Barack Obama Shares a List of Enlightening Books Worth Reading

in Books, Current Affairs | June 20th, 2018

Pho­to by Pete Souza via obamawhitehouse.archive.gov

What­ev­er his­to­ri­ans have to say about his polit­i­cal lega­cy, Barack Oba­ma will be remem­bered as charm­ing, diplo­mat­ic, thought­ful, and very well-read. He honed these per­son­al qual­i­ties not only as a politi­cian but as a schol­ar, writer, and teacher, roles that require intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty and open­ness to oth­er points of view. The for­mer pres­i­dent was some­thing of a dream come true for teach­ers and librar­i­ans, who could point to him as a shin­ing exam­ple of a world leader who loves to read, talk about books, and share books with oth­ers. All kinds of books: from nov­els and poet­ry to biog­ra­phy, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, and polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic non­fic­tion; books for chil­dren and books for young adults.

It is refresh­ing to look back at his tenure as a reli­able rec­om­mender of qual­i­ty books dur­ing his eight years in office. (See every book he rec­om­mend­ed dur­ing his two terms here.) Read­ing gave him the abil­i­ty to “slow down and get per­spec­tive,” he told Michiko Kaku­tani last year. He hoped to use his office, he said, “to widen the audi­ence for good books. At a time when so much of our pol­i­tics is try­ing to man­age this clash of cul­tures brought about by glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy and migra­tion, the role of sto­ries to unify—as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize—is more impor­tant than ever.”

While many peo­ple have been hop­ing he would weigh in on deeply dis­turb­ing cur­rent events, he “has been rel­a­tive­ly qui­et on social media of late,” notes Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz. But he has con­tin­ued to use his plat­form to rec­om­mend good books, sug­gest­ing that the per­spec­tives we gain from read­ing are as crit­i­cal as ever. “In a Face­book post pub­lished on Sat­ur­day, Oba­ma rec­om­mend­ed some of the non­fic­tion he’s read recent­ly, focused on gov­ern­ment, inequal­i­ty, and his­to­ry, with one book that address­es immi­gra­tion. Togeth­er the rec­om­men­da­tions are an intel­lec­tu­al anti­dote to the cur­rent US pres­i­dent, who eschews read­ing,” says Ha.

The list below includes Obama’s brief com­men­tary on each book and arti­cle.

Futureface: A Fam­i­ly Mys­tery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belong­ing, by Alex Wag­n­er (2018)

Jour­nal­ist Alex Wag­n­er inves­ti­gates a poten­tial new twist in her family’s his­to­ry. “What she came up with,” Oba­ma writes, “is a thought­ful, beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on what makes us who we are—the search for har­mo­ny between our own indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ties and the val­ues and ideals that bind us togeth­er as Amer­i­cans.”

The New Geog­ra­phy of Jobs, by Enri­co Moret­ti (2012)

Econ­o­mist Enri­co Moret­ti argues that there are three Amer­i­c­as: brain-hub cities like Austin and Boston; cities once dom­i­nat­ed by tra­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing; and the cities in between. “Still a time­ly and smart dis­cus­sion of how dif­fer­ent cities and regions have made a chang­ing econ­o­my work for them,” writes Oba­ma, “and how pol­i­cy­mak­ers can learn from that to lift the cir­cum­stances of work­ing Amer­i­cans every­where.”

Why Lib­er­al­ism Failed, by Patrick J. Deneen (2018)

Polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Patrick J. Deneen argues that lib­er­al­ism is not the result of the nat­ur­al state of pol­i­tics and lays out the ideology’s inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions. “In a time of grow­ing inequal­i­ty, accel­er­at­ing change, and increas­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic order we’ve known for the past few cen­turies,” says the for­mer pres­i­dent, “I found this book thought-pro­vok­ing.”

“The 9.9 Per­cent Is the New Amer­i­can Aris­toc­ra­cy,” by Matthew Stew­art (June 2018)

In The Atlantic, Matthew Stew­art, author of The Man­age­ment Myth, defines a “cog­ni­tive elite,” a “9.9%” of Amer­i­cans who val­ue mer­i­toc­ra­cy and, he argues, are com­plic­it in the ero­sion of democ­ra­cy. “Anoth­er thought-pro­vok­ing analy­sis, this one about how eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca isn’t just grow­ing, but self-rein­forc­ing,” says Oba­ma.

