Book Review

By Stephen Viederman, Needmore Fund

How I spent my summer is rightfully of little interest to those of you who may read my book notes. However, some of you seem to be interested in what I have been reading. So here goes.

On the lighter side I discovered Alan Furst, a film noir writer of spy stories set in Europe in the late 30s and the war years (II that is). He is very literate, knows his history and the locales where the action takes form, so that you can almost smell the Galois. These novels are great fun and great reading, in the spirit of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. All of his novels are available in Random House paperbacks.

Novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver and National Geographic photographer Annie Griffiths Belt have teamed up to produce a beautiful oversized book, Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands (Washington, National Geographic, 2002, $40). The interplay between a significant text––in length and depth––and the hand-tinted infrared images and color photos makes this an exceptional work.

When I was a kid, CBS had a radio program in New York called “Don Hollenbeck Views the News.” Once a week he reviewed how particular stories were presented and followed by the seven or eight New York newspapers then in existence. I was reminded of this when I was reading Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber’s Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq (New York, Jeremy R. Tarcher/Penguin paperback original, 2003, $11.95). Despite the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle was the only one of the top 100 papers in the country to review WMD, the book has been on the New York Times top 20 list. The British publisher reports it is the best-selling book on Iraq in the UK. WMD provides chapter and verse of what we see as a remarkable hoodwink. Perhaps a second edition is in the making as more details unfold each day.

John Ralston Saul seems to be unknown to many in the US. A Canadian philosopher, essayist and novelist he is a cogent critic of corporatism in all its forms (including in education) and a strong proponent of democracy. Among his books are Voltaire’s Bastard: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (1992) and The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (1994). The latter––essays in varying lengths arranged alphabetically––is both enjoyable and troubling reading that can be read as with any ‘dictionary’ wherever it falls open. It is also eminently quotable.

Saul’s 1995 Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto published as The Unconscious Civilization (New York, The Free Press, 1995) argues for non-conformism in the public place. Furthermore, “The examined life makes a virtue of uncertainty. It celebrates doubt.” He continues, “Common sense, creativity, ethics, intuition, memory and reason, can be applied together, in some sort of equilibrium, as the filters of public action. . . .The virtue of uncertainty is not a comfortable idea, but then a citizen-based democracy is built upon participation, which is the very expression of permanent discomfort.” It is the corporatist priorities that have become so woven into our social fabric that threaten the practice of Western democracy.

Better Together: Restoring the American Community (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2003) builds upon sociologist Robert Putnam’s earlier work on civic society in the US and overseas, especially Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000). His co-author is Lewis M. Feldstein, now president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, a longtime civil rights activist, former New York City official, and provost. The book is structured around 12 stories of communities “making connections among people, establishing bonds of trust and understanding, building community.” They include Valley Interfaith in Texas, the Dudley Street Initiative in Massachusetts, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, and even community within a large corporation––UPS. Each story is well told and interesting reading. But overall what I found lacking is a consistent focus on race, class, power and the systemic constraints that restrain organizing. A colleague once reported to me that one of the head organizers of a group described in the book reflected on the years of organizing they had done, and the millions of dollars that had been received for infrastructure, and bemoaned the fact that most indicators of social well-being had improved little if at all. Social capital is necessary but not sufficient to ‘restore’ community. Better Together is a worthy read to provoke dialogue on what else needs to be done.

William Greider sees some hope in his latest book, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2003). Focusing on capitalism’s singular concern for a financial bottom-line and its absence of concern for human values, he too recounts stories of places where a new, more humane, face of capitalism can be seen. He sees it, for example, in the efforts of some labor pension funds to use their working capital to provide social as well as financial returns for their beneficiaries. Like Saul he embraces contradictions, “Here is my notion of patriotic obligation: Americans will not become fully realized as a people––as a society that fulfills its potential––until we learn, in the spirit of Walt Whitman, to embrace our contradictions, all of them.” The right to live in a productive society is his vision, and he sees some signs of hope.

Whereas others have avoided addressing issues of power directly, not so Joan Roelofs, professor emeritus of political science at Keene State College in New Hampshire, in her latest book, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press: Studies in Radical Social and Political Theory, 2003). Though she does not cite Saul, she shares many of his views on the dangers of corporatism, in this case with regard to philanthropy and its strong influences on or agent of public policies. “Foundations themselves are buffer institutions, serving the corporate interests of their origins, their trustees, and their investments,” she concludes, “[and] acknowledging power (by which I mean the source of important decisions) would provide a more accurate account of politics, or history for that matter.” Chapters review foundation efforts in government reform, arts and culture, social welfare and the economy, the legal system, social change organizations and international activities. This is a spirited and important work that should be read if only to annoy people sufficiently to get them thinking in new ways.