January 2014 Acquisitions

Books:
Bonnie Bader and Nancy Harrison, Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?, 2005.
James M. Cain, Double Indemnity, 2005.
Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, 2014.
Bill Finger et al, Batman '66: The TV Stories, 2014.
Derek Fridolfs et al, Batman: Arkham Unhinged, Vol. 2, 2013.
Van Gosse, The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents, 2005.
Jessica Gunderson, Really, Rapunzel Needed a Haircut!: The Story of Rapunzel as Told by Dame Gothel, 2014.
Shane Hamilton and Sarah Phillips, The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics: A Brief History with Documents, 2014.
Kyle Higgins et al, Nightwing, Vol. 1: Traps and Trapezes, 2012.
Gregg Hurwitz et al, Batman: The Dark Knight, Vol. 2: Cycle of Violence, 2014.
Geoff Johns et al, Justice League, Vol. 1: Origin, 2013.
Victoria Kann, Pinkalicious and the Perfect Present, 2014.
Scott Lobdell et al, Teen Titans, Vol. 1: It's Our Right to Fight, 2012.
Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, 2010.
Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko, The Paper Bag Princess, 2005.
Andrea Posner-Sanchez, Doc McStuffins: A Knight in Sticky Armor, 2012.
Nick Robinson and Susan Behar, Origami XOXO, 2012.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Seventies, 2000.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Sixties, 1999.
Peter J. Tomasi et al, Batman and Robin, Vol. 2: Pearl, 2013.
Thomas W. Zeiler, Jackie Robinson and Race in America: A Brief History with Documents, 2014.


DVDs:
Machete Kills, 2013.

"6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture"

"'As soon as I walked into that dusty, remote town and the smiling children started coming up to me, I just knew my Facebook profile photo would change forever,' said Fisher, noting that she realized early in her nearly weeklong visit just how narrow and unworldly her previous Facebook profile photos had been."


From The Onion.

To Everything There Is a Season

"Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10, from college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

"For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action."

Jon Pareles in The New York Times reports the death of Pete Seeger.


And Alice Robb in The New Republic traces the history of Seeger's reputation.

"The Last Generation to Broadly Love Classical Music May Simply Be Aging, Like World War I Veterans, Out of Existence"

"Now let’s look at classical concerts. Live classical music is less commercially viable than ever. Attendance per concert has fallen, according to Robert Flanagan, an emeritus professor at Stanford. But 'even if every seat were filled, the vast majority of U.S. symphony orchestras still would face significant performance deficits.' Live orchestral music is essentially a charity case. A Bloomberg story on the recent wave of orchestra bankruptcies (an unheard-of phenomenon outside of the U.S., says Flanagan) notes that by 2005, orchestras got more money from donations than from ticket sales. The New York City Opera, once hailed as the 'people’s opera,' filed for bankruptcy in October. If the 'people' want opera, they’ve got a funny way of showing it."


Mark Vanhoenacker in Slate contends that "[c]lassical music in America is dead."

"The Alien, the Brain, the Brute, the Guru, the Kamikaze, the Lotus Blossom, the Manipulator and the Temptress"

"'The images were largely negative,' says exhibition curator Jeff Yang. 'This reflected the time frame—a period when the view of Asians was shaped by racist, xenophobic wartime propaganda' and fears related to immigration and economic and global rivalries.
"He adds that the pieces on display, some of which may 'disturb and disquiet,' illustrate how 'tenacious stereotypes' plus the nature of the medium ('an art of broad strokes and bright colors') helped create stock villains, vixens and sages."


Karen Wada in the Los Angeles Times discusses "Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986," a current exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum.

"A Forlorn Elegy for a Fading Institution"

"A dense and thorough history of pop music, Stanley’s book actually stops in 1999 because it was at this point that pop music, as he sees it, ceased to be ubiquitous. Smash Hits, Select, Melody Maker and the BBC’s Top of the Pops are all gone. Chart hits no longer have much of an era-defining quality to them, and regional-based underground music scenes, based around small pub and club venues, barely exist in any meaningful way."


Neil Davenport at spiked reviews Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop.


And in Stephin Merritt Salon interviews Stanley.

"Best, Most Original Idea Man’s Ever Had Returns 114,000 Google Search Results"

"At press time, Liptak was reading a Forbes.com profile of one of the multimillionaires who pioneered Liptak’s idea nine years ago."


From The Onion.

"Often Lurked Only in the Shadows"

"I don’t remember when I learned of Bill Finger other than that it was after I graduated college in 1994. I actually have a recording of myself in college discussing Batman’s real-life origin, in which I make no mention of Bill.
"I didn’t plan on becoming his champion; for a while, I wasn’t sure I would become his biographer! But it’s hard to put forth a tragic story like his and then feel compelled to do more on behalf of his legacy."


Michael Cavna at The Washington Post interviews Marc Tyler Nobleman about Bill Finger, "The Secret Co-Creator of Batman."

"A Sort of Hyper-America"

"The scrambling of pop time is a culture-wide phenomenon in the West, but it feels unusually strong in LA, where pop radio is dominated by old music: classic rock, New Wave and eclectic stations like Jack fm that mimic a 40-something’s iPod Shuffle. Flicking between stations, there’s a visual analogue to what you hear in the endless interplay of different eras of commercial signage and shop-front décor. In no other city have I had such an overwhelming sense of the erosion of a cultural timecode, that pulse that once synchronized the sectors of the contemporary scene (fashion, design, music, etc.) and constructed a sense of epoch."


In a 2011 Frieze article, Simon Reynolds discusses "'Hypnagogic pop' and the landscape of Southern California."

Professor Tiffany Family

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for movie producer Dick Shepherd, actor Dave Madden, actor Russell Johnson, and Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda.

Ringleader of the Tormentors

"The respective weight of Fox’s ideological and commercial motives remains a topic for debate. Manufactured indignation (the 'War on Christmas,' 'Obama’s Czars,' 'the Ground Zero Mosque') drives viewership, especially when performed for a mostly male audience by leggy blond anchors. At one level, Fox’s victimhood pose is obviously disingenuous; Murdoch has always played the outrage game to drive circulation and ratings. His most valuable player, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely seething with resentment, often at his friends as much as his enemies. Another pattern of his is to build up Frankenstein monsters, like Beck, Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, and then decry their ingratitude. Fox’s populism is so clearly an expression of his authentic feelings that it’s hard to see it as purely cynical."


Jacob Weisberg in The New York Times reviews Gabriel Sherman's The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country.

Velvet Elvises

"But the tacky, flashy, and downright ugly paintings have stayed with the popular imagination—because, according to folklore scholar Eric A. Eliason, we need them to. In his 2011 book “Black Velvet Art,” Eliason suggests that velvet paintings play an important role in Western culture as the anti-art, a fixed concept that people distance themselves from to prove they have good taste. Even though velvet painting references the same sort of pop-culture icons—such as Marilyn Monroe, the Pink Panther, comic panels—as work by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Roy Lichtenstein, it lacks the detached self-awareness that allows Pop Art to be deemed gallery worthy.
"'Why is black velvet different than any other medium?' Eliason says. "'Canvas art has some crappy and tacky stuff, too. But the assumption is the minute you put an artwork on velvet, you’ve ghettoized it into this denigrated category that, I think, exists for a purpose. If black velvet didn’t play the role that it has in the late 20th century, something else would’ve emerged to take its place. This snobbery shows the ugly side of the fine-art world and upper middle-class aspirational sensibilities.'"


