1 comments about Chicago Days / Hoboken Nights.

1. Daniel Pinkwater is noteworthy in many respects, but what fascinates me most is the way in which he manages to be brilliant, moving, and profound without ever accentuating the negative. This autobiographical collection of brief, bite-size narratives (perfect for bedtime, the bathroom, or the ten-minute break at work) chronicles Pinkwater's development as an artist/writer, and gives the reader the opportunity to enjoy the world through the eyes of a funny, intelligent man who truly loves life. This is a non-fiction, non-children's book by a children's author.

2 comments about Adorno: A Political Biography.

1. Jaeger's book ends with the claim that "by the time that Adorno died in August 1969, the normative potential of his theory was already exhausted," and that "the abstractions of exchange and money [had become] the ideology of a world without symbols, of a universality without culture." There is no recognition that this would imply the continuing 'normative potential' of Adorno's thought. This book is littered with similar mis-steps. Jaeger attacks Adorno's use of psychoanalysis as a critical tool, hut he himself traces Adorno's theory of the relationship between language and music to "an overwhelming sense of gratitude to his mother's voice." How could anyone write a biography on Adorno which fails to reflect on itself to this degree?
   Internal inconsistencies aside, there are problems of content. For no apparent reason, Jaeger stages Adorno's thinking as a clash between Athens and Jerusalem (although the entirely gratuitous mention of Leo Strauss might hint at an esoteric reading of the present book). Jaeger returns again and again to Jewishness, but always other peoples' Jewishness: Horkheimer, Celan... why all this in a book on Adorno? Well, Jaeger has a clear dislike for him. So Adorno - not Jewish enough, too anti-capitalist, too utopian - is often absent. This dislike is in turn understandable, since he is clearly incapable of understanding Adorno's ideas: see, for instance, the section on Heidegger and 'The Jargon of Authenticity'; or Jaeger's 'interpretation' of the Frankfurt School's sociology as a vision of society as "a kind of tabula rasa: people in it live without traditions, without religion, without nations and without a state." Bizarrely, two pages are given over to Ralf Dahrendorf's complaints about the Institute for Social Research, before we learn that Dahrendorf spent barely a month there.
   "Today's reader [of Minima Morali] may be struck not only by the lack of genuine observations on America but may gain only an inadequate idea of the author's empirical existence [sic]: but if Adorno had been identical with the 'implied author' he would no doubt have been prevented from writing the book by sheer unhappiness."
   Like the above sentence, this book is grammatically flawed, rhetorically atrocious (what exactly is a 'genuine observation'? Is it to be distinguished from an ungenuine one?), and showcases a total lack of understanding of its subject. Finally, it is self-absorbed. Jaeger's apparent desire to justify post-modern capitalism crushes any possibility of objective judgement.
   For all that, if read as a collection of portraits (of, amongst others, Kracauer, Horkheimer, Mann and Fromm) it's a nice way to pass a winter afternoon. But don't pay full price.



2. Although an authoritative intellectual biography of Adorno is needed, this book doesn't fill the gap. Despite the sub-title, the author ranges freely across Adorno's work in philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, music and literature, and just over two hundred pages (of main text) is not enough space to deal adequately with the material, let alone with the additional portraits of associates such as Horkheimer and Kracauer. Some of Adorno's major works, such as Negative Dialectics, receive cursory treatment, and either the author, or possibly the translator, is not comfortable with technical philosophical arguments. Some discussions of Heidegger's views, for example, are nonsensical.
   
   This has the appearance of a hasty piece of work, and as one reads on, the impression grows that the author has little respect for his subject. As a person and thinker, Adorno was surely flawed, but his story deserves a more balanced, detailed and informed recounting.

No comments about Margaret Mead: A Life.

No comments about Race, Class, and the World System: The Sociology of Oliver C. Cox.

4 comments about Torn from My Heart: The True Story of a Mother's Desperate Search for Her Stolen Children.

1. Yes, this book takes TWO days to read, because it cannot be put down!! A story of a marriage gone awry by domestic violence and the final violence of the father abducting the children and hiding them away.

   The author painstakingly describes her 6 year search for her children. She finds them absorbed into a religious community that resists their return.

   This book is beyond differences of spiritual beliefs but the inhumanity of stealing children and withholding their return without justification.




2. Read this book in two days. Pretty bad when all these fathers and mothers have to write books like this to establish their belief. To be arguing over God with your child is a twisted idealism that reeks of narcissim. This should have been agreed upon before the relationship and if two adults cannot agree or do not agree on worship then why did you have children? Books can seem immature and childish and this book was both.



3. Read this book in two days. Pretty bad when all these fathers and mothers have to write books like this to establish their belief. To be arguing over God with your child is a twisted idealism that reeks of narcissim. This should have been agreed upon before the relationship and if two adults cannot agree or do not agree on worship then why did you have children? Books can seem immature and childish and this book was both.



4. I went through the book in one days time. It is very well written. The author managed, no matter the damage done to her and her family, to remain objective in her story.

1 comments about Moved by Love: The Memoirs of Vinoba Bhave.

1. Vinoba Bhave (1940-1982) lived a simple life devoted to non-violence, engaged spirituality, and to the power of love. In his Introduction to Bhave's engaging memoirs, Satish Kumar observes that, as one of modern India's great spiritual leaders and social reformers, "Bhave was a man of great purity" (p. 13). Visionary that he was, Bhave recognized that he was a man who belonged "to another world than this, one that may seem very strange. For I claim that I am moved by love, that I feel it all the time" (p. 17).

   Bhave's fascinating life may be organized as follows. Broadly speaking, during his first twenty years, Bhave accumulated knowledge. During the next twenty years he accumulated the power to observe his religious vows. He then devoted the final period of his life to "accumulating love" (p. 88). In its 272 pages, MOVED BY LOVE first paints a touching picture of Bhave's parents, and then follows Bhave on his long walks through India, supporting Gandhi by offering non-violent resitance to the British Raj in 1940, and later persuading landlords to give more than four million acres of their land with India's poor. Bhave believed that "land is for everyone, like air, water, and sunlight" (p. 157). "What am I doing in all this?" Bhave asks midway through the book. "What do I want? I want change. First, change of heart, then change in personal life habits, followed by change in the structure of society" (pp. 134-5).

   These are the memoirs of a social activist who lived with one foot in his inner world, and the other foot constantly engaged in the outer world. "I have had very sacred experiences," Bhave tells us, "for I have become aware of the great purity of heart to be found among ordinary people, and have realized what a strength this is to our country. It is the foundation upon which, if we will, we may build a strong nation" (p. 121).

   G. Merritt

No comments about Theodor Adorno: Critical Evaluations (Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory).

No comments about Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America.

No comments about Max Weber's Insights and Errors (International Library of Sociology).

No comments about Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics (International Library of Sociology).