How the Poor Can Save Capitalism

I strongly recommend:  How the  Poor Can Save Capitalism a book by John Hope Bryant. The nature of the book means that he could have said:  and vice-versa.  At 150 pages it is a quick read and very interesting.

I believe that the disparity of incomes is a serious and growing problem.  It is inextricably bound up with race, but not entirely a problem of race.  I like what he does in that Bryant accepts both of these aspects of the problem.  As many have noted before, there are more poor whites than blacks in America.  A main theme is that if the only role models you have are sports stars, movie stars and drug dealers, then your prospects are not very good.

He rejects both:  the mantra that the poor just need to change their culture

and 

the theme that the poor only need for the rich to give them more money.

He notes that the poor do not know how to deal with finance and how that drags them down from the outset.

He says that the poor need self-confidence, role models, and opportunity. He proposes private and public initiatives to deal with this - hitting first on financial literacy as a root cause of the problem.  For more on this see: operation hope

With the support of a number of bankers for his capitalistic approach (which gives him credibility on the right) and Bill Clinton and Andrew Young (who give him credibility on the left) he represents an attempt to solve a problem by reaching across the great divide.

Even the effort is refreshing.

The Return of History and the End of Dreams

In his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukuyama argued that “the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government.” (Wikipedia)

In the The Return of History and the End of Dreams Robert Kagan (Alfred A Knoph, 2008, 105 pp) argues that the desire for hegemonic power, whether regional or global, is unabated; that the intervening quarter century has demonstrated the world has not turned into a collection of liberal democracies; and that international competition is still a long way from being limited to peaceful economic version. He argues that the democracies should exert more effort toward controlling the development of the new world order.

I thought it was very good.

Ratification - The People Debate The Constitution

This book by Pauline Maier is delightful if you among those of us who can't get enough of exactly how they pulled off the creation of the American nation.  You can follow the year long debate about the Constitution as it moves from state to state and marvel at the flukes that may have been critical.  For example,  in Virginia the formidable orator Patrick Henry was opposed because he thought the new government would free the slaves.  The issue was crucial both with respect to timing and Virginia's importance  and it was very close.  When the debate came to New York almost all of the major players in the state were opposed.  The convention was two to one against ratification.  If NY had come earlier it might have all been different or at least a lot harder.  But there were already 10 states in the union by then, so the question was no longer whether to have a union but whether to join it.

I very much enjoyed the book.

It is 588 pages (of which 100 are notes) by Simon and Schuster, 2010.

book recommendations

For quite some time now, I have been reading non-fiction almost exclusively.  Most of it is history.  Recently, I have been thinking of posting brief commentaries on the books I have liked best because I think many of them would be of interest to the readers of this blog.  So here we go:

THE RACE BEAT: THE PRESS, THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE, AND THE 

    AWAKENING OF A NATION.  By Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff,  pub. 2006.  

     Won the Pulitzer Prize.

This is one of the very best books I have ever read.  The sub-title is an accurate summary  of its contents. The early chapters describe the valiant efforts of the black press to trace and document the violence against blacks which was occurring in the south during the earlier part of the century.   By and large their reports of white riots and lynchings went unnoticed by white America.  The rest of the book is about the civil rights movement people of my age are familiar with.

The pivot between these two eras is Emmett Till and his mother.  Till was fourteen years old when he was abducted, tortured, and murdered in Money, Mississippi, in 1955.  His mother was determined that this atrocity would not be ignored.  She handled his funeral in such a way that the white press was compelled to pay attention.  That white press would go to Money for the trial of two men who, after their acquittal by a jury which required just shortly over one hour to determine their innocence, would not merely admit to but boast of the crime they had committed.

From then on the national media was on the story.

Lone Survivor by Chris Stringer

Have you ever looked at one of those charts that represent the precursors of our species and some lines in our species that didn't make it and feel like it was just a jumble of unconnected short  lines?  Lone Survivor attempts to remedy that.  The book is by Chris Stringer one of the authors of The Complete World of Human Evolution and is published by Henry Holt and Co, 2012.  It presents a view of most likely connections among our ancestors.  It is subtitled - How we came to be the only humans on earth.

Like The Complete World .. the presentation seems scientifically sound and accessible to the interested reader.  It is very well done and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject.

I enjoyed the book very much.

Balance Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane

The full title is Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America.

If you are among those of us who worry that America may be sailing into treacherous fiscal waters, then you will find this book very interesting.  The authors worked on the Romney campaign, but do not seem to be extremely partisan.

Aside from the usual suspects Rome, Spain, Britain, the US they includes 15th century China, the Ottoman Empire and California.

The Complete World of Human Evolution

The Complete World of Human Evolution  by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews and published by Thames and Hudson, second edition, 2012.  It presents an overview of primate and human evolution.

The presentation seems scientifically sound and accessible to the interested reader.  It is very well done and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject.

Bacevich, Niebuhr, and Dylan

Andrew Bacevich is a Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University and a retired Colonel in the U S Army.  He has written a little book entitled The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism, Henry Holt, 2008.  In it he argues very convincingly that the reason that we continue making foreign policy blunders is precisely because we do not recognize that we are subject to those limits.  I recommend it strongly.  It is not just another diatribe about George W. Bush.  It is much more.  See it on Amazon.

