cos-mop-o-lite, n, a person who is cosmopolitan in his ideas, life, etc.; citizen of the world.
cos-mo-pol-i-tan, adj. 1. belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the political, social, commercial, or intellectual world. 2. free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudice, or attachments. 3. of or characteristic of a cosmopolite. -n. 4. a person who is free from local, provincial, or national prejudices, etc.; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.
Alchian, Armen A., The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian, Volume 1: Choice and Cost Under Uncertainty edited by Daniel K. Benjamin (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006) ( From a short essay, "Energy Economics": "All presently politically powerful people--not only those in elected or appointed offices--gain from greater political control over economic resources. The greater will be the value of political office and power inherited by successor political groups; Republicans now, Democrats later. This shift of power is at the expense of the private sector and is shared by those presently in power with political opponents. The national anthem is 'Greedy businessmen and unions with their insatiable lust for wealth must be restrained, and the obvious way to do it is by political controls over the economy.'" "And that is a sickness of our society--the fantasy that greater political control will set aright those defects. []" "But whatever the explanation, political power over prices reduces our basic freedoms and culture. It is the culture and wealth so characteristic of liberal society that I am urging you to protect by the immediate abandonment of wage and price controls and without resorting to special discriminatory taxes. A free democratic political system cannot survive without private property rights in free open markets. Show me a society without private property and free prices, and I'll show you a totalitarian state." Id. at 516.).
Alch
ian, Armen A., The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian, Volume 2: Property Rights and Economic Behavior edited by Daniel K. Benjamin (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006) ("Everyone want security, if the cost is zero. And the higher the cost, the less they will want. But there is a particular set of employees who will most desire tenure. These are older people whose productivity is nearing or past its peak. By securing tenure at existing current wages, they will be assured of continuing employment, despite declining productivity, at a high wage rate. At the same time, all current employees on short-term contracts will be happy to switch to a tenure contract if no cut in pay is involved, for then it would appear as though they had obtained job security without any cost to themselves with all the cost being dumped on the employer. An employer will, of course, resist this, but the extent will depend upon the cost, and in a nonprofit institution, the cost imposed on the administrator lower than the same person would bear in the same kind of business if it were a profit-seeking enterprise. Hence the extent to which employers are induced to resist this demand is reduced, and tenure is more likely to exist, as are other forms of inefficiency." "But it should not be assumed that all the costs of tenure will be shifted by the employer to society at large. Actually they have also been shifted onto some of the employees. Nothing is guaranteed in a tenure contract as to the rate of advance of pay. The employer, once he has granted tenure, may subsequently resist pay increases until the margin between pay and productivity reflects the risk-bearing aspects mentioned earlier." From "Private Property and the Cost of Tenure," 373, 383-384.).
Arendt, Hannah, The Jewish Writings edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007).Bales, Kevin, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 1999) ("Today economic links can tie the slave in the field or the brothel to the highest reaches of international corporations. How these links join up is the central mystery of the new slavery, and one that desperately needs investigation. [] What would you do if you discovered that your job depended on slave labor? When we look into the mystery of the way slavery is linked into the world economy, we'd better be prepared for a few nasty surprises." Id. at 235-236. "If we have not indirectly participated in slavery through investment, we almost certainly have through consumption. Slave-produced goods and services flow into the global market, making up a tiny but significant part of what we buy. [] Will we stop eating chocolate or drinking soft drinks until we can be sure no slavery went into their production? Are we ready to pay $5 for a candy bar if that is what it takes to ensure that the producers are not enslaved and get a decent wage? When we can work out how to research the market and discover where and how slave-made goods enter our lives, there will be an even bigger question to face: How much are you willing to pay to end slavery." Id. at 239-240.).
Bales, Kevin, New Slavery: A Reference Handbook, 2d ed. (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004).Bales, Kevin, Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 2005).Begley, Louis, Wartime Lies (New York: Knopf, 1991) (fiction).