In light of a new museum just opened in Los Angeles, Lisa Hix at CollectorsWeekly.com depicts the history of painting on black velvet.

"A 'Race between Education and Technology'"

"Everyone should be able to benefit from productivity gains—in that, Keynes was united with his successors. His worry about technological unemployment was mainly a worry about a 'temporary phase of maladjustment' as society and the economy adjusted to ever greater levels of productivity. So it could well prove. However, society may find itself sorely tested if, as seems possible, growth and innovation deliver handsome gains to the skilled, while the rest cling to dwindling employment opportunities at stagnant wages."


The Economist discusses the danger of "technological unemployment."

Get Yeezus

The Village Voice publishes its 2013 Pazz+Jop poll results.

"Detroit Is Affordable and Fascinating"

"But what if someone offered you a free house? In a contemporary, literary twist on old homesteading incentives, a new nonprofit organization called Write a House is refurbishing three two-bedroom houses in Detroit and accepting applications this spring for writers to move in, rent free. Poets, journalists, novelists, and anyone who falls somewhere in between are encouraged to apply. If the writers stay for the required two years and fulfill other obligations, such as engaging with the city’s literary community and contributing to the program’s blog, they’ll even get the deed to the place. As the group’s mission puts it, 'It’s like a writer-in-residence program, only in this case we’re actually giving the writer the residence, forever.'"


Ian Crouch at The New Yorker discusses a new effort to lure writers to Detroit.

"New Study Reveals Nothing Pfizer’s Lawyers Can’t Take Care Of"

"'While Pfizer has for years benefited from record sales of its stable of flagship drugs, our research shows [not a damned thing the best and most handsomely compensated legal team in the country won’t make go away in a millisecond, don’t you worry],' read the study in part, which includes a series of troubling conclusions that are all being given a thorough read-through by Doug and the rest of the junkyard dogs in legal who will make goddamned sure any resulting litigation is either dismissed in a court of law outright or will result in a minor cash settlement that, c’mon, will be a mere drop in the bucket for a company the size of Pfizer."


From The Onion.

Blues Sit-In Fantasy Runner

The Los Angeles Times reports the deaths of movie producer Saul Zaentz, athlete Eusébio, movie studio owner Run Run Shaw, writer Amiri Baraka, Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes, civil rights activist Franklin McCain, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Investments..., Credit..., Property, Commodities and Capital"

"In 'Benito Cereno,' Melville retold these events with some significant ­changes. Omitting what Grandin calls 'Delano’s nearly yearlong hounding' of the Spaniard for what he considered his due compensation for the rescue, he emphasized Cereno’s lingering shock and Delano’s impenetrable insouciance. He focused on the leader of the slave rebellion, whose corpse, after his trial and hanging, was decapitated, with the head impaled on a spike in the main plaza of Lima so all could contemplate his 'voiceless end.'"


Andrew Delbanco in The New York Times reviews Greg Grandin’s Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.

"The National Battle to Curb Smoking Still Smolders"

"In addition to listing all the dangers and diseases associated with smoking, Terry also took the extraordinary step of calling for government involvement in the issue.  Across the decades, the national effort to separate Americans from their cigarettes has manifested itself in the creation of warning labels on packs of cigarettes (1965), the launching of free anti-smoking PSAs on television (1967), the creation of smoking sections in restaurants, airplanes, and elsewhere in the 1970s, and the banning of cigarette advertisements.  Eventually, full smoking bans took root as well."


Adam Chandler at The Atlantic notes the fiftieth anniversary of the Surgeon General "report that linked smoking cigarettes with lung cancer."

"Education Is Not Just a Vocational Enterprise"

"There are different pedagogical approaches all over the place. There are many younger historians, much younger than I am, who are more familiar with using social media as part of history teaching—using all sorts of Internet and other resources in classrooms. I'm sure that can be very positive, although it might become distracting. My experience as a teacher and as a student long ago, is that there is no substitute for a good teacher. I don't care what bells and whistles that you're using, it's the teacher in the classroom. That's why I'm a little skeptical about MOOCs, online education. I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that the presence of a teacher is actually critical to learning.
"I'm less interested in pedagogical approaches than the training of the teacher, the ability of the teacher, the knowledge of the teacher, and the teacher's ability to inspire students by conveying his or her own enthusiasm for the subject."


David Cutler at The Atlantic interviews Eric Foner about teaching history.

"Girlfriend Overdoses On Lotion"

"'Caroline didn’t do this to herself on purpose—she just didn’t know her limit,' distraught boyfriend Eric Klein told investigators, recalling that Nagler would often come home covered in a layer of lavender salve without acknowledging that she glistened brightly or smelled heavily of morning dew. 'It’s a wonder she hasn’t had an overdose yet; it’s a full-on addiction. She hides the bottles everywhere—underneath the sink, in the back of cabinets. I once saw her pull a small bottle of it out of her purse. She couldn’t go 20 minutes without it.'"


From The Onion.

It Must Be Won in the Field, in Every Private Home, in Every Public Office, from the Courthouse to the White House

"Half a century after Mr. Johnson’s now-famed State of the Union address, the debate over the government’s role in creating opportunity and ending deprivation has flared anew, with inequality as acute as it was in the Roaring Twenties and the ranks of the poor and near-poor at record highs. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps are keeping millions of families afloat. Republicans have sought to cut both programs, an illustration of the intense disagreement between the two political parties over the best solutions for bringing down the poverty rate as quickly as possible, or eliminating it.
"For poverty to decrease, 'the low-wage labor market needs to improve,' James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky said. 'We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won’t step up to the plate, we’re going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive.'"


Annie Lowery in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's declaration of a War on Poverty.

The Calvinist Moment

"That focus on sinfulness differs from a lot of popular evangelicalism in recent years. It runs contrary to the 'prosperity gospel' preachers, who imply that faith can make one rich. It sounds nothing like the feel-good affirmations of preachers and authors like Joel Osteen, who treat the Bible like a self-help book, or a guide to better business.

"'What you’d be hearing in some megachurches is, "God wants you to be a good parent, and here are seven ways God can help you to be a good parent,"' said Collin Hansen, the author of 'Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey With the New Calvinists.' 'Or, "God wants you to have a good marriage, so here are three ways to do that."' By contrast, Mr. Hansen said, those who attend Calvinist churches want the preacher to 'tell them about Jesus.'"

Mark Oppenheimer in The New York Times reports on the rise of Calvinism among Evangelical Protestants.

Imitation of Bel-Air Brothers

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for valet George Jacobs, scholar Ian Barbour, actor James Avery, actress Juanita Moore, and singer Phil Everly.

"Oh, and Its CEO Jim McNerny’s Total Compensation Is Somewhere North of $20 Million"

"But to really address the underlying trends will also mean taking on the more fundamental forces that lead to an outcome like we just saw in the Puget Sound: strengthening labor laws and unions in right-to-work states to weaken employers' race-to-the-bottom threats to move south; raising taxes on upper incomes and capital gains to slightly rebalance the equation between the McNernys of the world and their flush investors on the one hand and their overmatched workers on the other; and, perhaps most difficult of all, changing the norms for acceptable behavior by corporate titans, even if they've been named to the presidential exports council."

