A social critique thinly veiled as a golf book
581085
Nominally a book about three men who are arguably the most influential golfers ever to play the game:  Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods.  However, the actual discussion of these men's careers is not the main focus of this book.  Instead, the author spends more time denigrating the "heroes" of the book than highlighting their careers.  The first half of the book concentrates on Palmer and Nicklaus, and much of the discussion is about what the author deems their failure to single-handedly racially integrate professional golf.  Although I've seen this theme before, Sounes takes his criticism to a level that is somewhat unreasonable.  He seems to feel that either Palmer or Nicklaus or a combination of the two could have forced the tour to integrate in the 1960's.  There is no discussion of possible barriers that might have existed, instead the author adopts the thesis that, since it didn't happen and these were the big names in golf, it must be their fault.

Remarkably, the rest of the book concentrates on character assassination of two men who are probably the the most notable African-Americans associate with the pro game, Tiger Woods and his father Earl.  It seems somewhat incongruous that two of the book's protagonists are critiqued for their failure to help black athletes get on tour, while at the same time the remainder makes a case that Earl Woods is a liar, bigamist, and poor father who manipulated his child for his own glory, and that his son Tiger is an antisocial, tightfisted misanthrope who misappropriates money to self-serving charities while gambling away millions.  It seems ironic that Palmer and Nicklaus are torn down for not leading the charge for integration, and then when a man of color finally comes to a prominent position in golf, he is torn down as well.

Throw in some criticism for golf clubs that didn't integrate their membership racially at a very early stage or who bar women, and you've pretty much gotten the gist of the book.  A social critique thinly veiled as a book about golf, this work just cries out for fact-checking and a balanced point of view.  It's hard for me to stomach this depiction of Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods as self-centered, grasping, and avaricious.  They are golfers, and my purpose in purchasing this book was to read about them playing golf.  I was disappointed.
3759397
I spent two afternoons over the weekend reading FORE!, an anthology of twelve humorous golf tales penned by P.G. Wodehouse. It is an out-of-print book that I purchased from a secondhand bookseller through Amazon.com some months ago.

The stories take place in the early 20th Century when hickory shafts were still prevalent and it was fashionable to wear plus-fours. As the book contains numerous golf slangs throughout, some of which quite archaic, a reader with only a cursory knowledge of golf vocabulary is bound to scratch their head at times.

The stories (except for the first one) are all narrated by a character known as the "Oldest Member", a nosy and lonely man of advanced age who loiters around the golf club all day every day. According to him, golf is the most noble pursuit. Whoever plays golf must be a decent citizen. And one must always be wary of anyone who does not play the game. At the golf club, the Oldest Member often encounters young members who are experiencing relationship problems, and he would gladly assume the role of an agony uncle and offer encouragement by telling them golf anecdotes whose protagonists had overcome similar problems.

Most of the characters in the stories seem to be well-educated and belong to the upper-middle class, as they converse in a highly cultivated manner. Many of them hold strong opinions about golf. Let me quote a few instances:

 "The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our complex modern civilization and the most difficult to deal with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge."

 "Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband is too markedly superior to his wife at golf."

 "There are three things in the world that he holds in the smallest esteem - slugs, poets, and caddies with hiccups."

Meanwhile, the non-opinionated and uncultivated characters are the anonymous Scotsmen who are occasionally mentioned throughout the stories. They are portrayed as uncouth, as speaking an unintelligible dialect, and as extremely talented at golf.

Wodehouse's humor is of a farcical kind. For instance, in one story a character works at a law firm called "Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Cootes, Toots, and Peabody." In another story, two American rivals, both nouveau riche, compete on the golf course in order to decide who gets to employ a highly sought-after model English butler, one who in many ways resembles Mr. Carson from the popular British television show Downton Abbey.

