Skip to main content

Atomic Bomb Legacy

By

This series of photos in the NY Times today is amazing.

I mentioned Garry Wills Bomb Power here earlier, which I really enjoyed (if "enjoyed" is the right word when reading about the atomic bomb).

Comments

  1. James FergusonSeptember 14, 2010 at 3:55 PM

    Here's Atomic Cafe from 1982,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUtZOqgSG8

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsSeptember 14, 2010 at 3:57 PM

    Yes! That's a great film.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsSeptember 14, 2010 at 3:58 PM

    Interesting -- in that Times article, it notes that Obama has hosted a screening of one of the atomic bomb films at the White House. We need more of that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. robertwhelanSeptember 16, 2010 at 1:07 AM

    I saw the Gary Wills book on the bomb. I read Gary Wills books regularly and will see if Kindle has it and download a sample and let you know if I end up buying it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsSeptember 16, 2010 at 2:55 AM

    Robert, this is a really interesting book -- one that you will probably enjoy. Although the focus is on the bomb, it is basically a presidential history. Fascinating material. And highly readable (I have a hard time reading Wills).

    ReplyDelete
  6. MartiSeptember 16, 2010 at 8:06 AM

    I just looked up Bomb Power on Amazon and so far it's not available for kindle. I clicked the "I'd Like to Read on Kindle," but am not expecting much.

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsSeptember 16, 2010 at 4:19 PM

    How about Dylan? Hopefully you can join us Marti.

    ReplyDelete
  8. MartiSeptember 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM

    I think the Dylan book is available for Kindle -- quite overpriced for an ebook, but available. I'll sit this one out. I have a lot in my TBR pile (always will, but when you're reading something that grabs me, I join you). Thanks for asking!

    ReplyDelete
  9. MartiSeptember 17, 2010 at 11:35 AM

    This reminds me that about a year ago, Bob Dylan was stopped by the police in my hometown (Long Branch, NJ). Asked him for I.D. Seems typical for the police there to stop anyone for any reason.

    http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/bob_dylan_stopped_by_long_bran.html

    ReplyDelete
  10. avrdsSeptember 17, 2010 at 4:01 PM

    Sounds like the makings of a song to me!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more