October 2014 Acquisitions

Books:
Jason Aaron and Jason Latour, Southern Bastards, Vol. 1: Here Was a Man, 2014.
Marc Andreyko et al, DC Universe Presents, Vol. 3: Black Lightning and Blue Devil, 2014.
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Fatale, Vol. 5: Curse the Demon, 2014.
William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, 2014.
Andy Diggle and Victor Ibanez Ramirez, Rat Catcher, 2011.
RH Disney, Frozen (BGB), 2013.
Bob Fingerman, Minimum Wage, Vol. 1: Focus on the Strange, 2014.
Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin, Satellite Sam, Vol. 2: Satellite Sam and the Kinescope Snuff, 2014.
Christos Gage and Chris Samnee, Area 10, 2010.
Bob Kane et al, Showcase Presents: Batman, Vol. 1, 2006.
Bob Kane et al, Showcase Presents: Batman, Vol. 2, 2007.
Matt Kindt and Marco Castiello, Star Wars: Rebel Heist, 2014.
John H. M. Laslett, Sunshine Was Never Enough: Los Angeles Workers, 1880-2010, 2014.
Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game, 1978, 2004.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman, Vol. 4: Zero Year--Secret City, 2014.
Rick Spears et al, The Auteur, Vol. 1: Presidents Day, 2014.
Mary Tillworth, Barbie: Princess Charm School, 2011.
Brian Wood et al, Star Wars, Vol. 3: Rebel Girl, 2014.
Brian Wood et al, Star Wars, Vol. 4: A Shattered Hope, 2014.


DVDs:
The Incredible Mr. Limpet, 1964.

"What Was Wrought by White Supremacy"

"Today, Mississippi is politically polarized along racial lines. Whites are Republicans, blacks are Democrats, and the former controls state politics. Public investment isn't just disdained, it's attacked as racially suspect. 'The Republican Party has never been the food stamp party, or the party of pork until desperation set in with Thad Cochran's re-election bid,' said state Sen. Angela Hill during the Mississippi Senate Republican primary, in reference to Sen. Cochran's outreach to black voters. The state is harshly carceral—jailing more people per capita than almost anywhere in the country, the majority of them black—and has a huge number of all-white private schools while the public school system is largely segregated.
"You can understand all of this in terms of ordinary conservatism—and many people do—but this is a particularly strong conservatism shaped by a particularly brutal racial history. It's a small-government philosophy that has its roots in the pro-slavery thought of John C. Calhoun, emerged as resistance to Reconstruction, resurfaced in the fight against civil rights, and is now mostly ideological, if attenuated—but not separate—from its roots."


Jamelle Bouie in Slate looks at Mississippi.

Clinton or Obama?

"Substantial evidence suggests that Obama operates in a much more hostile and divided environment than Clinton did, even after the 1994 elections. Congressional polarization has increased. The presidential approval gap has expanded. Right-wing media has proliferated. Some new research that Amber Wichowsky, Jordyn Cziep, and I presented at APSA also suggests that the language used by the Speaker of the House (in floor speeches and other contexts) has become more sharply polarized over time - more negative toward the president and the other party, more negative about the idea of compromise. So if we are going to measure polarization spatially, or in terms of a continuum, Obama’s presidency is pretty clearly more polarized."


Julia Azari at Washington Monthly compares presidential opposition in the 1990s and the 2010s.

"Such Distinctions Have Been Lost Amid the Chants of Private Sector Good, Government Bad"

"And it's all about ideology, an overwhelming hostility to government spending of any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy."


Paul Krugman in The New York Times explains why "once the G.O.P. took control of the House, any chance of more money for infrastructure vanished."

"How 'the British Enjoyed and Consumed the Idea of Murder'"

"Worsley traces the written coverage of crime from the broadsides and Penny Bloods of the early 19th century through the growing market for detective and horror novels of a later era. In a time of low literacy and high poverty, 'patterers' would stand on street corners and read broadsides that reported crimes, usually with a fine disregard for the facts. Many patterers would act out the drama—the better the acting, the bigger the audience and the sales. As literacy increased, the broadsides turned into articles in the first widely sold newspapers. Novelists also started catering to the public appetite for mayhem. After Scotland Yard's detective branch was established, readers developed 'detective fever': Thousands of people wrote in to present their own theories about various murders, and the detectives were required to read and annotate them all."


