1. I read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini this week. Each review on the back of the book tries to capture the book in a theme or two. USA Today calls it a novel about “the dimmest rays of hope,” the Los Angeles Times says it’s about “the intimacy of family and village … Continue reading On “A Thousand Splendid Suns”
Tag: books
On “Good Arguments” (and Bad Ones)
1. "Arguments require us to disclose ourselves in a way that physical brawls or simple forbearance do not. In conflict with the world, we discover the boundaries of who we are and what we believe." Good Arguments is a book written recently by Bo Seo, a writer at the Australian Financial Review who debated for … Continue reading On “Good Arguments” (and Bad Ones)
On “Capital and Ideology”
In her book Plutocrats, Chrysia Freeland writes: “In 2005, Bill Gates was worth $46.5 billion and Warren Buffet $44 billion. That year, the combined wealth of the 120 million people who made up the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population was around $95 billion—barely more than the sum of the fortunes of these two men.” That is astounding, and by logical extension of this fact, if we were to hypothetically expropriate these two men of their wealth and redistribute it, we could double the material conditions of four in ten American citizens.
Literary Perspectives on American Racial Inequality
An issue that consistently escapes my understanding is the complexity of racial disparity in the United States. The knowledge that the life expectancy in some low-income African American communities is lesser than parts of rural Algeria is a bit irreconcilable with my image of the U.S. as the world’s most powerful and free nation (questionable … Continue reading Literary Perspectives on American Racial Inequality
On “The Jumblies”
Edward Lear's nonsense poem "The Jumblies" is among the most lighthearted pieces of poetry in history, describing a group of playful creatures who go to sea in a sieve. But could there be a deeper meaning to this poem?
agarwhale 