Alec MacGillis at The New Republic reacts to the union vote at Boeing near Seattle.

"The Squares Have Joined In"

"That's right, America. We've entered the age of the iPhone bong—sleek, elegant, corporate. Oh sure, maybe that Grateful Dead-style blown-glass hippie shit was never cool. Indeed, those items are ugly. But they know what they are. Far worse is the middlebrow pipe that strives to be something more.
"The situation has left actual young people confused."

Elspeth Reeve at The Atlantic argues that legal marijuana is uncool.

"A Classic Example of Style over Substance"

"As much as they were a musical act, the Pistols (and especially Vicious) were proof that all important bands think visually.  The neon cut-and-paste art, the tarted-up military fashions and edge-of-a-breakdown stage presence were all calculated for maximum impact and totalizing effect."

August Brown in the Los Angeles Times visits the latest Shepard Fairey exhibit, "SID: Superman Is Dead."

Take Fourteen

The Village Voice publishes its 2013 film critics' poll results.

2013 Favorites

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
56 Up (dir. Michael Apted)
The World's End (dir. Edgar Wright)
A Band Called Death (dir. Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett)
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (dir. Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori)
20 Feet from Stardom (dir. Morgan Neville)
Planes (dir. Klay Hall)
Lovelace (dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman)
Sound City (dir. Dave Grohl)
Our Nixon (dir. Penny Lane)
Good Ol' Freda (dir. Ryan White)

Albums:
Jagwar Ma--Howlin' (Mom + Pop)  
Daft Punk--Random Access Memories (Columbia) 
Relatives--The Electric Word (Yep Roc)   
Fitz & the Tantrums--More than Just a Dream (Elektra)    
Primal Scream--More Light (Ignition)  
Lorde--Pure Heroine (Lava)  
Best Coast--Fade Away (Bratty BC)  
Janelle Monáe--The Electric Lady (Wondaland)    
Phoenix--Bankrupt! (Loyauté)   
Franz Ferdinand--Right Thoughts Right Words Right Action (Domino)  

Songs:
Palma Violets--'Best of Friends'
Daft Punk--'Get Lucky'
Relatives--'Bad Trip'
Icona Pop--'I Love It'
Lorde--'Team'
Fitz & the Tantrums--'Spark'
Arctic Monkeys--'Do I Wanna Know?'
Lana Del Rey--'Summertime Sadness [Cedric Gervais Remix Edit]'
Franz Ferdinand--'Right Action'
Capital Cities--'Safe and Sound'

December 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Isaiah Berlin, The Age of Enlightenment: The 18th Century Philosophers, 1956.
Tony S. Daniel et al, Batman: Detective Comics, Vol. 2: Scare Tactics, 2013.
Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, 2011.
Virginia Heckert, Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments, 2013.
Bob Kane et al, Batman Chronicles, Vol. 1, 2005.
Scott Lobdell et al, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Vol. 1: REDemption, 2012.
Scott Lobdell et al, Superboy, Vol. 1: Incubation, 2012.
Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, 1978.
Bruce W. Miller, The Gabrielino, 1993.
Frank Miller et al, All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, 2011.
Frank Miller et al, Batman: Black and White, Vol. 1, 2007.
Grant Morrison et al, Superman: Action Comics, Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel, 2013.
Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, 2012.
Dennis O'Neil et al, The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime, 2013.
Jerry Ordway et al, Superman in the Eighties, 2006.
Jimmy Palmiotti, All Star Western, Vol. 3: The Black Diamond Probability, 2013.
George Perez et al, Superman, Vol. 1: What Price Tomorrow?, 2013.
Gail Simone, Batgirl, Vol. 1: The Darkest Reflection, 2012.
R.J. Smith, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, 2012.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman: Night of the Owls, 2013.
Johnny Temple (ed.), USA Noir, 2013.

DVDs:
An American Girl: Saige Paints the Sky, 2013.
Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics I, 2009.
Dolphin Tale, 2011.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, 1977.

"Lions Led by Donkeys"

"'Our look is at reconciliation, to have as many former enemies together as possible and to show that we have learned from our mistakes,' said Norman Walter, a spokesman for the German Embassy in London.
"But the nature and tone of some events elsewhere have become hotly contested, especially in Britain."

Henry Chu in the Los Angeles Times reports on Europeans being divided over how to commemorate the upcoming centennial of World War I.

No One Is Innocent

The Los Angeles Times publishes obituaries for singer Ray Price, preacher Harold Camping, thief Ronnie Biggs, movie rater Richard Heffner, pornographer Al Goldstein, and weapon designer Mikhail Kalashnikov.

A Cross of Bitcoin

"Smith is often treated as a conservative patron saint, and he did indeed make the original case for free markets. It’s less often mentioned, however, that he also argued strongly for bank regulation—and that he offered a classic paean to the virtues of paper currency. Money, he understood, was a way to facilitate commerce, not a source of national prosperity—and paper money, he argued, allowed commerce to proceed without tying up much of a nation’s wealth in a 'dead stock' of silver and gold.

"So why are we tearing up the highlands of Papua New Guinea to add to our dead stock of gold and, even more bizarrely, running powerful computers 24/7 to add to a dead stock of digits?"

In The New York Times, Paul Krugman takes on virtual currency.

Put the X in Xmas

"Xmas is, though, a much more venerable abbreviation than many suppose. The X signifies the Greek letter chi, which was traditionally combined with P, or rho, to signify the name of Christ. Constantine instructed his soldiers to scrawl the letters on their shields before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, his victory in which led to the unlikely establishment of a Christian empire. Far from a symbol of secularization, then, Xmas carries echoes of the clash of battle that inaugurated political Christendom.
"The abbreviation’s use in English dates back to 1021, when an Anglo-Saxon scribe saved himself space by writing XPmas. The P was dropped but the term soldiered on: Coleridge used Xmas in his letter writing. The wags at Punch pressed it into service as a verb, Xmassing (one imagines the verb would get more use if the WASPs who currently spend their time summering, wintering, and weekending were somewhat more observant)."

Matthew Schmitz at First Things explains Xmas.

Faden Away

"For the project, Snoop has taken on the nickname Snoopzilla, in homage to Bootsy Collins. To him the record represents a personal indulgence, a vanity project with less commercial potential than almost anything he's done. Think Neil Young doing rockabilly, or Garth Brooks doing alt-rock.
"For album producer Dam, however, it's a career-making turn, both an affirmation of what he's been working toward for decades and a thumbing of the nose to the local beat scene he came up in, which he feels never showed him proper respect."

In the LA Weekly, Ben Westhoff interviews Snoop Dogg and Dam-Funk, aka 7 Days of Funk.

