Book and Movie Reviews

“The Revival of Pragmatism,” by Morris Dickstein.
February, 1999

The Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1999: “CINCINNATI — An appeals court has overturned a rapist’s 51-year prison sentence because a judge turned to the Bible while deciding his punishment.”

THE REVIVAL OF PRAGMATISM, edited by Morris Dickstein, 1998, contains a section on “Pragmatism and Law.” The first essay in this section is an excellent one by Richard Posner discussing legal pragmatism read more

The Heat is On
The Heat: Steelworker Lives & Legends, Cedar Hill Publications.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies — captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.”

That quote can be found at the front of “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller. Setting aside Emerson’s sexism, mysticism, and read more

“The Nurture Assumption,” By Judith Rich Harris.

THE NURTURE ASSUMPTION: Why children turn out the way they do; parents matter less than you think and peers matter more, by Judith Rich Harris, Foreword by Steven Pinker.

This book appears to be very carefully put together. It’s not your usual genes vs. environment infotainment. The author, and the author of her foreword, seriously overplay the outsider autodidactic myth. Harris studied at a top graduate school, has co-written read more

Christian Parenti’s Iraq Uncensored
December 19, 2004
“The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq” By Christian Parenti, The New Press, 208 pages.

Parenti’s book provides a first-hand description of life in occupied Iraq, primarily the life of the occupiers, but also that of the occupied. None of this has been seen on the network news or read about in the corporate transcriptions of Pentagon PR that pass for newspapers in the United States. Yet much of it will read more

“A Promise of Justice,” by David Protess and Rob Warden.

A PROMISE OF JUSTICE, by David Protess and Rob Warden, 1998, tells the story of four men who were framed by police and prosecutors and put in prison and on death row for eighteen years. Although you know before reading the book that the men were eventually exonerated, the book grips you.

It’s a courageous, honest, and intelligent story of prosecutorial corruption and defense lawyers’ almost superhuman incompetence. read more

Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Reviewed June 5, 2004

This book veers off onto a number of topics in addition to free will and determinism, most of which material is well worth reading even if you’ve read Dennett’s other work. The argument with regard to free will is a somewhat original take on compatibilism – which is a longstanding position, all of Dennett’s bluster about his groundbreaking scandalbraving notwithstanding.

Our point of view as living acting human beings read more

“A Short History of Philosophy” By Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins.
305 pages
Oxford University Press 1996

Some weeks ago I began preparing a high school level course in philosophy. I’m enjoying it greatly. That is, I am learning a lot by teaching. Now something has happened which will shape the part of the course left to prepare, and – indeed – will lead me to rework what I’ve done. I had assumed that I was working in something of a void. I did not read more

“God of the Rodeo,” by Daniel Bergner.

“God of the Rodeo,” by Daniel Bergner, 1998, is a great book, an excellent account of life incarcerating and being incarcerated in Louisiana’s Angola penitentiary, a former slave plantation on which much has changed and much has not. The book is also about the struggle required in order to write such a book, a struggle that has recently been made much harder. Compare the following quotes.

(1)”There are countries in which read more

A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World, By Vivien Stern

This is one of the best books I’ve read about prisons, and the one which goes farthest toward suggesting how they could be minimized (not eliminated).

My first encounter with the idea that prisons might be a bad idea was in reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975). He spoke of alternatives or substitutes for prison, and also for factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals, all of which he said resembled read more

“HOSTILE CLIMATE: Report on anti-gay activity, 1999 edition,” produced by People For the American Way

“HOSTILE CLIMATE: Report on anti-gay activity, 1999 edition,” produced by People For the American Way (http://www.pfaw.org) is an overwhelming document, a 250-page book briefly chronicling 292 incidents of discrimination against homosexuals in the United States during 1998.
Excluded from this list are hate read more