On Ferlinghetti’s Americus, I
For Dianne Lee and Lynette D’Amico When I first read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Americus,I just before The Book of Mev was published, I was energized by discovering how much it is a mish mash, full of…
Category: Reviews
On “Happiness” by Thích Nhất Hạnh
In her 1938 essay, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf cautioned women to think critically about joining the professions men have created. She writes, “Those opinions cause us to doubt and criticize and question the value of…
A Counter Friction To Stop the Machine
The case of Bradley Manning matters. The reason is simple: He touched a nerve. Before releasing over 250,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, Manning commented, “Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going…
Nawal El Saadawi: Uncalled-for-boldness
This year I have invited people to participate in an Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle. Last month, several friends and I met to discuss Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi’s 1983 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,…
A Policy of Terror
A Comment on Norman Finkelstein’s ‘This Time We Went Too Far’: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (OR Books, 2010) We are approaching the second anniversary of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 into January…
Responsibility to Our “Unworthy Victims”
On Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide. Many years ago, I wrote a critical study of acclaimed moralist Elie Wiesel in which I tried to account for his trajectory from being…
Wonderful To See Babies Burning: On Howard Zinn’s “The Bomb”
City Lights Open Media Series has done the U.S. people a service in publishing historian Howard Zinn’s The Bomb, a two-part pamphlet that is a contribution to critical thinking about war, and about one of…
Higher Law
Review of Steven V. Mazie, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State. Published first in Journal of Church and State, 2006. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This…
Vietnam’s Wars
Review of Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam At War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 1. In our history books we refer to “the Vietnam War,” which fixated American attention for a decade, if not more….
Accuplacer Prep
Reading Overview (9:30 minutes) 1. Information and Ideas Reading Closely Determining Central Ideas and Themes Understanding Relationships 2. Rhetoric Analyzing Text Structure Analyzing Point of View Analyzing Arguments 3. Synthesis Analyzing Multiple Texts 4….