May 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Jules R. Benjamin, A Student's Guide to History, Twelfth Edition, 2013.
Anthony Bourdain et al, Get Jiro!, 2012.
William H. Chafe, Harvard Sitkoff, and Beth Bailey (eds.), A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, Eighth Edition, 2011.
William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, Seventh Edition, 2010.
Garth Ennis et al, Hitman, Vol. 2: Ten Thousand Bullets, 2010.
Garth Ennis et al, Hitman, Vol. 3: Local Heroes, 2010.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Indigestible MAD, 1968.
Albert B. Feldstein (ed.), The Recycled MAD, 1972.
Justin Gray et al, All Star Western, Vol. 2: The War of Lords and Owls, 2013.
Glen Hanson et al, Realworlds: Wonder Woman, 2000.
James D. Hudnall et al, Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography, 1989.
Victoria Kann, Pinkalicious: Flower Girl, 2013.
Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor, Batman: Death by Design, 2013.
Randy Lofficier et al, Superman's Metropolis, 1997.
Pat Olliffe et al, The Invincible Iron Man: An Origin Story, 2011.
Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture, 2012.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman, Vol. 1: The Court of Owls, 2013.
Matt Wagner, Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity, 2005.
Mark Waid and Alex Ross, Kingdom Come, 2008.
Daniel Wallace, Batman: The World of the Dark Knight, 2012.

DVDs:
Pixote, 1981.

You're Welcome

"Still, California’s challenge is America’s: how to manage public business competently enough—collecting taxes, covering costs, educating children, fostering research, protecting the environment, maintaining order—to allow the creative carnival of its private activities to go on. And this is where Jerry Brown’s accomplishment seems most impressive. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office with a budget deficit of about $27 billion, having covered some of the state’s obligations during his final year in office with IOUs. This year’s budget shows a surplus of at least $500 million. 'We are governable!,' Brown told me, emphasizing it because so many people have argued the reverse. 'We balanced our budget. Arnold just borrowed money, but we’re paying down our debts. We’re coming back.'"

James Fallows in The Atlantic praises Jerry Brown.

But David Dayen in Salon has another take.

"8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live"

"By Tuesday night, New York was completely abandoned. At press time, however, some 10 million Los Angeles–area residents, tired of their self-centered, laid-back culture and lack of four distinct seasons, and yearning for the hustle and bustle of East Coast life, had already begun repopulating the city."

From The Onion.

"It’s Time to Rename These Bases"

"All these installations date from the buildups during the world wars, and naming them in honor of a local military figure was a simple choice. But that was a time when the Army was segregated and our views about race more ignorant. Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?"

In The New York Times, Jamie Malanowski criticizes military bases named after Confederates.

"Rust Belt Stories"

"The author is fully present in these scenes, though the tales are predominantly those of others: Steelworkers laid off in their 50s, never to work again; autoworkers in their 40s moving into service jobs at a fraction of their former pay; chronically poor urban scavengers; young men who will never have a shot at a factory job rolling drugs in urban underground economies. Or economies in which nothing is produced."

Scott Martelle in the Los Angeles Times reviews Edward McClelland's Nothin' but Blues Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland.

"For the Purpose of Strewing with Flowers or Otherwise Decorating the Graves of Comrades"

"As America recognizes the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclaimation, we would do well to revisit the origins of Memorial Day among freedpeople in Charleston. While they honored those who fought for their emancipation, it was not simply a moment of great triumph and celebration for freedpeople, but a complicated process that led to the unexpected death of hundreds of thousands of former slaves."

Jim Downs at The Huffington Post discusses Memorial Day and the end of slavery.

"Nazis Were All but Invisible in American Movies at the Time When Depicting Their Savagery Might Have Done the Most Good"

"In the end it was Jack Warner who brought the rest of Hollywood on board. By using the techniques of 'March of Time,' he was able to blend melodrama, agitprop and a remedial history lesson into the Warners production 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy.' The film made it through the censor boards and onto American screens in the spring of 1939, only a few months before the outbreak of war in Europe. By then, as Doherty pointedly notes, even the most optimistic of Hollywood’s businessmen had concluded that Nazi Germany was no longer a viable outlet for American movies, and was unlikely to be so again for the foreseeable future."

Dave Kehr in The New York Times reviews Thomas Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.

"The Other Half Is Equality"

"We usually think of greater inclusiveness as a blow struck for equality. But in our time, the stories of greater social equality and economic inequality are unrelated. The fortunes of middle-class Americans have declined while prospects for many women and minorities have risen. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have improved together—this is what appeared to be happening in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies. Since then, many women and minorities have done better than in any previous generations, but many others in both groups have seen their lives and communities squeezed by the economic contractions of the past generation. Like almost everything else, the new inclusiveness divides the country into winners and losers. It’s been good for those with the education, talent, and luck to benefit from it; for others—in urban cores like Youngstown, Ohio; rural backwaters like Rockingham County, North Carolina; and the exurban slums outside Tampa—inclusiveness remains mostly theoretical. It gives an idea of equality, which makes the reality of inequality even more painful."

