In Jeff Sharlet’s disturbing book, The Family, Family leader Doug Coe describes his group’s philosophy as “Jesus plus nothing,” and he and his followers repeat this nonsensical mantra as though it meant anything. Actually, it means a lot of things, but if Jesus were to find out what they were, he’d be suing for libel. [...]
I confess I expected to like Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals, better than I did. First of all, the New York Times book reviewer dismissed it, always a good sign, and his two previous novels had received wide acclaim. Secondly, books like “Fast Food Nation” had already permanently changed my eating habits for the [...]
Like most people, I have some difficulty pinpointing the exact date on which I fell in love with Matt Taibbi. Was it that time when Glenn Greenwald quoted him discussing the wanton heap of corruption that is Tom Daschle by writing, “…he would blow a corpse for a cheeseburger?” Was it just the other day, [...]
Last night John Perkins spoke at the Student Union ballroom at Portland State University before an enthusiastic crowd of about 300, promoting his latest book, “Hoodwinked,” about the ongoing economic crash. In a wide-ranging speech that veered from shrunken heads to corporate personhood, Perkins exudes hope that out of the ashes of the predatory capitalism [...]
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
By R.W. Brands (Doubleday, 2008)
When the New Deal was in its infancy, amid a world in economic collapse and with fascism sweeping across Europe, Roosevelt rightly saw mass unemployment for the danger it was to American Democracy; many in the upper classes [...]
Today I met up with my brother downtown, and we went to the opening festivities of Mercy Corps, the Portland-based international relief organization, which just opened a new headquarters building in Old Town, right next to the venerable Skidmore Fountain. (Inscription: ”Citizens: The Riches of a City”….)
My nephew’s band, “Meet Your Monster,” was playing, and [...]
One of my favorite books to emerge from the Watergate era, and there are many, is Jonathan Schell’s The Time of Illusion. In it, Schell discusses the myriad ways that the Nixon Administration created a world where truth didn’t matter; wars were fought, laws were made and lives were either exalted or destroyed based on [...]
“Where have all the flowers gone?“ (2007, w/ Peter & Paul)
“Puff, the Magic Dragon“ (2007, w/ Peter & Paul)
“Follow Me” (1971)
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face“ (1970)
“Early Morning Rain“ (1966, w/ Peter & Paul)
“Blowin’ in the Wind” (1966, w/ Peter & Paul) h/t Jim Montague
“Because All Men Are Brothers (The Whole Wide World [...]
This song has been running through my head of late; Rhett Miller’s “Our Love,” from his album “The Instigator.” It’s that danged Doctor’s fault; coming up on fifteen years.
People are often puzzled as to why I read, almost exclusively, nonfiction books. The reason they find this so odd, in part, is because they perceive nonfiction to be the sort of dry, boring, graph and statistic-filled stuff they were forced to read in college, or the textbooks through which they plodded in high school, [...]