http://fglaysher.com/Reviews Meditations on the Human Condition Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:18:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sen McGlinn. Church and State: A Postmodern Political Theology. University of Leiden, 2005. 432 pages. In light of the Haifan Universal House of Justice having declared Sen McGlinn a “kafir,” infidel, shortly after the 2005 publication of Church and State, the book resonates with many unintended ironies and contradictions. Written ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2007/12/15/sen-mcglinn-church-and-state-leiden-2005/ White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Shelby Steele. HarperCollins, 2006. The approval by voters of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative merely marks another step along the path of a much deeper cultural shift on the part of blacks and whites. The old ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/12/13/shelby-steele-white-guilt-mcri/ Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books, 2005. The approval by voters of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative corroborates Thomas Sowell’s observation in his Preface to the book, referring to “a growing willingness to consider views that differ from the racial orthodoxy that has prevailed largely unchallenged from the ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/11/28/thomas-sowell-black-rednecks-white-liberals-mcri/ John McWhorter. Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. Gotham, 2006. John McWhorter’s Winning the Race has a strong sociological approach to the issues of black America, surveying the history of the development of the inner cities and the welfare system, leading to the dependence that later found expression ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/11/03/john-mcwhorter-winning-the-race-mcri/ Juan Williams, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It. Crown, New York. 2006. The major shortcoming of Juan Williams book is that he doesn’t go far enough. But more of that later. It should first be said ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/09/15/juan-williams-enough-mcri/ Creating Equal. My Fight Against Race Preferences. Ward Connerly A Courageous Man and a Brilliant Book.... March 25, 2000 In Creating Equal, Ward Connerly returns the *human* dimension to the realities of race in America. Where so often what the poet Robert Hayden called "race rhetoric" substitutes for thought and dialogue, ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/24/creating-equal-my-fight-against-race-preferences-ward-connerly/ A Dream Deferred. The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. Shelby Steele Reawakening the Dream.... December 7, 2000 This morning, sometime around three or four AM, I woke up thinking about Shelby Steele's A Dream Deferred. I read it a number of months ago and have been wanting to write a ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/23/a-dream-deferred-the-second-betrayal-of-black-freedom-in-america-shelby-steele/ The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell Chastising the Self-Anointed.... June 27, 2000 Thomas Sowell may be one of the most despised black men in America-despised by extremist liberals, black and white, because Sowell has devoted his abilities to exposing their destructive ideologies of social redemption as counterproductive to the best ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/22/the-quest-for-cosmic-justice-thomas-sowell/ Hating Whitey. And Other Progressive Causes. David Horowitz For Betty - Oh God, What Have We Done.... June 16, 2000 One brings to a book everything one is and has been through. Let me discuss David Horowitz's Hating Whitey by seemingly digressing a little on my own experience. I grew up in the ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/21/hating-whitey-and-other-progressive-causes-david-horowitz/ Tower of Babble. How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos. Dore Gold. Crown Forum, NY, 2004. Half the Babbling Story.... July 12, 2006 Dore Gold tells the story of the corruption and failure of the dream of world organization and peace. Created in the aftermath of World War II, “to save ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/20/tower-of-babble-how-the-united-nations-has-fueled-global-chaos-dore-gold/ UNvanquished. A US UN Saga, Boutros Boutros-Ghali Global Tragedies of Our Own Making.... October 30, 2000 I've often thought or returned to passages in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Unvanquished since reading it in the early summer of 1999. Throughout the debate and defeat of the CTBT, the charades over Congressional withholding of funding to ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/19/unvanquished-a-us-un-saga-boutros-boutros-ghali/ The Vendor of Sweets (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by R. K. Narayan India's Kali Yuga.... December 21, 2000 The novelist R. K. Narayan (1906-) was born into a Tamil-speaking, Brahmin family. For several years he attended Christian schools in Madras, where he was raised by his grandmother, a devout Hindu who taught him ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/18/the-vendor-of-sweets-r-k-narayan/ A Roadside Dog by Czeslaw Milosz Antinomies.... October 24, 2000 In A Year of the Hunter, Czeslaw Milosz unequivocally writes, "Poetry's separation from religion has always strengthened my conviction that the erosion of the cosmic-religious imagination is not an illusion and that the vast expanses of the planet that are falling away ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/17/a-roadside-dog-czeslaw-milosz/ John Milton (Bloom's Modern Critical Views) by Harold Bloom Abdiel Agonistes.... October 24, 2000 John Milton's reputation has unjustly suffered a diminution during the last