Although Wodehouse is heralded by many critics, most notably Stephen Fry, as the funniest writer of the last century, I only find his golf stories faintly amusing. They are innocent stories, too innocent for my taste. They are 'funny' only in an infantile sense. They are, to quote my literary hero George Orwell, "too genteel, too kindhearted and too consciously lowbrow." All in all, FORE! is an average collection of mildly humorous golf stories. It is good enough reading material for, say, passing time on a plane ride, or whiling away a lazy afternoon.
1806472
This is a work of clunky and malicious propaganda. Anecdotes and misinformation are slapped together in a crass, manipulative pr style lamenting that Hitler and Sanjay Gandhi's excesses discredited eugenics. Under the flimsy veil of feminist concern for reproductive freedom, Goldberg launches a creepy white supremacist revival of eugenics mythology, bemoaning that there aren't enough "Europeans" but there are too many of everyone else. While the book purports to be a kind of history of "overpopulation" remedies, she never brings herself to say what's unsatisfactory about the population status quo; with snark alone she dismisses the consensus among social scientists regarding the anticommunist and imperialist motives for such programs and their crackpot Social Darwinist guiding philosophies. Goldberg defends Margaret Sanger's odious racism with childish vulgar historicism and at the same time seems to give credit to Sanger's absurd racial anthropology, herself deploying it to ring the alarm about Muslims conquering Europe by breeding populations of threatening Semitic aliens 'within their secular host societites.'

Unsupported dogmatic statements are followed by streams of speculation and psychologistic fantasizing: John D Rockefeller III, we are told, was an "altrustic" man who funded the program that trained Mengele through the Rockefeller foundation and founded the Population Council after the war to continue his family's eugenics project for, Goldberg assures the reader, selfless and laudable motives. Goldberg insists the 'modest' JD Rockefeller III was a man whose concerns that "Modern civilization has reduced natural selection,
saving more `weak' lives and allowing them to reproduce" were prompted by "compassion" and whose project to reduce population growth among African-Americans, deemed "socially inadequate" by his organization, were admirable and benevolent. Goldberg insintuates that African Americans resisting these contraception and sterilization drives were mad misguided militants. (The proof Goldberg offers of this "fact" of Rockefeller's benevolence, altruism and "feminism" is that an employee of his said he used to say he prefered to talk to the wives of politicians when dining at events.)

Goldberg's final chapter "the Birth Strike" replicates all the nauseous phantasmagoric Islamophobic propaganda of Europe's extreme right, repeating the complaints expressed in the manifesto of the fascist mass murderer Andras Behring Breivik who slaughtered dozens of Norwegian students at a labour party summer camp for the declared purpose of terrorizing Norwegians into a white supremacist immigration policy. Breivik fretted in his manifesto that Europe was being destroyed from within by Muslim immigrants who took advantage of the sissified and weakened male that feminism had created in Europe. Goldberg shares Breivik's obsession with one Mullah Krekar, quoted by Breivik repeatedly and centrally staged by Goldberg in her depiction of the Muslim  demographic menace posing a threat to "European values" (feminism, gay rights) and European standard of living (by, she suggests without  a shred of evidence, reluctance to pay taxes to support their welfare states). While admitting that the "conservative" analysis that appear as Breivik's rationale for murdering socialist Norwegian schoolchildren is "exaggerated", Goldberg stresses it is "not wrong."  It's truly a disgusting performance, a wonky, genteel, euphemistic rehashing of Sanger's hideous Pivot of Civilization, mixed with Malthus, Laughlin, the Ehrlichs, and a splash of Hitler. For a sane alternative on the topics this lunatic, unresearched and repulsive book treats, see _The Crisis of Multiculturalism_ by Lentin and Titley, on these themes of the demographic Muslim intruder threat of "Eurabia" that Goldberg recycles, _the Myth of Population Control__, by Mahmood Mamdani (husband of director Mira Nair) and _the Legacy of Malthus_ by Allan Chase.
2459381
Gensler's book is not an introduction to contemporary ethics (unlike the Metaphysics volume of this series, which is an introduction to contemporary metaphysics), but a contemporary introduction to ethics.  Gensler treats six different metaethical views (cultural relativism, subjectivism, supernaturalism, intuitionism, emotivism, prescriptivism), and then goes on to propound his own (based on the Golden Rule).  He treats consequentialism and deontologism as ways of realizing the Golden Rule.  His final chapter examines abortion using the perspectives he detailed earlier in the book.

