Public Square
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Uncouth Nation
Why Europe Dislikes America
by Andrei S. Markovits
Part 5 of the Public Square series
Andrei S. Markovits is Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of six books, including The German Predicament and, most recently, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (Princeton).
No survey can capture the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. From ultraconservative Bavarian grandmothers to thirty-year-old socialist activists in Greece, from globalization opponents to corporate executives--Europeans are joining in an ever louder chorus of disdain for America. For the first time, anti-Americanism has become a European lingua franca.
In this sweeping and provocative look at the history of European aversion to America, Andrei Markovits argues that understanding the ubiquity of anti-Americanism since September 11, 2001, requires an appreciation of such sentiments among European elites going back at least to July 4, 1776.
While George W. Bush's policies have catapulted anti-Americanism into overdrive, particularly in Western Europe, Markovits argues that this loathing has long been driven not by what America does, but by what it is. Focusing on seven Western European countries big and small, he shows how antipathies toward things American embrace aspects of everyday life--such as sports, language, work, education, media, health, and law--that remain far from the purview of the Bush administration's policies. Aggravating Europeans' antipathies toward America is their alleged helplessness in the face of an Americanization that they view as inexorably befalling them.
More troubling, Markovits argues, is that this anti-Americanism has cultivated a new strain of anti-Semitism. Above all, he shows that while Europeans are far apart in terms of their everyday lives and shared experiences, their not being American provides them with a powerful common identity--one that elites have already begun to harness in their quest to construct a unified Europe to rival America. "In Uncouth Nation . . . the subject is the breadth and depth of the anti-Americanism that has swept Europe in recent years. . . . [A] book that promises to explain how Europe's aversion to the US has been catapulted into overdrive by George W. Bush's policies."---Caroline Walsh, Irish Times "Andrei S. Markovitz unveils . . . the huge misconception, implied or actually believed around the world, that anti-Americanism is something new. He uses a subtle example to demonstrate that it is the opposite: a malignant growth as old as the hills."---Bogdan Kipling, Chronicle Herald "Andrei S. Markovits sensibly distinguishes between disapproval of the United States for what it does and dislike of the United States for what it is. . . . In a fascinating twist, Markovits highlights the gradual transformation of European anti-Americanism after the Second World War from an ideology of the discredited right to one of the anti-imperialist left. . . . The book offers a great deal of convincing evidence for these assertions, some of it based on survey research, but most of it based on Markovits's deep familiarity with Europe's left-wing scene."---Jeffrey Kopstein, The Globe and Mail "Markovits documents his arguments extensively, and though he makes his leftist leanings clear, his research convinces him that anti-Americanism isn't about policy but about essence, which precedes it." "Markovits performs a valuable service. If you wonder where the U.S.-European relationship is heading, Uncouth Nation is a book well-worth reading."---Sasha Abramsky, American Prospect "The resentment of the United States, [Markovits] shows, has spread far beyond politics, penetrating deep into the pores of everyday European life. . . . In an argument Democrats in particular need to hear, Markovits concludes soberly that European hostility is unlikely to be substantially abated in a post-Bush America because Europe's animosities will remain central to both c
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The Case for Big Government
by Jeff Madrick
Part 9 of the Public Square series
"Finalist for the 2009 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, PEN American Center" Jeff Madrick is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge magazine and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
Political conservatives have long believed that the best government is a small government. But if this were true, noted economist Jeff Madrick argues, the nation would not be experiencing stagnant wages, rising health care costs, increasing unemployment, and concentrations of wealth for a narrow elite. In this perceptive and eye-opening book, Madrick proves that an engaged government--a big government of high taxes and wise regulations--is necessary for the social and economic answers that Americans desperately need in changing times. He shows that the big governments of past eras fostered greatness and prosperity, while weak, laissez-faire governments marked periods of corruption and exploitation. The Case for Big Government considers whether the government can adjust its current policies and set the country right.
Madrick explains why politics and economics should go hand in hand; why America benefits when the government actively nourishes economic growth; and why America must reject free market orthodoxy and adopt ambitious government-centered programs. He looks critically at today's politicians--at Republicans seeking to revive nineteenth-century principles, and at Democrats who are abandoning the pioneering efforts of the Great Society. Madrick paints a devastating portrait of the nation's declining social opportunities and how the economy has failed its workers. He looks critically at today's politicians and demonstrates that the government must correct itself to address these serious issues.