Beth, Loren P., John Marshall Harlan: The Last Whig Justice (Lexington: U. of Kentucky Press, 1992).Bossaerts, Peter & Bernt Arne Odegaard, Lectures on Corporate Finance, Second Edition (Singapore: World Scientific, 2006).Bowen, Elizabeth, The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (New York: Knopf, 1981) (fiction).
Bowles, Samuel, Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution (New York & Princeton: Russell Sage Foundation/ Princeton U. Press, 2004).Brecht, Bertolt, Poems 1913-1956 edited by John Willett, Ralph Manheim, & Erich Fried (New York: Three Arts Books/Routledge, 1987).Brogan, Hugh, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2006).Buckley, Christopher, Boomsday (New York: Tweleve, 2007) (fiction).
Canetti, Elias, The Play of the Eyes translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986) ("His [Robert Musil] touchiness was merely a defense against murkiness and adulteration. Clarity in writing is not a mechanical aptitude that can be acquired once and for all; it has to be acquired over and over again. The writer must have the strength to say to himself: This is how I want it and not otherwise. And to keep it as he wants it, he must be firm enough to bar all harmful influences. The tension between the vast wealth of a world already acquired and the innumerable things that demand to enter into it is enormous. Only the man who carries this world within himself can decide what is to be rejected, and the late judgments of others, especially of those who bear no world whatever within themselves, are paltry and presumptuous." Id. at 170.).
Canetti, Elias, The Tongue Set Free: Remembrance of a European Childhood translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979) ("For I believe that part of knowledge is its desire to show itself and its refusal to put up with a merely hidden existence. I find mute knowledge dangerous, for it grows ever more mute and ultimately secret, and must then avenge itself for being secret. Knowledge that comes forth by imparting itself to others is good knowledge; it does seek attention, but it does not turn against anyone. The contagion coming from teachers and books tries to spread out. In that innocent phase, it does not doubt itself, it both gains a foothold and spreads, it radiates and wishes to expand everything along with itself. One ascribes the qualities of light to it, the speed at which it would like to spread is the highest, and one honors it by describing it as enlightenment. That was the form in which the Greeks knew it, before it was squeezed into boxes by Aristotle. One doesn't care to believe that it was dangerous before being split up and stowed away. Herodotus strikes me as the purest expression of a knowledge that was innocent because it had to radiate. His divisions are those of the nations who speak and live differently. He does not strengthen the divisions when speaking about them; instead, he makes room for the most diverse things in himself and makes room in other people who are informed by him. There is a small Herodotus in every young man who hears about hundreds of things, and it is important that no one should attempt to raise him beyond that by expecting restrictions towards a profession." Id. at 205-206.).
Canetti, Elias, The Torch in My Ear translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982).Caplan, Bryan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) ("Economists have an undeserved reputation for 'religious faith' in markets. No one has done more than economists to dissect the innumerable ways that markets can fail. After all their investigation though, economists typically conclude that the man in the street--and the intellectual without economic training--underestimates how well markets work. I maintain that something quite different holds for democracy: it is widely over-rated not only by the public but by most economists too. Thus, while the general public underestimates how well markets work, even economists underestimate markets' virtues relative to the democratic alternative." Id. at 3-4. "Social pressure for conformity is another force that conflicts with truth-seeking. Espousing unpopular views often transforms you into an unpopular person. Few want to be pariahs, so they self-censor. [] However, even bereft of financial consequence, who wants to be hated? The temptation is to balance being right and being liked." Id. at 115.).
Carter, Jimmy, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).Chabon, Michael, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (New York: HarperCollins, 2007) (fiction).
Chandrasekaran, Rijiv, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (New York: Knopf, 2007) (What were they thinking? Were they thinking?).
Clinch, Jon, Finn (New York: Random House, 2007) (fiction).