The book does what it sets out to do tolerably well.  Unfortunately, the book does not set out to do very much.  It sets out to explain only the most basic ethical views in only the most cursory fashion.  He considers only one or two variations of each view, and only the most superficial objections.  The chapters are short (12 chapters out of roughly 200 pages), the type is rather big, there is a summary at the end of each chapter (even though each chapter is simple and brief), and there are "study questions" at the end of each chapter (which are useless because they are too simple).

The book is obviously written for an uneducated audience: Gensler thought it necessary to define the word "impasse" for his readers.  While he meant the book for undergraduates who had already had taken one or two philosophy courses, only the dumbest students would find this book very interesting.  This simple and clear book is occasionally helpful in clearing up one small thing or another, but overall it is not worth the time of anyone who knows the first thing about philosophical ethics.

The simplicity of the book is misleading in important ways.  Gensler does not consider the is/ought problem apart from mentioning it in explaining intuitionism.  He mentions Aristotle and Kant only in passing.  Skeptical views like Nietzsche's get no mention whatsoever.  The book gives no adequate reasons for valuing consistency or rationality in ethics.

Perhaps the greatest flaw of the book is that the chapters that contain Gensler's own moral arguments (7-9, 12) are condensed from his already published works.  Gensler's perspective throughout the book is intuitionist in the worst way: if a particular result is absurd to an intuitionist, he calls it absurd outright.  Thus, the book might be better termed "An Introduction to Contemporary Intuitionist Ethics."
4495409
Fairness would seem to demand that a book be evaluated according to its authors' intentions, and to do so for this book one must look no further than their brief preface (pp. ix-x). The authors profess that the book "is about key ideas that have built the modern world" and that the "principle effort  has been to illustrate and clarify this theme by looking at particular thinkers and their system of thought." Importantly, they admit that the book is almost entirely based on secondary sources and that they "cannot claim that we have found new facts or even that we have as yet undiscovered insights about the individuals we have examined." It is, in short, an introductory text. That is well and good, but the low bar that they establish is not fairly described in the book's marketing blurb. Many readers with a basic understanding of the last three centuries (and the principle thinkers thereof) will find little new here and be disappointed.

There is no disagreement with the historical figures they have selected for their study. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and the "Odd Couple" of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, would be on most thoughtful peoples' short list of most impactful persons of the modern age (suggesting other names for study would be to quibble). Of course, most persons interested in such eminent thinkers will have already read a good deal about them, and this book will cover little new ground.

A central theme of this book is that it suggests a world of little subtlety, where big ideas (perhaps once couched in some degree of nuance) are unleashed and seem to rattle about, playing out in extreme forms. Capitalism and free-markets, when unfettered, can be inhumane  check. Communism, well-intentioned, has proven "nightmarish" (p. 147) for mankind  check. Evolution has undermined the basis of scriptural creation stories  check. Democracies are in a constant tension as to individual freedom and centralized power  check.

As for "counter-Enlightenment" forces such as nationalism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism (both Christian and Islamic), these are sketched out and critiqued. Of course, any devotees of these "counter-Enlightenment" philosophies are quite unlikely to read this book and accept its bromide: study the humanities so as to reconsider mindsets and to "critically read and understand foundational texts, to analyze belief systems, and to discover the complex arguments that have produced different movements, wars, institutions, national identities, and the like" (p. 435-36) in order to confront the challenges of the future.

The premise that big ideas are an historical force and, in a significant way, influence our lives is credible. The idea that most people govern their lives by imbibing "foundational texts" and then rationally choose a path of conduct is naive, if not nonsensical. History is complex because lives are lived in response to circumstances and, largely, emotion and instinct. There are reasons that both capitalism and communism have produced ill-consequences  human nature resists "Reason" and seeks self-interest, individuals desire status and/or power, and emotional appeals to group bonds are seductive even when illusory. That is, it is not the ideas as much as the imperfect human agents who act upon them that determine outcomes (a reality the authors make several oblique references to, e.g., pp. 191 and 265).

What seems to be missing in this book is the vast grey area most of us reside in, i.e., thankful for the many benefits that the rational and scientific aspects of the Enlightenment have brought, yet reserving for ourselves an acknowledgement and desire for the spiritual or transcendent. Maintaining some sense of balance between the two may define what it is to be "human."

