Reviews and News:
Rousseau against the elites: “Rousseau had little formal education, but he accumulated plenty of experience during a largely unsupervised childhood and adolescence. Born in Geneva in 1712, to a struggling watchmaker and a mother who died shortly after giving birth, he was only ten years old when his father deposited him with indifferent relatives and left town. At the age of fifteen, he ran away and found his way to Savoy, where he quickly became the boy toy of a Swiss-French noblewoman. She turned out to be the great love of his life, introducing him to books and music. Rousseau, always seeking substitutes for his mother, called her Maman. By the time he arrived in Paris, he had already worked in various subordinate capacities throughout Europe: as an apprentice engraver in Geneva, a footman in Turin, a tutor in Lyons, a secretary in Venice. These experiences, Damrosch writes, ‘gave him the authority to analyze inequality as he did.'”
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“George Thomas’s The Founders and the Idea of a National University is much more than a historical narrative. It is a work of civic art. The title is unassuming: one expects a historical study of the (failed) attempts to establish a national university in the United States—and the expectation is not disappointed—but the author’s concern is decidedly broader and much more ambitious. Thomas’s book is about American identity and the character of the nation and its people, and it offers a troubling prognosis for the political health of the country.”
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My review of Cynthia Ozick’s new collection of essays is in this weekend’s Free Beacon: “‘A critic,’ Ozick writes, ‘is, at bottom, a judge, and judgment ought not to be tentative, or it is flat and useless,’ and tentative she is not. She scolds ‘academic theorists’ who have ‘marinated literature in dogma’ and who write ‘in a kind of multisyllabic pidgin.’ She dismisses the contemporary avant-garde by remarking that ‘nothing is more exhaustedly old hat than the so-called experimental.’ ‘Whoever utters “Kafkaesque,”‘ she writes, ‘has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka’s devisings.'”
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Revisiting Walt Whitman’s 1872 promotional poster: “In it we catch a glimpse of his mind from the angle of a designer: Bold, clean choices, with a touch of the wild. In a classic Whitman move, it seems he also included a (relatively) modest plug for Burrough’s biographical sketch ‘Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person.'”
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Pamela Haag misses the mark in her history of guns in America: “The best history books grapple with opposing evidence and alternative explanations, arguing why one interpretation makes more sense than another…in The Gunning of America, Pamela Haag simply ignores inconvenient facts.”
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The problem with positive thinking: There is “a powerful link between positive thinking and poor performance.”
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The lessons of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s battle against Hitler.
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Frank Freeman reviews a nuanced biography of Julia Ward Howe, author of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
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Essay of the Day:
In The Wall Street Journal, Christie Wilcox explains how scientists are trying to harness the healing power of venom:
“Scorpions to help us fight cancer? It isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Scientists are at work on a ‘tumor paint’ known as BLZ-100, derived from scorpion venom. The paint, which started its Phase I clinical trial for children’s brain tumors last year, is based on a toxin that causes rapid paralysis in insects, the scorpion’s usual prey. But in mammals, the toxin binds to chloride channels found in tumor cells. By linking the toxin to a fluorescent dye, doctors can see and remove an entire cancerous mass, reducing the likelihood of relapse.
“Scorpions and other animals that deploy toxins to survive are becoming increasingly important allies in humanity’s fight against ailments ranging from cardiovascular disease to diabetes and cancer. Whether it is sea-anemone venom tackling autoimmune disorders, tarantula venom attacking muscular dystrophy or centipede venom alleviating excruciating pain, scientists are finding the lifesaving potential in species that are feared for their painful, sometimes deadly stings.
“Humans have been toying with this idea for centuries. One of the earliest treatments for ailments from gout to baldness was apitherapy, the medical application of bee venom, which was used in ancient Greece, China and Egypt. The ancient Greeks associated snakes and their venoms with medicine through the god Asclepius, whose followers prescribed venoms as cures and whose staff had a snake wrapped around it—the inspiration for the well-known symbol of medicine today.
“Even so, scientists have only recently started to intensively explore the healing powers of venom.”
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Image of the Day: The Pink Cliffs
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Poem: Amanda Jernigan, “The Oracle, Retired”
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