lection
home authors titles dates links about5 june 2008
Christine Kenneally's First Word is a highly readable, energetic synthesis of two decades of recent academic work on the origins of human language. Ranging widely into primatology, ethology, computer modeling, paleoanthropology, and genetics, Kenneally assembles research on the question of how the human species developed language. Her thesis is that we don't know precisely how we got language, but we have a pretty good notion that it was selected for in the ordinary course of evolution, much like other things we're proud of (our opposable thumbs and bipedal locomotion). Language neither descended from the skies nor just showed up randomly one day. read more
31 may 2008
Ted Widmer contributes a notably energetic and hiply-written study of Martin Van Buren to the Times Books American Presidents series. The first seven Presidents are all colossal figures in American history, even if some of them were colossally awkward as President. Van Buren represents a sudden descent of the office into historiographical obscurity. As Widmer says, "a grand total of six American communities were named after him . . . Their combined population adds up to about ten thousand people, far more than have ever read a book about him" (18). read more
27 may 2008
There's a particular kind of book that I love to read (and have on occasion reviewed here): the "supermarket Western." By this I mean quite literally a Western that you buy at the supermarket. The racks of mass-market paperbacks at your typical Kroger or Tom Thumb here in North Texas – filled by the same distributors who stock the magazine racks – have been dwindling over the years, but they have not disappeared. They contain the top ten bestsellers, a few dozen romances of various subgenres, some spy thrillers, some self-help and advice books, the occasional SF – and, two or three times a year, a standard Western novel. I always examine it carefully before tossing it in my cart. I don't want a Western historical romance or an alternative-history spy-thriller Western or some kind of steampunk with cybercattle. I want a book that contains rustlers and rattlesnakes. read more
22 may 2008
"All efforts to judge Andrew Jackson by political standards other than his own, and those of his time," writes Sean Wilentz, "are doomed from the start" (6). In his contribution to the Times Books American Presidents series, Wilentz follows his own principles. Jackson was a slaveholder, had a lethally paternalistic view of American Indians, and took for granted a political world in which women were ciphers. At the same time, he inspired a broad-based democratic movement that would, in time, reach beyond the white males who were enfranchised in the Jacksonian era to include blacks, Indians, and women. Jackson climbed a rung of American political history toward a more representative system – even if he might look back from our perspective and see the advance as the start of a slippery slope. read more