"There’s a More Literate Readership Now"

"The way Mr. Snyder uses language also sets him apart from other comics writers. It’s more precise, more controlled—appropriate enough for a writer who received a master’s degree in fine arts from Columbia University and who teaches a graduate course in comics writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Here’s the opening of 'Batman: The City of Owls':

"'I’ve always believed the best way to know a city is to stay close to the ground. To feel the cracks in the sidewalk under your shoe. The strange bright silence of the park under snow. The hissing sparks that come down when the elevated train passes overhead on Third Avenue.' So long, Bam! Pow! Zzzttt!"

Dana Jennings in The New York Times profiles comics writer Scott Snyder.

"Finished as a Phenomenon of Public Significance"

"Calling something elite, which was how WASPs of an earlier era preferred to think of themselves, became a denunciation.  Being a WASP was no longer a source of happy pride but something distasteful if not slightly disgraceful--the old privileges of membership now seeming unjust and therefore badly tainted.  An old joke has one bee asking another bee why he is wearing a yarmulke.  'Because,' answers the second bee, 'I don't want anyone to take me for a WASP.'"

Joseph Epstein in The Wall Street Journal mourns the decline of the WASP Establishment.

"Dollar Tree CEO Officially Unveils Long-Rumored Foil Baking Pan"

"'The wait is finally over!' Sasser said to a throng of roaring event attendees while gesturing toward a rotating image of the sleek new cooking accessory broadcast on a large projection screen in the company’s cavernous, fluorescent-lit exhibition hall. 'With our latest release, we have completely rewritten the rules on what a foil casserole dish can be, and, in just a few short months, customers will have the future of non-metal sheet cooking at their fingertips.'
"'We’ve done it!' Sasser continued to thunderous applause and a barrage of camera flashes. 'Affordable bakeware will never be the same!'"

From The Onion.

"Evangelicalism’s Dilemma Stems More from a Change in American Christianity Itself"

"Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff."

Jim Hinch in The American Scholar looks to Orange County, California, for trends in American religion.

My Fair Ad Man

"No wonder we longed for the problems of postwar mass society: Those were corporate sins we could actually comprehend, and that we found downright soothing to contemplate. As the economy buckled, Americans tuned in to 'Mad Men' in increasing numbers. The show’s loving indictment of an affluent society spoke to us in tones of libidinal fascination. Forget credit-default swaps or the misanthropic billionaires of Greenwich: Tell us again about man’s search for meaning or the sweet alienation people felt when they shopped at some suburban grocery store stocked with the cherished brand names of our childhood.
"Faced with incomprehensible disaster, we viewers chose to dream about a lost capitalist paradise in which individualism was something both brave and profitable. And while we did so, capitalism as it actually exists was melting everything solid and familiar into air—the way it does in the retro title sequence of 'Mad Men'—leaving us to tumble into an abyss of dubious and desperate memories."

In Salon, Thomas Frank reacts to binge-watching Mad Men.

"Always Getting On with the Business of Being a ­Participant-Observer to History"

"Through the decades, on issue after issue, Schlesinger's liberal values and intellectual clarity stood him in good stead—his implacable hostility to Communism and McCarthyism, his skepticism about the invasion of Cuba, his opposition to the war in Vietnam, his prescience about presidential abuses of power, his critique of multiculturalism, his fear of a quagmire in Afghanistan. But he had a major blind spot, which started with his nearly uncritical devotion to the Kennedys (their intelligence, their style, their will to power) but didn't end there. The world of 'the liberals' was social as well as political—sparkling dinner parties at Hickory Hill, lunches at the Century Club, summers on the Cape. Robert McNamara, being a Kennedy man, was granted membership, and upon his departure from the Pentagon in 1967, at the height of the war for which McNamara bore so much blame, Schlesinger wrote, 'You have been one of the greatest public servants in American history, and your departure from the government is an incalculable loss to this nation.' But for Lyndon Johnson, the vulgar and uneducated Texan, whose liberal achievements on race and poverty far surpassed Kennedy's, the Schlesinger of these letters has utter contempt."

George Packer in The New York Times reviews Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger's The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

"A Fairly Grim, Hobbesian Vision of Society"

"The song does a number on Santa’s reputation, too. If the Rudolph song showcases a dystopia where affection is based on economic worth, St. Nick’s continued status as CEO of the world’s biggest gift-delivery operation highlights a more modern Capitalist flaw: The self-perpetuation of irresponsible elites. Boys and girls all over the world depend on the guy for their toys, yet he apparently never even thought to invest in headlights for his sleigh. It’s an almost Rumsfeldian display of poor planning. It ought to get an executive fired. But apparently getting in trouble for incompetence is just for little people."

Michael Schaffer in The New Republic criticizes "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

"3-Foot-Tall Christmas Tree Really Completes Incredibly Depressing Apartment"

"'I had this bleak, empty corner between my stained secondhand futon and the slanting bookshelf where I keep my six DVDs, so I thought it might be nice to put a misshapen, pathetically under-decorated Christmas tree there,' said Uhlir, noting how the shabby miniature pine with its two ornaments and single pitifully draped strand of colored lights really 'tied together nicely' with the ratty, soiled towel he placed beneath the tree and the nearby blinking internet router and tangle of Ethernet cords in the middle of the floor."

From The Onion.

Chelsea Mourning

"Yet it is the outrageous stories of the Chelsea that make it so appealing. The drunken mishaps, the acid-laden philosophies, the unusual couplings. The Chelsea's misfit artists, charming decay and low-rent opportunities are out of step with contemporary New York, and in 2007 the longtime manager was pushed out by directors who wanted to sell. The buyer, after years of stalled renovations that seemed designed to drive out longtime residents (who won a suit against his company), transferred the property into new hands in fall 2013. New owner King & Grove promises kinder, gentler renovations and a commitment to keeping the property 'artsy'--but the utopian 'thought-forms' of architect Hubert may have run out."

Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times reviews Sherill Tippins's Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.    

"The Most Notorious Woman in Illinois"

"It’s impossible to define the exact scope of welfare fraud in America then or now. A 1983 publication sponsored by the Department of Justice, for example, estimated annual Aid to Families With Dependent Children overpayments at between $376 million and $3.2 billion—not exactly a precise range. What’s clear, though, is that Linda Taylor’s larger-than-life example created an indelible, inaccurate impression of public aid recipients."

Josh Levin in Slate tells the epic story of Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen."

Jerry Brown for President?

"'Every move he’s making is the move of a presidential candidate,' said Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, who has run several times himself and would like to see Brown make another try for the White House in two years. 'It’s almost a blueprint.'"

Mark Z. Barabak in the Los Angeles Times speculates about Jerry Brown running for president in 2016.

"By Far the Most Important Single Factor behind Lagging Middle-Class Incomes"

"It’s now widely accepted that rising household debt helped set the stage for our economic crisis; this debt surge coincided with rising inequality, and the two are probably related (although the case isn’t ironclad). After the crisis struck, the continuing shift of income away from the middle class toward a small elite was a drag on consumer demand, so that inequality is linked to both the economic crisis and the weakness of the recovery that followed."

Paul Krugman in The New York Times explains why inequality hurts the economy.

Watts Billy Suspicion of Arabia

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for writer Doris Lessing, publisher André  Schiffrin, architect W.A. Sarmiento, musician Tabu Ley Rochereau, historian Michael G. Kammen, poet Richard Dedeaux, filmmaker Tom Laughlin, actress Joan Fontaine, and actor Peter O'Toole.

