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 Published: Vintage 2010.  Originally published: Scribner's, 1911.  Published: Macmillan, 1985.  Published: Princeton, 2010. |
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 Recommended reading for all market fundamentalists and competition worshippers, and their high priests and acolytes. A witty, scholarly and nuanced account of the financial shenanigans leading up to the GFC. There are no villains, but plenty of smart dopes who follow other dopes on the basis that if everyone is a dope, one won't be punished for being a dope. But the dopes were rewarded with taxpayer-funded bailouts, so they must have been smart after all. It's all happened before, as John Cassidy's sense of history, and lucid exposition of economic ideas reveals. An understandable choice by Tom Stoppard for one of the "best books of 2010" in The Guardian Weekly, of 17th December 2010. Published: Penguin, 2009.  Not recommended for rationalists who want their rationalism to be rational. Having set up "the God hypothesis" for demolition, Dawkins proceeds to discuss mostly issues that are peripheral to the hypothesis. Also, he can't seem to make up his mind on whether some issues are resolved or unresolved by science -- for example we read on page 185: "...except that we know how it came about: by the gradualistic crane of natural selection....But the very least the honest quest for truth must have in setting out to explain such monstrosities of improbability as a rainforest, a coral reef, or a universe is a crane, and not a skyhook. The crane doesn't have to be natural selection. Admittedly, no one has ever thought of a better one". So, is natural selection a fact in that we know to be true, or is it a provisional explanation in that no one has ever thought of a better one? Dawkins seems to dodge such issues, having it both ways, while at the same time being severely critical (correctly in my view) of those in the theological domain who do the same. But what is good for the goose should be good for the gander, and that's what we don't see here. He shows a naive belief in rationalism, apparently regarding it as its own justification. He seems to have little sense of mathematics and logic, where Godel's Theorems show fundamental limitations in what can be accomplished by pure reason. Rationalism deals with everything, so it seems, and there is an unstated assumption that there is no need for rationalism to inquire into itself. However, Dawkins is knowledgable and erudite in his domain, and he strikes some heavy blows, aided immensely by the failure of so many religious people and institutions to think clearly and seriously about their beliefs and their implications. And, to his credit, he tackles the issues head-on, and does not go around speaking in a hushed voice because he is talking about matters which many feel very deeply about, and who are therefore likely to say he offends them, as though that should be enough reason to stop those matters being discussed. Ultimately, one should take this primarily as a work of polemic rather than science, and on that level the book is enjoyable, well written, very funny, and even brilliant. But the bludgeon is Dawkins' favoured weapon, not the rapier. Originally published: Bantam Press 2006. Edition reviewed here: Black Swan, 2007. |
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 Published: Faber, 2010.  A remarkable book, with insights on every page. Niehbuhr has a talent for perception with cogency. Many of his observations have even greater relevance today, when what he calls "technics" and associated attitudes are markedly more pervasive in American (and western) society that when he wrote. His notion of irony in American history?: "....The triumph of 'common sense' in American history is thus primarily the triumph of the vitality of our democratic institutions. The ironic feature in it consists of the fact that we have achieved a tolerable synthesis between two conflicting ideologies in practice while we allowed the one to dominate in theory." It might be argued that such ironies are created by discrepancies that cannot be officially acknowledged, because society needs illusions to function and to validate itself to itself, perhaps particularly in the USA. And, it may be, as the author of the introduction, Andrew J. Bacevitch, claims, the most important book ever written on US foreign policy. But the book is not about foreign policy per se but about attitudes and culture in US society, and the contradictions and irony resulting from a tension between a high ideological rhetoric and sense of divine mission, and reality. But Niebuhr does not regard such tensions as stable, so that more recent technical and cutural developments, leading to a renewed emphasis on ideology, with consequent events, surely would not have surprised him. Originally published: Scribner's 1952. Edition reviewed here: University of Chicago Press, 2008.  I saw this "video installation" in January 2011 at the Art Gallery of South Australia. It's "The Feast of Trimalchio", a remarkable work by the Russian collective AES+F. It seduces, mesmerises and overwhelms with its beauty, its atmosphere of ritual, and its accompanying "story". True, its beauty is more that of a fashion magazine or a luxury hotel rather than that of Rembrandt or Corot, say; but that's deliberate and part of its irony, satire and "message". And what is its "message", if there is one and one can call it that? Well, it is more complex and ambiguous than initially appears, and I fear that one is inclined to read into it one's own predilections and concerns, especially as it has a very marked element of political and social comment. The booklet at the gallery about the work of AES+F was called by the rather foolish title "let the revolution begin". Is it a revolution to overthrow the shallowness and spiritual emptiness of western society, or is it a call to arms for fashion houses and luxury hotels to take over the world? For me, the former prevails, and "The Feast of Trimalchio" remains as a memento mori, not just of physical death, but of the possibility of the living death of the spirit and the soul. The overall mesmeric effect is heightened by the stately, sad and yearning music of the allegretto of Beethoven's seventh symphony, under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington. View Part I of "The Feast of Trimalchio" on youtube. GO TO ROD'S HOME PAGE EMAIL: nillsen@uow.edu.au |