In the Shad­ow of Stat­ues: A White South­ern­er Con­fronts His­to­ry, by Mitch Lan­drieu (2018)

Mitch Lan­drieu, the for­mer may­or of New Orleans, Louisiana, writes in his mem­oir of the per­son­al his­to­ry and reck­on­ing with race that led him to take down four Con­fed­er­ate stat­ues in 2017. “It’s an ulti­mate­ly opti­mistic take from some­one who believes the South will rise again not by reassert­ing the past, but by tran­scend­ing it,” writes Oba­ma.

“Truth Decay: An Ini­tial Explo­ration of the Dimin­ish­ing Role of Facts and Analy­sis in Amer­i­can Pub­lic Life,” by Jen­nifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, RAND Cor­po­ra­tion (2018)

This report for the non­prof­it RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, avail­able as a free ebook, attempts to study the ero­sion of fact-based pol­i­cy mak­ing and dis­course in the US. “A look at how a selec­tive sort­ing of facts and evi­dence isn’t just dis­hon­est, but self-defeat­ing,” says Oba­ma.

While the for­mer pres­i­dent no longer has the pow­er to sway pol­i­cy, he can still inspire mil­lions of peo­ple to read—essential for stay­ing bal­anced, informed, and reflec­tive in our per­ilous times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres. Oba­ma Releas­es a Free Playlist of 40 Songs for a Sum­mer Day (Plus 6 Books on His Sum­mer Read­ing List)

The 5 Books on Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Sum­mer Read­ing List

The Oba­ma “Hope” Poster & The New Copy­right Con­tro­ver­sy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear David Lynch Read from His New Memoir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

in Books, Fashion, Film | June 15th, 2018

We think of David Lynch as a film­mak­er, and right­ly so, but the direc­tor of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve has long kept a more diverse cre­ative port­fo­lio. He began as a painter, study­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of the Fine Arts, and has also tried his hand at pho­tog­ra­phy, music, and com­ic strips. More recent­ly, writes the AV Club’s Ran­dall Col­burn, “Lynch has also released his own line of cof­fee, col­lab­o­rat­ed on Twin Peaks-themed beer and skate­boards, and cre­at­ed his own fes­ti­val. His lat­est endeav­or? T‑shirts, which is wild because it’s hard to imag­ine the ever-dap­per film­mak­er ever wear­ing one.”

Per­haps a line of Lynch-approved tra­di­tion­al white shirts, made to be but­toned all the way up even with­out a tie, remains in devel­op­ment. But for now, fans choose from the 57 T‑shirts designs now avail­able at Stu­dio: David Lynch’s Ama­zon store. All suit­able for wear­ing to your local revival house, they include “Turkey Cheese Head,” “Cow­boy,” “Small Dog,”“Small Bark­ing Dog,“and “You Got­ta Be Kid­din’ Me.” What kind of life, now solid­ly into its eighth decade, has both enabled and dri­ven Lynch to make not just so many things, but so many Lynchi­an things? Per­haps we can find a few answers with­in the near­ly 600 pages of Room to Dream, Lynch’s new mem­oir.

“Fans who share Lynch’s plea­sure in mys­tery will approach this book anx­ious­ly, hop­ing that his secrets may some­how be both revealed and sus­tained,” writes the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Charles Arrow­smith of the book, an excerpt of which you can hear read by Lynch him­self above. (He begins by say­ing “I’m going to tell you a sto­ry about my grand­par­ents” and ends with the image of his young self vom­it­ing into a hel­met he’d brought to school for show-and-tell.) And those who fear that the con­ven­tion­al­i­ty of the mem­oir form might flat­ten out Lynch’s idio­syn­crasies can rest assured that “in telling his life sto­ry, Lynch demon­strates the same dis­re­gard for causal­i­ty and tonal con­sis­ten­cy that marks his films.”

Despite includ­ing not just Lynch’s per­spec­tive but the per­spec­tives of many oth­ers (“sur­pris­ing­ly can­did ex-wives, fam­i­ly mem­bers, actors, agents, musi­cians, and col­leagues in var­i­ous fields,” pro­claims the jack­et copy), “Room to Dream pulls off a neat trick in draw­ing back a cur­tain and reveal­ing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle. Despite the book’s heft, there’s not much to expli­cate the mys­ter­ies of Lynch’s work. But then, for him, the mystery’s the thing. To explain would be to destroy. What we get instead is insight into his cre­ative process.” As ded­i­cat­ed Lynch enthu­si­asts under­stand, the cre­ative process, which through­out his career has led him not to answers but ever more strange­ly com­pelling ques­tions, is every­thing.

