Jeff Grim talks about a book which aims to show how decades of hatred between northern and southern states drove us to a civil war. “Fleming makes a convincing argument that the fringe elements (fanatics in his words) in both regions pushed the country toward a civil war. He also argues that the animosity began decades before the Civil War.”
Perhaps slavery was so contentious an issue it could not be civilly discussed in 19th Century America.
Jeff Grim talks about a book which aims to show how decades of hatred between northern and southern states drove us to a civil war. “Fleming makes a convincing argument that the fringe elements (fanatics in his words) in both regions pushed the country toward a civil war. He also argues that the animosity began decades before the Civil War.”
Perhaps slavery was so contentious an issue it could not be civilly discussed in 19th Century America.
I’ve always had a good impression of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, but after reading David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants, I want to find Blink, Outliers, and all the others. They are bound to be just as insightful and transformational as this one.
Gladwell’s two-fold premise is that some perceived disadvantages are actually advantages in the right context and vice versa. He frames the book around the battle between David and Goliath. The army of Israel was terrified of the gigantic warrior Goliath, who could probably spear two men at once. Who could win a sword fight with a man like this? But David, inspired with a confidence from the Lord, changed the battle plan.
I was skeptical of this description at first, as you may be, but Gladwell backs it up beautifully. Goliath was prepared for a hand-to-hand fight. His arrogance probably kept him from considering potential threats like David’s sling, and his eye-sight may have been pretty bad due to the condition, pituitary macroadenoma, that made him a giant (height: “six cubits and a span”). One scholar suggests Goliath’s shield bearer, who stood in front of him when they first met David, was actually a guide, because the warrior’s sight was that bad.
The endnotes in this book hold many cool details like these, but the theme of the story is that Goliath’s considerable advantages on the battlefield became disadvantages with new rules of engagement. The same can be seen in many other situations:
Gladwell tells many fascinating stories about the advantages of difficulties and the limits of advantages. Continue reading David and Goliath: The Advantages of Disadvantages
I’m reading Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell: David and Goliath from Socrates in the City on Vimeo.
In writing my final paper for the library science class I took last semester, I decided I wanted to quote Dr. Samuel Johnson’s statement that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” In a research paper, I have learned (the hard way), you can’t just give a quotation, even if it’s a famous one. You have to actually cite the work. So I downloaded Boswell’s Life of Johnson to find the page number. And since I had it on my Kindle, I figured I might as well read it.
I’m glad I did, but frankly it was a little tough. It’s a very long book – and this is the abridged version. The original is six volumes. Yet it was a unique reading experience. I’ll get to that later.
Dr. Samuel Johnson is best known for two things – he compiled the very first English dictionary, all by himself except for some secretarial help (the French, he liked to remind people, though they had a smaller language, needed a whole college of scholars to do their own), and getting his biography written in memorable fashion by his friend James Boswell.
Johnson was famous for his wit – but it’s not the kind of wit we generally think of today. Today we picture wits in the Oscar Wilde mold. Johnson would have considered Wilde flippant and contemptible. Johnson’s wit was mostly aimed at defining fine points of meaning and moral truth. Most of his great lines aren’t really rib-ticklers, though he had his moments: “A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern as the KNEE of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, ‘Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.’”
Tall, fat, ugly, near-sighted and hard of hearing, with annoying behavioral tics, Johnson was nevertheless one of the most beloved men in London, one whose society was much sought after, though he had little power or wealth. He was a feared debater, who sometimes took a side of an argument he didn’t actually hold, just for the mental exercise. And he wasn’t above resorting to cheap shots to win – Oliver Goldsmith observed that “there is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.” Yet his friends remembered him as an extremely kind and generous man, though prone to moods and fits of bad temper.
And that’s the value of The Life of Samuel Johnson, for those who care to take it on. James Boswell produced one of the world’s great written portraits – describing the man as he knew him for many years, and quoting him as exactly as humanly possible from notes he schooled himself to write down while his memory was still fresh. We come away with the impression that we’ve gotten to know a remarkable man – incisive, clever, opinionated, frustrated by fortune, plagued by fears, struggling with his faith – as well as many of his friends must have. A remarkable achievement in English (or any other language).
Long, though.
In The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing, by Jeff Goins, we have a light-weight book on living in the present. No exegesis of the origin of the word wait (Middle English from Anglo-French). No history of waiting or relevant thoughts recorded by ancient thinkers. Goins gives us his own thoughts teased out of stories from his life. His point: “What we were hoping for, what we dreamed would be a larger-than-life experience, ends up looking a lot like morning breath and spreadsheets.”
With stories about Christmas and Epiphany in Spain, on falling in love and becoming a parent, and on leading worship services for prisoners in Washington, he tells us that the in-between times are dull but good. “The good life comes like most good things,” he says, “unexpectedly—in moments that are fading away faster than we realize.”
Toward the end, Goins says he has always been reluctant to push religion on anyone, but that’s what this book needs. Despite the background of church and faith in almost every story, the book points to personal contentment rather than to Christ. A Buddhist could do this. What we need during the in-between times is not a reminder to bless those around us or that we can learn from the slow places in our lives. We need to remember the work and glory of Christ Jesus, whose spiritual wealth is far greater than anything we can achieve with our hard work.
