Light reading

Old issues of The Crisis (“a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture that “seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color”) are now online, so I no longer have to go the library to read them. In an issue from 1995 I found an amusing interview with Barack Obama. In it he explains “it’s liberating to be in a country where black people are in the overwhelming majority”; says “integration is not a victory on our part”; and complains about his grandmother’s rational fear of  “strange black men”.

Two of the greatest publications in American history, the Weekly World News and LIFE Magazine, are also available. Both teem with incredible stories.

Comments

  1. Thras30/11/09 9:12 AM

    Quite incredible. I was surprised to hear that a public paddling could not save the marriage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. C. Van Carter30/11/09 12:30 PM

    The quotes from the couple are hilarious.

    On p.99 is the famous "High-brow, Low-brow, Middle-brow" article. Also interesting is the article about Churchill's speech before a crowd of 14,000 at Boston Garden, and of course the ads.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous30/11/09 7:43 PM

    ;

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Brief Reviews of Movies I haven’t Seen

Brokeback Mountain: A love affair between a pair of homosexualist cowboys ends tragically when one is killed by a horse . The actors playing the leads are (supposedly) straight. Includes graphic sex scenes. If you are into this sort of thing stay home and rent the spaghetti western Django Kill...If You Live, Shoot! instead, it's a weird and entertaining film that includes an honest depiction of homosexualist cowboys - an entire gang of them. Memoirs of a Geisha: A trio of Chinese honeys infiltrates Japan by disguising themselves as whores. The potential of the premise squandered, as unlike the homosexualist cowboy film Memoirs of a Geisha is only PG-13. The Producers: A pair of real life homosexualists (Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane) portray heterosexual Broadway musical impresarios. Notice the pattern. Do you understand 'Hollywood logic' works now? King Kong: I’ve decided the old-style stop-motion animation is better than tedious modern CGI effects. The latter mechanical
Read more

Christmas Books

Image
The Illustrious House of Ramires , by Eça de Queirós. A novel about an ineffectual nobleman writing an historical novel about his heroic ancestors. Queirós has been called the Portuguese Flaubert. Large Fees and How to Get Them : a book for the private use of physicians , by Albert V. Harmon, M.D. If you practice early 20th medicine and want large fees, this book is essential reading. If you don’t, there are still lessons in its amusing and unsentimental discussion of various topics, like in the chapter “The Bugbear of Ethics”, where Harmon advises “ethics in its place is a good thing...But there is such a thing as overdoing the ethical proposition”. Histrionics: Three Plays and Over All the Mountain Tops , by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard once said “I despise actors, indeed I hate them, for they ally themselves at the least sign of danger with the audience and betray the author and completely identify with stupidity and feeble-mindedness. Actors are the destroyers and extermin
Read more