Conquest, Robert, The Dragons of Expectations: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History (New York: & London Norton, 2005) ("Thomas Jefferson told us at some length how education should be 'primarily historical.' He added that our people would thus be enabled to 'judge of the future.' This careful phrasing does not, I think, imply any claim to predictability, but it certainly implies its contrary--that those ignorant of history will be incompetent to consider the possibilities." "Jefferson saw historical education as vital to the citizens of a free society--if they are to remain free in the longer run. History is, in fact, that part of the humanities which enables us to look back with a real perspective and so, also, to look forward as well-briefed as we can be. We need the whole accessible past to give us a deep perspective. We need the history of the twentieth century because it contains, if sometimes in vestigial form, the elements of the present--and the future." Id. at 206.).
Coyle, Diane, The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) ("I want to persuade you that economics get an unfairly bad press. Economics is entering a new golden age, and this book is about the frontiers of economic research and empirical discovery during the past fifteen or twenty years. Yet these accomplishments are not widely known." Id. at 1. "Nevertheless, the distinctiveness and importance of economics remains entirely in its insistence on applying the scientific method to the study of human behavior. However, inadequately we put our behavior under the microscope, it is the only valid mode of analysis." Id. at 5. Two comments: First, some of the best research and writing in law today comes, I think, from 'law and behavioral economics' types. Law schools, with the exceptions of Harvard, Yale and Chicago, and one or two other schools, no longer aspire to produce/nurture a few 'philosopher-kings and philosopher-queens. Law school have, for the most part, become trade schools. It is law, not economics, which lost it soul.).
Deudney, Daniel H., Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory From the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007).Ebenstein, Lanny, Milton Friedman: A Biography (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).Ehrenreich, Barbara, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).Fessler, Ann, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006).Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap/ Harvard U. Press, 1959).Frankel, Tamar, Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad (Oxford & New York: : Oxford U. Press, 2006).Frankfurt, Harry G., The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1988).Frankfurt, Harry G., The Reasons of Love (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2004)("At the limit, when the field of consciousness has become totally undifferentiated, there is an end to all physic movement or change. The complete homogenization of consciousness is tantamount to a cessation of conscious experience entirely. In other words, when we are bored we tend to fall asleep." "Any substantial increase in the extent to which were are bored threatens the very continuation of conscious mental life. What our preference for avoiding boredom manifests is therefore not merely a casual resistance to more or less innocuous discomfort. It expresses a quite primitive urge for psychic survival. I think it is appropriate as a variant of the universal and elemental instinct for self-preservation. It is related to what we commonly think of as 'self-preservation,' however, only in an unfamiliarly literal sense--that is, in the sense of sustaining not the life of the organism but the persistence and vitality of the self." Id. at 54-55.).
Gay, Peter, My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1998) ("This is not an autobiography; it is a memoir that focuses on the six years, 1933 to 1936, I spent as a boy in Nazi Berlin. Because I have aimed at more than a superficial recital of the outrages I witnessed and the insults I swallowed, I have surrounded my principal plot with chapters in which I diagnose just what I brought to that experience and what deposits it left on me. This book records one man's story, the story of a poisoning and how I dealt with it. But after listening to scores of refugees across the years, I am confident that what I have to say has more general application." Id. at ix. "History has a way of spoiling, or at least complicating, the best stories." Id. at 83.).
Gay, Peter, Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture 1815-1915 (New York & London: Norton, 2002) ("It has been no secret since the ancient Greeks that if humans were to act out all their fantasies of triumph, of revenge, of erotic dominance or pleasure in inflicting pain--if in short there were alibis for all conduct--nothing could last for more than a moment: no love, no family life, no group acting in concert, no settled community." Id. at 100.).
Gay, Peter, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1968).Goldsworthy, Adrain, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2006).Gordin, Michael D., Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007) (demunks some myths surrounding the decisionmaking, reasoning and justifications regarding dropping the bombs on Japan.).
Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, ed., A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 1998).Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, Or Does It Explode?: Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1991).Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, Troubling the Water: Black-Jewish Relations in the American-Century (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006) ("Facile claims about the ending of a black-Jewish political partnership because of black extremism or Jewish self-serving manipulation miss the complexity and drama of the civil rights struggle. If there is a tragedy in the weakening of black-Jewish ties it is ultimately not about blacks or Jews, but rather about the loss of momentum in the struggle for justice. Perhaps a clearer understanding of both the real limits and noblest goals of the black-Jewish relationship can help forge a new, broader partnership. And perhaps understanding the limits of liberalism in a racialized state can help liberalism become truer to its own ideals." Id. at 14.).
Gross, Jan T., Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2001).Grotius, Hugo, Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty edited and with an Introduction by Martine Julia van Ittersum (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).Grotius, Hugo, The Free Sea edited and with an Introduction by David Armitage (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).
Grotius, Hugo, The Rights of War and Peace: Volumes I-III edited and with an Introduction by Richard Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005).Gurfewuns, Amir, Our Holocaust translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen (New Milford, Ct: The Toby Press, 2006) (fiction).
Hamid, Mohsin, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Orlando & New York: Harcourt, 2007(fiction).
Iweaka, Uzodinma, Beasts of No Nation ((New York: HarperCollins, 2007) (fiction).
Jelinek, Elfriede, Greed translated from the German by Martin Chalmers (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007) (Fiction. "Everything's going down the drain, anyway. Eye for an eye. People have already got used to every imaginable horror. Love is the only thing they want to experience again and again and then once again after that, this time, however, exclusively with the right partner. They want the beloved to look cheerful, otherwise it's no fun for them." Id. at 276.).
Kamdar, Mira, Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World (New York: Scribner, 2007).Kennedy, David & William W. Fisher III, eds., The Canon of American Legal Thought (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006).Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1997).Kissinger, Henry, White House Years (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979) ("The vitality of free peoples would be tested by the answer they gave to the age-old dilemma of freedom: how to reconcile diversity and unity, independence and collaboration, liberty and security." Id. at 86. "The principle of linkage. We insisted that progress in superpower relations, to be real, had to be made on a broad front. Events in different parts of the world, in our view, were related to each other; even more so, Soviet conduct in different part of the world. We proceeded from the premise that to separate issues into distinct compartments would encourage the Soviet leaders to believe that they could use cooperation in one area as a safety valve while striking for unilateral advantages elsewhere. This was unacceptable." Id. at 129. "Linkage, however, is not a natural concept for Americans, who have traditionally perceived foreign policy as an episodic enterprise. Our bureaucratic organizations, divided into regional and functional bureaus, and indeed our academic tradition of specialization compound the tendency to compartmentalize. American pragmatism produces a penchant for examining issues separately: to solve problems on their merits, without a sense of time or context or of the seamless web of reality. And the American legal tradition encourages rigid attention to the 'facts of the case,' a distrust of abstraction." Id. at 129-130. "For moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have a choice." Id. at 225. "On December 2 Pakistani Ambassador Raza delivered a letter from Yahya to President Nixon invoking Article I of the 1959 bilateral agreement between the United States and Pakistan as the basis for US aid to Pakistan. The American obligation to Pakistan was thus formally raised. The State Department was eloquent in arguing that no binding obligation existed; it regularly out out its view at public briefings. It pointed out that Article I spoke only of 'appropriate action' subject to our constitutional processes; it did not specify what action should be taken.. The Department also claimed that the obligation was qualified by its context, the 1958 Middle East 'Eisenhower Doctrine' resolution, which, it was argued, intended to exclude an India-Pakistan war. State simply ignored all other communications between out government and Pakistan." "The image of a great nation conducting itself like a shyster looking for legalistic loopholes was not likely to inspire other allies who had signed treaties with us or relied on our expressions in the belief that the words meant approximately what they said." Id. at 894-895. "The flaw in Nixon's method of administration soon became evident, however. So much time, effort, and ingenuity were spend in trying to organize a consensus of the senior advisors that there was too little left to consider the weaknesses in the plan or to impose discipline on the rest of the government. There was no role for a devil's advocate." Id. at 996.).
