my mind on books

American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression has chosen ‘The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America’ as Book of the Month; and author David Hajdu is interviewed at their website.

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An interesting post at the Language Log on the Whorfian hypothesis: “Poor, arid, and, in appearance, deformed”

At least in lexicographic terms, the Indo-European languages do not, contrary to what Whorf says, share a linguistic history that predisposes their speakers unconsciously to a particular physics of time, distance, velocity and so on. In particular, the English words for those abstract physical concepts developed rather late, mostly as part of a conscious effort to import or develop explicit physical theories. And the terms used were figurative or metaphorical extensions of much juicier and more concrete words for things like “strength” and “discord” and “being alive”.

Thanks to The Frontal Cortex for posting on this book: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Here is a podcast with Page at “Invisible Handwriting”,

a recent New York Times article,

and a long review at Crooked Timber.

Link to the review

author (of the book) Gregg Easterbrook’s webpage

The title caught my mind, sounds interesting as a cultural analysis: American Angels: Useful Spirits in the Material World by Peter Gardella (University Press of Kansas, 2007)

Gardella’s engaging study is the first to look objectively at the place of angels in American culture. He explores in particular the emergence of a domestic religion of “useful angels”–especially outside mainstream churches–that has created a uniquely American faith, one that addresses everything from the sexuality of angels to how angels and demons literally figure in the War on Terror….
Beautifully and sympathetically written, but with a scholar’s eye for pattern and detail, American Angels mixes theology, psychology, sociology of religion, gender theory, and even film criticism to create an unusually well-rounded survey of a uniquely American phenomenon. It shows us how the utility of angels speaks to the very core of religion and will enlighten skeptics and believers alike.

In a similar vein there is American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon by Stephen Prothero (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004)