Note: When Room to Dream comes out on June 19th, you can down­load the audio­book ver­sion, which Lynch helps nar­rate, for free if you sign up for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram. We have details on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

David Lynch’s Pho­tographs of Old Fac­to­ries

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Ralph Steadman Creates an Unorthodox Illustrated Biography of Sigmund Freud, the Father of Psychoanalysis (1979)

in Art, Books, History, Psychology | June 6th, 2018

Sig­mund Freud died in 1939, and the near­ly eight decades since haven’t been kind to his psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal the­o­ries, but in some sense he sur­vives. “For many years, even as writ­ers were dis­card­ing the more patent­ly absurd ele­ments of his the­o­ry — penis envy, or the death dri­ve — they con­tin­ued to pay homage to Freud’s unblink­ing insight into the human con­di­tion,” writes the New York­er’s Louis Menand. He claims that Freud thus evolved, “in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, from a sci­en­tist into a kind of poet of the mind. And the thing about poets is that they can­not be refut­ed. No one asks of ‘Par­adise Lost’: But is it true? Freud and his con­cepts, now con­vert­ed into metaphors, joined the legion of the undead.”

The mas­ter of a legion of undead psy­cho­log­i­cal metaphors — who, in the ranks of liv­ing illus­tra­tors, could be more suit­ed to ren­der such a fig­ure than Ralph Stead­man? And how many of us know that he actu­al­ly did so in 1979, when he pro­duced an “art-biog­ra­phy” of the “Father of Psy­cho­analy­sis”?

Sig­mund Freud, which has spent long stretch­es out of print since its first pub­li­ca­tion, tells the sto­ry of Freud’s life, begin­ning with his child­hood in Aus­tria to his death, not long after his emi­gra­tion in flight from the Nazis, in Lon­don. It was there that he met Vir­ginia Woolf, who in her diary describes him as “a screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes, par­a­lyzed spas­mod­ic move­ments, inar­tic­u­late: but alert.”

There, again, Freud sounds like one of Stead­man’s draw­ings, some­times out­ward­ly unap­peal­ing but always pos­sessed of an unig­nor­able vital­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by a sol­id core of per­cep­tive­ness. Ear­li­er chap­ters of Freud’s life, char­ac­ter­ized by intel­lec­tu­al as well as phys­i­cal vig­or­ous­ness aid­ed by the 19th-cen­tu­ry “mir­a­cle drug” of cocaine, also give the illus­tra­tor rich mate­r­i­al to work with. One can’t help but think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which forged a per­ma­nent cul­tur­al link between Stead­man’s art and Hunter S. Thomp­son’s prose. How “true” is the drug-fueled desert odyssey that book recounts? More so, per­haps, than many of Freud’s sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies. But as with the work of Freud, so with that of Thomp­son and Stead­man: we return to it not because we want the truth, exact­ly, but because we can’t turn away from the often grotesque ver­sions of our­selves it shows us.

You can pick up a copy of Stead­man’s illus­trat­ed Sig­mund Freud here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud, Father of Psy­cho­analy­sis, Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Sig­mund Freud’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Draw­ings Show How He First Visu­al­ized the Ego, Super­ego, Id & More

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Ralph Steadman’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Biog­ra­phy of Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1983)

Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Draws the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, from Nixon to Trump

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Download 50,000 Art Books & Catalogs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Digital Collections

in Art, Books | June 4th, 2018


If you’ve lived in or vis­it­ed New York City, you must know the laugh­able futil­i­ty of try­ing to “do the Met” in a day, or even a week­end. Not only is the muse­um enor­mous, but its per­ma­nent col­lec­tions demand to be stud­ied in detail, an activ­i­ty one can­not rush through with any sat­is­fac­tion. If you’re head­ed there for a spe­cial exhib­it, be espe­cial­ly disciplined—make a bee­line and do not stop to linger over elab­o­rate Edo-peri­od samu­rai armor or aus­tere Shak­er-made fur­ni­ture.

I thought I’d learned my les­son after many years of res­i­dence in the city. When I returned last sum­mer for a vis­it, fam­i­ly in tow, I vowed to head straight for the Rei Kawakubo exhib­it, list­ing all oth­er pri­or­i­ties beneath it. More fool me.