Sara Paretsky in The New York Times reviews Lucy Worsley's The Art of the English Murder.

Lone Deep Nancy Transfer

The New York Times reports the deaths of actress Elizabeth Peña, singer Tim Hauser, clothing designer Oscar de la Renta, newspaper editor Ben Bradlee, RFK press aide Frank Mankiewicz, and Reagan astrologer Joan Quigley.


And the NME announces the deaths of singer Alvin Stardust and bassist Jack Bruce.

"NYC Officials Assure Public Most Puddles Of Bodily Fluid On Streets Not Contaminated With Ebola"

"'I want to emphasize that the pools of vomit, urine, and other fluids people may notice as they walk around the city are very unlikely to be contaminated with Ebola,' said New York City health commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett, adding that such fluids, as well as occasional clumps of feces, were almost certainly not deposited onto the streets and sidewalks by an infected individual."


From The Onion.

"What You Need to Do to Be a College Sports Fan These Days: Adopt the Mentality of a 7-Year-Old"

"The people who defend the status quo in college sports have always maintained that the student-athletes do get something in return for their on-the-field labors: a free education. Opponents of the status quo, like myself, have often countered that a lot of those student-athletes realistically aren't able to take advantage of that educational opportunity, because, in playing their sports, they're essentially working full-time jobs. But I don't think many of us imagined that the system was as corrupt as it was at UNC—where student-athletes, by being steered into these courses, were basically being defrauded."


Jason Zengerle in The New Republic reacts to the scandal at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

"The Richest Large Country in the World Is Beggaring Its Own Future by Decades of Systematic Underinvestment"

"Kleinbard likens inequality apologists to courtiers telling their rich patrons what they want to hear. His years of serving affluent clients in private practice taught him that they genuinely believe they deserve their wealth.
"'They thought that money was naturally attracted to them because of their special qualities,' he told me. 'They would take better care of it and nurture it, and you would no more turn a baby out on a snowy slope than you would let these poor dollars into the hands of the unwashed masses.'"


In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik talks with Edward D. Kleinbard about Kleinbard's new book, We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money.

"How Could They Create a System That Would Be Most Likely to Be Filled with Men of Civic Virtue but Avoid Creating Temptations That Might Corrode That Virtue?"

"And all of it has happened, Teachout admonishes, because the founders' understanding of corruption has been methodically taken apart by a Supreme Court that cynically pretends to worship the founders' every word. 'We could lose our democracy in the process,' Teachout warns, a bit of hyperbole that maybe it’s time to start taking seriously."


Thomas Frank in The New York Times reviews Zephyr Teachout's Corruption in America: From Ben Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United.

"The First Major Campus Revolt of the '60s"

"Like Savio's orations that fall at Berkeley, Reagan's address was an impassioned dissent against what he saw as a complacent, if not morally corrupt, status quo. Like Savio, Reagan attacked bureaucracy, elitism, and the loss of individual freedom. But while Savio's dissent stemmed from civil rights, Reagan's was based on what he saw as government intrusion on the free market."


Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, Seth Rosenfeld in California looks at Mario Savio, Clark Kerr, and Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1964.

"Populist Candidate Gaining Support Among Underrepresented Corporations"

"'By presenting himself as an alternative to politicians in the pocket of the high-profile, blue-chip establishment, Rogers has found a way to tap into the frustrations and concerns of the many ordinary corporations that have long felt alienated by the political process,' said political science professor David Thorne of Stanford University, noting that, rather than relying on large donations from a few elite companies, Rogers' campaign has focused on collecting contributions from a much broader base of firms that can often give just $10,000 or $50,000."


From The Onion.

