Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy
Sycophancy (ˈsikəˌfan(t)sē) is the phenomenon known to most of us by alternative words or phrases such as sucking up, ass kissing, brown nosing, and bootlicking—words and terms that give sycophancy…
Nonfiction
39 posts
What books can tell us about the world.
Tiger and Clay – Syria Fragments
“There are memories for which we can live more than a life time.” —Brother of Rana Abdulfattah Photographs over the past several years have shown migrants and refugees crossing the…
Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939
As the son of a WW II veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, I grew up hearing stories from my Dad about his personal experiences in the war. I picked up Volker Ullrich's Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939 because I wanted to know more about Hitler the man: his roots, his formative years, his path to Führer, the choices he made along that path. "If anything, he will emerge as even more horrific."
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems
Liu Xiaobo is the author of hundreds of essays and seventeen books. Most of the essays in No Enemies, No Hatred are from the period between 2004 and 2008, and reflect, in the service of freedom of speech, how words followed by action can change the direction of a country.
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin was first published in 1963 during the emerging Civil Rights Movement and was an instant best seller. A brilliant social critic, public intellectual, and interpreter of racial myths and beliefs, Baldwin captured the zeitgeist of a country riven by race. Without prejudice or fear, he deconstructed the institution of racism in America.
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Warmth of Other Suns is a magisterial book examining the Great Migration from the South that began during World War I and lasted until the 1970s.
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
One of Di Giovanni’s themes in her book The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria is “the velocity of war,” the speed with which it descends upon a country, whether it be Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, or Syria. The book is based on Di Giovanni’s reporting from Syria during the six-month period, June–December 2012.
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Ben Ehrenreich, on assignment for Harper’s magazine, went to Palestine’s West Bank in 2011 to report on Israel’s water war with Palestine. The Way to the Spring is based on his eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.
The Longest War
Consider 9/11 and the Arab Spring of 2011 as opposing bookends to a decade of repression, fear, and fetishized violence. 9/11—the worst terrorist attack on United States soil—killed nearly 3,000…
The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban The Bomb
Unless you are a World War II history buff, you may have missed the fact that the island of Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands played an important role in…