Kissinger, Henry, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) ("When the visual image replaced the written word as the principal means of understanding the world, the process of learning was transformed from an active to a passive mode, from a participatory act to assimilating predigested data. One learns from books via concepts that relate apparently disparate events to each other and require analytical effort and training. By contrast, pictures teach passivity; they evoke impressions which require no act by the viewer, emphasize the mood of the moment, and leave little room for either deductive reasoning or the imagination. Concepts are permanent; impressions are fleeting and in part accidental." Id. at 28-29. "The prophet's role is more subtle. Though his cause is based on proclaimed values, his clams are for this reason even more universal and insistent. Righteousness is the parent of fanaticism and intolerance. Opponents are extirpated--after, it is alleged, for their own good. Reigns of terror become necessities, not aberrations. The symbol of such a period is the commissar who kills millions without love and without hatred in the pursuit of an abstract duty. This is why crusades have often created as much havoc and suffering as conquests." Id. at 1075-76.).
Kissinger, Henry, Years of Upheaveal (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown, 1982) ("The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision. If he gets too far ahead of his people he will lose his mandate; if he confines himself to the conventional he will lose control over events. The qualities that distinguish a great statesman are prescience and courage, not analytical intelligence. He must have a conception of the future and the courage to move toward it while it is still shrouded to most of his compatriots. Unfortunately, while it is true that great are the statesmen who can transcend ambiguity, not everyone who confronts ambiguity is a great statesman. He may even be a fool." Id. at 169.).
Kraut, Richard, What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being (Cambridge, Ma. & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2007) ("The proper test of a person's objectivity, in practical matters, is open-minded self-scrunity, not an impersonal regard for the good of all." Id. at 65. "Good intentions and the ethical training everyone receives as a child can by themselves take one only so far. To act well, one must bring to bear on what one does a sense of what is worthwhile, and if that sense is merely a product of what one happens to want or like, one can easily go astray. Common sense must be informed by ethical reflection; and such reflection, systematized and intensified, is what moral philosophy is." Id. at 272-237. This is a thoughtful book, and well worth the investment of reading.).
Laforet, Carmen, Nada [1945] translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (New York: Modern Library, 2007) (fiction).
Leavy, Jane, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: HarperCollins, 2002) (Consider the following passage: "Years later when [Robert] Pinsky was teaching writing at the University of California at Berkeley, someone sent him a poster of Koufax pitching: a study in kinetic sculpture, midway through his delivery, coiled and balanced in his back leg, his foot the only point of contact with the earth." "Pinsky hung the poster on his office door. In the arc and force of the pitcher's motion, Pinsky saw everything he wanted his students to know about writing: balance and concentration; a supremely synchronized effort; the transfer of energy toward a single, elusive goal." Id. at x (italic added). Should not this be what law teachers (doctrinal, clinical, writing, skills) strive to get their students to know about lawyering? "[B]alance and concentration; a supremely synchronized effort; the transfer of energy toward a single, elusive goal: JUSTICE.).
Luce, Edward, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (New York: Doubleday, 2007).Lukacs, John, George Kennan: A Study of Character (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2007).Lybarger, Loren D., Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle Between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007).Maalouf, Amin, Balthasar’s Odyssey translated from the French by Barbara Bray (New York: Arcade, 2002) (fiction).
Marcus, Sharon, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006).McPherson, James M., This Mighty Scourge: Perspective on the Civil War (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2007).McKibben, Bill, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: Times Books/ Henry Holt, 2007).Miller, John H., & Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007).Narayan, R. K., Mr. Sampath–The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (New York: Everyman’s Library/Knopf, 2006) (fiction).
Nehamas, Alexander, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (Princeton & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2007).Nusseibeh, Sari (with Anthony David), Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) ("More than anything else I experienced in America, Jefferson's home and university symbolized for me a special kind of will. It wasn't just the will to political independence that impressed me--even the most brutal political campaigns speak of independence. What stirred my imagination--and still does, especially after all the intervening years of violence and disappointment in my homeland--were the moral assumptions at work behind the American Constitution. With all his failing and contradictions, Jefferson believed in the dignity of the moral conscience, and that human freedom was a good in itself, not needing the sanction of tradition or religious authority. A revolution must have at its core a belief in the moral integrity of the individual; otherwise it will inevitably degenerate into despotism." Id. at 149-150. "In Western society, a liberal education can often be little more than a rite of passage or a sign of a proper unbringing, like eating your sald with the right fork. For us, it's a matter of life and death, Education is a tool to prevent people from passively stewing in their own resentment, and either giving up by submitting or lashing out by tossing bomb. Id. at 181. Note: These days, when liberal arts education is most American universities is alive in name only, one senses that more and more college graduates--too timid to rage against the system, and still hoping to be allowed into the 'club'--are 'stewing in their own resentment'. "In Pavia, I chose to give my talk on the predicament of Palestinian prisoners, and my entree into the subject was the notion of freedom, and how the will was inextricably linked with personal and national identity. I told my audience about my observations of students who had spent long hours in the interrogation cell, and how by refusing to confess, they came out of it with a new sense of self and often for the first time in their lives, a genuine experience of freedom." "Freedom, I said, isn't some innate quality stamped on our foreheads like a product bar code; nor is it something external like a particular passport or the right amount of money in the bank. Freedom is an expression of the will, and the amount you have of it is in direct proportion to your mastery over fear and egotism. By exercising the will, the individual carves out a distinct identity." Id. at 280-281.).
Oakes, James, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York & London: Norton, 2007).Obama, Barack, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown, 2006) (By now, if one has been paying attention to what will be the longest presidential election season in U.S. history, you know Barack Obama narrative. However, this book is worth a read so as to get the narrative as one long, coherent piece. Needless to say, this should not be taken as an endorsement (or anti-endorsement) of Mr.. Obama's presidential aspirations.) .
Oren, Michael, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York & London: Norton, 2007) (Here is an indication that one of America's peculiar talent, i.e., for pursuing international relations without understand the other peoples' history or cultures, is not a recent development. "[President] Wilson's confusion regarding the future of the Middle East became apparent to Walter Lippmann, a former New Republic editor who was serving as the assistant secretary of war, six months before the Paris conference. In an internal memo of May 1918, Lippmann warned that America was liable 'to win a war and lose the peace' unless it found the 'sheer, startling genius' necessary to reconcile Wilson's conflicting plans for the Middle East. Heeding his caveat, the government established a secret task force, headquartered in the New York Public Library and code-named The Inquiry. More than one hundred scholars were enlisted in the group, leaders in fields as diverse as engineering, Egyptology, and Native American cultures. None of them, however, were specialists on the Middle East. Rather, The Inquiry's experts' consulted encyclopedias, travel books, and missionary manuals--everything by Arabic and Turkish texts--in formulating their plans for the region. Others pursued personal agendas. The American Board secretary James Barton, for example, proposed that the entire Ottoman Empire be placed under America's aegis, with spiritual and ethical guidance provided by missionary schools and colleges." Id. at 378.).
Padgett, Ron, Ed., Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems (American Poets Project) (New York: Library of America, 2007).Palmer, Glenn & T. Clifton Morgan, A Theory of Foreign Policy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006) ("We are primarily motivated by a belief that traditional ways of evaluating foreign policy are fundamentally flawed. The most significant shortcoming is that analysis typically treats foreign policy as through it is aimed at achieving only one goal--maintaining the security of the state. Many have noted that 'security' is an ambiguous concept and that almost anything can be said to enhance it. Our complaint is not that 'security' is too abstract; rather, it is that we cannot understand foreign policy decisions if we assume they are aimed at producing only a single good. Accepting that foreign policy decisions often involve trade-offs is essential to understanding those decision; this requires that we recognize that policy is aimed at achieving multiple goals." Id. at xi. "[W]e take the simplest possible remedying step by assuming that states pursue two goods through their foreign policies. We call these change, which constitutes efforts to alter the status quo, and maintenance, which constitutes efforts to prevent change in the status quo. This is clearly an abstraction, but it allows us to consider trade-offs and it is the simplest model that can do so." Id.).
Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Sun Over Breda (New York: Puntan, 2007) (Fiction. "He who kills from afar knows nothing at all about the act of killing. Her who kills from afar derives no lesson from life or from death; he neither risks nor stains his hands with blood, nor hears the breathing of this adversary, nor reads the fear, courage, or indifference in his eyes. He who kills from afar tests neither his arm, his heart, nor his conscience, nor does he create ghosts that will later haunt him every single night for the rest of his life. He who kills from afar is a knave who commends to others the dirty and terrible task that is his own. He who kills from afar is worse than other men, because he does not know anger, loathing, and vengeance, the terrible passion of flesh and of blood as they meet steel, but he is equally innocent of pity and remorse. For that reason, he who kills from afar does not know what he has lost." Id. at 163.)
Pinsky, Robert, First Things to Hand: Poems (Louisville: Sarabande Books, 2006).Robinson, Paul H. & Michael T. Cahill, Law Without Justice: Why Criminal Law Doesn't Give People What They Deserve (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2006).Rosen, Jeffrey, The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America (New York: Times Books/ Henry Holt, 2006).Rubinstein, Ariel, Lecture Notes in Mircoeconomic Theory (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006).Sarila, Narendra Singh, The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006).Shaviro, Daniel N., Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government’s March Toward Bankruptcy (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2007).Shriver, Lionel, The Post-Birthday World (New York: HarperCollins, 2007) (fiction).
Sniderman, Paul M., & Louk Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents in the Netherlands (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2007).Sternberg, Robert J., ed., The Psychology of Hate (Washington, D.C.: American Psycholgical Association, 2005).Tanguay, Daniel, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2007).Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Old Way: A Story of the First People (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006) ("The five groups of San or Bushmen are called the First People." Id. at xi.).
Tirole, Jean, The Theory of Corporate Finance (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006).Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, Volumes I-II: The Henry Reeve Text as Revised by Francis Bowen Now Further Corrected and Edited with Introduction, Editorial Notes, and Bibliographies by Phillips Bradley (New York: Knopf, 1945, 1997) (I try to reread Democracy in America every three or four years).
Tocqueville, Alexis de, The Old Regime and the Revolution, Volume One: The Complete Text, edited and with an introduction and critical apparatus by Francois Furet & Francoise Melonio, translated from the French by Alan S. Kahan (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1998).Tocqueville, Alexis de, The Old Regime and the Revolution: Volume Two: Notes on the French Revolution and Napoleon edited with an introduction and critical apparatus by Francois Furet & Francoise Melonio, translated by Alan S., Kahan (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2001).Von Mises, Ludwig, Bureaucracy edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007).Von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time translated from the German by Leland B. Yeager, edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983, 2006) ("The outcome of German imperialism, which cast the German people into bitter misery and made it into a pariah people, shows that those whose leadership it followed in the last generation were not on the right path. [] Did not the men of the Enlightenment, who today are reproached for lack of state feeling, better understand what is good for the German people and the entire world? More clearly than all theories could do, the course of history shows that properly understood patriotism lead to cosmopolitanism, that the welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration. Everything that the German people possessed, its intellectual and material culture, it has uselessly sacrificed to a phantom, to no one's benefit and to its own harm." Id. at 62 (italic added). Keeping in mind that the following was written decades ago, does it not describe--and sadly--our own times? "Yet precisely this incessant striving for more wealth is the driving force of our development; one cannot eliminate it without destroying the basis of our economic civilization. The contentment of the serf, who was happy when did not suffer actual hunger and when his lord did not thrash him too badly, is no ideal state of affairs whose passing one could lament." "It is also true, however, that the rise of outward welfare corresponds to no increase in inner riches. The modern city-dweller is richer than the citizen of Periclean Athens and than the knightly troubadour of Provence, but his inner life exhausts itself in mechanical functions at work and in superficial dissipations of his leisure hours. From the pine torch to the incandescent lamp is a great step forward, from the folk song to the popular song a sad step backward. Nothing is more comforting than that people are beginning to become conscious of this lack. In that alone lies hope for a culture of the future that will put everything earlier in the shade." Id. at 177 (italic added).)
