What Are Your Favorite Non-Fiction Books?

in Life, Literature | June 20th, 2011

A few days ago, The Guardian pub­lished its list of the 100 Great­est Non-Fic­tion Books of all time. The col­lec­tion spans biog­ra­phy, art, phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry and sev­er­al oth­er hefty cat­e­gories, and, for the most part, there’s not much for any­one seek­ing light sum­mer read­ing, unless you’re the sort who reg­u­lar­ly brings Kant, Hume, Herodotus, and Pepys down to the sea­side. (Note: The Guardian pub­lished Fri­day The Best Hol­i­day Reads, which goes heavy on vaca­tion-wor­thy fic­tion.)

Inspired by the Guardian project, The New York Times turned to its staff and put togeth­er a list of their own favorite non-fic­tion books. Some of their choic­es are what you’d expect (Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Joan Did­ion’s The White Album, Michael Lewis’ Mon­ey­ball), and a few oth­ers both sur­prised and delight­ed us (Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, Adri­an Nicole LeBlanc’s Ran­dom Fam­i­ly and Please Kill Me: The Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain). But we still found the list vague­ly incom­plete.

So now, dear read­ers, we turn to you.

Sev­er­al years ago we asked you to tell us about the books that changed your life, and you deliv­ered. (Your first choice by a wide mar­gin was George Orwell’s 1984.) This time around, we want to hear your favorite non-fic­tion books, and we’ll both post your choic­es and — of course — let you know if they’re avail­able for free online.

We’ll kick it off with a few per­son­al favorites:

The Pos­sessed, by Elif Batu­man. A delight­ful rem­i­nis­cence by a recov­er­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent, in which she treats, among oth­er things, Russ­ian nov­el­ists, doomed love affairs, aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences, Tur­kic poet­ry, and most­ly, the plea­sures and per­ils of lov­ing books just a lit­tle bit too much.

The Best Amer­i­can Sports Writ­ing of the Cen­tu­ry, edit­ed by David Hal­ber­stam and Glenn Stout. You don’t even need to know or care about sports, because like all great lit­er­a­ture, these essays aren’t real­ly just about what they’re about. The sub­ject may be sports, but the sto­ries are Amer­i­ca.

Your turn! Feel free to add your favorites to the com­ments sec­tion below…

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Stephen Colbert Dishes Out Wisdom & Laughs at Northwestern

in Life, Television | June 19th, 2011

Conan O’Brien’s speech at Dart­mouth’s grad­u­a­tion last week­end — that’s a hard act to fol­low. But Stephen Col­bert put on a very good show Fri­day at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, his alma mater (Class of 1986).

Best Joke:

We did­n’t have cell phones [dur­ing my days at North­west­ern]. If you made plans to meet some­one in a snow storm and they did­n’t show up, you just assumed that they were devoured by wolves and went on with your life. And we could­n’t text, and we cer­tain­ly could­n’t sext each oth­er. If you want­ed to send some­one a pic­ture of your pri­vate parts, you had to fax it. That’s how Kinko’s got its name!

Best Advice:

In my expe­ri­ence, you will tru­ly serve only what you love, because ser­vice is love made vis­i­ble. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love com­mu­ni­ty, you will serve your com­mu­ni­ty. If you love mon­ey, you will serve your mon­ey. If you love only your­self, you will serve only your­self and you will have only your­self… Try to love oth­ers and serve oth­ers, and hope­ful­ly find those who will love and serve you in return…

H/T @webacion

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The Sounds of Jerusalem

in Life, Music | June 15th, 2011

Ophir Kutiel, aka Kuti­man, burst onto the dig­i­tal scene with The Moth­er of All Funk Chords in 2009. Now he has resur­faced with a new video. This time, it’s a musi­cal jour­ney through Jerusalem, a mashup that weaves togeth­er the sounds of local musi­cians, cre­at­ing a visual/aural com­po­si­tion that lets you tap into the unique sound of a city that lives part­ly in the past, part­ly in the future, always waver­ing between opti­mism and despair.…

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The Ayn Rand Guide to Romance

in Life, Philosophy | June 14th, 2011

Can Ayn Rand tell us some­thing about achiev­ing a deeply sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ship? It’s hard to imag­ine. She was noto­ri­ous­ly churl­ish, dumped friends and allies who did­n’t give her works pos­i­tive reviews, and cheat­ed on her hus­band with a man 24 years her junior, then even­tu­al­ly expelled the young Nathaniel Bran­den from her intel­lec­tu­al cir­cle. And heck, she even made her hus­band wear a bell on his shoe, to warn her about his com­ings and goings.