"Modern-Day Caligula Orders Everything Bagel"

"At press time, the lusty sybarite was adding a Nantucket Nectars Orange Mango juice to his order—a sinful orgy of exotic fruits that only the most reprobate of libertines dare even consider—in a final flourish of intemperance wholly in step with his bottomless, perverted cravings."

From The Onion.

What They Talk about When They Talk about "Corporatism"

"The core right-wing ideology reappears when any effort is made to shelter something from the market. If corporatism is such a bad thing, then focusing more plainly on public ownership should be a way out. Indeed some of the most striking corporate favors lately are the result of the mass privatization of civic infrastructure like roads, bridges, schools, and parking meters. Yet the right is quiet on this. Crucially, they don’t join efforts by the left to paint these kinds of measures that slowly bleed the state as terrible versions of cronyism and corporatism."

Mike Konczal in The New Republic discusses conservatives "new favorite word."

"Let’s Start Requiring Some Right Answers"

"When I was growing up, my mother—who, like me, was a 'contingent' professor—would sequester herself for days to grade, emerging Medusa-haired and demanding of sympathy. But the older I got, the more that sympathy dissipated: 'If you hate grading papers so much,' I’d say, 'there’s an easy solution for that.' My mother, not to be trifled with when righteously indignant (that favored state of the professoriate), would snap: 'It’s an English class. I can’t not assign papers.'"

Rebecca Schuman in Slate calls for an end to college essay assignments.

"A Perfect Marriage of Callousness—a Complete Lack of Empathy for the Unfortunate—with Bad Economics"

"Here’s the world as many Republicans see it: Unemployment insurance, which generally pays eligible workers between 40 and 50 percent of their previous pay, reduces the incentive to search for a new job. As a result, the story goes, workers stay unemployed longer. In particular, it’s claimed that the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which lets workers collect benefits beyond the usual limit of 26 weeks, explains why there are four million long-term unemployed workers in America today, up from just one million in 2007.

"Correspondingly, the G.O.P. answer to the problem of long-term unemployment is to increase the pain of the long-term unemployed: Cut off their benefits, and they’ll go out and find jobs. How, exactly, will they find jobs when there are three times as many job-seekers as job vacancies? Details, details."

 

Paul Krugman in The New York Times discusses the opposition to extending unemployment benefits.

Shoes Too Small to Fit His Feet

"It didn't exactly spring Mandela from jail single-handed, but it raised awareness of his plight like nothing else and helped to make apartheid one of the defining causes of the 1980s, something the man himself acknowledged after his release in 1990. And Dammers went further by founding the lobby group Artists Against Apartheid. In its broad outline it is an uplifting tale, but the full story is a turbulent affair, involving mental illness, creative paralysis, crippling debt, and a damaging musical row during which Dammers found himself on the opposing side to two black South African musicians who had been fighting apartheid decades before he paid that life-changing visit to Alexandra Palace: Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba."

Spin runs an excerpt from Dorian Lynskey's 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day about the Special A.K.A.'s "Free Nelson Mandela."

Twenty-[Seven] Years in Captivity

"Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace."

Bill Keller in The New York Times writes an obituary for Nelson Mandela.

"This Is the Defining Challenge of Our Time"

"So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed. In fact, this trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America’s market economy; across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some--some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. How could it be, he wrote, that it’s not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?
"But this increasing inequality is most pronounced in our country, and it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people."

The Washington Post publishes a transcript of President Obama's speech on inequality.

Paul Krugman in The New York Times praises the speech.

And in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik writes that "Obama gave the most important speech of his presidency."

"Deformed Freak Born Without Penis"

"According to reports, the sadly disfigured 26-year-old’s quality of life has been greatly diminished due to such a condition. Sources said the abnormal, visibly blemished creature has been repeatedly passed over for employment opportunities, frequently gawked at and harassed on the street by total strangers, and has faced near constant discrimination for over two decades, all due to the horrific and debilitating birth defect."

From The Onion.

Step in Cool Dirty Water Trixie

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for etiquette instructor Maxine Powell, poet Wanda Coleman, choreographer Marc Breaux, musician Chico Hamilton, actress Jane Kean, writer John Egerton, musician Dick Dodd, and televangelist Paul Crouch.

"By Embracing the Free Market so Completely, the Party Had Gone Calamitously Awry"

"Fairlie's views of toryism, like his views of most things (America, women, Parliament, Scotch), were deeply romantic. He described his kind of conservative as one who stands alongside 'the King and the People, against the barons and the capitalists.' In other words, government's role was to preserve tradition and social order, not to speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites or to enact sudden or overreaching reforms. He warmed to this view as a boy, when summers on a family farm in Scotland taught him that 'nothing very much changes, and then changes only slowly.' He refined it as an adult, coming to revere the leadership of Winston Churchill, whom he called 'the greatest tory of them all,' and absorb the writings of Michael Oakeshott, 'the most formative conservative political thinker of his generation.' When he arrived in America, he expected to find conservatives with similar beliefs.  Instead he found the Republicans."

In a 2009 Newsweek article, Jeremy McCarter profiles British writer Henry Fairlie, who died in 1990.

"20,000 Sacrificed In Annual Blood Offering To Corporate America"

"The blood offering follows last week's Feast of Increasing Market Values, a yearly celebration during which Americans gather with their families under the second Q4 full moon to give thanks to corporations and to pray for cash dividends during the holiday shopping season."

From The Onion.

"We Have Paid Scant Attention to the Cultural Middle Class"

"This talk of 'a subject they love' brings us to the real crisis, which is both economic and cultural (or even moral). The point of work should not be just to provide the material goods we need to survive. Since work typically takes the largest part of our time, it should also be an important part of what gives our life meaning. Our economic system works well for those who find meaning in economic competition and the material rewards it brings. To a lesser but still significant extent, our system provides meaningful work in service professions (like health and social work) for those fulfilled by helping people in great need. But for those with humanistic and artistic life interests, our economic system has almost nothing to offer."

Gary Gutting in The New York Times advocates for "those with strong humanist interests and abilities who can’t reach the very highest levels."

November 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
John Albano et al, Showcase Presents Jonah Hex, Vol. 1, 2005.
Alfred H. Burne, The Crecy War, 1999.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, 1963.
Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, 1977.
Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, Return to Perdition, 2012
Max Allan Collins et al, Road to Perdition 2: On the Road, 2011.
Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973, 1998.
Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, Batman: Mad Love and Other Stories, 2011.
Hannah Dolan et al, Lego Star Wars: Character Encyclopedia, 2011.
Jon Evans and Andrea Mutti, The Executor, 2011.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988.
David McCullough, Truman, 1993.
Peter Milligan and James Romberger, The Bronx Kill, 2010.
Ann Nocenti et al, Catwoman, Vol. 3: Death of the Family, 2013.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman, Vol. 2: The City of Owls, 2013.
Scott Snyder et al, Talon, Vol. 1: Scourge of the Owls, 2013
Ilan Stavans, Becoming Americans: Immigrants Tell Their Stories from Jamestown to Today, 2009.
Victoria Taylor, Lego Super Heroes: Ready for Action!, 2013.
Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, 1983, 1997.

