Tag: Robert R. Thomas
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Review: Caste is “the bones,” race “the skin” in America’s body of discontents
By Robert Thomas Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson offers a deep, scholarly dive into the foundations of human hierarchical organization. “A caste system,” she defines “is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups…
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Review: “Begin Again” blends James Baldwin’s urgent lessons and a call to face “the American Lie”
By Robert R. Thomas BEGIN AGAIN by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is a clear example of a historical genre I call living history, i.e., history being written in real time by living historians. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, where he is also the chair of the…
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Coronavirus Diaries #1: Viral time and the witching hour — when the dead wander in and out
By Teddy Robertson Ed. Note: Here is the first of an East Village Magazine’s new feature, the Coronavirus Diaries — personal accounts and commentary from our writers to attempt to capture some of what we’ve all been going through and reflecting on what it means. Sunday has become my day to write to friends. It’s a…
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Book Review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism–the Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
By Robert R. Thomas When entering foreign territories, orientation is the key to survival. Who is in charge? What are the rules? In her masterful analysis of the current state of global capitalism, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff, the Charles Edward…
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Book Review: “American Dialogue” offers indispensable conversation between “then” and “now”
By Robert R. Thomas In assessing the here and now, history offers an indispensable perspective. American Dialogue is an enlightening example. As author and historian Joseph Ellis puts it, “The study of history is an ongoing conversation between past and present from which we all have much to learn.” Subtitled The Founders and Us, his book’s…
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“Demolition Means Progress” discussion continues Dec. 8 at Broome Center
Community Read, a project of the Flint Genesee Literacy Network, continues discussion Dec. 8 of Andrew Highsmith’s look at 20thcentury Flint, Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis. Highsmith shows how much of Flint’s racial division and economic devastation is the result of public policies enacted over decades, including education,…
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“Demolition Means Progress” Community Book Read and discussion kicks off Sept. 29
By Jan Worth-Nelson A four-session opportunity to read, discuss and absorb Demolition Means Progress: Flint and the Fate of the American Metropolis by Andrew Highsmith, a book described by many readers as one of the most penetrating, well-researched and troubling about Flint, kicks off at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 29 at Totem Books. Harold C. Ford,…
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Review: Connor Coyne’s “Urbantasm: The Dying City” original, dark, magical, and infused with Flint
Urbantasm Book One: The Dying City by Connor Coyne Review by Robert R. Thomas Connor Coyne’s Urbantasm is the most original take on Flint I have read to date. Set in the fictional Rust Belt city of Akawe, Michigan, “an hour’s drive north of Detroit,” Coyne’s allegorical tale is a serial novel of four volumes the…
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Book review: “The Impossible Presidency” and its sobering path to an “impossible president”
By Robert R. Thomas In 2008 American mythology got a sobering lesson delivered by profligate banksters who caused a near-collapse of the global economy. They then explained to the political class the economic alt-reality of BIG. How big? Too big to fail. Even bigger than our government and the rule of law. No banksters went…
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Review: Quoting Comey,”The Chickenshit Club” eyes why the DOJ goes easy on bankers
By Robert R. Thomas My wife, a retired librarian, came across a blurb for this book, of which she said, “This looks to be right up your alley.” She was correct, as usual, on many levels. I am hardly the only American who has never been satisfied by any answers as to why no banksters…
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