But, no mat­ter, you have to sep­a­rate the phi­los­o­phy from the per­son … or so many acolytes of flawed thinkers have argued. Right fans of John Edwards? All three of you? So here you have it, The Self­ish Path to Romance, a love man­u­al based on Ayn Rand’s Objec­tivist phi­los­o­phy. The video almost screams par­o­dy, but it’s appar­ent­ly not. You can snag a copy of the book on Ama­zon here…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Argues That Believ­ing in God Is an Insult to Rea­son on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

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Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dartmouth Graduation

in Life | June 13th, 2011

The stars shined upon the Ivy League schools this grad­u­a­tion sea­son. Tom Han­ks at Yale, Amy Poehler at Har­vard, Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at U Penn. These kids have it good, but nowhere near as good as the Dart­mouth grads. This week­end, Conan O’Brien rolled into Hanover, New Hamp­shire and dished out plen­ty of jokes:

Par­ents, if your child majored in fine arts or phi­los­o­phy, you have good rea­son to be wor­ried. The only place where they are now real­ly qual­i­fied to get a job is ancient Greece. Good luck with that degree.

You know, New Hamp­shire is such a spe­cial place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New Eng­land air and thought, “Wow, I’m in the state that’s next to the state where Ben and Jer­ry’s ice cream is made.”

To this day I can­not help but won­der: What if I had gone to Dart­mouth? If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I might have spent at least some of my col­lege years out­side and today I might not be aller­gic to all plant life, as well as most types of rock. If I had gone to Dart­mouth, right now I’d be wear­ing a fleece thong instead of a lace thong… If I had gone to Dart­mouth, I’d have a liv­er the size and con­sis­ten­cy of a bean bag chair. Final­ly, if I had gone to Dart­mouth, today I’d be get­ting an hon­orary degree at Har­vard. Imag­ine how awe­some that would be.

And a lit­tle wis­dom for life, which, hon­est­ly, holds entire­ly true.

For decades, in show busi­ness, the ulti­mate goal of every come­di­an was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many peo­ple I thought that achiev­ing that goal would define me as suc­cess­ful. But that is not true. No spe­cif­ic job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told grad­u­ates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, dis­ap­point­ment will come. The beau­ty is that through dis­ap­point­ment you can gain clar­i­ty, and with clar­i­ty comes con­vic­tion and true orig­i­nal­i­ty.

Many of you here today are get­ting your diplo­ma at this Ivy League school because you have com­mit­ted your­self to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a com­mence­ment address than “fol­low your dream.” Well I am here to tell you that what­ev­er you think your dream is now, it will prob­a­bly change. And that’s okay. Four years ago, many of you had a spe­cif­ic vision of what your col­lege expe­ri­ence was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very dif­fer­ent from what you imag­ined. Your room­mates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion changed. I bet some of you have changed your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion since I began this speech. I know I have. But through the good and espe­cial­ly the bad, the per­son you are now is some­one you could nev­er have con­jured in the fall of 2007.

You can find the com­plete tran­script of the speech here. And don’t miss Conan’s vis­it to Google last sum­mer, which was full of good laughs…

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Mark Kelly Beams David Bowie Lines to His Wife, Gabby Giffords

in Life, Music | June 9th, 2011

This week, U2’s 360° Tour hit the west coast of the US, stop­ping first in Seat­tle, then Oak­land and next Ana­heim. Though crit­ics have offered mixed reviews (this v. that), we had our­selves a ball, hor­ren­dous traf­fic jams aside. And we were par­tic­u­lar­ly touched by one moment with a poignant back­sto­ry.

