A weekend special....
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
For Bo again:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/books/review/Williams-t.html
I think he gets it.
That sounds like a book I won't be reading.The author seems a bit out there.I mean using the womans movement as a reason why white male yokels started seeing or fabricating Bigfoot sightings in the 60's and 70's because their manhood was threatened seems a wee bit loony to say the least.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I loved about the Pyle book is that he really gets at the question of the nature of science, and how we know what we know. This is where the bigfoot story really intrigues me. I'm sort of thinking I should become a bigfoot expert in my spare time.
ReplyDeleteSo this new book interests me, even if he appears to take the current obsession with bigfoot out of its historical context, which is where Pyle was so good.
Speaking of historical context, there is another academic book about bigfoot also just published (two bigfoot studies in one year?):
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11135.php
New York: Sorry, I must have misplaced my modifiers. The committee met in DC, but the members come from all over the country. The person who quipped about Lincoln and Darwin is a neurosurgeon from Washington University. I like it when people from medical schools have a sense of history!
ReplyDeleteThe resulting meeting will take place this summer in DC, with the goal of defining a new direction for undergraduate biology, which is still sort of stuck in the 19th century. (This is one of my many eclectic interests when I'm not chasing down bigfoot, much to the chagrin of my biologist friends.)
Two bigfoot bboks in one year.A right and a left?
ReplyDeleteBy the way the Mcleod book from UC press"Anatomy of a Beast" sounds like an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteA left and a right? There could be something to that....!
ReplyDeleteSo I went to cancel my Sunday NYTimes after all these years and they offered me 6 months at 50% off.So I'll keep getting it after all.
ReplyDeleteI checked the cover price here and it's $8.00. I like to have the real paper when I can, but it's getting pricey alas. Wonder if I can get a 50% off deal here.....
ReplyDelete