Newsweek's 50 Books for Our Times

Newsweek recently posted a list of "Fifty Books for Our Times." It is laden with contemporary works of non-fiction, in stark contrast to the novel-heavy "meta-list" of the "Top 100 Books" compiled from other top booklists: "Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more." This is their justification for wanting a new list to supplement the classics:

which books—new or old, fiction or nonfiction—open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways.

Fair enough.

In scanning through the 50 books, I discovered that I haven't read very many of them. In the first 20, I've read only Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Many others look interesting (some were already on my "to-read" wishlist) and I plan to read them eventually.

As for the remainder of the list, I've read some Mark Twain (three books are compiled as "The Mississippi Books"), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Underworld by Don DeLillo. That's it, five of fifty. Nearly all are novels.

I do much better on the classic list of 100: 1984 by George Orwell, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Shelley's Frankenstein, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five, Orwell's Animal Farm, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Rabbit, Run by John Updike, Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, and Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" (actually 3 books).

That's 20 of 100, though I confess that many were read in high school or college English classes.

Plus, I've read memorable portions of many others on the list: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Capital, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, Thucydides's Peloponnesian Wars, A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh (I likely read this entire book to my daughters), John Milton's Paradise Lost, various works of Shakespeare, and The Holy Bible.

That's 8 to 10 more, depending upon how many works of Shakespeare I can recall reading (as opposed to simply viewing)

Some more from the top 100 compiled list are on my shelf, just waiting to be read one of these days. Top-listed works by Evelyn Waugh, Ralph Ellison, Conrad, Anthony Burgess, and Robert Penn Warren are literally stacked or shelved nearby in a "to read" collection.

Maybe I should set them aside in favor of books from the contemporary list?

Take a look at that Newsweek list and make a recommendation if something is familiar -- and good.


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Ducking in

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I posted "Cheney: The Most Dangerous Veep Ever?" It concerns the political stunts he pulled -- and lies he told -- to promote war against Iraq.

Thursday, June 25, I posted "Is Obama channeling Bush?" The post is about the latest increase in heated rhetoric from President Obama about events in Iran.


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Global Health

Does foreign aid work? I've mentioned that question previously, but there's new disturbing data recently published in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal. Here's the AP account of one recent study:

Trying to show health campaigns actually saved lives is "a very difficult scientific dilemma," said Tim Evans, a senior World Health Organization official who worked on one of the papers.

In one paper, WHO researchers examined the impact of various global health initiatives during the last 20 years.

They found some benefits, like increased diagnosis of tuberculosis cases and higher vaccination rates. But they also concluded some U.N. programs hurt health care in Africa by disrupting basic services and leading some countries to slash their health spending.

The other study discussed in the AP story about the journal articles notes that health aid dollars do not necessarily match need. It would appear as if many political factors influence aid decisions:

[University of Washington researcher Chris] Murray and colleagues also found AIDS gets at least 23 cents of every health dollar going to poor countries. Globally, AIDS causes fewer than 4 percent of deaths.

"Funds in global health tend to go to whichever lobby group shouts the loudest, with AIDS being a case in point," said Philip Stevens of International Policy Network, a London think tank.

Somewhat cynically, Philip Stevens of International Policy Network (a British think tank) points out the mixed motives of the aid community:

"The public health community has convinced the public the only way to improve poor health in developing countries is by throwing a ton of money at it," Stevens said. "It is perhaps not coincidental that thousands of highly paid jobs and careers are also dependent on it."

It's fairly disheartening.


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Fall classes: books and films

This past week, I made final book selections for my fall classes.

MWF at noon I'm teaching POLS 335, Global Ecopolitics, a course which is most often called Global Environmental Politics at other schools. However, I did my graduate training at University of Maryland where Dennis Pirages was pioneering the study of "ecopolitics." In addition to extensive discussion of global environmental concerns (with a focus this term on climate change), my course devotes a great deal of attention to both resource politics and global poverty. There are still plenty of seats available in the course. Students do not need prior exposure to either international relations or environment courses.