George Packer at The New Yorker looks at "What America Has Gained, What America Has Lost."

At The American Conservative, Samuel Goldman responds.

Joe Klein at Time reads Packer's new book.

"Every War Has Come to an End"

"Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony at a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground.  Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores; fans taking in a ballgame; a veteran starting a business; a bustling city street; a citizen shouting her concerns at a President."

The New York Times prints President Obama's speech about counterterrorism.

"The Troubling Question Is Why She Has Become What the Education-Reform Movement Is Looking for in a Standard Bearer"

"Surely one reason that the education-reform movement comports itself in this strident and limited manner is that it depends so heavily on the largesse of people who are used to getting their way and to whom the movement’s core arguments have a powerful face validity. Only a tiny percentage of American children attend the kind of expensive, non-sectarian private schools where many of the elite send their children. It is worth noting that these schools generally avoid giving their students the standardized achievement tests that state education departments require, making the results public, and paying teachers on the basis of the scores, and that they almost never claim to be creating hyper-competitive, commercial-skills-purveying environments for their students. Sidwell Friends, of presidential-daughter fame, says it offers 'a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.' That doesn’t sound like it would cut much ice with Michelle Rhee."

Nicholas Lemann in The New Republic discusses Michelle Rhee.

"Zelig in the Corner of Someone Else’s Portrait"

"When he crosses a present-day mind, it is almost never as the plump, white-mustachioed burgher painted by Sargent. We see instead the slender young man, one hand playfully on his hip, the other on the back of Lincoln’s chair, being photographed with Nicolay and the president in Alexander Gardner’s Civil War studio. Hay may have written, in 1900, that 'the most important part of my life came late,' but his heart and subconscious are unlikely to have believed it. While sailing home from Europe shortly before his death—he’d gone for a rest cure but succumbed, as always, to social distractions—he had a dream about going 'to the White House to report to the president who turned out to be Mr. Lincoln' instead of the incumbent Roosevelt. It was his service to the first that brought him into the realms of myth and even religious mystery; his work for the second put him in the mere thick of history."

Thomas Mallon in The New York Times reviews John Taliaferro's All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, From Lincoln to Roosevelt.

This Can't Be Today

"I was just grateful I got on for the ride. For some reason, which I cannot explain, we have become to other people what Television was for me. That is for me the greatest satisfaction because those guys, for me, were it. For all the bullshit that's out there, one of the most rewarding things for me has been, 25 years later, to go out and play again. It's almost more rewarding now – I've never been in a room where so many people are so happy to see me. There are people for whom this music means a great deal, and it's very humbling."

Michael Hann in The Guardian presents an oral history of the Paisley Underground.

"A Commitment to Democracy as Process"

"O’Brien is right that Obama represents an American political tradition, though there’s no need to go back to seventeenth-century Rotterdam to find it. The focus on democratic process, reform, and an ideal of deliberative democracy has been shared by many of the less successful Democratic candidates (and a few Republicans, like Representative John Anderson in 1980) since the 1950s. It’s the tradition of what historian Sean Wilentz called the 'beautiful losers,' beginning with Adlai Stevenson, and journalist Ron Brownstein called 'wine track' candidates (people who talk about 'new politics') as opposed to the more electable 'beer track' candidates like Bill Clinton (who focus more on basic economics than on the nature of politics). Obama’s passion has always seemed to be more for a richer and more collaborative form of politics than for any particular vision of economic justice.
"Obama’s presidency has been the first real test of a politics focused on reform and democratic participation rather than traditional bipartisan bargaining—and it has failed. Over the last four years, American politics split sharply into the two primary traditions: the first a sort of hyper-Lockeanism represented not just by the Tea Party but even by Mitt Romney’s division of the country into 'makers and takers,' the second a demand—driven by circumstances and crisis—for a much more active, expansive government role in the economy. Economic issues, once a natural zone of compromise, began to seem more like social issues, matters of irreconcilable absolutes. There wasn’t much room in the middle, and for a period, Obama’s discursive strategy seemed wholly irrelevant."

Mark Schmitt in the Washington Monthly reviews Ruth O’Brien's Out of Many, One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition.

"Devastating to Open Access"

"Harris understands the temptation to resort to two-tier pricing. During the economic downturn and subsequent squeeze on state budgets, funding for community colleges was cut $809 million over three years. Faculty and staff were cut. Class sizes increased to 20-year highs; teacher-to-student ratios rose to 11-year highs. The number of course sections decreased. Students faced waiting lists.
"The solution, however, is not to create a pricing system that favors 'haves' over 'have-nots.'"

The Sacramento Bee's Editorial Board criticizes proposals to create "pay to play fees for community colleges."

"Mere Representation"

John Harris and Meghan Sutherland in The Guardian discuss Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle.

"A Particular Kind of Socialism"

Whatever its political vagaries, people bought the NS just as much for the 'back half,' outstanding books and arts pages that gave one of the best reflections of serious English culture for most of the last century. Evelyn Waugh was not the only one amused by what he called the notorious contrast 'between the Jekyll of culture, wit and ingenious competition and the Hyde of querulous atheism and economics which prefaces it.'"

