Michael Dawson

A Pretty Little Atrocity, Jun 14 2002

This book begins with a sentence fragment arguing that the age of white racism and Southern apartheid seems like ancient history. It ends by implying that it was really all for the best that Dr. King was shot when he was shot, as he was "passing irretrievably into decline." The stuff in between these two whoppers is cribbed from a range of authors, all of whom are vastly more qualified than Frady to have written this book for Penguin Lives.

Alas, I suspect Penguin is simply engaging in good marketing here. Yuppies buy most of the books, and this one is a perfect ego-stroke to yuppies. It lets you say you know something about MLK, without having your basic worldview challenged by a… Read more

Stunning Masterpiece, Dec 7 2000

I love this book. In form, it's an entertainment. In substance, its every line is worthy of the most serious study and elaboration. The irony is that Galeano's use of the "Through the Looking Glass" theme, which once dripped with satire, applies to our upside-down age not as lampoon, but as a dead-on, hard-headed description of reality. I suspect this will end up among my five favorite books of all time. Meanwhile, I'm still savoring the wonders of a thing that verbalizes my deepest unformed thoughts for me. Gracias, Mr. Galeano!

A Revolutionary Debunking, Jun 7 2000

This book is a hot knife through the rancid butter of existing views of the ties between science, ecology, and the politics of the human future.

Foster presents prodigious historical evidence for his thesis that, despite a century-and-a-half of obtuseness on both right and left, Karl Marx was one of the greatest and deepest inheritors and advancers of the best tradition of both "Enlightenment materialism-humanism" and ecological realism.

Foster shows that, contrary to traditional interpretations, Marx was neither an admirer of crude mechanistic science nor an airy Hegelian dreamer. If one actually bothers to read the earliest and the lesser-known Marx, it turns out… Read more