DVDs:
Inception, 2010.
Lego Batman: The Movie--DC Super Heroes Unite, 2013.

"Nation's Uncles Enter Last Stage Of Prep For Thursday's Thanksgiving Debates"

"Sources confirmed the nation’s uncles are drafting their closing remarks around the theme of how the crust on the pumpkin pie could be 'a little flakier.'"

From The Onion, 2012.

"There’s a Tendency to Grab a Hold of Some Historical Incident and Yoke It to a Current Agenda"

"Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common—William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the 'common course.' But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism."

In a 2010 New York Times article, Kate Zernike discusses competing narratives about the Pilgrims.

"Conservatives 'Care More about the Rich and Affluent than Ordinary People'"

"The class war, of course, is an old and unresolved battle in Britain. But the significance of Mr. Major’s remarks lay as much in their timing as their content.

"Most administrations reach a tipping point in the trajectory of office when their energies switch to the next big fight. That is where Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives, leading an uneasy coalition with the junior Liberal Democrats, seem to be at the moment, hoping that a surge of positive economic omens will loft them to undiluted power in the next national elections 2015.

"But the message from Mr. Major’s comments, the conservative Daily Telegraph said, has clouded the vision. 'If the Conservatives are seen as the party of the few, the rich, the privileged,' the newspaper said, 'then it is all too conceivable that a Labour leader posing as the tribune of the people will be able to snatch victory in 2015.'"

Alan Cowell in The New York Times reports on comments made by former British Prime Minister John Major about inequality.

"It’s a Nice Idea for a Book, If Only It Were True"

"Most important, Matthews provides no evidence to suggest that whatever personal amicability O’Neill and Reagan maintained mattered. In one or two cases, the Democrats cut good deals with Reagan, such as when they revised the Social Security program. But on the key legislative issue of Reagan’s presidency—the 1981 fight over his budget, which slashed taxes on the rich—O’Neill simply got rolled. Spooked by the president’s popularity, which surged after he was shot by John Hinckley in March of that year, O’Neill failed to compete with Reagan in the new age of media politics. Worse, he also came up short in his supposed strong suit—riding herd on his caucus—as scores of Democrats, fearing the tax-cutting bandwagon, defected to back the Reagan bill. The consequences—skyrocketing budget deficits and debilitating inequality—have plagued us ever since."

David Greenberg in The New York Times reviews Chris Matthews’s Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked.

"Report: Employers Created 40,000 New Jobs For Existing Employees Last Month"

"'In every industry, companies are drastically increasing the amount of work that needs to be completed, as well as tacking on thousands of assignments previously performed by departed employees. In many cases, we are even finding that employers have brought on several unpaid interns to share in the abundance of job duties.'"

From The Onion.

"Cares about the Welfare of the People—Their Health, Their Housing, Their Schools, Their Jobs, Their Civil Rights, and Their Civil Liberties"

"JFK is a reminder that this wasn’t always so. Retrospectives on him inevitably include the witty press conferences, the white-tie White House dinners with the likes of Pablo Casals, the photos of John Jr. playing under the Oval Office desk. But the warm feelings Americans have toward Kennedy may be something more than nostalgia for a glamorous presidency cut short. They reflect a wistfulness for the sense of common purpose and faith in a collective project that a proudly liberal president helped the nation achieve."

David Greenberg in The New Republic reiterates John F. Kennedy's liberalism.

"Terrified Obama Trapped Inside Healthcare.gov Website"

"'The mainframe,' the president quickly added as hundreds of policy cancellations erupted from the swirling vortex. 'I need to get to the health care exchange mainframe.'"

From The Onion.

Seven Score and Ten Years Ago

"On Nov. 19, 1863, Everett stepped forward and began to speak. He went on and on—for two hours and eight minutes. The crowd grew restless.
"Lincoln rose, adjusted his spectacles, and began: 'Four score and seven years ago.' The first two words rhyme, setting in motion a symphony of sounds. The biblical ring of his opening was rooted in lines from Psalm 90. Lincoln never mentioned the Bible, but the whole of his speech was suffused with both biblical content and cadence.
"He first placed the dedication of the battlefield in the larger context of American history. In appealing to 'our fathers,' Lincoln invoked a common heritage. The trajectory of that sentence underscored the American ideal that 'all men are created equal.' Lincoln at Gettysburg asserted that the meaning of the Civil War was about both liberty and union."

Ronald C. White in the Los Angeles Times marks the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address.

Slate publishes an excerpt from The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation by Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell.

And The Onion provides a word cloud.

"Radicals in Their Tolerance of Islam"

"The book charts the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in 16th-­century Europe and migration to America a century later. Much of the popular animus toward Islam, she explains, originated in northern Europeans’ fear of the Ottoman Empire (to say nothing of Barbary pirates trolling the Mediterranean for captives). But not every­one took a pejorative view of the faith or its adherents. John Locke, for one, preached toleration and 'civic equality' for England’s Muslim population in the late 1680s, as part of his daring argument for guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of Jews, Roman Catholics and nonconformist Protestants.

"Spellberg specifies Locke as Jefferson’s inspiration and, in the book’s finest pages, sketches a genealogy of his proudest accomplishments, especially the 1786 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which anticipated the First Amendment separating church and state."

 

Kirk Davis Swinehart in The New York Times reviews Denise A. Spellberg's Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders.

"Universal, Comprehensive and Regulated"

"Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and the even more badly botched Hillary Clinton healthcare reform effort of the early 1990s, have one thing in common (along with their aura of failure). Although derided by right-wingers as Marxist social engineering, both are enormously less ambitious, and more obsequious to the so-called free market, than the comprehensive national health insurance law proposed, within my lifetime, by a United States president. Modeled closely on programs enacted in major Western European nations, the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, or CHIP, would have offered identical healthcare coverage to all Americans, irrespective of age or income (and with no exclusions for any reason), through three separate but interdependent programs: One for people with full-time jobs, through their employers; one for the unemployed, disabled and poor (replacing Medicaid); and an expanded version of Medicare providing full healthcare coverage for all senior citizens.
"You already know the punch line here, right?"

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon remembers Richard Nixon's health-care proposal.

"You Don't Need Good Rhythm to Sound Real Mean"

"The first commercially produced drum machine, the Wurlitzer Side Man, was made in America, and it has had a democratizing effect on music. If you can 'hold the whole band in your hand,' as one of the advertising campaigns in the book suggests, music production becomes more accessible, no longer limited only to those with big contracts and fancy studios. (Especially if machines are affordable: the Roland-808, 'found few early admirers,' so 'Roland ceased production,' prices 'dropped considerably,' the 808 found 'its way into the hands of young hip-hop producers,' and then it went on to be 'embraced by ... just about every genre.') Art has always valued the contributions of the novice or the innocent, who can create without any preconceived ideas about what he or she 'should' be creating. The drum machine allows for that wide-eyed, unknowing experimentation."

Elias Leight at The Atlantic looks at Joe Mansfield 's new book, Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession.

"Male Substitute Teacher With Ponytail Cloaked In Mystery"

"'We didn’t really do any work. He told us he wanted today’s lesson to be more of a "conversation," whatever that means.'"

From The Onion.