In the right-hand column of this blog, I've added a link to my textbook selections available on-line at Powell's Bookstore. The list includes books I've used in the past few years, though it begins with books selected for the coming term:

Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren by Joseph Dimento and Pamela Doughman (MIT 2007).






Global Environmental Governance: Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Studies by James Gustave Speth and Peter Haas (Island, 2006).






The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier (Oxford, 2008).






I'm also teaching POLS 552, Global Politics Through Film. The class will be viewing films on Monday afternoons at 3 pm (the class ends at 5:15) and will discuss them on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 pm. I've taught the course twice since 2006 -- students can find a list of films used previously here. I changed a couple of selections from fall 2006 to summer 2008 and may again tweak some choices from the original list. Time constraints are a major concern as some interesting films are longer than 150 minutes.

I think it is a fun class for students and I must increase enrollment before late August for it to remain on the schedule. My pitch: students do not have to take any exams, but will write a couple of short analytical or review papers through the term -- culminating in a longer research paper at the end. I provide extensive feedback and typically allow rewrites of papers in classes at the 500 level. All of the paper assignments tie to film texts. Undergraduates worried about taking this course at the 500 level may be able to sign up for a 300 or 400 level course and might be able to arrange for this to count as a Writing Requirement (WR).

No textbooks with substantive international relations content are required; the class will instead read a couple of short IR-related articles each week. The class focuses on substantive issues more than IR theory. The following books is recommended as an aide to writing about film:

A Short Guide To Writing About Film by Timothy J. Corrigan (Longman, 2006).


This is the sixth edition of Corrigan's brief text. Though a new 7th edition is available, I figured that it would be cheaper for students to buy used copies of the slightly older one. I think it would be OK for students to consult any recent edition of the book and it is likely that the new edition will have a better resale value.


Disclosure: The blog receives a 7.5% commission on book sales purchased through links from this website.

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Duck doings

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I posted "Joking Cousins" about the "joking relationships" that operate throughout Africa. Practitioners insult one another without taking offense -- a social tie that is said to promote peaceful order within various societies.

On Wednesday, June 10, I posted "Domestic terror" about the recent shooting inside the Holocaust Museum and the murder of an abortion services provider in Wichita. Do these violent attacks mean that the Department of Homeland Security was correct a few months ago when it warned about the danger of radical right-wing extremism in the US?


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Steroids update: Sosa HR edition

Today, The New York Times is reporting that baseball slugger Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003. At that time, Major League Baseball's steroid policy was supposed to assure anonymity for players who tested positive.

As I've noted previously, contemporary players appearing on the all-time home run leader board are widely viewed as tainted. Consider this list of men who played in the 1990s who cracked the top 25 HR:

1. Barry Bonds: lots of evidence, apparently.
5. Ken Griffey Jr.
6. Sammy Sosa: 2009 report of 2003 test failure
8. Mark McGwire: 1998 Androstenedione use plus much other innuendo
10. Rafael Palmeiro: suspended in 2005
12. Alex Rodriguez: in 2009 admitted steroid use from 2001-2003
13. Jim Thome
17. Manny Ramirez: suspended in 2009
18T. Frank Thomas
24. Gary Sheffield: named in Mitchell report concerning 2003 usage
25. Eddie Murray

Does this mean Griffey, Thome and Thomas are the real home run heroes of the steroids era?


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The resource curse

I've just returned from nearly a week in an oil-rich state well-known for its opposition to the American regime. The big story, as has been widely reported, involves thuggish government behavior, which highlights its power. New information technology has played a key role in the backlash -- with lots of people lamenting the lack of government transparency.

No, I didn't go to Iran. For news about the controversial election and the even more contentious aftermath, visit my colleagues at the Duck of Minerva who are doing a great job.

FYI: I just spent about a week near Tulsa, where the local news media focused incessantly on the brutality of a state trooper towards an ambulance driver. The video isn't pretty.


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Sugar

"Sugar" may be the best film about baseball that I've seen. It is a realistic story of a young pitcher from the Dominican Republic who is invited to spring training in the USA and then assigned to a low minor league team in small-town Iowa.