In The New Republic, Geoffrey Wheatcroft marks the centennial of the New Statesman.

The $64,000 Stingray Mobile

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for animator Ray Harryhausen, car customizer Dean Jeffries, bicycle designer Al Fritz, actor Taylor Mead, and television psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers.

"Enumerating Heresies and Defining Orthodoxies"

"'There is much that citizens from all points on the ideological spectrum can learn from the story of the Federalist Society,' Avery and McLaughlin conclude. And indeed there is. Although they don’t spell out the lessons for liberals, at least two emerge from the data they present. First, the various strands of legal liberalism—civil libertarians, Great Society liberals, neoprogressive technocrats, economic populists and advocates of equal rights on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation—would do well to set aside their ideological differences and converge around a common approach to constitutional interpretation that citizens can understand. And second, if liberals want to take the courts back from conservatives, they have to recognize that ideas—and judicial appointments—matter."

Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times reviews Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin's The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back From Liberals.

Fiat Nox

"When Clark Kerr was installed as UC's president, he cited the 'immeasurable benefits' the university had derived from the 'long vision and the understanding of the legislators and officers of our state.' As that 'enlightened and friendly environment' has eroded in the decades since, so has the education of successive generations—and the prospects for California's future."

Seth Rosenfeld in the Los Angeles Times identifies Ronald Reagan's governorship as the beginning of the University of California's decline.

Brave New School

"Those that have signed up are a mix of for-profit and nonprofit institutions, many of them business schools, both in the United States and overseas. Professors and administrators say they have been won over by on-the-job performance. 'This is what they do for a living,' says Ms. Whisenant. 'We're working with professionals.'"

Audrey Williams June in The Chronicle of Higher Education writes about companies in India that allow American college professors to outsource grading.

"I Went to Those Shows . . . "

"My parents are awesome, but they're pretty left-wing. They live in Canada now. They moved when Bush was re-elected. You know how a lot of people said they were going to do that? My parents actually did it. So I was raised with what I would say was a healthy alternative political view. Certainly, most of my memories of my childhood are at City Lights, because that's where I was babysat. Lawrence Ferlinghetti would watch me, and I would play in his office."

Stephen Mooallem in Interview interviews Winona Ryder.

"It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way"

"Jim Knoepp of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group that has campaigned against the guest worker program, said farm work, like other difficult labor, can be made attractive to Americans at reasonable cost, and farmers should not be excused from doing so.

"'There used to be lots of American pickers who moved around the country,' he said. 'But wages have stagnated and conditions have deteriorated and agriculture is unwilling to make these jobs attractive. Think of trash collection. That’s not very appealing either. But if you offer a decent wage and conditions, people do it.'"

 

Ethan Bronner in The New York Times reports on a lawsuit in Georgia alleging hiring discrimination in farm work. 

The Devil Made Him Do It

"Wilson came out of a difficult Jersey City, N.J., childhood, spent largely in foster homes from which he repeatedly ran away; eventually, he escaped into the Air Force where he began performing. Cook offers an intriguing glimpse into black nightlife in mid-'50s California, where Wilson got his professional start, in San Francisco and the working-class rooms of the San Joaquin Valley. He was older than both Bill Cosby, whose success preceded his (and of which, according to 'Flip,' he was jealous), and Richard Pryor, whom he hired as a writer-performer for 'The Flip Wilson Show. ' Pryor paid him back by calling him 'NBC's house Negro.'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Robert Lloyd reviews Kevin Cook's Flip: The Inside Story of TV's First Black Superstar.

"The Further West One Comes, the More There Is to Like"

"San Francisco readily embraced the outré young Irishman. Wilde returned the favor. 'There is where I belong,' he told his hosts at one reception. 'This is my atmosphere. I didn't know such a place existed in the whole United States.' When the time came for him to leave San Francisco on April 8, even the railroad locomotives were said to have echoed one of his catchphrases, whistling 'too too!' as they left the station."

Roy Morris, Jr., in the Los Angeles Times discusses Oscar Wilde's 1882 visit to California.

"Bang Up the Middle of the State"

"Dropping into the Central Valley from the mountains surrounding the Tejon Pass is like breaking open a petit four, getting past the glossy, pretty exterior: inside is the cake. The urban surfaces of California are what we see in movies and on TV: slick, manufactured, shouting, cajoling, bamboozling, seducing, ready to sell you something. And then the confected beauty of the city gives way; now the land reaches far out to the sky. Your ears pop from the pressure change, and a sign advises you that the next gas station is 19 miles off."

Maria Bustillos in Aeon magazine drives the Five.

Smoke Out Hickory

"But after an election in which Democrats rode a wave of minority support to keep the White House and Senate, party activists should wonder about one of the founders for whom that event is named. If branding matters, then the tradition of honoring perhaps the most systematic violator of human rights for America’s nonwhites should finally run its course."

Steve Yoder in Salon argues in favor of dumping Andrew Jackson from the name of Democratic Party fundraising events.