One man's America: the pleasures and provocations of our singular nation 978-0-307-44935-1, 0307449351
America's most widely read and most influential commentator casts his gimlet eye on our singular nation. Moving far
265 109 492KB
English Year 2008
Table of contents :
Content: I. PEOPLE. The fun of William F. Buckley --
Buckley: a life athwart history --
David Brinkley: proud anachronism --
Barry Goldwater: "Cheerful Malcontent" --
John F. Kennedy's thoughts on death --
Eugene McCarthy: The tamarack tree of American politics --
What George McGovern made --
Daniel Patrick Moynihan: the senate's sisyphus --
John Kenneth Galbraith's liberalism as condescension --
Milton Friedman: ebullient master of the dismal science --
Alan Greenspan: high-achieving minimalist --
The not-at-all dull George Washington --
George Washington's long journey home --
John Marshall: the most important American never to have been president --
James Madison: well, yes, of course --
Longfellow: a forgotten founder --
Ronald Reagan: the steel behind the smile --
Reagan and the vicissitudes of historical judgments --
John Paul II: "A flame rescued from dry wood" --
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: an enlightenment fundamentalist --
Hugh Hefner: tuning fork of American fantasies --
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: the emeritus beat as tourist attraction --
Buck Owen's Bakersfield Sound --
Andrew Nesbitt: 79-lb. master of Tourette Syndrome --
Simeon Wright's grace. II. PATHS TO THE PRESENT. The most important American war you know next-to-nothing about --
The amazing banality of flight --
The price of misreading the prairie sky --
A range of mountains on the move --
The emblematic novel of the 1930s (Gone with the Wind) --
All quiet at the overpass --
FDR's transformation of liberalism --
Retailers give thanks for Thanksgiving (and FDR) --
FDR's Christmas guest from hell --
"My place is with my shipmates" --
An anthem of American optimism in 1943 --
When war WAS the answer --
Catching up to Captain Philip --
The most fateful heart attack in American history --
How Ike's highways helped heal Civil War wounds --
The short, unhappy life of the Edsel --
The 50s in our rearview mirror --
2002: superstitions are bad luck --
2003: lingerie and duct tape --
2004: The Passion of the Christ and the passions of the faculty clubs --
2005: "In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans" --
2006: "Go ahead, we will get into one of the other boats" --
2007: Ready, fire, aim. III. GOVERNING. The two Americans: hard and soft --
Angela Job's resilience --
Against "national greatness conservatism" --
Summa contra Reagan nostalgia --
The left's plea for materialistic politics --
Constitutional monomania --
Judicial activism, wise and not --
The hard truth about "soft rights" --
Oologah's, and America's, slide --
A fraudulent "fairness" --
Policing speech in Oakland --
Liberalism's itch in Minneapolis --
Chicago: from the White City to the Green City --
Our moralizing tax code --
"Electronic morphine" on the Ohio River --
Prohibition II: interestingly selective --
Being green at Ben & Jerry's --
The tyranny of the small picture --
Draining the reservoir of reverence --
United 93: "we've go to do it ourselves" --
Nothing changes everything. IV. SENSIBILITIES AND SENSITIVITIES. Narcissism as news --
The speciesism of featherless bipeds --
What we owe to what we eat --
The Holocaust: handcrafted --
The "daring" of the avant-garde yet again --
Anti-Semitism across the political spectrum --
When Harry remet Hanne --
Cars as mobile sculpture --
Hog heaven: happy one hundredth, Harley --
Restoration at 346 Madison --
Starbucks, Nail salons, and the aesthetic imperative --
Manners vs. social autism --
A punctuation vigilante --
America's literature of regret --
Chief Illiniwek and the indignation industry --
Christmas at our throats --
V. LEARNING. National amnesia and planting cut flowers --
A sensory blitzkrieg of surfaces --
"Philosophy teaching by examples" --
Fascinating contingencies --
Ed Schools vs. Education --
This just in from the professors: conservatism is a mental illness --
The law of group polarization in academia --
Antioch College's epitaph --
A scholar's malfeasance gunned down --
Juggling scarves in the therapeutic nation --
Nature, nurture, and Larry Summer's sin --
AP Harry applies to college --
Teaching minnows the pleasure of precision. VI. GAMES. Raising Michael Oher --
The man from Moro Bottom --
"Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer!" --
Randy Shannon's realism --
The NFL: an intensification of reality --
Speaking SportsCenterese --
The movie, and the truth, about Texas Western --
VII. THE GAME. "Remember 1908!" --
Jackie Robinson: the possible and the inevitable --
Ted Williams: "I can't stand it, I'm so good" --
Roberto Clemente: "We think he can hit" --
Greg Maddux: "Watch this: the first-base coach may be going to the hospital" --
Take me out to the Metric --
Elias knows EVERYTHING --
The game's gifted eccentrics --
Don't beat a dead horse in the mouth --
The Golden Age --
Pet Rose, always hustling --
The precious, precarious equipoise --
Barry Bonds: enhanced and devalued --
The methodical Mr. Aaron --
Realism among the RiverDogs --
Striving for motel years --
Seeking anonymous perfection --
"Where's baseball?" VIII. WONDERING. Incest at "a genetically discreet remove" --
An intellectual hijacking --
From Dayton, TN to Rhode Island's Committee on Fish and Game --
Earth: not altogether intelligently designed --
Intelligent design and unintelligent movies --
The Pope, the neurosurgeon, and the ghost in the machine --
How biology buttresses morality, which conforms to ... biology --
The Space Program's search for ... us --
Nuclear waste: that's us --
The loudest sound in human experience --
L = BB + pw + BC/BF --
Wonder what we are for? wondering --
IX. MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH. Golly, what did Jon DO? --
The long dying of Louise Will.