In a world with so many outstanding books to choose from, there is little to recommend this book beyond its stated intentions of being an introductory text on select thinkers with a cursory look at their impact. If that is what you desire, this book will likely satisfy you.
1306674
I wanted to like this book, but couldn't.  Lasch has a provocative premise, and a prescient one, given that this screed was written during the Clinton Administration.  Still, it falls apart.  The chapters read as independent essays strung together to make a book.  They are light on data, heavy on philosophy, that is hand-waving, and really, Lasch's goal seems mostly to be to demonstrate that he's read more philosophers than you have.  What to do about the problem?  That's your problem.  In total, when it comes to disconnected Elites doing jack for the greater society, Lasch inadvertently makes himself Exhibit A.
4440650
This is an OK essay; it's kind of an extended magazine article. Lilla lambastes the current Progressive movement and Democratic Party, excoriates identity politics, and then in broad strokes, suggests the way for Progressives to win back the hearts and minds of America.

His criticism of campus liberals and their fixation on identity and identity victimhood is right on the money. Today's narcissistic campus left is so busy claiming identities, engaging in movement politics, macro-praising any form of self-expression, and micro-parsing discourse that it has lost all understanding of what it means to be a citizen, to appreciate what it means to see yourself as part of a larger whole. His claim is that identity politics immediately cuts off reasoned debate and is the single biggest impediment to a Progressive America. I happen to agree with him though probably not to the extent he would have me.

He also notes that Liberals lack a clear political vision and suggests ways to correct that. He points out the conservatives/Republicans also have no political vision, only the desire to destroy, making now a good time to develop that vision.

At times, the book felt somewhat scattershot and disorganized. His arguments could have been presented more cohesively. And the shortness of this book leaves you wanting just a little more exposition and reasoned discussion. But its brevity means you can finish the book in a night or two. It's written for Liberals and the left end of the political spectrum. Recommended if you're of that persuasion.
1003735
Sociology has long been stuck in the deathless troika of class, race, and gender.  Blogmanship, to which the appellation 'seminal' surely applies, shows the way forward for sociology to gain in the 21st century the relevance it claimed for itself in the 20th.  After all, as this sharply observed study clearly demonstrates, on the internet the color of your gender, or its bank balance, are completely irrelevant.  All that matters is the correct and timely application of the principals of blogmanship in order to leave your opponents watering their keyboards with tears of humiliation.

In assembling this academic masterwork, Noseybonk -- considering the subject, an actual name would have been as jarring as a Lamborghini at a Green Peace meeting -- has cited the leading experts in the field, as well as adding his own sharply observed insights.

The result is a definitive delineation of blogmanship principles which, absent being extremely well written, will surely be seen as Clausewitzean in stature.
2177868
The white trash of the book are rural poor, initially in both the northern and southern United States but, by the end of the book, the northerners have disappeared and the focus is purely on southern whites.  It covers the period from colonial times through the first decade of this century. It is academic in tone with a very large number of references and yet it contains very little interpretation, discussion, or factual evidence.  Indeed, most of the content is a string of quotations, scrupulously documented, illustrating the contempt of the literate classes for poor whites; interpretation and discussion are confined to the preface and the epilogue, some 16 rather superficial pages in all.  Professor Isenbergs quotes seem to be highly selective.  In 400 years of history, were no contrary views expressed?  If there were, they are not quoted in this book!  Her quotations are extraordinarily repetitive, a catalog of contemptuous and mean-spirited opinions.  For two-thirds of the book, it is difficult to tell what the authors own view of white trash is.  Does she agree with the critics or does she sympathize with the poor?  But in the final third, her own voice occasionally comes through:  She is just as contemptuous of white trash as those she quotes.

Despite the title, this book is not a history of class or even a history of the rural poor, it is an account of an underclass through the prejudiced eyes of others:  The subjects of the book are not allowed to speak for themselves.  The author does not answer, or even ask, the many questions that arise.  How large was (and is) the group of whom she writes?  Was there any social mobility?  Are those she calls todays white trash the direct descendants of the white trash of colonial days?  Did poor immigrants become white trash?  If not, why not?  (The effect of the waves of 19th and 20th Century immigrants is ignored.)  What was the impact of industrialization?  Amazingly, industrialization is not mentioned in the book.  Industrialization in Europe had a huge effect on rural workers, both for ill and for good, why not in the United States?  How does the history of the poor in similar countries differ from that of the United States?  The author makes no comparisons of any kind to other nations.

