Printed Word Matters

HOW HUMOUR LAID THE WORLD BARE, FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT | Katharina Van Cauteren

<div>Homer’s gods can roar with laughter. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and the rest of the cabal — grinning, giggling, splitting their sides. Anything man can do, the gods can do better. The Greek pantheon is a projection of the terrestrial on to the celestial. It’s only when God becomes man that he stops laughing. Jesus doesn’t do stand-up. There are no gags in the Bible, no guffaws or gales of laughter. The Christian faith is an awfully serious thing...</div>

VEILS OF DISTORTION: HOW THE NEWS MEDIA WARPS OUR MINDS

<div>Anyone who’s followed the news for decades has noticed without fail that coverage has tilted more and more towards stories about celebrities and all manner of trivial conflicts between members of the public. What was once the sole domain of what we call 'tabloid' news has spread to become a fixture of most mainstream news outfits....</div>

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND THE AFTER-DEATH

What happens after we die has always been a major source of religious speculation, and providing answers to this question has also been one of religion’s chief tasks. Many faiths use the fear of death and the lure of an afterlife as a sort of spiritual club to dun adherents into proper moral behavior and correct belief in this world, promising all sorts of things to the worthy righteous after death. Pragmatically speaking, this promotes a very positive outcome, but how does one verify the benefi

REJUVENATING COMMUNISM: YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS AND ELITE RENEWAL IN POST-MAO CHINA

This book is a study of ambitious young Chinese, their aspirations, and career choices. It was prompted by an initial puzzle: how does the Chinese party-state manage to attract recruits and maintain their commitment over time, when ideology does not structure recruitment anymore and a liberalized employment market provides alternative career options? These issues are central to our understanding of what contributes to the long-term resilience of non-democratic regimes and their ability to remain

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JOEL KUPPERMAN?

I’ll never forget that day in 1944 - it was extremely warm for November – people called it 'Indian Summer' – but I didn’t see any Indians. It was the day I saw Joel Kupperman at school. He was in a hallway carrying books - alone. We were walking toward each other - face to face. This was my chance to introduce myself, but I was too scared to speak to the most famous kid in America (at least since Shirley Temple - but she wasn’t very famous anymore). It was an exciting moment, but I froze...

THEY SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND: ON THE ONGOING ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

<div>She spoke as to a child who could not understand. All the futility that lay ahead. Yet who she knew would go on to repeat. Repeat repeat the things men had to learn....</div>

THE WILD GODS OF BARBARA EHRENREICH AND WILLIAM JAMES

<div>Better known for her books on low-wage workers, such as Nickled and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote her dissertation on cellular immunology, and had always considered herself a scientist, even as she began to write on social issues. Author of about twenty books, the one that breaks the pattern is among her last, Living with a Wild God, in which she writes about an encounter with god, an event for which she was unprepared...</div>

SON OF TERAH | Short story by Jessalyn LeBlanc

<div>He hasn’t mentioned a child in years. Not since we got the farm and the linen tablecloths and the cattle with their promise of riches. Not since that first September, when the wheat bloomed in abundance. Not since that night against the oil lamp’s unsteady flame when we came to the synchronous and silent understanding that I would not bring a baby into this world...</div>

MUSIC OF THE DEVIL-1955 | By Myron S. Lubell

<div>They called my generation of teenagers 'juvenile delinquents' – mainly because of our'wild and crazy' music. Drugs weren’t a major problem in the mid-1950’s, and the 'sexual revolution' hadn’t started. I’m not saying we didn’t think about sex – we sure did, a lot – but the 'respectable' girls knew how to say NO – at least with me...</div>

GARY SOTO’S PILGRIMAGE

<div>In the brief essay 'Catholics,' from his first book of nonfiction, Living Up the Street (1985), prolific Chicanx poet and author Gary Soto depicts himself as an elementary school student in a parochial school 'standing in a waste basket for fighting on the day we received a hunger flag for Biafra'...</div>

