Partial to the The Partial Critics

Last week, to wean myself of my television habit, I sat down to read a Howells biography, but glanced at the books piled beside my chair, waiting to be reshelved. Some I’ve ignored for decades, packing them in box after box in move after move. The one on top, by one of my old teachers, was published in 1965.

I’d never been much interested in theory; in those days, the study of literature was not yet dominated by meta-criticism. Then, I confess, literature seemed primarily a way to objectify and understand my own inner chaos. The level of abstraction required to think in terms of literary theories was just not the way I thought. But, that last spring at Nebraska, I enjoyed Lee Lemon’s critical theory seminar & the play of those conversations. Sometimes books wait for us; last week, I found myself lost in his. The Partial Critics beautifully embodies an attitude I remembered: respectful of literature & its bounty, of the critics he critiques with affection.

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Crosby – The Measure of Reality – Quantification and Western Society 1250-1600

Crosby, Alfred W., The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 (Cambridge Univ. Press), 1997. 245pp. (Issued in the US as The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600)

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

Recently, I reviewed a book (Nisbett’s Geography of Thought) that describes the social psychological research on thinking styles in East Asia and the West. Nisbett traces the origins of the Western predisposition to thinking with Platonic properties, objects and “actors” to Greek philosophy and culture. In an earlier review of a book about the Peloponnesian War by VD Hanson, certainly demonstrated the unusual economic nature of a 5th cent. BC Athenian democracy, harnessing extraordinary financial and physical resources, even in causes that were tragic, despicable, or ultimately misguided. But did the Greeks of that era, ordinary men and women, actually see the world as we modern Westerners do … in ways that Nisbett and his colleagues now claim to distinguish in the lab?

I have my doubts.

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Epstein — The Big Picture

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

Epstein, E.J., The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood, Random House, 2005.

If your last visit to the cinema was a disappointing mix of overpriced tickets and salt-and-sugar concession snacks, followed by a postage stamp theatre blaring rock music, 15 minutes of advertising, with sticky floors and oafs talking on their cell phones during the feature film, you’re not alone. And if you felt that the movies on offer were only suitable for teenagers, antinomians, and nihilists, you were correct. They were made that way on purpose.

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Karsh — Islamic Imperialism: A History

Karsh, Efraim, Islamic Imperialism: A History, Yale Univ. Press, 2006, 276 pp.

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

In the course of the last five years, two explanations for 9/11 have taken pride of place. The first, notably championed by Bernard Lewis, cites the ongoing humiliation of the Muslim world since the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. The second, more broadly reflected in a kind of Occidentalism, claims a justifiable rebellion against the interference in Muslim affairs by European powers over the last two hundred years … if not back to the Crusades.

In Islamic Imperialism, Efraim Karsh steps away from the idea of an external force creating tension or dismay in the Arab or Muslim world, and looks at the internal dynamics of Islamic society from its earliest days. Who were Muslims actually fighting over the last 1300 years? Who were their allies? Which Muslims did the fighting? How keen were they to convert their conquered territories? What was their rationale for battle at the time? And how have the rationales changed over time, and been recast retrospectively?

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Neolithic Boyz

There are lots of reasons why I’m not making a living blogging, and one of them is that I often insist on, and even enjoy, setting the expectations of my readers in brutally honest fashion. Therefore:

  1. This post is a lengthy (3,000 words; reading time 8-15 minutes, not including the links) review of three books.
  2. Two of them are obviously related and are the sort of thing that most ChicagoBoyz readers greatly enjoy, judging by what gets blogged and commented on here.
  3. The third book, however, may appear to have been dragged in from a not-so-parallel universe by The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
  4. Anyone who finds another instance of these three being reviewed together gets the usual payment I offer for meeting a challenge (barbecue of your choice).
  5. If this entire post turns out to be value-added to a majority of its readership, I will have a miracle to my credit. Blessed Saint Leibowitz, pray for us.
  6. Just to discourage you further — as I have remarked elsewhere, when reviewing books, I pretty obviously don’t know what I’m doing, and as one authorial subject of an earlier effort remarked, my suggestions are of, shall we say, limited value in a market lacking a large segment of people with a mindset closely resembling mine.
  7. (Parlor game: if everyone shared your tastes, which sectors of the economy would collapse, and which would boom? Discuss.)

Well, then, to business: the first two books are Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn and Lee Silver’s Challenging Nature. The third is a surprise (OK, so I do occasionally pull a punch). Read on, if you dare …

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