Imme­di­ate over­whelm over­took as we entered, on a week­end, in a crush of tourist noise. After hours spent admir­ing sar­copha­gi, neo­clas­si­cal paint­ings, etc., etc., we had to nix the exhib­it and push our way into Cen­tral Park for fresh air and recu­per­a­tive ice cream.

Does an exhi­bi­tion check­list, with pho­tographs and descrip­tions of every piece on dis­play, make up for miss­ing the Kawakubo in per­son? Not exact­ly, but at least I can linger over it, vir­tu­al­ly, in soli­tude and at my leisure. If you val­ue this expe­ri­ence, can­not make it to the Met, or want to see sev­er­al hun­dred past exhi­bi­tions from the com­fort of your home, you can do so eas­i­ly thanks to the wealth of cat­a­logs the Met has uploaded to its Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions.

These cat­a­logs doc­u­ment spe­cial exhibits not only at the New York land­mark, but also at gal­leries around the world from the past 100 years or so. In a recent blog post, the Met points to one such scanned catalog—out of almost a hun­dred from the Hun­gar­i­an Gallery Nemzeti Sza­lon—from a 1957 exhi­bi­tion of sculp­tor Mik­lós Bor­sos. The text is in Hun­gar­i­an, but the art­work (fur­ther up), in detailed black and white pho­tographs, speaks a uni­ver­sal visu­al lan­guage.

These cat­a­logs join the thou­sands of books—50,000 titles in all—at the Met’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions. There, you’ll find col­lec­tions such as Rare Books Pub­lished in Impe­r­i­al and Ear­ly Sovi­et Rus­sia, with unusu­al trea­sures like the book Church­es of Uglich, a sur­vey of one Russ­ian town’s church­es, with pho­tos, from the 1880s. “Inter­est­ed in Dada?” asks the Met, and who isn’t? The muse­um has just added a 1917 issue of jour­nal The Blind Man, edit­ed by Mar­cel Duchamp and con­tain­ing Alfred Stieglitz’s pho­to­graph of Duchamp’s found art prank Foun­tain.

If fashion’s your thing, the muse­um has added thou­sands of Bergdorf Good­man sketch­es from 1929 to 1952 (see a par­tic­u­lar­ly ele­gant exam­ple above from the 1930s). Maybe you’re into the his­to­ry of the Met itself? If so, check out this mas­sive col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal images of the muse­um, inside and out, dat­ing from its incep­tion in 1870 to the present. There’s even a selec­tion of pho­tos of its icon­ic spe­cial exhi­bi­tion ban­ners from 1970 through 2004 (like that below from 1982).

If you’re head­ed to the Met to see one of these spe­cial exhibits, take my advice and don’t get dis­tract­ed once you’re inside. But if you want to access a range of the museum’s cul­tur­al trea­sures from afar, you can’t do any bet­ter than brows­ing its Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions, where you’re also like­ly to get lost for hours, maybe days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Makes 375,000 Images of Fine Art Avail­able Under a Cre­ative Com­mons License: Down­load, Use & Remix

Down­load 200+ Free Mod­ern Art Books from the Guggen­heim Muse­um

2,000+ Archi­tec­ture & Art Books You Can Read Free at the Inter­net Archive

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Philip Roth Read from Five of His Major Novels: Sabbath’s Theater, The Ghost Writer and More

in Books, Literature | May 31st, 2018

“I saw and heard some­thing remark­able just a few hours ago,” wrote New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick a lit­tle over five years ago, “some­thing I’m not like­ly to for­get until all the mech­a­nisms of remem­ber­ing are shot and I’m tucked away for good.” He had attend­ed an eight­i­eth-birth­day cel­e­bra­tion for the late Philip Roth at the Newark Muse­um. There, after a series of trib­utes from fel­low lit­er­ary fig­ures includ­ing Jonathan Lethem, Hermione Lee, and Edna O’Brien, the Newark-born-and-raised nov­el­ist gave what Rem­nick described as “the most aston­ish­ing lit­er­ary per­for­mance I’ve ever wit­nessed.”

Roth began by nam­ing all the mem­o­ries of his Newark child­hood about which he would not speak that evening, from “the news­reels at the Roo­sevelt The­atre” to “the fights at Lau­rel Gar­den” to “see­ing Jack­ie Robin­son play for the Mon­tre­al Roy­als against the Newark Bears, at Rup­pert Sta­di­um” and much else besides. Then, after admit­ting that he had com­mit­ted par­alip­sis, the rhetor­i­cal tech­nique of bring­ing up a sub­ject by say­ing that you won’t, “Roth final­ly set­tled into his real theme of the night: death. Hap­py birth­day, indeed!”