Change Their Minds and Change the World

"The only scion of a once-grand Boston family, Marston was equal parts genius, charlatan, and kinkster. As an undergraduate at Harvard just before World War I, he was thrilled by militant suffragists like the ones who chained themselves to the fence outside 10 Downing Street. Maybe that's where his fusion of feminism and bondage started—imagery of slavery and shackles abounded in the movement's demonstrations and propaganda. His experiences in the psychology department left their mark, too. Marston was a lab assistant to the prominent Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg, a rigid German who opposed votes for women and thought educating them was a waste of time. Münsterberg would surface in the comics as Wonder Woman’s archenemy, Dr. Psycho. ('Women shall suffer while I laugh—Ha! Ho! Ha!') Busy strapping Radcliffe students to blood-pressure machines in Münsterberg's lab, Marston invented the lie detector—a forerunner of Wonder Woman's golden lasso, which compels those it binds to speak the truth."


In The Atlantic, Katha Pollitt reviews Jill Lepore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

"He Wanted the Full Debate, and He's Getting It"

"The synod document, a concrete reflection of the Francis papacy, in effect takes the weapons out of the hands of the hierarchical culture warriors. One might measure its significance in the pushback by groups who in the past prided themselves on their orthodoxy and adherence to papal and hierarchical teaching. They are in a fury and are not hiding their disappointment and rejection of the synod's thinking. Voice of the Family, which identifies itself as a coalition of 15 international pro-family Catholic groups, termed the document 'nothing short of a "betrayal" of Catholic and family values. And the blog Rorate Caeli, an extreme conservative Catholic site, described the document as a 'heresy, the homoheresy,' and in contradiction of the Gospel and Catholic tradition."


Tom Roberts in The New Republic reacts to the Vatican's continuing Extraordinary Synod on the Family.

"Not an Agenda to Help a Small Group of People, an Agenda to Build a Future for This Country"

"But start with this: three out of four kids in college are in public universities. A generation ago, state support for public universities was strong enough that three out of four dollars to educate those kids came from taxpayers and the family had to make up the difference for the fourth dollar. Today, that has basically reversed itself. That is, that the states are putting up, just generally across the country, about one out of four dollars and the families have got to come up with the other three out of four dollars. This matters because it is the state universities that are the backbone of access to higher education for middle class families, and I think that’s the place you have to start the conversation. I'm not going to let anybody off the hook, but I think it's the critical part of the conversation. And I say this—it's like I talk about in the book—this is personal for me. I graduated from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester in Texas."


Thomas Frank in Salon interviews Elizabeth Warren.

"All That Remained Was Politics. That Was a Lot. It Still Is"

"Eig's timing is fortunate; Americans are currently fighting new variations on the same battle, one that has never quite receded but, for political and legal reasons, is under a brighter spotlight than ever. It was one thing to invent the pill and get it approved. It has been quite another for women to have actual access to the contraception that’s right for them, what with this country's byzantine system of health care delivery and our even more contorted sexual politics."


In The New York Times, Irin Carmon reviews Jonathan Eig's The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution.


Rebecca Leber interviews Eig in The New Republic.

"What I Really Mean Is the Difference Between Humanities Majors and Science Majors"

"That may sound like crude or facetious shorthand, but I believe it contains a genuine insight. Given that I clearly belong to one of these tribes (you get only one guess), it's entirely likely that I will mischaracterize the other one. Such is the nature of the epistemological division. When I say that one side is primarily concerned with facts and the other with narrative, or that one side understands the world primarily in subjective, experiential and relativistic terms while the other focuses on objective and quantifiable phenomena and binary true-false questions, that may help us frame the profound mutual misunderstanding at work. Harris' conception of religion as bad science, which seems like a ludicrous misreading to those who understand religion as a mythic force that shapes community and collective meaning, is a classic example. One side insists that the only important question is whether the truth-claims of religion are actually true; the other side says that question doesn't even matter, and then wonders what 'truth' is, anyway. It's the overly literal-minded versus the hopelessly vague."


Andrew O'Hehir in Salon considers liberals and religion.

"From Civil Rights to Human Rights"

"Given ongoing white resistance and the sad realities of America's current partisan politics, African-American leaders and civil rights activists cannot continue to rely only on change from within. As Malcolm X once urged them to do, they might have to find support among, and make common cause with, the international community—as he put it, 'human rights are a precondition for civil rights.' This approach does not guarantee success, but it at least offers hope. History suggests that only when our policymakers and national leaders conclude that the mistreatment of African-Americans is harmful to America’s interests in the world will we see meaningful progress in civil rights here at home. Until then, sadly, we can expect more tragedies such as that of Michael Brown."