"A 'Self-Styled Revolutionary' who Wants to Change the Church Fundamentally"

"'It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?' said Ms. Kurt, a hospice community educator. 'Even when it was discouraging working in pro-life, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.'       

"In the eight months since he became pope, Francis has won affection worldwide for his humble mien and common touch. His approval numbers are skyrocketing. Even atheists are applauding.

"But not everyone is so enchanted. Some Catholics in the church’s conservative wing in the United States say Francis has left them feeling abandoned and deeply unsettled."

Laurie Goodstein in The New York Times writes about conservative Catholics who worry about Pope Francis.

"Hillary's Nightmare"

"All of this is deeply problematic for Hillary Clinton. As a student of public opinion, she clearly understands the direction her party is headed. As the head of an enterprise known as Clinton Inc. that requires vast sums of capital to function, she also realizes there are limits to how much she can alienate the lords of finance. For that matter, it’s not even clear Clinton would want to. 'Many of her best friends, her intellectual brain trust [on economics], all come out of that world,' says a longtime Democratic operative who worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and then for Hillary in the White House. 'She doesn’t have a problem on the fighting-for-working-class-folks side'—protecting Medicare and Social Security—'but it will be hard, really wrenching for her to be that populist on [finance] issues.'

"Which brings us to the probable face of the insurgency. In addition to being strongly identified with the party’s populist wing, any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given Democrats’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person."

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic argues that "the Democratic Party is becoming Elizabeth Warren’s party."

"Myth-Making Is the Most Valuable Marketing Tool"

"Edison, Lemley writes, 'did not "invent" the light bulb in any meaningful sense.' Electric lighting was long in the works when Edison came on the scene, and his work attracted several patent infringement lawsuits from his contemporaries. 'What Edison really did well,' Lemley argues, 'was commercialize the invention.'"

Alison Griswold at Business Insider reconsiders Thomas Edison.

"The Brunch Is All the Same"

"And so a vivid and storied layer of authentic Paris is being wiped out not by not-in-my-backyard activism, government edict or the rapaciousness of Starbucks or McDonald’s but by the banal globalization of hipster good taste, the same pleasant and invisible force that puts kale frittata, steel-cut oats and burrata salad on brunch tables from Stockholm to San Francisco."

Thomas Chatterton Williams in The New York Times laments the gentrification of Paris's Pigalle district.

"It’s Not Being Taken from Us. We Gave It Up."

"The Dissolve published two pieces in two days about the demise of video stores in general and why brick-and-mortar rental shops are still valuable parts of film culture whose demise should be met with sadness and regret. Pieces like that are an important part of the conversation, but in those and others like them, people have also been quick to stress that Blockbuster had just as many cons as pros: it was a corporate, plastic environment that stressed new releases and mainstream titles while downplaying older, foreign, or more obscure releases. In other words, it aimed for the biggest possible chunk of the market, and it made quite a bit of money doing so.
"Yet Blockbuster had been dying for years."

In Salon, Daniel Carlson refuses to mourn the demise of Blockbuster.

"So Reagan Has Won"

"New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Stiglitz’s tag-team partner on the economic left, chimed in this week with a related argument. When the ideologues of austerity piously refuse to invest in jobs, infrastructure or education while wrapping themselves in the mantle of fiscal responsibility, he wrote, they’re actually inflicting irreparable long-term damage on the economy. Krugman’s focus in that column was primarily on job creation, but his lesson clearly applies to Wiseman’s depiction of a legendary state university that has long been considered on the same level as Harvard and Oxford and MIT and Stanford but that also, within living memory, charged no tuition at all to California high school graduates who qualified for admission.
"Appropriately enough, it was Ronald Reagan who did away with all that. The onetime B-movie icon ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to 'clean up the mess at Berkeley,' and I can’t help wondering whether Wiseman’s title is a sly reference to that famous slogan. Reagan of course meant the Free Speech Movement and organized student opposition to the Vietnam War, which was still widely popular among the public. Once he took office in Sacramento (after defeating Democratic incumbent Pat Brown, a godfather of the University of California system and the father of current Gov. Jerry Brown), Reagan demanded that the UC regents start charging student fees for the first time. (The word 'tuition' was initially avoided.) He also proposed cutting the university budget by 10 percent across the board–a sequester, as we might say today–and suggested that the regents could make up the shortfall by selling off the rare books collection in Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.
"No Gutenberg Bibles or first-edition Shakespeare folios were auctioned off to pay the bills at Berkeley, but that sounds an awful lot like Tea Party anti-government rhetoric circa 2013, doesn’t it?"

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon connects Frederick Wiseman's new documentary, At Berkeley, to decades of neoliberalism.

"Bemused Condescension Offset by a Cautiously Positive Appraisal"

"But at the same time, The Nation recognized the great promise that Kennedy represented and, with a few frustrating exceptions, the fundamentally progressive nature of his politics. When Kennedy won the general election in November 1960—beating by only 100,000 popular votes Vice President Richard Nixon, who in the words of Frederic Collins had based his campaign on the conclusion 'that sadism is the stronger strain in the psychopathology of American politics.'"

Katrina vanden Heuvel digs through The Nation's archival articles about John F. Kennedy.

"A Founding Father of a Completely Different Sort"

"California's missions were not simply places where Franciscans acted out their ambitious dreams but sites where Indians, in the face of disease and overwhelming pressure to assimilate to European ways, persisted in their beliefs under the most difficult of circumstances. The missions are also a reminder of California's place in a world history shaped by conquest and underscored by tragedy. Serra helped lay a foundation for California, as flawed as that foundation may be, and his ever presence can remind us of the achievements and costs inherent in his doing so."

After curating a new exhibit, Steven W. Hackel in the Los Angeles Times considers the three-hundredth anniversary of Father Junípero Serra's birth.

"A Constant Reminder that We Live in a Hydraulic Society"

"First, worried that the aqueduct couldn't meet its needs, Los Angeles shouldered aside San Diego's plans to tap the Colorado River and took over that project for itself. That may help to explain San Diego's abiding resentment of all things Angeleno, its persistent opposition to water planning that might benefit the city and its often fruitless quest for an 'independent' water supply of its own, no matter what the cost.
"Second, to ensure that it was getting all the water the aqueduct could convey, Los Angeles determined to strangle agricultural water use in the Owens Valley. This prompted the valley's armed resistance. The aqueduct was repeatedly blown up, and at one point, it was seized by the embattled farmers, who shut it down entirely.
"Los Angeles ultimately won that conflict. The Owens Valley economy was devastated and the city wound up owning most of the area, which it attempted to run as a virtual colony. For half a century, investments in valley business were actively discouraged."

William Kahrl in the Los Angeles Times marks the centennial of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

"The Moves Have Reignited Old Debates—and Wounds—about Cal State's Commitment to Social and Cultural Diversity"

"Officials at San Jose State are proposing to reduce African American studies from a department with its own administrative functions and fold it into the sociology and social sciences department. They argue that the program as it currently stands—with one full-time faculty member and about 12 student majors—can't sustain itself. The move would provide students with a wider variety of courses and they would still be able to major or minor in African American Studies, spokeswoman Pat Lopes Harris said.
"But department chair Ruth Wilson said the low numbers reflect a lack of investment. She argued that her department and other ethnic studies programs are in a Catch-22: budget cuts that resulted in fewer faculty, courses and student enrollment are now being used to justify further cuts."

