Like most works of feminist literature–and I have read quite a few–I can find little to argue with in this book. Brownmiller’s arguments make sense to me…but that is because I am a man, and as a man I can readily agree that functionality is superior to ornamentality, that reason is superior to emotion, that …
Category: Politics
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/09/12/femininity-by-susan-brownmiller/
Jul 08 2009
Gold and Iron, by Fritz Stern
“This is a book about Germans and Jews, about power and money. It is a book focused on Bismarck and Bleichröder, Junker and Jew, statesman and banker, collaborators for over thirty years. The setting is that of a Germany where two worlds clashed: the new world of capitalism and an earlier world with its ancient …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/07/08/gold-and-iron-by-fritz-stern/
Dec 15 2008
Premature Evaluation: Sundown Towns
An important story, very badly told. Before and, more crucially, immediately after the American Civil War, African-Americans were widely dispersed throughout the country. By the 1940s, however, blacks living outside the South were concentrated in particular areas of the largest cities. In Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism James Loewen asks how that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/12/15/premature-evaluation-sundown-towns/
Feb 12 2008
Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Conrad Black
The author of this book has also written a biography of comparable length of Richard Nixon. I must say that compared to Roosevelt, Nixon comes across as positively principled and idealistic. Black portrays FDR as a bold and gifted but somewhat underhanded and unscrupulous leader. His portraits of all of the major figures of this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2008/02/12/franklin-delano-roosevelt-by-conrad-black/
Oct 11 2007
Brown shadows
One of the things that’s generally known about Germany, but not often spoken about for various reasons(1), is how much continuity there was between the Third Reich and the early days of the Federal Republic. A certain degree of continuity is inevtiable any time a government changes; even the Bolsheviks brought back a lot of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2007/10/11/brown-shadows/
Sep 26 2006
Premature Evaluation: Khrushchev by William Taubman
Wish an 876-page biography could be longer? Not often, but definitely with this one. I don’t know the literature well enough to say for sure, but it sure feels like a definitive take on an important figure of 20th century history. William Taubman combines the virtues of journalist and scholar in his biography of Nikita …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/26/premature-evaluation-khrushchev-by-william-taubman/
Sep 20 2006
Baltic Framework
Our recent posts on governments in Stockholm and Schwerin are as good a reason as any to highlight Northern Shores, by Alan Palmer. (It’s published in the US as The Baltic.) I had intended to write a premature evaluation, but then I finished the book, which I picked up during a business trip to Helsinki, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/09/20/baltic-framework/
Feb 11 2006
Premature Evaluation: Grace and Power
What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it? Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, I’m not trying to sell a review of Grace and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2006/02/11/premature-evaluation-grace-and-power/
Jul 20 2005
Stasiland
Don’t pick of a copy of Stasiland, by Anna Funder, if you have work to do. I did the first time, and I nearly missed a deadline. I did it again this morning, intending to write a review, and my productivity dropped like a rock again. Consider yourselves warned. It’s not exactly the kind of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/07/20/stasiland/
Jul 18 2005
Two on Turkey
With Turkish accession one of the most important issues facing the European Union, people interested in the question could do much worse than read these two recent, and reasonably short, books that focus on the country: Crescent and Star, by Stephen Kinzer, and The Turks Today, by Andrew Mango. Both illustrate and explain contemporary Turkey, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2005/07/18/two-on-turkey/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire