a mighty wind, pizza (2003/04/25)
"A" and I saw A Mighty Wind and ate pizza.
Let's see what's on the shelf.
- AIDS: The Burdens of History, had it for a class in college.
- Witness to a Century: Encounters With the Noted, the Notorious, and the Three Sobs, belonged to my dad. Seldes interviewed Lenin, Trotsky, Ralph Nader, and many, many more. Haven't read it.
- Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, off the free shelf at work. Read it.
- Civic Realism, also free. Read some, boring.
- Mythologies, had it for a class. It was written in 1957, and is an early example of semiotics. Fans of Ira Glass may know that he earned his degree in semiotics. I think he's more interesting than this book, which is like a tedious unfunny French version of This American Life.
- Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, not for a class, but it could have been. As soon as Europe discovered sugar, they couldn't get enough of it.
- Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, I think I borrowed this from Will about eight years ago. I should give it back.
(Had I known I was going to write up my bookshelf I wouldn't have put so many pointy-headed cultural criticism books together.)
- The Germans, for a class. Why is this book lacking a subtitle?.
- The Periodic Table, I started reading this after a girlfriend moved to Minnesota, but before my dad died. It was a book he had read. It's a memoir of a Holocaust survivor. I couldn't finish it.
- Human Families, by Stevan Harrell, a professor I liked in college. I skimmed through it a few times. I paid $60 for this. It's out of print now, but you can buy a remaindered copy for under $10. Looking back, I realize now he was more popular than good.
- All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, I think I read this in 2001. I know Howard Zinn is cool and everything, but if you ever wanted to read radical leftist political history and not want to throw yourself off a bridge or wallow in self-loathing bitterness, this here's your book.
- Being There: The Necessity of Fieldwork, from the free shelf. The author is anthropologist who did his fieldwork in rural Iran in the 1970s. The book is mainly about the interesting embarrassing personal events you can't publish in journals, but are probably more interesting.
- I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, the copy shown here is a paperback review copy, but elsewhere I have a signed edition. You may be surprised to discover it's the best celebrity autobiography I've read.
- The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, which I read because I wanted to read about Satan-worshipping South American miners. You have to stomach an awful lot of Marxist prattle to get to the fun stuff. It's probably not worth it, but at least I learned that Stephanie's ex-boyfriend Chuck has more in common with precapitalist peasants than I would have guessed.