California Literary Review

Web Site:

http://calitreview.com

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• What’s Killing the Honeybees?
  Posted on 04 Nov 2008 in Agriculture, Animals, Environment, Food, Nature, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  “So the bigger conclusion is that we have soaked our landscape in toxic chemicals, many of which can interact to form even more toxic compounds, and there is absolutely no regulation or testing of this mixing. Most beekeepers and researchers I’ve spoken with believe pesticides are one factor, working in conjunction with introduced parasites, viruses, bacteria, and fungi, and quite possibly with deteriorating living conditions for bees. Bees could handle one or two of these stressors, but not all of them.”

• School Rampage Killers: A Psychological Portrait
  Posted on 27 Oct 2008 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Psychology, Sociology, True Crime
  

  The shooter had convinced himself that killing was gutsy and masculine. Based on his misreadings of Nietzsche and from repeated viewings of the Oliver Stone film, Natural Born Killers, he had convinced himself that the killer was a kind of superior being, and that killing constituted a form of “Natural Selection.”

• Dr. Shashi Tharoor: Understanding India
  Posted on 08 Oct 2008 in China, Economics, India, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics, Religion
  

  “India is a status-quo power: it wants nothing that Pakistan has. Pakistan’s rulers, however, are obsessed with Kashmir, which they have repeatedly tried and failed to wrest from India through war and militancy, and with a desire to “cut India down to size” by bleeding it through terrorism. What needs to happen is for a new political culture to prevail in Pakistan, one that privileges peace, dialogue, co-operation, tourism and trade instead of resentment, bigotry, militarism, intolerance and violence.”

• Christine MacDonald on the Corruption of the Environmental Movement
  Posted on 01 Oct 2008 in Environment, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  “But after watching environmentalists blatantly engage in greenwashing for their corporate sponsors, I can tell you that once a group takes money from a corporation and comes to rely on the continued flow of those dollars to run programs and pay salaries, it loses its ability to be a critic and a watchdog. One high-ranking environmentalist once told me he shies away from seeking corporate funds because corporate executives ‘tend to want to buy you up first and talk about conservation later.’ I think that is largely the norm.”

• David Harris on Bill Walsh, the Brilliant Coach of the San Francisco 49ers
  Posted on 29 Sep 2008 in Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports
  

  “Once, as an assistant coach at Cal, he knocked a guy out who flipped him the bird when out driving with his family. Bill got in his last known public fist fight at the age of 65. ‘Genius’ or not, he was not someone to be trifled with.”

• Photo Essay: North Korean Propaganda Posters
  Posted on 19 Aug 2008 in Art, Art & Design, History, Military, Politics
  

  Posters are visual illustrations of the slogans that surround the people of North Korea constantly. North Korean society is in a permanent mobilization. Party and government declarations are stripped down to single-line catchphrases. Through their endless repetition in banners, newspaper headlines, and media reports, these compact slogans become self-explanatory, simultaneously interpreting and constructing reality.

• Being Kidnapped at Knifepoint Is Not Enough to Change David Lida’s Love for Mexico City
  Posted on 13 Jul 2008 in Mexico, Non-Fiction Reviews, Travel
  

  “But with neoliberal governments, an unjust distribution of wealth is becoming the norm. Even in wealthy countries, working people are earning lower salaries, fewer benefits and have less free time. Simply put, the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer; I wonder if the rest of the world isn’t coming around to Mexico City.”

• Susskind Quashes Hawking in Quarrel Over Quantum Quandary
  Posted on 08 Jul 2008 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Science
  

  “The next generation of physicists and cosmologists will have the fun and excitement of discovering the right mathematical formulation of a “multiverse.” Finding observational (astronomical?) ways to confirm that we live in such a diverse world is another challenge. Only the old fogies who thought that physics was almost finished are disappointed. The only thing that I would find discouraging would be that we run out of questions.”

• Jill Bolte Taylor’s Right Brain Wants to Tell Us Something
  Posted on 02 Jul 2008 in Disability, Medicine, Non-Fiction Reviews, Psychology
  

  “I had a rare congenital malformation in the blood vessels of my left hemisphere and at the age of 37 the malformation (AVM) blew and resulted in a major hemorrhage in the left half of my brain. On the morning of the stroke, I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I describe myself as an infant in a woman’s body.”

• Eugene Debs and the Fight for Free Speech
  Posted on 26 Jun 2008 in Biography, Economics, Espionage, History, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics
  

  Debs was the great voice of socialism in the United States for the first two decades of the 20th century, a five-time presidential candidate for a third-party crusade against capitalism. He was a homegrown rebel, born and raised in Indiana, and a powerful speaker who knew how to translate socialism into an American idiom.