by Richard Subber | Jan 14, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality
Homo economicus doesn’t exist…
Book review:
The Middle Out:
The Rise of Progressive Economics
and a Return to Shared Prosperity
by Michael Tomasky (b1960)
New York: Doubleday, 2022
289 pages
Read this book for a detailed history of the failures of “free market” economics and the dreadful prescriptions of Milton Friedman who elevated “profit” above all other considerations.
Read The Middle Out to get some concepts and some vocabulary and some inspiration to shift public discourse toward the embrace of a philosophy of economics that puts energy into sustaining the public good and the best interests of all of us.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
–
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 11, 2023 | Books, Reflections, Tidbits
“The beginning is always today.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)
Today started when you woke up. Think about beginnings.
Thanks to my trusted advisor for this one.
Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and by the way, if you’ve only watched the movie, you don’t know the Frankenstein story. Read the book.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
from the agile mind
of Arthur Conan Doyle
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
television is entertainment at its worst
Book review:
Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman (1931-2003)
New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking, 1985
184 pages
This is a rare treasure—a can’t-put-it-down kind of book.
I wish I’d read it 35 years ago.
Amusing Ourselves to Death is a 184-page drumbeat of insight and reality about the devastating impact of television on our culture and our prospects of living the good life.
Postman, a media theorist and cultural critic, says television “is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment.” (p. 141)
He wrote the book before the internet got really started, and before the enhanced horrors of social media like Facebook and Twitter and TikTok.
He continued to write about the failures of our educational enterprises and the negative impacts of technology on our culture.
Don’t let Amusing Ourselves to Death be the only Postman book you read in the near future.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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