by Richard Subber | Mar 30, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality
Tell yourself the truth…
Book review:
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis
by Jared Diamond (b1937)
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019
Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
502 pages.
Diamond delivers a knock-out with every one of his books. Upheaval is no exception.
Diamond fully backs up his frank and frightening assessment of the United States in its current crises.
America and Americans have many strengths, including our geographic stronghold and our democratic traditions. We’re facing many fault lines, not least of which is our increasingly paralyzing political polarization and refusal to embrace sensible compromise to get good things done for all Americans. Repeat for effect.
Upheaval is not a feel-good book. It is a call to action, with a credible road map and many reasons to fear our failure to face up to our crises.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 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 | Mar 28, 2023 | Human Nature, Politics, Tidbits
“One cannot level one’s moral lance at every evil in the universe.
There are just too many of them.
But you can do something,
and the difference between doing something
and doing nothing
is everything.”
Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016)
“Pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win.”
Jonathan Kozol (b1936)
‘Nuff said.
Get started.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 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 | Mar 25, 2023 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
a kind of music of the spheres…
Overture
I stood awhile in prescient dark,
faint sounds of night
were near and far,
a rustling song,
a sylvan chord,
a tiny thrum,
and more—
a downbeat for the dawn to come,
scant chorus rising,
I whispered hallowed words
to make a coda,
and waited for the star of day.
January 21, 2023
Inspired by “Behind Stowe” (1927) by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 22, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
that feel-good feeling…
Movie review:
Winter’s Tale
2014
Rated PG-13
118 minutes
Starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe
Winter’s Tale offers a gripping combination of magic, miracle, young love, and gritty good vs. evil plot lines. It’s just what you need to guarantee the feel-good feeling as you finish watching the movie some night soon.
Using words to describe it is a challenge. Winter’s Tale (2014, rated PG-13, 118 minutes) creates the characters and then rushes to convergence at the end: Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay) imparts her miracle to Peter (Colin Farrell), Peter fights evil to create goodness, the girl will live, the magic horse prances into the sky, and love conquers all.
This is a tale about a world as we would like it to be, and the kind of love we all wish everyone could have. It’s proof that the slightest breath of angels can make magic.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood…it ain’t Shakespeare
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 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 | Mar 15, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Power and inequality
guns and germs…
Book review:
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by Charles Mann
New York: Vintage Books, 2011
1491 offers everything you never knew about civilized people in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and killed most of them (OK, many died in battle, but it was European diseases, mostly). Maybe close to 100 million “native” people died within 100 years or so of the “discovery” by Columbus…but hold on, this book is not about Wounded Knee-type criticism or ex post facto self-flagellation.
In 1491, Mann beautifully describes the marvelous sophistication of cultures, cities, agriculture, arts, and science that blossomed in North America, Central America, and South America thousands of years ago, in many cases predating achievements and growth and civilization in Europe.
Yes, the Incas never used the wheel except for children’s toys.
Yes, the Mississippian city of Cahokia was a bustling port and a trading center with population equal to Paris in France—and that was 500 years before Columbus sailed.
Yes, the Olmec culture in what is now Mexico invented the zero whole centuries before mathematicians in India did the same.
My recollection of schoolboy learning about the history of the Americas is that the dates and events were tied to discovery and conquest and colonization by Europeans. The implication was that, before the white men with guns, germs and steel arrived, nothing much was going on in whole continents characterized more by “virgin land” and “endless wilderness” than by people who had agriculture, city life, art, trade, commerce, religion, science, kings, and philosophers.
Mann offers 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. For me, the joy of reading this book is learning about the multiplicity of cultures that flourished in the Americas, and learning how they tamed and managed and very greenly conserved their environment…and for me, the sad revelation of this book is understanding that the peoples of the Americas were human beings whose achievements were noble and notable, and yet, lamentably, their cultural legacies are largely lost and the losses are barely mourned.
In 1533 Pizarro and his conquistadors at Cuzco precipitated the decline of the 300-year-old Inca empire in Peru. Fifty years later, the Spanish colonial administrators in Peru ordered the burning of all the Incan “khipu” knotted string records because they were “idolatrous objects.” Khipu were the Incas’ only form of writing. The smoke from the burning of their books gets in your eyes, forever and ever.
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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
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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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