You can hear Roth’s per­for­mance in its 45-minute entire­ty in this video, in which he also reads a pas­sage from 1995’s Sab­bath’s The­ater. You can see Roth giv­ing anoth­er read­ing from that book, which he calls his favorite (and also “death-haunt­ed”), in the 92Y video at the top of the post.

Its title char­ac­ter, the sex-obsessed 63-year-old pup­peteer Mick­ey Sab­bath, exists as a law unto him­self. He lives a chaot­ic, sor­did­ly plea­sure-seek­ing life in response, Roth explains, “to a place where noth­ing keeps its promise and every­thing is per­ish­able.”

Among Roth’s 31 books, the stand­alone Sab­bath’s The­ater lays a fair claim to the title of his mas­ter­piece. But unlike oth­er mem­o­rable Roth pro­tag­o­nists, Sab­bath starred in no oth­er books. The most sprawl­ing char­ac­ter-con­nect­ed series Roth wrote, which spans nine books writ­ten over near­ly three decades, fea­tures nov­el­ist and autho­r­i­al alter ego Nathan Zuck­er­man.

You can hear Roth read selec­tions from the first three Zuck­er­man nov­els, 1979’s The Ghost Writer (also known as Zuck­er­man Bound), 1981’s Zuck­er­man Unbound, and 1983’s The Anato­my Les­son, in the three videos above. Roth’s last cycle of nov­els were con­nect­ed not by com­mon char­ac­ters but by their short length and, in their brevi­ty, even more intense explo­rations of the themes, or theme, always dear to him: what it means to have grown up Amer­i­can at a cer­tain peri­od in his­to­ry, and how that mean­ing trans­forms and deep­ens with age.

In the video above, Roth reads the end of 2010’s Neme­sis, his final nov­el­is­tic med­i­ta­tion on that theme. In it sev­er­al char­ac­ters of his gen­er­a­tion, then young boys, watch their teacher throw a javelin. “Run­ning with the javelin aloft, stretch­ing his throw­ing arm back behind his body, bring­ing the throw­ing arm through to release the javelin high over his shoul­der, and releas­ing it then like an explo­sion, he seemed to us invin­ci­ble.” The awe Neme­sis’ nar­ra­tor and his friends feel wit­ness­ing that ath­let­ic mas­tery, Roth’s read­ers feel — and will con­tin­ue to feel — wit­ness­ing his lit­er­ary mas­tery.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Roth (RIP) Cre­ates a List of the 15 Books That Influ­enced Him Most

What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an Eng­lish Prof?

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Use Psychedelic Drugs to Improve Mental Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

in Books, Health, Psychology | May 29th, 2018

The his­to­ry of research on psy­che­del­ic drugs is so sen­sa­tion­al that more sober-mind­ed exper­i­ments (so to speak) often get obscured by the hip, the weird, and the nefar­i­ous, the lat­ter includ­ing secret CIA and Army test­ing of LSD and oth­er drugs as a means of psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion.” These exper­i­ments inad­ver­tent­ly led to Ken Kesey’s infa­mous “Acid Tests” in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. On the oth­er side of the coun­try, Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Tim­o­thy Leary used ques­tion­able meth­ods in his psilo­cy­bin exper­i­ments with pris­on­ers and stu­dents, before get­ting fired and going on to expand the mind of the coun­ter­cul­ture, earn­ing the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing Richard Nixon call him “the most dan­ger­ous man in Amer­i­ca.”

Mean­while, work­ing in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty in very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances in the late 50s, a UC Irvine psy­chi­a­trist named Oscar Janiger brought vol­un­teer sub­jects, includ­ing sev­er­al dozen artists, to a house out­side L.A., where they were giv­en LSD and psy­chother­a­py. Janiger’s work has its sen­sa­tion­al side—a cousin of Allen Gins­berg, he report­ed­ly intro­duced Cary Grant, Anais Nin, Jack Nichol­son, and Aldous Hux­ley to acid. But his pri­ma­ry achieve­ment, in data that remained most­ly unpub­lished dur­ing his life­time, were his dis­cov­er­ies of the ther­a­peu­tic and cre­ative use of psy­che­del­ic drugs under con­trolled con­di­tions with sub­jects who were pre­pared for the expe­ri­ence and guid­ed through it by trained pro­fes­sion­als.

The exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Janiger and oth­ers dif­fered marked­ly from the free­wheel­ing recre­ation­al drug use of the coun­ter­cul­ture and the weaponiza­tion of psy­che­delics by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. In recent years, sci­en­tists and psy­chol­o­gists have con­duct­ed sim­i­lar kinds of research under even more tight­ly con­trolled con­di­tions, sub­stan­ti­at­ing and expand­ing on the con­clu­sions of ear­ly exper­i­menters who found that psy­che­delics seem remark­ably effec­tive in treat­ing depres­sion, anx­i­ety, alco­holism, drug addic­tion, and oth­er stub­born­ly destruc­tive human ills. This research sup­ports with sound evi­dence LSD inven­tor Albert Hoff­man’s descrip­tion of his drug as “med­i­cine for the soul.”

While research orga­ni­za­tions like MAPS (Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies) have cen­tral­ized and pro­mot­ed much of the cur­rent research, it’s now get­ting a huge pop­u­lar boost from none oth­er than food writer Michael Pol­lan, best­selling author of books like The Omnivore’s Dilem­ma and In Defense of Food. “A self-described ‘reluc­tant psy­cho­naut,’” writes NPR, Pol­lan sub­mit­ted him­self as a test sub­ject for exper­i­ments with “LSD, psilo­cy­bin and 5‑MeO-DMT, a sub­stance in the ven­om of the Sono­ran Desert toad.” He has described his expe­ri­ences and the work of the research com­mu­ni­ty in a new book titled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Sci­ence of Psy­che­delics Teach­es Us About Con­scious­ness, Dying, Addic­tion, Depres­sion, and Tran­scen­dence.

At the top of the post, see Pol­lan describe the book in a short video from Pen­guin. He dis­cuss­es such ancient ideas (as he has in past writ­ings) of psy­choac­tive drugs as “entheagens”—or chem­i­cal con­duits to the divine. “In the Dar­win­ian sense,” he says, the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose of psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ences may be an increase in cog­ni­tive vari­ety and the stim­u­la­tion of “more metaphors, more insights.” In his Fresh Air inter­view above, Pol­lan fur­ther explains how this works ther­a­peu­ti­cal­ly. “One of the things our mind does is tell sto­ries about our­selves,” he says. “If you’re depressed, you’re being told a sto­ry per­haps that you’re worth­less, that no one could pos­si­bly love you… that life will not get bet­ter.”

“These sto­ries,” Pol­lan says, “trap us in these rumi­na­tive loops that are very hard to get out of. They’re very destruc­tive pat­terns of thought.” Psy­che­del­ic drugs “dis­able for a peri­od of time the part of the brain where the self talks to itself. It’s called the default mode net­work, and it’s a group of struc­tures that con­nect parts of the cor­tex — the evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly most recent part of the brain — to deep­er lev­els where emo­tion and mem­o­ry reside.” Dis­rupt­ing old nar­ra­tives helps peo­ple to write bet­ter, health­i­er sto­ries.

As Pol­lan says in the Time video above, psy­che­delics have been pop­u­lar­ly con­ceived as drugs that make you crazy—and in some cas­es, that hap­pens. But they are also “drugs that can make you sane, or more sane.”  One of the major dif­fer­ences between one out­come and the oth­er is the con­di­tions under which the drug is tak­en. When qual­i­ty and dosage of the drugs are con­trolled, and when sub­jects are pre­pared for “bad trips” with spe­cif­ic instruc­tions, even fright­en­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions can con­tribute to bet­ter men­tal health.

In his psilo­cy­bin exper­i­ment, for exam­ple, Pol­lan was accom­pa­nied by two “guides” and giv­en “a set of ‘flight instruc­tions,” includ­ing what to do if you see a mon­ster.

…don’t try to run away. Walk right up to it, plant your feet and say, “What do you have to teach me? What are you doing in my mind?” And if you do that, accord­ing to the flight instruc­tions, your fear will morph into some­thing much more pos­i­tive very quick­ly.

In anoth­er exam­ple, anoth­er psy­lo­cy­bin sub­ject, Alana, describes in the Vox video below her guid­ed expe­ri­ence with the drug dur­ing a smok­ing ces­sa­tion tri­al at Johns Hop­kins. “There were scary parts, fore­bod­ing parts,” she says, but thanks to con­trolled con­di­tions and the reas­sur­ing pres­ence of a guide, “I always knew there was joy and peace on the oth­er side of it. It was free­ing.”

