Subterms
In January 1919, an invite to present a lecture was extended to a leading German intellectual and political theorist Max Weber. The young members of Munich University’s Free Students Union had requested that he elucidate himself on the “vocation” of politics, with the added subtext of threatening to invite Weber’s nemesis, the socialist Bavarian President […] More
Phillip Roth’s 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” has been made into a six-part TV series and shown recently on HBO in the United States and Great Britain. David Simon wrote the script for the television version and directed the production. Simon’s earlier credits include “The Wire,” “Treme” and “Murder: Life on the Streets,” all […] More
As I reread Anne Frank’s diary — living just a 10-minute walk from her hiding place in Amsterdam and having first read it in an American middle school, only imagining Europe — I immediately recognize many things that were not familiar the first time around. In recounting her life before going into hiding, she describes her […] More
It seems that on the highest levels, everything is going wrong. In the past few years, populism and authoritarianism have reared their ugly heads. The economy has just reached historic lows, and we are only beginning to reap the effects of a ruined environment. Suicide rates are climbing, refugee crises continue like low-grade political fevers, […] More
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has a prodigious output and, indeed, it takes a prodigious effort to keep up with it. No sooner had I completed reading the latest trio of her books than a new one was signaled, many of the recent works being based on her delivery of prestigious guest lectures at universities around […] More
If Donald Trump had anything in common with a poet, it would be Homer. Homer was a pre-literate poet from Ancient Greece, while Trump is a post-literate US president who prefers to be briefed orally, gets his news from television and boasts that he likes to read as little as possible. Homer refers to speech […] More
To make money in the world of self-help books, being realistic and balanced, and where failure is accepted as a good thing, will not work. It seems that the leaders of America and the United Kingdom have cottoned on to this. It is well documented that Donald Trump is a big fan of the 20th-century positive-thinking […] More
