Had Sitting Bull and his war chiefs reacted in the customary skirmishing style of Plains Indian warfare, the outcome would have been very different. But the Sioux and Cheyennes, fighting with their backs to the wall against the encroaching tide of white civilization, opted for a pitched battle and almost from the outset, Custer’s tactical plan went terribly wrong.
Non-Fiction Reviews
A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn by James Donovan
by Ed Voves
September 25th, 2008
Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder by David Healy
by Garan Holcombe
September 10th, 2008
He refuses to accept the dominance of money over medicine and the alarming diagnoses of bipolar disorder in infants. ‘We now have a system that inhibits our abilities to find cures while encouraging companies to seek short-term profits by co-opting bipolar disorder for the purposes of increasing the sales of major tranquilizers to infants. Giving major tranquilizers to children is little different from giving children cancer chemotherapy when they have a cold.’
The Dancer Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Dancers by Rose Eichenbaum
by Elinor Teele
September 8th, 2008
In fact, the only one who doesn’t fall in with this uplifting sentiment is, God bless her, Shirley MacLaine. With a fabulous display of grande dame orneriness, she even takes Eichenbaum to task for trying to make something monumental out of the whole idea. Exploring the dancer within? Bah humbug.
Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness
by John Holt
September 4th, 2008
Jaynes, a psychologist who taught at Princeton up until his death in 1997, showed how ancient peoples from Mesopotamia to Peru could not “think” as we do today, and were therefore not conscious. Unable to introspect or contemplate metaphor-driven scenarios, they experienced auditory hallucinations — voices of gods actually heard as the Old Testament or the Iliad — which, emanating from the brain’s right hemisphere, told an individual what to do in circumstances of novelty or stress.
Bracing For Armageddon? by William R. Clark
by John R. Guthrie
August 14th, 2008
Asahara amassed hundreds of million dollars and sent agents to far-flung destinations to ferret out information and materials for use in bioweapons. In 1995, he sought to hasten the apocalypse and seize earthly power by spreading an unlikely sacrament, sarin gas, in the Tokyo subway system. This event killed twelve people outright and injured another thousand or more, many of them seriously. The group had carried out a previous gassing, a sort of practice run for the Tokyo event, in the outlying town of Matsumoto. Seven died.
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
by Elinor Teele
August 6th, 2008
Gold, jewels – that was what the new world promised and that was what the Spanish demanded. It is the same paradox that had English settlers starving on the shore while lobsters scuttled underfoot. If it wasn’t what they had imagined, it didn’t exist.
The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tsouliadis
by Julia Braun Kessler
July 23rd, 2008
Readers of faint heart beware when embarking upon this superb work of history. So many stories of suffering are here collected, so utterly specific in their brutal details, a strong stomach will be required. Yet, it is worth the pain since one cannot emerge doubting: the epoch is surely one of history’s most vicious; and its revelation of the Twentieth Century’s brutality is dumbfounding.
O Beloved Kids: Rudyard Kipling’s Letters to his Children
by Elinor Teele
July 17th, 2008
An Imperialist, a warmonger, blind to what was in front of him, the critics say. A Nobelist, a wordmonger, enshrined in Western memory, answer his supporters. All of these Kipling has been, but it is as a father, first and foremost, that he appears in O Beloved Kids.
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic by Joseph J. Ellis
by Brett F. Woods
June 23rd, 2008
Over the preceding two centuries, Ellis notes, a number of English, Scottish, and French thinkers had generated a large body of political knowledge that undermined the medieval worldview about government, society, and even human nature itself. Further, that the American people were the beneficiaries of this accumulated wisdom – “it had yet to be called the Enlightenment,” Ellis reminds us – which, although it had its origins in Europe, was now destined to enjoy its fullest implementation in America…
Remembering Nureyev by Rudi van Dantzig
by Elinor Teele
June 9th, 2008
More intimately, van Dantzig shows us the idiosyncratic human being that powered the death-defying leaps and diamond-cut footwork. Paranoid about the KGB and Scotland Yard, perennially late to any rehearsal or engagement, often rude to his female partners, free with his sexual life at dinner parties, Nureyev comes across as a royal pain in the ass.
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- Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb: Pete notes: Amazing pics! Does anyone have an idea when another test is being done. Hopefully never.
- Collapse: How Nations Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond: Sam Ogbonna notes: Virtually the entire non-Western world is a genocidal time bomb.
- Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb: Simon notes: I believe the photos are absolutely stunning! Perhaps it would be wise to not introduce politics into a photgraphy site?
- Christine MacDonald on the Corruption of the Environmental Movement: Jim West notes: Courageous, yes, Christine. Audubon Society has major polluters on its board of directors. Rachel’s...
- Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb: Baskin & Cabins notes: Yeah, there definitely is a strange beauty to nuclear test photos. Obviously every one is aware of them and what they are...
- An Interview With James Hollis: Jean Joseph notes: For me, “The Middle Passage” has become like a Bible on my night table. I read from it when I need encouragement and am fighting...
- Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb: jez notes: @andrew reed: i think you’re getting a bit hysterical about - and missing the point of - this series of photographs. “the...
- Photo Essay: North Korean Propaganda Posters: Chris bennett notes: what the heck is wrong with north korea why do they hate america i tell you why because we have the freedom and the power to do...
- Christine MacDonald on the Corruption of the Environmental Movement: Rini Sucahyo notes: I am currently the External Relations Coordinator for Conservation International - Indonesia. I don’t...
- T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. by Sanyika Shakur : Shakier Dohou notes: Whoever wrote the article dissing the book is just a hater. We know the book is ficition with much truth injected in it. Such as the...
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