Using psy­che­delics to con­front and con­quer fears goes back many thou­sands of years in tra­di­tion­al soci­eties. Mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture has large­ly turned to anti­de­pres­sants and oth­er phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to reg­u­late anx­i­ety, but as Pol­lan points out, “Prozac doesn’t help when you’re con­fronting mor­tal­i­ty,” the deep­est, most uni­ver­sal fear of all. But psychedelics—as Aldous Hux­ley found when he took LSD on his deathbed—can “occa­sion an expe­ri­ence in people—a mys­ti­cal experience—that some­how makes it eas­i­er to let go.” Sure­ly, there are oth­er ways to do so. In any case, psy­che­del­ic drugs seem so ben­e­fi­cial to psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being that they can be, and hope­ful­ly will be in the future, used to pos­i­tive­ly (respon­si­bly) shift the con­scious­ness and cre­ative poten­tial of mil­lions of suf­fer­ing peo­ple.

For more on this sub­ject, read Pol­lan’s lat­est book–How to Change Your Mind: What the New Sci­ence of Psy­che­delics Teach­es Us About Con­scious­ness, Dying, Addic­tion, Depres­sion, and Tran­scen­dence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip Which Took Place on April 19, 1943

Rare Footage Shows US and British Sol­diers Get­ting Dosed with LSD in Gov­ern­ment-Spon­sored Tests (1958 + 1964)

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Philip Roth (RIP) Creates a List of the 15 Books That Influenced Him Most

in Books, Literature | May 23rd, 2018

Image by Thier­ry Ehrmann, via Flickr Com­mons

We stand at a piv­otal time in his­to­ry, and not only when it comes to pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics and oth­er tragedies. The boomer-era artists and writ­ers who loomed over the last sev­er­al decades—whose influ­ence, teach­ing, or patron­age deter­mined the careers of hun­dreds of successors—are pass­ing away. It seems that not a week goes by that we don’t mourn the loss of one or anoth­er tow­er­ing fig­ure in the arts and let­ters. And along with the eulo­gies and trib­utes come crit­i­cal reap­praisals of often straight white men whose sex­u­al and racial pol­i­tics can seem seri­ous­ly prob­lem­at­ic through a 21st cen­tu­ry lens.

Sure­ly such pieces are even now being writ­ten after the death of Philip Roth yes­ter­day, nov­el­ist of, among many oth­er themes, the unbri­dled straight male Id. From 1969’s sex-obsessed Alexan­der Port­noy—who mas­tur­bates with raw liv­er and screams at his ther­a­pist “LET’S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID!”—to 1995’s aging, sex-obsessed pup­peteer Mick­ey Sab­bath, who mas­tur­bates over his own wife’s grave, with sev­er­al obses­sive men like David Kepesh (who turns into a breast) in-between, Roth cre­at­ed mem­o­rably shock­ing, frus­trat­ed Jew­ish male char­ac­ters whose sex­u­al­i­ty might gen­er­ous­ly be described as self­ish.

In a New York Times inter­view at the begin­ning of this year, Roth, who retired from writ­ing in 2012, addressed the ques­tion of these “recur­rent themes” in the era of Trump and #MeToo. “I haven’t shunned the hard facts in these fic­tions of why and how and when tumes­cent men do what they do, even when these have not been in har­mo­ny with the por­tray­al that a mas­cu­line pub­lic-rela­tions cam­paign — if there were such a thing — might pre­fer.… Con­se­quent­ly, none of the more extreme con­duct I have been read­ing about in the news­pa­pers late­ly has aston­ished me.”

The psy­cho­log­i­cal truths Roth tells about fit­ful­ly neu­rot­ic male egos don’t flat­ter most men, as he points out, but maybe his depic­tions of obses­sive male desire offer a sober­ing per­spec­tive as we strug­gle to con­front its even ugli­er and more vio­lent, bound­ary-defy­ing irrup­tions in the real world. That said, many a writer after Roth han­dled the sub­ject with far less humor and com­ic aware­ness of its bathos. From where did Roth him­self draw his sense of the trag­i­cal­ly absurd, his lit­er­ary inter­est in extremes of human long­ing and its often-destruc­tive expres­sion?