Bacevich led me to the renowned theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971.   In 1952 Niebuhr wrote a little book entitled The Irony of American History,  University of Chicago Press. Bacevich wrote an introduction to this edition.  It is a more philosophical approach to a broader variation of the same question.  I had some difficulty at the beginning of the book,  but it was worth it.  Among other things, the book anticipates some of the philosophical problems that would arise during the then recently begun cold war.  See it on Amazon.

Since there are an ample number of reviews on Amazon I will not write one and avoid the risk of coming up against the limits of my own power. 

 I don't know if there is a "Cliff Notes" (abreviated) version of these books.  However, it would not be too far wrong to say that the following song (hear it here) serves that purpose:

With God on Our Side

Bob Dylan

Oh my name it ain't nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fightin'
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

Through many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

Bob Dylan concert

I got out to see Dylan at his concert in Murray, KY on April 27.

Now, I knew that he was not going to be singing "The times they are a changin' ".  After all, like Joan Baez said, "The sixties are over so set him free."

 The first song lasted for about an hour.  At least the same beat went on for that long.  I'm not sure about the words which he sort of spit out so that I only understood about 5-7% of them.  I assumed that this was his current genre and there clearly was an audience for it.

They played for an hour and a half and then, mercifully, quit.

But it was Bob Dylan.

Diamonds and Rust

A beautiful love song from Joan Baez to Bob Dylan.

Diamonds and Rust

Well I'll be damnedHere comes your ghost againBut that's not unusualIt's just that the moon is fullAnd you happened to call
And here I sit, hand on the telephoneHearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years agoHeading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyesWere bluer than robin's eggs"My poetry was lousy", you saidWhere are you calling from?A booth in the Midwest
Thirty years agoI bought you some cuff linksYou brought me somethingAnd we both know what memories can bringThey bring diamonds and rust
You burst on the sceneAlready a legendThe unwashed phenomenonThe original vagabondYou strayed into my arms
And there you stayedTemporarily lost at seaThe Madonna was yours for freeYes the girl on the half-shellWould keep you unharmed
Now I see you standingWith brown leaves falling aroundAn' snow in your hairNow you're smiling out the windowOf that crummy hotel over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white cloudsMingles and hangs in the airSpeaking strictly for meWe both could have died then and there
Now you're telling meYou're not nostalgicThen give me another word for itYou, who are so good with wordsAnd at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness nowIt's all come back too clearlyI once loved you dearlyAnd if you're offering me diamonds and rustI've already paid.

My Tenure Biennium a memoir

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The book is about an extremely unusual tenure case.
It can be obtained at the MSU Book Store in the Curris Center in Murray KY or ordered from donna.witherspoon@murraystate.edu or 1-800-749-8580. The price is $12 (plus postage if applicable).

Murray, KY, 1981 In the midst of a campus-wide political crisis in which a board of regents is unable to oust a transformational president, a failed department chairman makes his third application for tenure, withholds evidence from another applicant’s tenure file, and begins a whispering campaign. A politically secure dean, who had sided with the board, cooperates with the chairman’s misconduct and presents the upper administration with an interesting opportunity. What will they do?

Readers’ Comments about My Tenure Biennium

From readers who were there:

Your recollections, most capably presented in your Tenure Biennium, were, for the most part, similar to my own.
Constantine W. Curris, Murray State University President, 1973-83

“I got it in the mail yesterday and I read it last night.
Couldn’t put it down. Very interesting reading.”
Vaughn Vandegrift - Chair of MSU Dept of Chemistry, (1982-88)
Chancellor, SIU – Edwardsville - present

“ remarkably detailed … exceptional documentation … certainly intrigue and politics appear to have played a role.”
James L. Booth - VPAP– Acting President – Provost, MSU (1982-1998)

"Wayne's story is told with more evidence, greater honesty, a higher level of thoughtful, self-reflective analysis, and, a keener sense of humor than I would have ever thought possible from any Ph.D., especially one who survived such an academic nightmare!”
Ken Wolf – MSU Associate Professor of History during the biennium

“I took my guidance from the chapters' epigraphs that provide an eclectic soundtrack -- from Bob Dylan to the Psalms to Willie Nelson -- …”
Terry Foreman - Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies 1978 – 96, Senate VP in the biennium

“… amazing detail …” Dr. Frank Julian –VP for Student Development, 1974-1989

"This is a fascinating, intriguing story with a remarkable depth of specifics, accuracy, analysis, humor, and quality. I had difficulty putting MY TENURE BIENNIUM down."
Jules Harcourt Chairman, Office Systems and Business Education, 1976-1991

"… some of my experiences within the College of Environmental Sciences … were similar to yours."
Oliver Muscio MSU Chemistry Professor 1976-2008

From readers who were not there.
"A powerful narrative that offers valuable lessons for administrators at every level."
Ted Brown Dean, MSU College of Humanities and Fine Arts 2006 - present

"Dr. Bell’s tenure case is fascinating. How could a university promote a faculty member early and then turn around and deny that faculty member tenure the very next year? Red flags should have been going off everywhere. The system clearly wasn't working."
John Mateja – Dean, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, MSU (1998 – 2001)

(from the foreword) “The episode of Wayne's tenure biennium was, I think many of you will soon agree, a watershed moment in the history of the math department and a sanguinary contest for its heart and soul.”Rob Donnelly - Prof of Mathematics, Murray State Univ., (1997 – present)

added 9/22/11 The introduction to the book is listed below.
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