Links, Old-style and New
A
Project Gutenberg and similar efforts may one day make this untrue, but for
the moment books make up the greatest part by far of our
overbrain. This page, then, is a bibliography as well as a list of links.
Many of the books included are from the third and fourth decades of this
century; it was a time when an unusual number of able writers went looking
behind the curtain to discover the Wizard. Hard times provoke hard questions,
it may be.
If this is true, pockets of clear vision may be expected soon to reappear
throughout the land due to the coming economic collapse. Twenty years of Wall
Street’s propaganda and bribery have finally succeeded in destroying the last
of the entire regulatory structure built in the 1930s to prevent another
Great Depression. Only the Glass-Steagall Act clung to life, and now it, too,
is gone.
But I digress, and will again, lots of times...
A good many of the books that I have found useful are out of print and
difficult to find in libraries, but the internet has made it possible to locate
such books far more easily than ever before. Of the many excellent
book search sites, the one I use most often is ABE Book Search.
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man Albert Jay Nock wrote a number
of other books, but this one, published in 1943, collects most of what he had
to say. Mr. Nock, although largely forgotten now, should not be. His prose
style combines Walter Lippmann’s magisterial voice with H.L.
Mencken’s wit. Among the many fascinations
of the Memoirs is an oddly persuasive argument for the increase of illiteracy.
The Onion No one has ever done such a sustained and consistently
funny dissection of the American newspaper. One might have thought the feat
impossible, as Edmund Morris found it impossible to do a literary dissection
of Mr. Reagan’s brain. How can a vacuum be described, let alone parodied?
The question is answered at The Onion.
The Symbols of Government Thurman Arnold, a Roosevelt
braintruster and a founder of the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter, was a
Yale Law School professor when he wrote this book in 1935. The Folklore of
Capitalism followed two years later. He was that rare thing, an insider who
was able to describe the nature of the thing he was inside. No one has done a
better job of describing the myths that govern our economic,
legal and political life.
Dead or Alive? Here the dead are gathered, so that they may
be distinguished from the quick. Didn’t Stokely Carmichael die, or am I
thinking of Hoagy Carmichael? They’re both dead, actually. Hoagie died in
1981 and Stokely in 1999 in Africa, where he called himself Kwame Ture. All
of this is at The Dead People Server.
Language in Action
Later S.I. Hayakawa was to become president of San Francisco State college
during a period of student protests, an experience that turned his brain to
oatmeal. Thus qualified, he won election to the U.S. Senate from California. But
in 1941, he was a brilliant assistant professor of English at the Illinois
Institute of Technology and published this excellent book on the uses and misuses
of language.
In Greed We Trust James Lardner has put together a huge mass of material
on the extreme economic inequality--unparalleled outside the Third World--of the richest
nation in history. Be ashamed for both our political parties (and possibly even for
yourself) at Inequality.org.
Flypower In these busy times, more and more people are wondering
how to build an airplane from nothing more than houseflies and ordinary kitchen matches. For
illustrated instructions, click and you will be transported to
Work Well Together.
Buttterfield 8 Linc Madison’s
site lists the location of every area code in the country. It also
has maps and a history of telephone numbering schemes.
Copyright © 2004 by Jerome Doolittle
remnant@badattitudes.com
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