There can be few of todays book-readers who believe that the United States is and always was a classless society.  If you are one of them, then perhaps you should read this book.  But for those who do not suffer from that delusion, this book offers nothing to deepen your understanding.

This is an unpleasant and uninformative book.
3797016
As a collection of thoughts on random aspects of the short game, I found this book to be interesting, ultimately it does not fulfill its claims.  Other than Tiger Woods, there are minimal techniques provided.  This book claims to be an amazing collection of the elite sports psychologists of the game.  However, I would suggest purchasing their books instead of relying on the one or two liners that this author describes.  Three books that have more relevance than this one would be: The 8 Traits of Champion Golfers (Dr. Deborah Graham), Golf is Not a Game of Perfect (Dr. Bob Rotella), and Zen Golf (Dr. Joseph Parent).  These books alone will provide you with information far exceeding the claims of this work and are all referenced by the author.
1483412
The book is at least worth 2.5 stars. So, to balance the previous reviewer, I have made mine 5.

In fact, the previous reviewer does not do justice to the contents of the book. Here is the list, and let the reader judge for himself:

Series Preface vi
Acknowledgments vii
Permissions viii
Introduction by Nicole Loraux, Gregory Nagy, and Laura Slatkin
PART I
CONVERGENCES OF APPROACH
Jean-Pierre Vernant, "The Spiritual Universe of the Polis" (I962) 19
Jean Bollack, "Reflections on Philological Practice" (i977) 31
Louis Gernet, "The Origins of Greek Philosophy" (1945) 41
Pierre Levque and Pierre Vidal-Naquet,
"Cleisthenes the Athenian" (I964) 48
Nicole Loraux, "Greek Civil War and the Anthropological
Representation of the World Turned Upside-down" (I995) 54
Nicole Loraux, "Epilogue: Once Again, the Woman, the Virgin,
Female Athenians" (I98I) 71
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "The Black Huriter Revisited" (I986) 83
Louis Gernet, "Political Symbolism: The Public Hearth" (I951) Ioo
Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Hestia-Hermes: The Religious Expression
of Space and Movement in Ancient Greece" (I963) 12
Jeannie Carlier, "Voyage in Greek Amazonia" (1979) 134
Frangois Hartog, "Frontiers and Otherness" (I980) 143
Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, "The 'I' of the Inquirer:
The Function of Critical Discourse" (I987) I58
Francoise Frontisi-Ducroux, "Living Statues" (1975) 164
Geoffrey Kirk, "The Spicy Side of Structuralism" (1978) 176
Marcel Detienne, "Afterword: Revisiting the Gardens
of Adonis" (I994) I83
Paul Veyne, "Social Diversity of Beliefs and Mental Balkanization" (1983) 195
Marcel Detienne, "Return to the Mouth of Truth" (1996) 205
PART II
CONVERGENCES OF SUBJECT
Michel Lejeune, "Damos in Mycenaean Society" (1965) 225
Louis Robert, "Inscriptions from Lesbos" (I960) 240
Louis Robert, "Eulaios: History and Onomastics" (I962) 249
Nicole Loraux, "What Tiresias Saw" (i982) 257
Helene Monsacr6, "The Erotic Images of War" (I984) 276
Maurice Olender, "Misshapen Priapus" (I986) 283
Yan Thomas, "The Venter: Maternal Body, Paternal Right" (I987) 292
Claude Nicolet, "Structure and Communication" (1976) 302
Jean Irigoin, "The History of the Text of Pindar" (1952) 3I4
Louis Gernet, "Dionysus" (1953) 324
Jean-Pierre Vernant, "The Masked Dionysus of Euripides'
Bacchae" (I986) 334
Stella Georgoudi, "The Twelve Gods of the Greeks:
Variations on a Theme" (1995) 346
Claude Mosse, "Heroes and Gods" (I984) 355
Laurence Kahn, "Against the Rules: A Performative Sacrifice" (I978) 359
Claudine Leduc, "A Theology of the Sign in Greece: The Homeric
Hymn to Hermes (I), Commentary on Lines 1-181" (I995) 362
Francoise Letoublon, "The Mirror and the Loop" (I983) 375
Pierre Judet de La Combe, "Remarks on Aeschylus's Homer" (1995) 384
Philippe Rousseau, "Rewriting Homer: Remarks on the
Narrative of the Chariot Race of Sophocles' Electra" (2000) 395
PART III
DIVERGENCES OF APPROACH OR SUBJECT
Charles de Lamberterie, "Milman Parry and Antoine Meillet" (I997) 409
Emile Benveniste, "The Medical Tradition of the
Indo-Europeans" (1945) 422
Charles Malamoud, "The Work of Emile Benveniste: A Linguistic
Analysis of Indo-European Institutions" (1971) 428
Emile Benveniste, "Social Symbolism in Greco-Italic Cults" (1945) 439
Patrice Loraux, "Thought Takes Form" (I993) 448
Jacques Derrida, "Khora" (I987) 464
Bibliography and Abbreviations 468.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [468]-481)
1713493
Attempts to discuss film from a sociological perspective without actually acknowledging the field of sociology or any sociological terms. I appreciate where the guy is coming from, but why treat this social approach to film as a novelty when you could have drawn from richer material? Why introduce a term like "the social imaginary" when C. Wright Mills already coined "the sociological imagination" fifty years ago?