two centuries. The romantics, repulsed by his religious theme of the earthly pilgrimage of the soul, corrupted his poem by maliciously interpreting Satan as the hero, despite ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/16/john-milton-by-harold-bloom/ Poetry of Ryuichi Tamura Vanishing.... October 12, 2000 For Japan and its writers, the modern darkness deepens during the period of military fascism and World War II. With the defeat and unconditional surrender, immense shock waves rocked the entire culture calling into question the pseudo-Shinto and Confucian values Japan had based its ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/15/poetry-of-ryuichi-tamura/ Rats' Nests. The Collected Poetry of Hagiwara Sakutaro (Translations of Modern Japanese Poetry Series) by Hagiwara Sakutaro In Front of the Bridge.... October 1, 2000 By the end of the nineteenth century, several anthologies of Western literature had been translated and published introducing Japanese writers to a variety of new literary styles ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/13/rats-nests-the-collected-poetry-of-hagiwara-sakutaro/ The Gourmet and Other Stories of Modern China by Wenfu Lu A Decade of Upheaval...., June 25, 2000 I want to review The Gourmet and Other Stories of Modern China by focusing on one jewel of a story by Lu Wenfu (1928-), who suffered long and hard from the horrors of the ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/11/gourmet-and-other-stories-of-modern-china-wenfu-lu/ The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe The Shifting Sands of Modernity...., June 24, 2000 Shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 narrative writing became heavily influenced by Western literature. Although there are many excellent early fiction writers and those who, like Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata, tend to reflect ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/08/10/woman-in-the-dunes-kobo-abe/ The Silent Cry. A Novel by Kenzaburo Oe The Global Cry...., June 24, 2000 Let me discuss "The Silent Cry" and Oe's work in general by first sketching in a broader view of Kenzaburo Oe's literary interests. No other Japanese writer has seen as deeply into Mishima's suicide and the "vacuum" of modern ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/26/the-silent-cry-a-novel-kenzaburo-oe/ Bitter Winds. A Memoir of My Years in China's Gulag. Harry Wu. Bitter Winds, Indeed...., April 20, 2000 Returning in 1994 from China as a Fulbright Scholar, I could not shake China off. It has become part of my consciousness forever. After writing an essay on classical and modern Chinese literature, with ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/25/bitter-winds-a-memoir-of-my-years-in-chinas-gulag-harry-wu/ Modernity and the Millennium : The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East Juan R. I. Cole. Columbia University Press, 1998. Respecting the Conscience of Man...., June 27, 2000 In his conclusion, which would never have passed the system of censorship, "Bahai review," that the UHJ imposes on all ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/25/modernity-and-the-millennium-the-genesis-of-the-bahai-faith-in-the-nineteenth-century-middle-east/ Fang Lizhi and Human Rights in China, April 13, 2000 Since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Fang Lizhi has often been regarded as the foremost advocate of human rights in China. As one might well imagine, his championing of democracy and human rights has a long history going back ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/25/bringing-down-the-great-wall-writings-on-science-culture-and-democracy-in-china-fang-lizhi/ William Garlington. The Bahai Faith in America. Praeger. 2005. c.221p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-275-98413-3. $39.95. The American Bahai Mixture. After becoming a Bahai in the 1960s, William Garlington moved to Australia, where he wrote his dissertation on Bahai mass teaching in Malwa, India, eventually returning to the United States. For over ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/25/william-garlington-the-bahai-faith-in-america-praeger-2005/ Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire: The Conquest of Solitude. University of Chicago Press, 1986. In an 1856 letter Baudelaire complains of "the great heresy of our times... the suppression of the concept of original sin" and insists "the whole of nature participates in original sin." Baudelaire, however, does not defend the ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/14/selected-letters-of-charles-baudelaire/ Saul Bellow. Him With His Foot In His Mouth and Other Stories. 1984. More than any other novelist of our time, Saul Bellow has been aware of the event that Jacques Derrida has called "the rupture." And more than any other novelist, Bellow has crafted rich and strange mimetic confrontations with ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/13/him-with-his-foot-in-his-mouth-and-other-stories/ Gerald Graff. Literature Against Itself. Literary Ideas in Modern Society. 1979. Postmodern literature and critical theory have shattered and discarded the ancient metaphor that literature is a mirror held up to the world. Among some thinkers the figure itself is considered passe. They loathe not only the metaphor but the very ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/13/literature-against-itself/ I wearied long ago of submitting to magazines and waiting for months on editors who couldn’t understand where I was coming from and whose views I didn’t share…. Amazon was for a few years a new forum and technology that seemed promising but soon proved too commercial, lacking discriminating taste ... http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/2006/07/13/why-i%e2%80%99ve-decided-to-blog-my-reviews%e2%80%a6/