The film focuses attention on the agents and leagues operating in Latin America, as well as the immigrant experience in America. Indeed, the film would have been perfect for my "Globalization (and Baseball)" course that I taught during fall 2003. After all, I assigned Stealing Lives by Arturo J. Marcano Guevara and David P. Fidler, which tells the story of sweatshop baseball labor throughout Latin America.

Former Cincinnati Reds ace Jose Rijo plays a fairly prominent role in the movie. Apparently, presuming the film is accurate, baseball has upgraded the facilities in the Dominican Republican because Marcano Guevara and Fidler describe players working and living in squalor.

As you might expect, the film gives some attention to steroids. Most importantly, it emphasizes the precarious position of young men in Latin America pursuing an unlikely dream. The movie also shows the advantages granted to the million dollar draftee ("Brad Johnson") from Stanford. He teaches the main character about the life and work of former Latin star Roberto Clemente, who said: "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth."


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Crime in the City is-a Getting Worse

Back in the 1980s, one of my favorite bands was the Beat Farmers -- a cowpunk group from southern California. One of their great songs was called "Gun Sale at the Church" (that's a video link).

Irony is a powerful weapon, right?

Sometimes, reality is even more potent. The Courier-Journal, June 3:

A Valley Station Road church is sponsoring an "Open Carry Church Service" in late June, encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters, enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.

Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church said the first-time event is "basically trying to think a little bit outside the box" to promote "responsible gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights."

The idea is fairly controversial in the local religious community. "Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper of Lexington...said the event 'would nauseate Jesus.'"

Apparently, the event has been planned to help celebrate the 4th of July -- not the latest act of domestic terrorism.


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Discrimination and the Court

Just to be clear, the widely quoted and allegedly "racist" remark from Judge Sonia Sotomayor is from a section of a speech specifically concerning decisions in "race and sex discrimination cases." This is the relevant section from the speech -- with the part you've likely heard marked in red:

...our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

A bit earlier in the talk, Sotomayor accepted "the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought."


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The judge who saved baseball

Tuesday, several people asked me about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. I replied that I knew very little -- only that she was the judge who saved baseball in the 1994 labor dispute. Later that day, I saw Obama describe her in exactly those words.

As part of the negotiation for a new labor deal in 1994, the union went out on strike to prevent implementation of a salary cap. Owners had built a large strike fund and refused withdraw this demand. Owners also skipped an August 1 pension payment to the players. The dispute forced the end of the season in August, leading the owners to cancel the playoffs and World Series.

The next spring, owners fielded replacement players and threatened to market inferior baseball. The National Labor Relations Board rejected owners' negotiating strategies. From Doug Grabiner's FAQ:

The NLRB first threatened to issue a complaint that the owners had not negotiated in good faith on February 3, 1995; the owners settled by withdrawing the cap. However, they then responded to the players' ending their signing freeze by initiating their own signing freeze, and unilaterally renewing contracts by changing the language to deny players the right to arbitration and free agency.

On March 15, the NLRB issued a new complaint over this charge. On March 26, it asked Judge Sotomayor to grant an injunction restoring the old work rules. She granted this injunction on March 31, and the MLBPA then terminated the strike. When the owners decided not to lock the players out, spring training began, with Opening Day postponed to April 25.

The owners appealed this decision, and asked for a stay of the injunction. The stay was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on September 29. This upholds Judge Sotomayor's ruling that the owners may not declare an impasse without her approval. The injunction also restored the old work rules pending a hearing on the full charges. This hearing was postponed at least eleven times as negotiations continued, was never held, and became moot with the new agreement.

The complaint over the August 1, 1994 pension payment was settled on May 19, 1995. The owners agreed to make this payment with interest by June 1, 1995, and agreed to make another payment on August 1, 1995, following the All-Star game.

