Recall This Book

27 RTB: Books in Dark Times 4 David and John Plotz

Aside from being John’s (younger, brighter, handsomer–and definitely hirsuter) brother, what has the inimitable David Plotz done lately? Only hosted “The Slate Political Gabfest“, written two books (“The Genius Factory” and “The Good Book“) and run the amazing travel website, Atlas Obscura.

panda bad, horse good: David Plotz feeds a new friend

So, what is he reading? The fully absorbing “other worlds” of Dickens and Mark Twain tempt David, but he goes another direction. He picks one book that shows humanity at its worst, heading towards world war. And another that shows how well we can behave towards one another (and even how happy we can be…) at “moments of super liquidity” when everything melts and can be rebuilt. He also guiltily admits a yen for Austen, Rowling, and Pullman–and gratuitously disses LOTR. John and David bond about their love for lonnnnnnng-form cultural history in tSo, what is he reading?he mold of Common Ground. Finally the brothers enthuse over their favorite book about Gettysburg, and reveal an embarrassing reenactment of the charge down Little Round Top.

26: RTB Books in Dark Times 3 Plotz/Ferry

For the third installment of Books in Dark Times, inspired by our global moment, Elizabeth and John turned inward.

We started with a book that you might not think would be so comforting, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) about the plague in London “during the last Great Visitation in 1665.”

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/great-plague/#external-links

25 RTB: Books in Dark Times 2 Stephen McCauley (JP)

On March 20th, John talked to Stephen McCauley, author of such brilliant comic novels as Object of My Affection (also a Jennifer Aniston movie) and most recently My Ex-Life.

Steve brings light to dark corners in this the second installment of Books in Dark Times. He sings the praises of Charles Dickens, of Anthony Trollope (Elizabeth, offstage, chuckles delightedly) and the world-escaping delights of both Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the Mapp and Lucia novels of E. F. Benson. He concludes with sweet words for the sour genius of a trio of late 20th century American pessimists: Joan Didion, Dorothy Baker and Iris Owens.

Charles Dickens, “Little Dorrit” (1855-7)

W.S. Merwin, “The Essential“

Hilary Mantel, “Wolf Hall” (2009)

Anthony Trollope, “The Last Chronicle of Barset” (1867)

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, “Dangerous Liaisons” (1782)

P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves Series

Evelyn Waugh, “Brideshead Revisited” (1945)

A still from the British television series, *Brideshead Revisited*

E. F Benson, Mapp and Lucia (1920-1939)

Christina Stead House of All Nations (1938; difficult genius, says Steve..)

Joan Didion, “Democracy” (1984)

Joan Didion, “Play It as it Lays” (1970)

Dorothy Baker “Cassandra at the Wedding” (1962)

Iris Owens, “After Claude” (1973; says Steve, you need suicide and even suicide wont help you…she gets abandoned by the cult even…)

Patricia Highsmith, the Ripley novels (1955-70)

Patrick White, “The Eye of the Storm” (1973)

[and of course, those penguins.…]

Listen to the Episode here:

Read the Transcript here:

25 BDT McCauley Download

Coming Soon: John and Elizabeth sit down together to discuss their own Books in Dark Times. Beth Blum on Self-Help from Dale Carnegie to its grim neo-Stoic present. Further BDT conversations with David Plotz, Seeta Chaganti and many more…..

24 RTB: Books in Dark Times 1 Alex Star (JP)

“Books In Dark Times” takes its inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s Men in Dark Times, which proposes “That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth.”

At this dark moment, we really want to know what brings people like Alex—and like you, dear listener—comfort or joy in these dark Corona days. Alex Star, brilliant editor at Farrar Straus and Giroux, former editor of Lingua Franca, founding editor of the Boston Globe Ideas section, is the editor of many remarkable prizewinning books including George Packer’s The Unwinding and James Forman’s Locking Up Our Own.

Books in Dark Times: what are You reading?

What books gives you comfort and joy in these times, and why? If what we do at the darkest moments is a glimpse of our inner nature, what we read then tells us just as much.

My own thoughts nowadays turn–surprise, surprise–to Hannah Arendt. She has this to say in her unforgettable 1968 book, Men in Dark Times:

“That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth–this conviction is the inarticulate background against which these profiles were drawn. Eyes so used to darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light of a candle or that of a blazing sun. But such objective evaluation seems to me a matter of secondary importance which can be safely left to posterity.”

23 [Recall This Buck I]: Chris Desan on Making Money (EF, JP)

This is the first of several RTB episodes about the history of money. We are ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. Our idea is that forms matter, and matter in ways that those who profit from those forms often strive to keep hidden. Today, we begin by focusing on the rise of capitalism, the Bank of England, and how an explosion of liquidity changed everything.

We are lucky to do so with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School, who recently published Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). She is also managing editor of JustMoney.org, a website that explores money as a critical site of governance. Desan’s research explores money as a legal and political project. Her approach opens economic orthodoxy to question by widening the focus on money as an instrument, to examine the institutions and agreements through which resources are mobilized and tracked, by means of money. In doing so, she shows that particular forms of money, and the markets within which they circulate, are neither natural or inevitable.

9* Women in Political Power, with Manduhai Buyandelger (Rebroadcast, in honor of Elizabeth Warren)

As we prepare our mini-season on the history of money (Recall This Buck) we dive back into the archives for our very first Rebroadcast. And our first asterisk, too: was that the right symbol to use? The egress of Elizabeth Warren from the race for the Democratic nomination saddened us: after all, we both belong to her broad-based coalition of kindergarten teachers, college teachers and teacher’s pets… It also inspired us to revisit this favorite conversation. Enjoy!

Thatcher and HRC walk into a glass ceiling…In this episode, John and Elizabeth are joined by MIT anthropologist Manduhai Buyandelger to discuss women in political power in Argentina, Mongolia, the UK, the United States and beyond. At the conversation’s heart: Manduhai analyzes the legacy of “female quotas” in Soviet-era politics, as well as the narrow “lanes” that women politicians are sorted into.