Von Mises, Ludwig, The Theory of Money and Credit translated from the German by H. E. Batson (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1980) ("Recurring economic crises are nothing but the consequence of attempts, despite all the teachings of experience and all the warnings of the economists, to stimulate economic activity by means of additional credit." "This point of view is sometimes call the 'orthodox' because it is related to the doctrines of the Classical economists who are Great Britain's imperishable glory; and it is contrasted with the 'modern' point of view which is expressed in doctrines that correspond to the ideas of the Mercantilists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I cannot believe that there is really anything to be ashamed of in orthodoxy. The important thing is not whether a doctrine is orthodox or the latest fashion, but whether it is true or false. And although the conclusion to which my investigations lead, that expansion of credit cannot form a substitute for capital, may well be a conclusion that some may find uncomfortable, yet I do not believe that any logical disproof of it can be brought forward." Id. at 31 (from "Preface to the English Edition" (1934). "Cynics dispose of the advocacy of a restitution of the gold standard by calling it utopian. Yet we have only the choice between two utopias: the utopia pf a market economy, not paralyzed by government sabotage on the one hand, and the utopia of totalitarian all-around planning on the other hand. The choice of the first alternative implies the decision in favor of the god standard." Id. at 499-500.).
Von Mises, Ludwig, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006) ("The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences. [] What is needed to prevent a scholar from garbling economic studies by resorting to the methods of mathematics, physics, biology, history or jurisprudence is not slighting and neglecting these sciences, but, on the contrary, trying to comprehend and to master them. He who wants to achieve anything in praxeology must be conversant with mathematics, physics, biology, history, and jurisprudence, lest he confuse the tasks and the methods of the theory of human action with the tasks and the methods of the theory of any of these other branches of knowledge. What was wrong with the various Historical Schools of economics was first of all that their adepts were merely dilettantes in the field of history. No competent mathematician can fail to see through the fundamental fallacies of all varieties of what is called mathematical economics and especially of econometrics. No biologist was ever fooled by the rather amateurish organicism of such authors as Paul de Lilienfeld." "When I once expressed this onion in a lecture, a young man in the audience objected, 'You are asking too much of an economist,' he observed 'nobody can force me to employ my time in studying all these sciences.' My answer was: 'Nobody asks or forces you to become an economist." Id. at 3. Ah, substitute law for economics and that young man sounds like a contemporary law student. Also, for me at least, it reminds me how the 'liberal arts and science' education has been destroyed in American colleges universities.)
Walzer, Michael, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985).Washington, Harriet A., Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Doubleday, 2006) (America and Americans have never been good on race. This book, flawed at points, makes a strong case for harmful effects on American racism in the context of medice, medical research, etc. Makes me laugh in disgust at people talk assert "American exceptionalism.").
Wolpert, Stanley, Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2006).Yamashita, Karen Tei, Brazil Maru (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1992) (fiction).
Yamashita, Karen Tei, Circle K Cycles (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2001) ("book of hybrids merg[ing] fiction, essay, and pop culture collage").
Yamashita, Karen Tei, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1990) (fiction).
Yamashita, Karen Tei, Tropic of Orange (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997) (fiction).
Yunus, Muhammad (with Alan Jolis) Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 1999, 2003).Zhang, Guixing, My South Seas Sleeping Beauty: A Tale of Memory and Longing translated from the Chinese by Valerie Jaffee (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2007) (fiction).
Zhu, Tianxin (Chu Tien-hsin), The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2007) (fiction).
"Self-righteousness [ ] spawns arrogance, selfishness, indifference.... Don’t let the weight of things numb you. Read, think, disagree with everything, if you like – but force your mind outward." Anton Myrer, Once an Eagle (Carlise, Pa.: Army War College Press, 1977), at 194.