Moshik Temkin in The Nation reminds Americans of how people internationally observe racial issues in the United States.

"Amazon Is the Price We’re Paying for That Bipartisan Turn in Thinking"

"Conservatives, it turned out, were only too happy to hear such talk. After years of defending monopoly as perfectly justifiable, they began publishing books and articles conceding that consumer welfare was a legitimate purpose of antitrust, perhaps the only one. Robert Bork denounced all of Brandeis's attempts to protect small producers as a 'jumble of half-digested notions and mythologies.' A cottage industry of like-minded critiques emanated from the University of Chicago's Law School and then traveled straight to Republicans in Washington. In the hands of Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, not to mention the judges he appointed to the federal bench, efficiency and low prices provided the justification for dismantling much of the old antitrust infrastructure. No subsequent administration, either Democratic or Republican, has meaningfully tried to revive it."


Franklin Foer in The New Republic looks at Amazon and monopoly.


Scott Timberg in Salon links Amazon to the decline of alternative newspapers.

"Let's Take a Moment to Talk About the Current Wave of Obama-Bashing"

"Am I damning with faint praise? Not at all. This is what a successful presidency looks like. No president gets to do everything his supporters expected him to. FDR left behind a reformed nation, but one in which the wealthy retained a lot of power and privilege. On the other side, for all his anti-government rhetoric, Reagan left the core institutions of the New Deal and the Great Society in place. I don't care about the fact that Obama hasn't lived up to the golden dreams of 2008, and I care even less about his approval rating. I do care that he has, when all is said and done, achieved a lot. That is, as Joe Biden didn't quite say, a big deal."


In Rolling Stone, Paul Krugman defends President Obama.


Francis Wilkinson at the Washington Monthly argues that Obama has led the Democrats politically to triumph.


Danny Vinick looks at the economy in The New Republic.


And Thomas Frank in Salon criticizes Krugman's article.

Just Like Twilight Baby Robinson

The New York Times runs obits for actor Don Keefer, baseball player George Shuba, Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, and musician Paul Revere.

"A Valuable Addition to the Growing Literature on Slavery and American Development"

"It is hardly a secret that slavery is deeply embedded in our nation's history. But many Americans still see it as essentially a footnote, an exception to a dominant narrative of the expansion of liberty on this continent. If the various elements of 'The Half Has Never Been Told' are not entirely pulled together, its underlying argument is persuasive: Slavery was essential to American development and, indeed, to the violent construction of the capitalist world in which we live."


Eric Foner in The New York Times reviews Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slaver and the Making of American Capitalism.

"The Most Basic Apprehension of Our Condition Demands a Scaling-Up of Our Enquiries"

"The public future of the past is now firmly in historians' hands. History as a discipline is poised to recover its ancient mission as the guide to life but in a new guise as a critical human science, capable of judging data, incorporating it into complex narratives, and presenting its conclusions in forms accessible to the widest possible range of publics as well to those who make the policies that shape all of our lives. Historians now have more evidence–more data–in more forms available to them than ever before. Using digital materials and the tools to make sense of this data, historians can perform analytical feats that would have required a lifetime of immersion a generation ago."


In Aeon, David Armitage and Jo Guldi champion the longue durée over the Short Past.


Annalee Newitz in io9 responds.

"Nation Longs For One More Day With Dying Manufacturing Sector"

"'I have all these wonderful memories from back when the conveyor belts were constantly running, shifts were working around the clock, and it seemed like the manufacturing sector was just so full of life, but now, I can barely recognize it at all,' said Alison Panetta of Akron, OH, explaining that she now simply wanted to make sure she said her farewells on her own terms. 'At this point, I've accepted that it isn't going to get any better. I just want to enjoy what little time we still have left.'
"'I made the mistake of not doing that with the family farming sector, and I'm not going to make it again,' Panetta added."


From The Onion.