Dur­ing the show, the audi­ence gets beamed up to Mark Kel­ly, an astro­naut on the space shut­tle Endeav­our, who hap­pens to be mar­ried to Gab­by Gif­fords, the US rep­re­sen­ta­tive shot this past Jan­u­ary in Ari­zona. To the 70,000 onlook­ers, Kel­ly says “Tell my wife I love her very much she knows” – the same lines deliv­ered by Major Tom, the fic­tion­al astro­naut, made famous by David Bowie’s Space Odd­i­ty: And, with that, U2 breaks into “Beau­ti­ful Day,” the song that served as a wake-up call for the Endeav­our crew, at Gab­by Gif­fords’ per­son­al request. How’s that for a nice touch?

P.S. Yes we know that Endeav­our returned to earth last week. But we have noth­ing against the will­ing sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief.

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“Lift” — A Portrait of Life in a London High Rise

in Film, Life | June 8th, 2011

How do you ade­quate­ly por­tray life in a high-rise build­ing? Lon­don film­mak­er Marc Isaacs found a rather uncon­ven­tion­al answer to this ques­tion. He installed him­self inside the lift/elevator of a high rise on the East End of Lon­don. And for ten hours a day, over two months, he would ride up and down with the res­i­dents, with his cam­era point­ing at them. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to see how the res­i­dents react to him being there — some are sus­pi­cious or even hos­tile at the begin­ning. Oth­ers open up about their per­son­al lives and their dai­ly life in the build­ing. And then oth­ers bring him some­thing to eat, a chair to sit down on, or even lit­tle presents. The result is a mov­ing and “qui­et­ly fas­ci­nat­ing med­i­ta­tion on the mun­dan­i­ties of Lon­don life.” Writ­ing about the film, the Times Online put it best: “Isaacs has an astound­ing gift for get­ting peo­ple to open up to him and he uses film the way a skilled artist uses paint. The result is beau­ti­ful, heart­break­ing and pro­found­ly humane.”

Here’s some bonus mate­r­i­al: a review of “Lift” and Isaacs’ two oth­er short doc­u­men­taries “Calais” and “Trav­ellers,” a Sun­day Times arti­cle enti­tled “Marc Isaacs on his doc­u­men­tary art,” and an inter­view with Mark by The Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ers Group dfg.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Bono Tells Graduates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

in Life, Music | June 7th, 2011


Back in 2004, Bono, the co-founder of ONE (an NGO that rais­es aware­ness of AIDS and pover­ty in Africa), received an hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. Of course, Bono is also the lead singer of U2, and he can com­mand the atten­tion of any large audi­ence. Speak­ing to Pen­n’s grad­u­at­ing class of 2004, Bono did­n’t give the usu­al advice — go forth and fol­low your pas­sion. No, the mes­sage was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. He urged the grad­u­ates to serve their age by betray­ing it, by “expos­ing its con­ceits, it’s foibles, it’s pho­ny moral cer­ti­tudes … and mas­sive moral blindspots,” Africa being per­haps the most glar­ing exam­ple. Then, his speech wraps up with this, the best lines saved for last.

Whether it’s this or some­thing else, I hope you’ll pick a fight and get in it. Get your boots dirty, get rough, steel your courage…, make one last pri­mal scream, and go. Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remem­ber, you don’t owe any­body any expla­na­tions. You don’t owe your par­ents any expla­na­tions. You don’t owe your pro­fes­sors any expla­na­tions.

You know I used to think the future was sol­id or fixed, some­thing you inher­it­ed like an old build­ing that you move into when the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion moves out or gets chased out. But it’s not. The future is not fixed, it’s flu­id. You can build your own build­ing, or hut or con­do.

My point is that the world is more mal­leable than you think, and it’s wait­ing for you to ham­mer it into shape.… That’s what this degree of yours is, a blunt instru­ment. So go forth and build some­thing with it. Remem­ber what John Adams said about Ben Franklin, “He does not hes­i­tate at our bold­est mea­sures but rather seems to think us too irres­olute.” Well this is the time for bold mea­sures and this is the coun­try and you are the gen­er­a­tion.

Amen Bono, catch you tonight…

You can find a full tran­script of Bono’s speech here.

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