Printed Word Matters

STONE CRABS AND KISHKEHS: THE HISTORY OF MIAMI BEACH

Miami Beach, Florida is one of the most well known resort cities in the world. However, during the 20th century this glitzy 'fun-in-the-sun' paradise was also a haven for elderly Jewish immigrants, many of whom had fled from Czarist Russia. It was also home for recent survivors of the Holocaust. They were easy to identify, always dressed in short sleeves, proud to display the numbers branded on their arm - but some wore long sleeves, even on the hottest days of summer, hiding a memory from hell.

REJUVENATING COMMUNISM: YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS AND ELITE RENEWAL IN POST-MAO CHINA

This book is a study of ambitious young Chinese, their aspirations, and career choices. It was prompted by an initial puzzle: how does the Chinese party-state manage to attract recruits and maintain their commitment over time, when ideology does not structure recruitment anymore and a liberalized employment market provides alternative career options? These issues are central to our understanding of what contributes to the long-term resilience of non-democratic regimes and their ability to remain

THE LAST AND FIRST ROMANTIC

<div>A Secular Age was Taylor’s diagnosis, but in Cosmic Connections he offers a prescription. Across almost six-hundred pages Taylor presents an erudite compendium of arguments and close readings, but many will be familiar with the rather archaic (though by no means inaccurate) form of the philosopher’s claim – that the means of connection, meaning, and transcendence in a disenchanted world must be fundamentally aesthetic, that they must be poetic...</div>

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND THE AFTER-DEATH

What happens after we die has always been a major source of religious speculation, and providing answers to this question has also been one of religion’s chief tasks. Many faiths use the fear of death and the lure of an afterlife as a sort of spiritual club to dun adherents into proper moral behavior and correct belief in this world, promising all sorts of things to the worthy righteous after death. Pragmatically speaking, this promotes a very positive outcome, but how does one verify the benefi

VEILS OF DISTORTION: HOW THE NEWS MEDIA WARPS OUR MINDS

<div>Anyone who’s followed the news for decades has noticed without fail that coverage has tilted more and more towards stories about celebrities and all manner of trivial conflicts between members of the public. What was once the sole domain of what we call 'tabloid' news has spread to become a fixture of most mainstream news outfits....</div>

TWO THEOLOGICAL VIEWS OF POLITICAL ORDER

<div>Many books have been, are, and will be written on the subject of international relations. But not many, at least not today, would discuss international order and our perceptions of it from a political-theological point of view. One of the few titles that offers such a discussion is William Bain's The Political Theology of International Order...</div>

THE SCIENCE OF ONE: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM

It’s often said that the first philosopher was Thales of Miletus, born in the 7th century BCE. His big idea was that everything is made of water. In hindsight, this is not such a good idea. Even watermelon is only 92% water. But there’s actually a very profound thought in Thales’ idea. To wit: although the world seems like it’s made of so many different things, of all different colors and shapes and sizes and consistencies, behind this appearance of baffling multiplicity lies a hidden unity. Dee

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JOEL KUPPERMAN?

I’ll never forget that day in 1944 - it was extremely warm for November – people called it 'Indian Summer' – but I didn’t see any Indians. It was the day I saw Joel Kupperman at school. He was in a hallway carrying books - alone. We were walking toward each other - face to face. This was my chance to introduce myself, but I was too scared to speak to the most famous kid in America (at least since Shirley Temple - but she wasn’t very famous anymore). It was an exciting moment, but I froze...

ON TRANQUILLITY OF MIND | By Plutarch

<div>It was late before I received your letter, wherein you make it your request that I would write something to you concerning the tranquility of the mind, and of those things in the Timaeus which require a more perspicuous interpretation. ...</div>

WRITING THE SELF | By Michel Foucault

<div>Self-writing clearly appears here in its complementary relation to anchoritism; it offsets the dangers of solitude; it exposes what one has done or thought to a possible gaze; the fact of being obliged to write fills the role of companion by inciting human respect and shame. One can thus posit a primary analogy: that which others are to the ascetic in his community the notebook will be to him in his solitude....</div>

RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY, THE RUSSIAN STATE, AND THE RUSSIAN NATION

In the 1996 presidential election campaign, Russian President Boris Yeltsin asked the Russian people to reconstitute themselves as a democratic people with a Western orientation. Since his first election in 2000, current Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the Russian people to reconsider that identity and to reconstitute themselves once again as a powerful nation with interests distinct from those of the West. He has done this primarily through redefinition of the foundational terms of W

ANIL SETH ON THE HARD PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

How could any kind of physical processing give rise to any kind of experience, any rich life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. So I like this formulation of the hard problem. It basically presupposes a kind of view of the universe where there is stuff, a kind of materialist starting point, and then asks how and why is consciousness part of that picture? To me, that includes the second version of the way you put it, which is: okay, then how and why is it t

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL WON’T GO AWAY

The Devil has stalked the pages of journalist Randall Sullivan’s and Ed Simon’s books, a whiff of sulfur apparent across the pages of their writing. Both authors have long been concerned with theodicy, with the question of evil; how such misfortune and wickedness is possible in a world created by a benevolent and omnipotent God. Central to that question has been a preoccupation with ultimate evil, the manner in which absolute and metaphysical malignancy has been represented across the Abrahamic

THE PIECES | AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES WILSON | By Paul Willetts

<div>I must admit that I’m not one of those people who’s obsessed by 1960s music, yet I was immediately captivated by The Pieces, which portrays the brief career and mysterious life of a fictional late 1960s British folk singer...</div>

DOSTOYEVSKY’S SOLUTION TO KANT’S PROBLEM OF EVIL

In Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, Kant posited the existence of a radical evil within the soul and thereby, according to Goethe, 'criminally sullied his philosopher’s cloak with a shameful taint'. He also transformed our whole approach to the problem of evil, whether as an ugly ditch, standing between man and his creator, or the practical problem of surmounting the evil each individual faces in his or her consciousness, in his or her relations with others and his or her world...

THE VILLAGE OF THE WATERWHEELS

The village of the waterwheels, Lao Tzu and a minor epiphany in Moscow all speak of one thing, a glimpse into a future where people are satisfied with less, and yet what is lived is infinitely richer in texture and colour than we often experience today. We will have come full circle from conquering nature, red in tooth and claw, to a return into its heart with more complete knowledge about our purpose here, and the fulness of being a human being. We will be comfortable in our own skin...

HEDGEHOGS, DEATH AND THE BEAUTY IN THE MUNDANE: HOW PHILIP LARKIN CUTS SO DEEP

<div>Fear of mortality, the fragility of relationships, the beauty lurking in the everyday. These are common themes in modern poetry — cliches, even. Yet in the hands of a master poet, they feel vibrant and fresh. Such was the skill of Philip Larkin, a defining poet of the 20th Century. But to truly appreciate that skill, we need to lean close to Larkin’s techniques and process...</div>

SON OF TERAH | Short story by Jessalyn LeBlanc

<div>He hasn’t mentioned a child in years. Not since we got the farm and the linen tablecloths and the cattle with their promise of riches. Not since that first September, when the wheat bloomed in abundance. Not since that night against the oil lamp’s unsteady flame when we came to the synchronous and silent understanding that I would not bring a baby into this world...</div>

FABRICATING DREAMS | ON HOW AN UNKNOWN PUBLISHER IN EDO JAPAN ENTICED THE WORLD

In the early 1830s the owner of the small-scale publishing house Hōeidō in the Nihonbashi area of Edo (Tokyo), Takenouchi Magohachi, met with Andō Tokutarō -aka Utagawa Hiroshige-, an unconventional amateur artist from the samurai class. We can only imagine how the two set their plan out for the most formidable series ever printed in Japan: the 53 stations of the Tokaido. In fact, little did they know that with this series, conceived originally as a profitable venture, they would firmly establis

GREY MATTER | THE ECSTATIC TRUTH OF ROMANTIC NEUROSCIENCE

<div>Truth does not necessarily have to agree with facts. Otherwise, the Manhattan phone book would be The Book of Books...</div>