A practical call to arms, The Case for Big Government asks for innovation, experimentation, and a willingness to fail. The book sets aside ideology and proposes bold steps to ensure the nation's vitality. "In this new economic, political, and ideological environment, The Case for Big Government shows how yesterday's contrarianism can become today's consensus. A leading economist, a former financial columnist for The Times and an adviser to Senator Edward Kennedy, Jeff Madrick makes the case that the nation faces social and economic challenges requiring higher taxes, increased public investment and more rigorous regulation of corporate conduct. Researched and well-written . . . fact-filled and well-reasoned."---David Kusnet, New York Times Book Review "The Case for Big Government comes at an auspicious time. With the global economy in crisis, experts of all stripes have supported government intervention. At the same time, Americans have elected Democrat Barak Obama, who has favored greater federal involvement, to lead the country. Author Jeff Madrick argues that government involvement in economic affairs is not only beneficial in times of crisis, but can also enhance long-term growth by giving incentives for industries and households to prosper."---Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, Reuters "Helpful to debaters, Madrick's work succinctly summarizes a perspective from the Left on America's economic problems."---Gilbert Taylor, Booklist "[Madrick's] book is a thoroughgoing defense of government's role in the economy, written with the broad perspective of an economic historian rather than a mere policy polemicist. Thus, a book that could have been a thudding discourse on the efficiency of the French medical system instead takes us on a bracing survey of government's role as a driver--not merely an enabler--of a growing, fair, economy."---Ezra Klein, The American Prospect "If Obama's election to the presidency seems to be the realization of part of King's dream, we still are left with the question of what, exactly, Obama is going to do. Jeff Madrick thinks he knows exac

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The End of the West
The Once and Future Europe
by David Marquand
Part 18 of the Public Square series
"One of Financial Times's Best Books of Politics for 2011" David Marquand has been a member of the British Parliament, an official of the European Commission, and principal of Mansfield College, University of Oxford. He is a fellow of the British Academy and the author of many books, including Britain since 1918.
Why Europe is on the decline-and what can be done about it
Has Europe's extraordinary postwar recovery limped to an end? It would seem so. The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and former Soviet Bloc countries have experienced ethnic or religious disturbances, sometimes violent. Greece, Ireland, and Spain are menaced by financial crises. And the euro is in trouble. In The End of the West, David Marquand, a former member of the British Parliament, argues that Europe's problems stem from outdated perceptions of global power, and calls for a drastic change in European governance to halt the continent's slide into irrelevance. Taking a searching look at the continent's governing institutions, history, and current challenges, Marquand offers a disturbing diagnosis of Europe's ills to point the way toward a better future.
Exploring the baffling contrast between postwar success and current failures, Marquand examines the rebirth of ethnic communities from Catalonia to Flanders, the rise of xenophobic populism, the democratic deficit that stymies EU governance, and the thorny questions of where Europe's borders end and what it means to be European. Marquand contends that as China, India, and other nations rise, Europe must abandon ancient notions of an enlightened West and a backward East. He calls for Europe's leaders and citizens to confront the painful issues of ethnicity, integration, and economic cohesion, and to build a democratic and federal structure.