I can understand this reluctance, if it comes from that contemporary desire to askew religion in favor of our relationship with our Lord Jesus, but when we hide from the truth because we can’t stomach religious terminology, we harm ourselves and our readers. The gospel of Christ trips people. They take offense at it, and so do we. We need to understand that such squeamishness comes from our sinful pride, our desire to manage our own lives without submission to the King of Kings. When we understand that we live under the authority of Christ, our Lord, then we can handle the in-between times with greater patience.
Disclosure: I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review.
Over at ChristianityToday.com, Gina Dalfonzo addresses a problem with Alistair McGrath’s new biography, C. S. Lewis: A Life. In contrast to Lewis’ own account in A Grief Observed, other biographies, and the movie Shadowlands, McGrath inclines more to the view of most of Lewis’ friends, who found the unvarnished divorcee from New York abrasive, unladylike, and possibly devious.
McGrath objects to what he sees as our culture’s “romanticised reading” of Lewis’s marriage, spurred by the 1993 movie Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. McGrath seems intent on debunking that image—even though, according to those who knew them closely, the marriage was romantic before Hollywood ever got hold of it. McGrath finds the circumstances of Lewis’s marriage not quite to his taste, but it’s not Lewis himself that he blames for them….
Whatever the reason, McGrath’s attitude toward her is very negative indeed. He admits that she brought Lewis great happiness, but anyone who had known nothing of her before reading his portrayal would have trouble understanding why. McGrath paints her as an unlikable, determined seducer and money-grubber.
Some time back (I don’t have the magazine handy) the Journal of the C. S. Lewis Society reported a lecture on Joy Davidman, which the speaker began with a sentence on the lines of, “Tonight Joy Davidman will be portrayed, not by Debra Winger, but by Bea Arthur.” I’m assuming she drew material from the McGrath book (which I understand to be generally excellent. Haven’t read it).
I suspect we’re dealing with culture shock here – the effect of a New York Jew on a group of semi-cloistered English scholars raised in the Edwardian Age. It’s too bad they generally found no way to bridge that gap. But I have no doubt, personally, that Joy and Jack loved each other sincerely and worked at their marriage as a true Christian union.
Tip: Frank Wilson at booksinq.
Gay Talese didn’t want to write about so public a figure as Frank Sinatra when his editors at Esquire assigned it to him, but he took it on with creative persistence and produced a masterful profile. Elon Green talked to him about it for Nieman Storyboard, so we now have the feature story with writerly annotations throughout.
Greens says at one point every story he has ever heard about Sinatra appears to have come from Talese’s profile, which is enormously detailed. Here’s an appealing bit:
I had seen something of this Sicilian side of Sinatra last summer at Jilly’s saloon in New York, which was the only other time I’d gotten a close view of him prior to this night in this California club…. That night dozens of people, some of them casual friends of Sinatra’s, some mere acquaintances, some neither, appeared outside of Jilly’s saloon. They approached it like a shrine. They had come to pay respect…. Continue reading Gay Talese on Writing "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives…. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal….
Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal; it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has as its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox at its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
One thing for which G. K. Chesterton can always be depended on is surprises. Orthodoxy was not the kind of book I expected it to be. I was looking for something along the lines of C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, an excellent book in a different way. But Chesterton’s approach to apologetics was quintessentially Chestertonian.
Instead of making a purely logical argument for the Christian religion (and Protestants will be pleased to know that he touches fairly lightly on distinctively Catholic matters), Chesterton outlines the rational and the emotional process by which he came to faith. It’s a little like Lewis’ Surprised by Joy in that way, but less autobiographical in terms of life events.
The narrative, delivered in this way, becomes more than an argument. Chesterton gives a demonstration of his orthodoxy by describing the Word becoming flesh in his own experience. We are not saved in our spirits alone; our bodies and our personalities must also come along. Only a salvation that offers something for all aspects of our natures will meet our needs, and Chesterton describes how he spent his life looking for the things his soul hungered for, only to discover that all of them were waiting already assembled in one place – the church.
Highly recommended.
A friend recommended I read Andrew Price’s How Conservatism Can Rise From the Ashes, by Andrew Price, in hopes of raising my optimism about the political future.
This was kind of him, but the results were not as advertised. It’s a well-written and well thought-out argument, but I found little in it to cheer me.
First of all, Price criticizes conservatives for concentrating on the wrong things, and delivering losing messages. One of the wrong things he wants jettisoned is what he calls “theology,” which I take to mean pro-life and pro-family principles. I’ve said it before – I don’t really care much if the Republicans start winning elections again, if they win by dumping conservative social values. I’d probably still vote for them, because low taxes are better than high for everybody, but I’d nevertheless consider my country lost.
Secondly, this book depressed me because Price outlines a series of radical changes in the Republican platform – an “assets tax,” toughening regulation of corporations and the environment, new retirement and health care programs, radical changes to education funding. He might be right, but I rate the likelihood of any of these changes being enacted pretty low. If this strategy is the only one by which we can win, it seems to me we’re probably doomed.
Finally, I question the logic of one of his contentions – that the public hates conservatives because we’re mean and call people names. If calling names turns the public off, why do they vote for the people who keep calling us Nazis?
How Conservatism Can Rise From the Ashes is a perfectly good, thoughtful book, but it did not raise my spirits. It might work for you, though.