Carla Rivera in the Los Angeles Times explores the problems ethnic studies faces in the California State University system.

"These Days, All Retail Roads Do Appear to Begin and End with Amazon"

"Stone obviously admires his subject, but it’s hard to tell if he likes him. For that matter, it’s hard to tell if anybody likes him. Worth $27 billion, Bezos still makes employees pay for parking and for a time posted private ambulances outside warehouses during heat waves instead of ponying up for extra air-conditioners. It comes across loud and clear just how painful working anywhere near Bezos seems to have been over the years, despite halfhearted attempts by employees to recast a total lack of empathy as some sort of trick of leadership: one of his 'gifts,' they say, is 'to drive and motivate his employees without getting overly attached to them personally.' Is that a gift? It may be in actual war, but I’ll bet soldiers in the Middle East get more than free Gatorade and an extra 10 minutes of break time a day when the temperature tops 100 degrees."

In The New York Times, Duff McDonald reviews Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

"The 'Nanny State' Works"

"Radcliff's research suggests that higher levels of social programs produce a happier population and that public policies such as social insurance and strong labor market protections are among the most important factors.
"'The differences in your feeling of well-being living in a Scandinavian country (where welfare programs are large) versus the U.S. are going to be larger than the individual factors in your life,' he says. 'The political differences trump all the individual things you're supposed to do to make yourself happier—to have fulfilling personal relationships, to have a job, to have more income. All those individual factors get swamped by the political factors. Countries with high levels of gross domestic product consumed by government have higher levels of personal satisfaction.'"

Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times discusses the work of political scientist Benjamin Radcliff.

"Pot and Slots"

"But both have been made possible by the same trend in American attitudes: the rise of a live-and-let-live social libertarianism, the weakening influence of both religious conservatism and liberal communitarianism, the growing suspicion of moralism in public policy.

"And both, in different ways, illustrate the potential problems facing a culture pervaded by what the late sociologist Robert Bellah called 'expressive individualism' and allergic to any restrictions on what individuals choose to do."

 

Ross Douthat in The New York Times links the rising popularity of legalized marijuana and casino gambling.

The End of Food?

"As a tech-obsessed child growing up in the nineties, Rob Rhinehart was always puzzled by food. Here he was, eagerly embracing the wonders of the information era, and he had to gnaw on seared chunks of meat and raw vegetables. 'I remember when I was very young, eating lettuce and thinking it was very weird to be eating leaves, sitting in this nice house with all of these electronics around us,' he says now.
"These days, Rhinehart doesn’t eat much lettuce or anything else recognizable as food. Instead, the 25-year-old gets most of his nutrition from a water bottle filled with a thick, light-brown slurry he invented. A cocktail of highly processed foodstuffs mixed with water—oat flour, tapioca maltodextrin, rice-protein powder, canola oil, and scores of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrient additives—it contains everything the human body needs, or so he claims."

Adrian Chen in New York talks to the inventor of food-substitute Soylent.

"The National Anthem of Hip-Hop"

"Created by a group of Hollywood session musicians who never toured, it’s a set of sometimes thrilling, sometimes cheesy instrumentals built on tight brass charts, psychedelic guitar riffs, funky keyboard vamps and heavy percussion.
"'Bongo Rock' is significant, however, for being one of the musical cornerstones of rap. While it’s hard to measure these things accurately, it is certainly one of the most sampled LP’s in history, if not the most sampled. Most every history-minded hip-hop D.J. has a copy, and the first few bars of its signature number, a driving cover version of the 60’s instrumental number 'Apache,' can send crowds into overdrive."

In a 2006 New York Times article, Will Hermes tells the story of the Incredible Bongo Band.

"The Most Myth-Encrusted Figure in Early America"

"She was born Matoaka, in the mid-1590s, the daughter of Powhatan, who ruled a native empire in what is now eastern Virginia. Powhatan had dozens of children, and power in his culture passed between males. But she did attract special notice for her beauty and liveliness; hence Pocahontas, a nickname meaning, roughly, 'playful one.' This was also the name she was known by to the English who settled near her home in 1607. John Smith, an early leader in Jamestown, described her as beautiful in  'feature, countenance, and proportion' and filled with 'wit and spirit.'

"But contrary to her depiction in films by Disney and others, Pocahontas wasn’t a busty teenager when the English encountered her. Smith called her 'A child of ten years old,' while another colonist described her as a 'young girle,' cartwheeling naked through Jamestown. There is no evidence of romance between her and Smith (a lifelong bachelor, who, to judge from his own portrait, was far from handsome). Nor is there a firm basis for the tale of Pocahontas saving the English captain from execution by flinging her body across his. The only source for this story is Smith, who exaggerated many of his exploits and didn’t mention his rescue by Pocahontas until 17 years after it allegedly occurred."

 

Tony Horwitz in Smithsonian looks at the life and legend of Pocahontas.

October 2013 Acquisitions

Books:
Victor Bockris, Transformer: The Lou Reed Story, 1995.
Alan Davis and Mark Farmer, Justice League of America: The Nail, 2004.
Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty, Batman: The Joker's Last Laugh, 2008.
Joshua Hale Fialkov et al, I, Vampire, Vol. 3: Wave of Mutilation, 2013.
Steve Fischer, When the Mob Ran Vegas, 2005.
Alan Grant et al, The Batman of Arkham, 2000.
Paul Gravett (ed.), The Mammoth Book of the Best Crime Comics, 2008.
David Howard-Pitney, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s: A Brief History with Documents, 2004.
Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer, Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981-1989: A Brief History with Documents, 2011.
Mat Johnson et al, Right State, 2013.
Gerard Jones and Gene Ha, Batman: Fortunate Son, 2000.
Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser (eds.), Teaching American History, 2009.
Randy Lofficier et al, Batman: Nosferatu, 2000.
Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, 1998.
Ernest R. May, The 9/11 Commission Report with Related Documents, 2007.
James S. Olson and Randy Roberts, My Lai: A Brief History with Documents, 1998.
Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, 2002.
Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents, 2007.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Fifties, 2002.
Jerry Siegel et al, Superman in the Forties, 2005.
Louise Simonson and Dan Schoening, Wonder Woman: Monster Magic, 2013.
Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie, The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents, 2008.
Matthew Avery Sutton, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents, 2013.
Judd Winick et al, Batwing, Vol. 2: In the Shadows of the Ancients, 2013.
Brian Wood et al, Star Wars, Vol. 1: In the Shadow of Yavin, 2013.
Rowena Yow (ed.), Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics, 2013.

DVDs:
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949.
Barbie: Princess Charm School, 2011.

"Almost Nobody Was Fooled by Welles’ Broadcast"

"How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted. In an editorial titled 'Terror by Radio,' the New York Times reproached 'radio officials' for approving the interweaving of 'blood-curdling fiction' with news flashes 'offered in exactly the manner that real news would have been given.' Warned Editor and Publisher, the newspaper industry’s trade journal, 'The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove ... that it is competent to perform the news job.'"

Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow in Slate counter the long-told story of panic following the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938.