A wake-up call to those who cling to ideas of a triumphalist Europe, The End of the West shows that the continent must draw on all its reserves of intellectual and political creativity to thrive in an increasingly turbulent world, where the very language of "East" and "West" has been emptied of meaning. In a new preface, Marquand analyzes the current Eurozone crisis-arguing that it was inevitable due to the absurdity of combining monetary union with fiscal disunion-and raises some of the questions Europe will have to face in its recovery. "One of the many virtues of David Marquand's The End of the West, a book that carefully documents the gap between the EU's ambitions and its achievements, is that it explains exactly why EU politics are so tedious. . . . It provides a crisp and relevant analysis of the difficult choices that Europe faces."---Henry Farrell, The Nation "A sweeping new assessment of the continent's drift." "[Marquand] the grand old pro-European is on to something when he pokes an inquiring finger into the question of what modern Europe wants to be. . . . This highly readable book offers a compelling description of Europe's modern malaise."---Anne McElvoy, New Statesman "The End of the West is a bracing and timely work, no doubt about it." "A committed pro-European's brilliant, timely analysis of what is wrong with the European Union."---Vernon Bogdanor, Times Higher Education Supplement "The End of the West is a wake-up call. It raises many questions and calls for drastic changes in the EU government. . . . Marquand gives us a concise and brilliant analysis of the failures and weaknesses of the EU. Readable and compact, this book helps us understand the reasons behind the present problems affecting the EU." "This is a text with compelling questions, not one with definite solutions. What makes it fascinating is the forthright and dispassionate examinations of crucial problems. As Europe faces, in the months and years ahead, the formidable tribulations generated by the global downturn, it is the wider issues delineated in Marquand's The End of the West that should be probed, examined and argued with."---Donald Sassoon, Political Quarterl

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On the Muslim Question
by Anne Norton
Part of the Public Square series
Anne Norton is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire; 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method; and Republic of Signs.
Why "the Muslim question" is really about the West and its own anxieties-not Islam
In the post-9/11 West, there is no shortage of strident voices telling us that Islam is a threat to the security, values, way of life, and even existence of the United States and Europe. For better or worse, "the Muslim question" has become the great question of our time. It is a question bound up with others--about freedom of speech, terror, violence, human rights, women's dress, and sexuality. Above all, it is tied to the possibility of democracy. In this fearless, original, and surprising book, Anne Norton demolishes the notion that there is a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues, is the West's commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the most fundamental sense, the Muslim question is about the values not of Islamic, but of Western, civilization.
Moving between the United States and Europe, Norton provides a fresh perspective on iconic controversies, from the Danish cartoon of Muhammad to the murder of Theo van Gogh. She examines the arguments of a wide range of thinkers--from John Rawls to Slavoj Žižek. And she describes vivid everyday examples of ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims who have accepted each other and built a common life together. Ultimately, Norton provides a new vision of a richer and more diverse democratic life in the West, one that makes room for Muslims rather than scapegoating them for the West's own anxieties. "Is there a clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington maintained, between the Muslim world and the West? Norton's response will be of interest to students of geopolitics and Islamic studies." "She scores many hits, and illuminates the smug racism behind much recent blazoning of Enlightenment values."---Paul Laity, Prospect "Two strengths make Norton's work stand out in the crowded field of books that address Islam and democracy. First is her insistence on considering Islamic voices of the past and present, from medieval philosopher al-Farabi to Qutb and Ramadan, as conversation partners within the Western tradition. Second is her concise rebuttal of prominent philosophers, in particular Jacques Derrida, John Rawls and Slovaj Zizek, each of whom has perceived a danger in the nature of Islam."---Steve Young, Christian Century "Professor Anne Norton of the University of Pennsylvania, is a liberal academic who takes on all the anti-Muslim hysterics, right wing paranoiacs and sloppy thinkers in this measured and profoundly thought-provoking book."---Charles H. Middleburgh, Middleburgh Blog "Anne Norton provides us with a window into the interaction between European versions of modernity and the Islamic experience, drawing attention to how Muslims often face resistance and hatred as they enter into previously constituted elements of European society." "Anne Norton's On the Muslim Question . . . is distinguished by moral daring and intellectual perspicacity, that is bold and passionate in tone but also rigorous and academic in substance. . . . Anne Norton's scholarly effort, as much an academic tract as a pamphlet and a political statement, redeems all those promises and amply testifies to the intellectual and moral resources of the academy as well as its integrity."---S. Parvez Manzoor, Muslim World Book Review "Anne Norton . . . has written an incisive volume analyzing a question at the heart of a number of contemporary vexing domestic and foreign policy issues. She brings to the task an impressive command of the subject matter as well as exceptional insight and judgment as a political theorist."---Mujeeb Khan, H-Net Reviews "[T]he book is an insightful analysis of th

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The Politics of the Veil
by Joan Wallach Scott
Part of the Public Square series
Joan Wallach Scott is the Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Parite!: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism and Gender and the Politics of History.
In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all.
Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions.