He offered one col­lec­tion of influ­ences in 2016, when he pledged to donate his per­son­al library of over 3,500 vol­umes to the Newark Pub­lic Library (“my oth­er home”) upon his death. Along with that announce­ment, Roth issued a list of “fif­teen works of fic­tion,” writes Talya Zax at For­ward, “he con­sid­ers most sig­nif­i­cant to his life.” Next to each title, he lists the age at which he first read the book.

“It’s worth not­ing,” Zax points out, “that Roth, who fre­quent­ly fields accu­sa­tions of misog­y­ny, includ­ed only one female author on the list: Colette.” Make of that what you will. We might note oth­er blind spots as well, but so it is. Should we read Philip Roth? Of course we should read Philip Roth, for his keen insights into vari­eties of Amer­i­can mas­culin­i­ty, Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, aging, Amer­i­can hubris, lit­er­ary cre­ativ­i­ty, Wikipedia, and so much more besides, span­ning over fifty years. Start at the begin­ning with two of his fist pub­lished sto­ries from the late 50s, “Epstein” and “The Con­ver­sion of the Jews,” and work your way up to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

via The For­ward

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

What Was It Like to Have Philip Roth as an Eng­lish Prof?

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Philip Roth on Aging

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Summer

in Books | May 22nd, 2018

It’s some­thing of a tra­di­tion. Every sum­mer, philanthropist/Microsoft founder Bill Gates rec­om­mends five books to read dur­ing the slow sum­mer months. This year’s list, he tells us, wres­tles with some big ques­tions: “What makes a genius tick? Why do bad things hap­pen to good peo­ple? Where does human­i­ty come from, and where are we head­ed?”

And now, with­out no fur­ther ado, here’s Bil­l’s list for 2018. The text below is his, not mine:

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, by Wal­ter Isaac­son. I think Leonar­do was one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonar­do had an absurd­ly wide range of inter­ests, from human anato­my to the the­ater. Isaac­son does the best job I’ve seen of pulling togeth­er the dif­fer­ent strands of Leonardo’s life and explain­ing what made him so excep­tion­al. A wor­thy fol­low-up to Isaacson’s great biogra­phies of Albert Ein­stein and Steve Jobs. [Read his blog post on the book here.]

Every­thing Hap­pens for a Rea­son and Oth­er Lies I’ve Loved, by Kate Bowler. When Bowler, a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School, is diag­nosed with stage IV colon can­cer, she sets out to under­stand why it hap­pened. Is it a test of her char­ac­ter? The result is a heart­break­ing, sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny mem­oir about faith and com­ing to grips with your own mor­tal­i­ty. [Read his blog post on the book here.]

Lin­coln in the Bar­do, by George Saun­ders. I thought I knew every­thing I need­ed to know about Abra­ham Lin­coln, but this nov­el made me rethink parts of his life. It blends his­tor­i­cal facts from the Civ­il War with fan­tas­ti­cal elements—it’s basi­cal­ly a long con­ver­sa­tion among 166 ghosts, includ­ing Lincoln’s deceased son. I got new insight into the way Lin­coln must have been crushed by the weight of both grief and respon­si­bil­i­ty. This is one of those fas­ci­nat­ing, ambigu­ous books you’ll want to dis­cuss with a friend when you’re done. [Read his blog post on this book here.]

Ori­gin Sto­ry: A Big His­to­ry of Every­thing, by David Chris­t­ian. David cre­at­ed my favorite course of all time, Big His­to­ry. It tells the sto­ry of the uni­verse from the big bang to today’s com­plex soci­eties, weav­ing togeth­er insights and evi­dence from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines into a sin­gle nar­ra­tive. If you haven’t tak­en Big His­to­ry yet, Ori­gin Sto­ry is a great intro­duc­tion. If you have, it’s a great refresh­er. Either way, the book will leave you with a greater appre­ci­a­tion of humanity’s place in the uni­verse. [Read his blog post on this book here.]

Fact­ful­ness, by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. I’ve been rec­om­mend­ing this book since the day it came out. Hans, the bril­liant glob­al-health lec­tur­er who died last year, gives you a break­through way of under­stand­ing basic truths about the world—how life is get­ting bet­ter, and where the world still needs to improve. And he weaves in unfor­get­table anec­dotes from his life. It’s a fit­ting final word from a bril­liant man, and one of the best books I’ve ever read. [Read his blog post on this book here.]

You can find Gate’s read­ing lists from pre­vi­ous sum­mers in the Relat­eds below.

via Gates Notes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

Bill Gates, Book Crit­ic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2015

Sum­mer 2014

Sum­mer 2013

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