by Richard Subber | Nov 3, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics
the “public watchdog,” as if…
Book review:
-30- The Collapse
of the Great American Newspaper
Charles M. Madigan, ed.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007
Madigan collected 15 commentaries on the continuing decline of the American newspaper industry and the woeful prospects for its improvement or survival.
The authors of Collapse do not offer predictions, but the adverse circumstances they describe as existing or possible seem all too real almost 15 years later.
Community newspapers have mostly disappeared or shriveled in vitality and importance.
Big city newspapers have been transformed into cash conduits by profit-seeking money managers, who as a group don’t care about doing or preserving the popular (and dubious) legacy concept of journalism as “a public watchdog.”
At every level of government, from township zoning hearing board to U.S. Congress, fewer and fewer reporters—or no reporters—are showing up to observe what’s going on and report it to a citizenry that historically has never wanted to pay the full cost of getting “the news.”
The basic business model of newspaper owners today is: soak the aging, shriveling group of home delivery subscribers for as much as they will pay, and soak the shriveling group of newspaper advertisers for as much as they will pay, for as long as they’re willing to pay. One by one, newspapers are disappearing.
For example, the seven-day home delivery price of The Boston Globe is about $25/week, or almost $1,300/year.
Do you remember how much a newspaper cost when you were a kid?
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
…too much death (book review)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)
and Joseph L. Galloway
–
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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by Richard Subber | Sep 25, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history
tender and mournful…
Book review:
The Zookeeper’s Wife
by Diane Ackerman (b1948)
American naturalist, poet, and author
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007
368 pages
Diane Ackerman writes about terrifying experiences, in Poland during World War II, that are not too terrible to be put into words.
Antonina is the zookeeper’s wife in Warsaw. She and her family and friends are eyewitnesses unable to escape the terror of the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
Many are killed or “transported” to the concentration camps.
Many continue to live ruined lives, in constant fear of misery, pain, and death, and with at least sporadic hope that they have a future they will welcome.
“One puzzle of daily life…was this: How do you retain a spirit of affection and humor in a crazed, homicidal, unpredictable society? Killers passed them daily on zoo grounds, death…stalked people at random in the streets.”
Ackerman writes a tender and mournful account of the instinctive courage of the children to forsake their childhood, and suffer with the adults—it’s so hard to read it without tears.
The Zookeeper’s Wife may be the most emotionally burdensome book I’ve read.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
–
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”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 22, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
profitable, powerful, vicious…
Book review:
For All the Tea in China:
How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink
and Changed History
by Sarah Rose
New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2010
This is a credible account of how tea from China became a worldwide drink.
With commanding competence, Rose relates the intrepid life of Robert Fortune, and the depressingly familiar tale of a giant corporation running amok.
The East India Company in England was an extremely vicious, extremely powerful, and extremely profitable company for more than two hundred years. It was tea from the East India Company that got dumped into Boston harbor on December 16, 1773. After a bloody 1857 war of its own making in India, the company was abruptly dissolved by the British Parliament. Rose says: “…the company had amassed possessions to rival Charlemagne’s and created an empire on which the sun never set; it was the first global multinational and the largest corporation history has ever known. Yet it failed spectacularly at one significant task: to govern India in peace.” No surprise there.
For my taste, the greater value of For All the Tea in China is the examination of how the commerce and consumption of tea shaped worldwide politics, warfare, and society. Tea reduced famine in Europe. Tea taxes financed Britain’s imperial expansion. Increased tea drinking—and increased sugar consumption—made the British sugar colonies important in British commerce and politics. Centuries of monopoly in tea production and engagement with Europeans altered the political and cultural development of China.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Jun 5, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics
…the Irish weren’t the only ones…
Book review:
How the Irish Became White
by Noel Ignatiev (1940-2019)
American author and historian
New York: Routledge, 1995
Ignatiev offers enough detail and context to satisfy historians of every stripe.
For the less ambitious reader, there may be a bit more than she cares to know in How the Irish Became White.
Of course, I certainly don’t presume to summarize the author’s careful exposition in 233 pages.
If you really want to know more about how non-black immigrants allowed and persuaded themselves to buy in to the systemic racism that flourished in America since the 17th century, dig in to How the Irish Became White.
One sure point is: don’t pick on the Irish exclusively. They certainly weren’t alone in their transgressions.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
…way too much death (book review)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)
and Joseph L. Galloway
–
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 | Feb 12, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Power and inequality
…doing more good in America…
Book review:
American Character:
A History of the Epic Struggle
Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good
Colin Woodard (b1968)
Journalist
New York: Viking, 2016
308 pages
American Character is intuitive and informative analysis of what makes Americans tick, politically.
Woodard says we need to promote “fairness” in all its meanings if we want a shot at changing the success stories of Trump/laissez fair Republicans/Tea Party/the oligarchs. I reluctantly use the word “fairness” without any pretense of conveying the fullness of his meaning. It means a lot, in different ways—seriously, meaningfully, it’s different strokes for different folks.
I’m gonna read American Character again.
It’s easy to understand what Woodard is saying. He offers a sane and credible strategy for doing more good in America for all Americans.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
How does a poem end?
“Finis,” my thoughts (my poem)
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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 | Dec 29, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history
the “milliohnim” and “the promised land”
Book review:
Thieves in the Night:
Chronicle of an Experiment
by Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)
The Macmillan Company, New York, 1946
357 pages
Koestler, a Hungarian-British writer and journalist, more famously wrote Darkness at Noon, a critique of Communism and totalitarianism.
Thieves in the Night, written later, is a gently powerful story. Koestler recounts the travails and limited joys of only a few of the “milliohnim” who sought a promised land. His characters are Jews, creating new settlements on purchased Arab land in the Holy Land, prior to World War II.
Men and women who create settlements live a tough life. A reader like me learns almost too much about the vagaries and drudgery of deliberately, fully conscious communal life on Ezra’s Tower, an isolated hilltop in Galilee. First, establish the security perimeter, then erect the watchtower, build the children’s dorm, construct the cowshed, set up the showers…in that order. The dining hall, the sleeping huts for the men and women, and the lavatories are to be built later.
The Mukhtar and his clan in the nearby Arab village do not welcome the Hebrew newcomers. Soon, the leader of the village delegation gives morbid advice to the settlers: “You young fools and children of death, you don’t know what may happen to you.” Bauman responds curtly: “We are prepared.” The Jewish settlement at Ezra’s Tower is not a resort.
The story of the settlers’ life at Ezra’s Tower is mostly drab. Koestler’s exploration of their mindset, their politics, their philosophy, and their religion all swirled together is stunning. Their aspirations and their misgivings, and their palpable legacy of homelessness and their transforming experiences, are irresistible.
Thieves in the Night is an adventure for the open and inquiring mind. Occasional sympathetic despair is a perfectly understandable reaction.
After you read this novel, look around you and ask yourself if you see things a bit differently. Ask yourself if you like your new conception of “a thief in the night.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
–
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells much truth about old age…
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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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