GEORGE KENNAN ON THE FATE OF THE SOVIET UNION AND NATO EXPANSION

<div>It is hard to explain why George Kennan's voice was heard and proved right when he wrote the Long Telegram in 1946 and helped shape the post-World War II world, and then was left almost unnoticed when he wrote a short letter in the New York Times after the fall of the Soviets (just as he predicted) in 1997, at the end of the Cold War. Why was Kennan right and heard for the fall of the Soviets and not right and heard for the expansion of NATO?</div>

‘HOW STATES THINK’: THE RATIONALITY VS THE EMOTIONALITY OF FOREIGN POLICY

‘How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy’, a new book by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato, is a well-written and insightful examination of a central question in international relations: are states actually rational actors? That is, does the empirical record show that they are routinely rational or routinely non-rational? The issue is crucial for both the study and practice of international politics and the authors make the case that “only if states are rational can scholars a

BERNARD STIEGLER'S PHARMACOLOGY

<div>I think it is extremely important to understand that the accidents, the toxicities, the diseases, our wounds, can also be sources of invention, creativity, maybe even of the most brilliant ideas. So, from all the intoxication, all the misuse of pharmaka, we may also learn - and progress and practice pharmacology together...</div>

STONE CRABS AND KISHKEHS: THE HISTORY OF MIAMI BEACH

Miami Beach, Florida is one of the most well known resort cities in the world. However, during the 20th century this glitzy 'fun-in-the-sun' paradise was also a haven for elderly Jewish immigrants, many of whom had fled from Czarist Russia. It was also home for recent survivors of the Holocaust. They were easy to identify, always dressed in short sleeves, proud to display the numbers branded on their arm - but some wore long sleeves, even on the hottest days of summer, hiding a memory from hell.

PHARMAKON: CULTURE AND REALITY

<div>Has culture ever been separated from practical life? Culture has different forms: high culture, mass culture, national culture, local culture, family culture, political culture, Christian culture, secular culture, and so on. Culture is the form of practical life. And practical life is the living substance of culture...</div>

THE VILLAGE OF THE WATERWHEELS

The village of the waterwheels, Lao Tzu and a minor epiphany in Moscow all speak of one thing, a glimpse into a future where people are satisfied with less, and yet what is lived is infinitely richer in texture and colour than we often experience today. We will have come full circle from conquering nature, red in tooth and claw, to a return into its heart with more complete knowledge about our purpose here, and the fulness of being a human being. We will be comfortable in our own skin...

SEARCHING FOR CERTAINTY: SEPARATENESS AND THE SELF

<div>Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Over and over again. Descartes was driven to the extremity of his wits, desperate to prove to himself that the external world existed, and that such certainty came with a sense of personal agency within that world. Once again, he fell back on Plato’s allegory of the cave: not for him is that which is what it appears to be!</div>

GAZA: WHEN THE COST OF WAR IS MUCH MORE THAN LIVES

In better times, and there were better times, diners would file into the Al Salam Abu Haseira fish restaurant near sunset to feast on plates of shrimp, grouper, sardines, sea bream, and anything else Gaza’s fishermen would haul in from the sea—given the restrictions on the distance from the shore they were allowed to fish—monitored by the Israeli military. If grouper were aplenty the kitchen would whip up its specialty, zibdiyeh, a tomato-based stew made with pine nuts, herbs, tahina, shrimp, an

WATERGATE IN THE COUNTRY | A Poem by Arjen Boswijk, Art by Uko Post

<div>Under threatening gray skies...</div>

NINA BERBEROVA AND SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Nina Berberova was unhappy whenever her Italics Are Mine was called a memoir. She would insist that her book was an autobiography—and not merely insist but do everything in her power to cement this specific genre definition in the reader’s consciousness. The word “autobiography” is in the subtitle of Italics, and the first sentence of the first chapter also says that “this book is not reminiscences” and explains in detail wherein the difference lies between the two genres...