I bought the book as a required text in a film analysis course, but reading it really just made me wish the course was being taught by someone who actually had a background in sociology.
1361707
This a 200 page rant against love, monogomy, and marriage written by a Northwestern University Media Studies professor in which the author states a plethora of the shortcomings of the institution of marriage. In fact, the best part of this book, for me, was the chapter, 'Domestic Gulag', where you read that if you are in a couple you: 'can't leave the house without saying where you are going... You can't be a slob... You can't be impulsive, self-absorbed, or distracted...', etc. It's a funny list, but what's the point? It's hard to live with people. No news here.

I agree with the idea that marriage and other cultural institutions can be restrictive and aren't necessarily for everyone, but the author sets up a straw man argument. It's the brave author, the only one with the guts to be Against Love, opposed to the societal heirarchy or some Marxist bugaboo or other, typified by Women's magazine articles and relationship self help books. So radical!

Here's a representative quote from page 47 of the paperback, "But, after all, we don't make history under conditions of our own choosing, and private life is pretty much all we have to work with when it comes to experiments in our part of the world these days, where consumer durables and new technologies come equipped with planned obsolescence, and social institutions are as petrified as Mesozoic rock formations."

Kind of a busy sentence. What is it trying to convey? The assumptions are numerous and unclear, and, of course, you are supposed to be laughing along with it's jaw dropping transgressiveness.(The whole book is like this, btw. Read a few of the sample pages and you'll have a decent idea if you'll like the book or not.)

To be more speficic, the bit about planned obsolescence is not relevant and makes me wonder if the author was a Nader-ite in the 70's or something. Who's this 'we' she's referring to, other middle class, middle age, urban, academic, white, women? Our social institutions are petrified ("as Mesozoic rock formations" even!)? Someone needs to check out craiglist or just get off campus once in a while. Marriage, or coupledom in any form, is a social institution that most people I know don't feel especially obsessed with, oppressed by, or anything else. The concern that people are pushed into it by massive societal pressure is misplaced and, frankly, pretty dated.
1110582
The gist of the book is: political discourse tends to run along three axes, which are incommensurable. Liberals tend to judge along an oppressor-oppressed axis, Conservatives along a barbarian-civilization axis, Libertarians along a coercion-freedom axis. The purpose of the book is not to deconstruct and criticize what he sees as the dominant heuristics of each group, but to use them to help readers get into their ideological opposition's shoes.

The strong point of this book is in trying to put the reader into his or her ideological opponents' shoes. He brings up the ideological turing test (created by Bryan Caplan) which asks: if you were put in a room with your ideological others, could you pass as one of them? Psychology finds that, on average, liberals think they can make better conservatives than conservatives, and vice versa. Neither is right.