Conservative columnist George Will apparently distorted this history to portray Sotomayor as an activist judge, but it is easy to find a corrective online. Indeed, even owner lawyers say she issued a fair ruling:

Sotomayor’s ruling restored the terms of the previous labor agreement so the season could go forward. Randy Levine, who became the owners’ chief labor negotiator five months after Sotomayor’s injunction, said her decision “gave both sides an opportunity to take a breath, to take stock of where they were.” Levine, now the Yankees’ president, added, “It led to the good-faith bargaining that produced revenue sharing, the luxury tax and interleague play.”

Sotomayor couldn’t will the owners and players to come to a quick agreement or prevent some old tensions from rising. But an agreement was finally reached more than a year later, in late November 1996. And there have been no work stoppages since.

What kind of red-blooded American could oppose the judge who saved baseball?


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RIP: Jay Bennett

As anyone who saw "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" knows, Jay Bennett was booted out of Wilco just as they were about to explode into the pop mainstream with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."

For my tastes, Bennett was an integral part of two far more entertaining Wilco projects -- "Being There" and "Mermaid Avenue" (in collaboration with Billy Bragg).

Those are two of my favorite recordings of the 1990s.

Jay Bennett, 45, died in his sleep this past weekend. I learned of it while watching the Chicago Cubs versus Pittsburgh Pirates on WGN tonight. To honor Bennett, the team played some Wilco songs between innings.

Sad news, but great tunes.


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Best Hitchcock?

Last night, my wife and I watched "Family Plot" with our teenage daughters. Alfred Hitchcock's last film is OK, but far from his greatest. Back in 1988-1989, when my wife and I lived briefly in California with a brand new VCR (we bought the floor model to save money), we watched a lot of Hitchcock movies.

Here's how I'd rank the top 10 Hitchcock films:

1. Rear Window (1954): Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly co-star in an excellent thriller.

2. North by Northwest (1959): this is one of my favorite films starring Cary Grant. The crop dusting scene is a bit of a stretch, keeping it from the top spot.

3. Psycho (1960): This would rank higher for many viewers, but I prefer suspense to horror and this one is closer to the latter.

4. Dial M for Murder (1954): the premise is odd. Who could be unhappily married to Grace Kelly?

5. Notorious (1946): Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and subterfuge.

6. Rope (1948): It's creepy. You knew Jimmy Stewart would be terrific -- but Farley Granger?

7. The Lady Vanishes (1938): Some parts are dated, to be sure, but it has mystery and comedic elements. We saw this film recently on local public television.

8. Lifeboat (1944): I watched this alone recently and enjoyed it a great deal. Tallulah Bankhead was perfect as someone you wouldn't want on a lifeboat.

9. Strangers on a Train (1951): I haven't seen this in a long time, or it would probably rank higher. I also want to read the book, which was strongly recommended to me by a friend.

10. Vertigo (1958): To me, this is the most overrated Hitchcock film. The first half is strong, but the movie loses me towards the end.

Honorable mention:

To Catch a Thief (1955): this is lightweight, but I really like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly -- even when they play familiar (and somewhat unbelievable) characters.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943): It might belong on the top 10 list, but I haven't seen it in many years. To be sure, Joseph Cotton made some terrific movies ("The Third Man" and "Citizen Kane," for example).


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Obama v. Cheney

Yesterday, both President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney gave speeches about terrorism, torture and national security. If you didn't watch them and don't have time or inclination to read them -- I'd advise watching this 100 second video mashup courtesy of the people at Talking Points Memo:



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Ducking in

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group international relations blog, I posted "Ire of Newt." Former Speaker of the House Gingrich is calling for the head of successor Nancy Pelosi because of her accusing the CIA of lying about what they told her about waterboarding in 2002. I reveal the frequent occasions when Newt himself has called out the CIA and State Department during wartime.

Yesterday, I posted "KSM: NIMBY?" which is about the hullabaloo surrounding the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. KSM is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. NIMBY = "not in my backyard."

Wednesday, April 29, I posted "Neorealists as Critial Theorists: Film Edition." I examined the favorite IR films of Harvard academic (and blogger) Stephen Walt in light of my film class (and work on "comedy of global politics").

Tuesday, April 28, I posted "The flu: context," which discussed the broad human security implications of the flu in an ordinary year (without swine flu).


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