The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony. "Scott does a good job of conveying the hysteria that surrounded the foulard debate in France...Scott's broad and exhaustive research makes for a bracing account of the debate."---Laila Lalami, The Nation "Veil-bashing is suddenly socially acceptable among not merely tabloid-reading Little Englanders, but also metropolitan sophisticates...Why should a bit of cloth so threaten the French republic? That is the central question posed by [this] subtle new study...Many French commentators cast the debate about the veil as an issue about Muslims, Islam and integration. Scott, a distinguished historian at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, shows that it revealed rather more about the French themselves."---Carla Power, New Statesman "This book is a powerful denunciation of the French government and people whom Scott labels as racist, discriminatory, and intolerant of Muslim immigrants primarily from North Africa. In instituting a ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public schools, the author claims that France has gone too far in its policies of strict secularism and adherence to the values of republicanism in which citizenship is conceived of as an individual matter devoid of ethnic and religious content. . . . [A] fascinating piece of scholarship."---S. Majstorovic, Choice "It is difficult to do justice to the rigour and subtlety of this important book, written by a distinguished historian with previous works on gender and democratic politics. It should be read not only by those interested in the French situation but also by anyone who is concerned by the hysteria surrounding Muslims in Europe. It clarifies the ideas behind current debates on multiculturalism, assimilation and integration, and points the way towards a solution."---Mary Hossain, Journal of Islamic Studies "The Politics of the Veil is a propitious contribution to the exploration and analysis of the complex meanings and purported meanings of these phenomena that have come to symbolise for Turkey and France the struggle to defend the foundations of their Republic against forces that allegedly undermine all th

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The Whites of Their Eyes
The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History
by Jill Lepore
Part of the Public Square series
"Winner of the 2011 Gold Medal in History, Independent Publisher Book Awards" "Winner of the 2010 Bronze Medal Book of the Year Award in HistoryForeWord Reviews" "A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice for 2010" "One of U.S. News & World Report's (online version) Top Debate Worthy Books of the Year for 2010" "A Boston Authors Club Annual Awards Highly Recommended Book for 2011" "Honorable Mention for the 2010 PROSE Award in U.S. History, Association of American Publishers" Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her books include New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, winner of the Bancroft Prize.
From acclaimed bestselling historian Jill Lepore, the story of the American historical mythology embraced by the far right
Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution-so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty-so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America."
Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a careful and concerned look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independencea history of the Revolution, from the archives. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past-a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty-a yearning for an America that never was.
The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism-anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.
In a new afterword, Lepore addresses both the recent shift in Tea Party rhetoric from the Revolution to the Constitution and the diminished role of scholars as political commentators over the last half century of public debate. "Jill Lepore, a historian of the American Revolution and a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a brief but valuable book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History, which combines her own interviews with Tea Partiers (mostly from her home state, Massachusetts) and her deep knowledge of the founders and of their view of the Constitution."---Alan Brinkley, New York Times Book Review "Throughout her book Lepore's implicit question remains always: Don't these Tea Party people realize how silly they are? They don't understand history; they need to learn that time moves forward. 'We cannot go back to the eighteenth century,' she says, 'and the Founding Fathers are not, in fact, here with us today.'"---Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books "For a number of years, the author has been contributing pieces to the New Yorker on American colonial history, pithy commentaries shaped by historical evidence and a storyteller's hand. Here she braids those essays together, which makes them more satisfying and meaningful than if they were merely collected in an anthology. . . . The author is not smug in her treatment of the Tea

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Sex and Secularism
by Joan Wallach Scott
Part of the Public Square series
"One of The Guardian's Best Books of 2017" Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include The Fantasy of Feminist History, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton), and Gender and the Politics of History.
How secularism has been used to justify the subordination of women
Joan Wallach Scott's acclaimed and controversial writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. With Sex and Secularism, Scott challenges one of the central claims of the "clash of civilizations" polemic-the false notion that secularism is a guarantee of gender equality.
Drawing on a wealth of scholarship by second-wave feminists and historians of religion, race, and colonialism, Scott shows that the gender equality invoked today as a fundamental and enduring principle was not originally associated with the term "secularism" when it first entered the lexicon in the nineteenth century. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the articulation of the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. Scott points out that Western nation-states imposed a new order of women's subordination, assigning them to a feminized familial sphere meant to complement the rational masculine realms of politics and economics. It was not until the question of Islam arose in the late twentieth century that gender equality became a primary feature of the discourse of secularism.