Now on to the parts of the book I disagreed with. Kling compares the diverging languages to an 'audible' in football: a purposeful confusion of signs to make sure the opposition doesn't know what is going on. This seems farfetched to me. Diverging language among groups that are so large, tends to be an unintentional process that indicates that there are few contacts between groups. Polite society has politics as one of its taboos, and people tend to view media outlets that they agree with in the first place; this means that the network of people actually using political language in conversation is very fractured, just what you would expect from people with little real contact (and strong enforcement within each social group).

His portrayal of the explanations for the financial crisis seemed a little problematic. The movie "Inside Job," which seems to be a very Progressive explanation of the financial crisis, is told with a strong appeal to the barbarian-civilization axis. The director chronicles the 'depravity' of bankers, interviewing former prostitutes and others who can attest to the barbarousness of bankers. The barbarian-civilization heuristic seems to be somewhat common in Progressive discussions: witness discussions about gay marriage or creationism in schools. Their ideological opponents aren't oppressors (though in the former there is some of that), but barbarians who refuse to embrace civilization--a civilization that embraces science, and sees traditional hierarchies as barbaric (as well as oppressive).

These differences in interpretation notwithstanding, this is an excellent and quick read. It is a rare duck that tries to improve political discourse rather than score points for the author's team. There have been critics who argue that this book doesn't advance the academic literature on the cultural theory of preference formation, and so on, but these critics miss the point. As James Buchanan (the economist, not the president) was fond of saying, it takes repeated iterations to force alien concepts on reluctant minds. There are few concepts more alien than respecting your political opponents, and this is an excellent iteration of it.
1601610
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO basically states that the workers (Proletariat) are being more and more exploited by the middle and upper-class (Bougeoise, if that's how it is spelled), and that in order to end the class struggle, the Proleteriat must overthrow the Bougeoise by any means necessary, including violence.
Several highly destructive social-planning ideas are put forth, such as the abolition of private property, marraige and inheritance rights.  When inplemented in an actual real-life scenario, they create a populaton that is lazy, self-degrading, without any hold on thier traditional culture or former standards of honor, morality or history and its harsh and brutal lessons.  Furthermore, human consiousness cannot make everyone equal.  The forces of nature did not make everyone equal in all abilities, mental and physical.  Not to mention, there are basic biological differences between men and women that will always show up even when an environment is created to try to surpress them.  What makes a Communist movement suspicious is that it will be joined by members of the Bougeoise to lead it.  This seems to point to raging masses of people being manipulated by powerful people behind the scenes who are using Communist idealogy for their own ends.
But there is one redeeming point about this book, which is why I gave it two stars:  If it has been an genuine inspiration of sorts for people to fight and die against unfair oppressors, and to altruistically strive to better their lives, then it has some value on a humanistic scale.
2684007
Well, I love the premise. But I spent too much time questioning the follow through of the experience. This type of golf memoir is much to common. The idea of someone giving up so much to chase the game in a quasi spiritual way has become trite. And when the author talks about how much he misses his family while in Scotland...please sir, did someone put a sand wedge to your head?

But I want to be sure I thank him for the insight into relationships present in the tale. Not so much his, but the antidotes he shares about his customers. And I will read any golf book before turning on the TV.
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At least Rowse was a professional historian rather than an enthusiastic amateur who mindlessly collects great names to prove an unprovable point.  But he was the product of a certain time and place, a certain social class, a certain mentality.  In short, he was an educated Englishman, with all that this implies.  This book is very snobbish, very ethnocentric.  This is a book in which the world consists of England and a few other places thrown in for good measure just to show he's a good sport.  This is one of those books in which Latin America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, eastern Europe minus Russia, Polynesia, Portugal, etc. simply don't exist; or, if they do exist, they shouldn't.  Neither do the lower classes exist, nor certain races unworthy of mention in polite society.  He says that Shakespeare had no sexual interest in Mr W. H. of the Sonnets.  Far be it from Rowse to conceive of gay history as a social history involving ordinary men.  There are no footnotes, a fatal mistake.  His opinion of the Germans is understandable in context, but it gets stale 70 years after the war.  I find it curious that he thought that East Prussia was a German "colony."