Challenging the assertion that secularism has always been synonymous with equality between the sexes, Sex and Secularism reveals how this idea has been used to justify claims of white, Western, and Christian racial and religious superiority and has served to distract our attention from a persistent set of difficulties related to gender difference-ones shared by Western and non-Western cultures alike. "Sex and Secularism offers a series of bracing and illuminating reflections on a whole culture of oppression that ought to have been exposed much earlier."---Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian "Sex and Secularism must be praised for drawing attention to the history of secularism and gender inequality. Scott's message is no doubt timely in light of the powerful effect of the #MeToo campaign, which should give anyone pause before boasting about the superior treatment of women in the secular west."---Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, The Guardian "Scott's ardent and principled opposition to the prejudice and hostility expressed towards Islam – more specifically towards Islamic countries, societies and practices – by 'secularists' in Europe (principally France) and the United States is timely and necessary."---Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Times Literary Supplement "In Sex and Secularism, Scott broadens her scope geographically and temporally. Here the subject is women's relationship to secularism in modern western nation-states. This is a big and complex subject for a compact volume, but Scott is especially well-positioned to tackle it. . . . A challenging, timely, and important book. . . . Readers of Sex and Secularism will be forced to rethink their assumptions about the role of women and their bodies in contemporary political debates."---Susan B. Whitney, Literary Review of Canada "Sex and Secularism is a challenging, timely, and important book. . . . Her aim, she continues, was to 'open--not to definitively close--a conversation about the place of gender equality in the discourse of secularism.' That she has definitively done, as few other scholars could."---Susan Whitney, Literary Review of Canada "In her new book, the eminent feminist historian Joan Wallach Scott['s] . . . aim is to sketch a speculative history of the relationship between sex and secularism: to uncover how ideas about the proper place of religion and the proper place of women have influenced ea

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The Posthuman Dada Guide
tzara and lenin play chess
by Andrei Codrescu
Part of the Public Square series
Andrei Codrescu is an award-winning writer and National Public Radio commentator. His latest books are Jealous Witness: New Poems and New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City (Algonquin). The author of many essay collections, including The Disappearance of the Outside, he is the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life."-The Posthuman Dada Guide
The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world-all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse-a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution-lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada-and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources. "One of our most prodigiously talented and magical writers." "Can't decide whether to cry or laugh? Laugh at absurdity, laugh at hardship, laugh at poverty, says Andrei Codrescu in his maddening, enlightening, self-contradictory, highly amusing new book. . . . [Codrescu] has rolled into one slim guide a postmodern self-help manual, a history lesson, a love letter to dissident poets, a hard jab at communism and a veiled autobiography. . . . The guide is, beneath it all, a mournful celebration of the achievements of pre-communist Romanian Jews, such as Tzara and modernist painter and architect (and Dadaist) Marcel Janco."---Carly Berwick, Los Angeles Times "Any reader looking for a quirky, polemical, provocative introduction to Dada might like to try Andrei Codrescu's Posthuman Dada Guide, in which the author's key terms are alphabetically listed and 'hermeneutically filleted'. His linguistic glee also means that this dictionary can easily be read cover to cover."---Peter Read, Times Literary Supplement "This Zagat-sized handbook, a Dadaist chop suey showcasing the astonishing intellectual range of English professor and NPR commentator Codrescu, is arranged alphabetically and topically, which permits one to dip in or to read it all. The occasionally outrageous encyclopedic juxtapositions of entries give a firsthand experience similar to the effect of Dada cutups and collages." "A hard-edged, rapier-like volume, perfect for sliding into a back pocket of skinny hipster pants or stabbing into the complacent underbelly of bourgeois (or bourgeois-bohemian) society. It offers a headier-than-usual tour of the early-1900s avant-garde, sprinkled with sex appeal for the would-be MySpace-age revolutionary. . . . As art theory, the Guide could even be preferable to a college seminar on modernism. . . . [Codrescu] also places Dada on a broader historical stage than it usually receives, mingling it with world politics."---Eli Epstein-Deutsch, Village Voice "Even
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