Falling Man 9–11

in Books | September 11th, 2007

On the anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks, it seems fit­ting to call atten­tion to Don DeLil­lo’s Falling Man, a recent addi­tion to the grow­ing body of fic­tion now known as “9/11 nov­el.” How­ev­er you may feel about DeLil­lo’s writ­ing style (we often find that it grates), Falling Man adept­ly cap­tures the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal haze that sur­round­ed NYC in the wake of the attacks. In inter­views with Guer­ni­ca and NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered, DeLil­lo talks about the influ­ences that led him to explore the attacks and their after­math from the per­spec­tive of both a ter­ror­ist and a sur­vivor. If lis­ten­ing to the book is more your speed, check out the audio ver­sion at Ama­zon or the down­load at Audi­ble.

This guest post was writ­ten by Noah Elkin.

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Life-Changing Books Now on Google’s “My Library”

in Books, Google, Web/Tech | September 10th, 2007

A few weeks ago, our read­ers con­tributed to cre­at­ing a list of books that left an indeli­ble mark on their lives. You can review the orig­i­nal post here. But we fig­ured why not add them to our “My Library” page on Google, a new prod­uct that we briefly men­tioned yes­ter­day. You can access the col­lec­tion here (or get it by rss feed). And, as you’ll see, we also import­ed to the list all of our users’ com­ments on the indi­vid­ual books. Explore the list, find a great read, and pass it along to a wor­thy friend.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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The World Without Us: The Staggering Thought Experiment

in Science | September 10th, 2007

What if we dis­ap­peared from the face of the earth tomor­row? All of us, just like that? What would hap­pen? How would the remain­ing world sur­vive or thrive with­out us? That’s the sce­nario that sci­ence writer Alan Weis­man works through in his new eco-thriller, The World With­out Us.

Based on his con­sid­er­able research and exten­sive inter­views with experts, Weis­man sees things play­ing out like this (and here I’m quot­ing from the New York Times book review): “With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s sub­way tun­nels would fill with water in two days. With­in 20 years, Lex­ing­ton Avenue would be a riv­er. Fire- and wind-rav­aged sky­scrap­ers would even­tu­al­ly fall like giant trees. With­in weeks of our dis­ap­pear­ance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioac­tive blobs, while our petro­chem­i­cal plants, ‘tick­ing time bombs’ even on a nor­mal day, would become flam­ing gey­sers spew­ing tox­ins for decades to come… After about 100,000 years, car­bon diox­ide would return to pre­hu­man lev­els. Domes­ti­cat­ed species from cat­tle to car­rots would revert back to their wild ances­tors. And on every dehabi­tat­ed con­ti­nent, forests and grass­lands would reclaim our farms and park­ing lots as ani­mals began a slow parade back to Eden.” And, it’s also help­ful to know, per­haps, that not even cock­roach­es would fare well in a world with­out Homo sapi­ens.

How Weis­man researched this big ques­tion and drew his con­clu­sions is fas­ci­nat­ing, and for­tu­nate­ly it’s all explained in this Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that fea­tures two recent inter­views with Weis­man. You can also catch Weis­man speak­ing on John Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show in less sci­en­tif­ic terms. Watch the video here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• For more relat­ed pod­casts, check out our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion
• Also check out Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can’s June 12 inter­view with Jared Dia­mond (author of Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fate of Human Soci­eties), who talks about the “State of the World Envi­ron­ment.” (iTunes — Feed — Web Site).

Google’s “My Library” (and Other Bookish Social Networks)

in Google | September 10th, 2007

As part of Google’s push into the dig­i­tal book mar­ket (see Fri­day’s post), the com­pa­ny launched last week My Library, which lets you cre­ate lists of your own books, search the con­tent of your book inven­to­ry by key­word, and then share your book lists with friends. (You can see exam­ples of these book lists here and here, and also get Google’s offi­cial spiel on the project here.) It’s a nice idea for stu­dents and schol­ars, but will it have much take-up with the broad­er read­ing pub­lic? I’m skep­ti­cal, but you tell me? We’ve got many bona fide read­ers here. Will you be sink­ing time into build­ing your Google Library? Or are you instead ever-refin­ing your Face­book pro­file and shar­ing book­lists there? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Check out the Visu­al Book­shelf app on Face­book, which offers an effec­tive way of shar­ing your books with your social net­work. Also be sure to scan Deeplink­ing’s com­pi­la­tion, The Big List of Book­ish Social Net­works. Final­ly, if you cre­ate a book­list on Google Library (start mak­ing one here), send the urls our way and we’ll post them.

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The Digital Tipping Point: The Wild Ride from Podcast to Book Deal

in Books, Media | September 10th, 2007

Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly announced last week that Lars Brown­worth, a New York high school teacher, will pub­lish with Crown (a Ran­dom House divi­sion) a new book that cov­ers “1,200 years of Byzan­tine his­to­ry, exam­in­ing the culture’s for­got­ten role in pre­serv­ing clas­si­cal thought, con­nect­ing East and West, and build­ing mod­ern West­ern soci­ety.” It’s expect­ed to hit the book­stores in ear­ly 2009.

There’s lots to say about this deal, but we want­ed to delve a lit­tle into the back­sto­ry, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how an unex­pect­ed chain of events, all built into Web 2.0, made this deal pos­si­ble. (And, yes, we’ll also touch briefly on where Open Cul­ture fits into the pic­ture.)

The sto­ry begins in March 2005, back when Brown­worth start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing on iTunes an edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast called 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site). Released in install­ments, the pod­casts gave users the rare abil­i­ty to down­load a com­plete aca­d­e­m­ic course to their MP3 play­er, any­time, any­where, for free. Brown­worth was a pio­neer, and by late 2006, peo­ple start­ed tak­ing notice. In Decem­ber, Wired men­tioned 12 Byzan­tine Rulers in a short web fea­ture, which net­ted the pod­cast a small uptick in down­loads. Then, days lat­er, our fledg­ling blog fol­lowed up with a short piece — The Hottest Course on iTunes (and the Future of Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion). From there, things got inter­est­ing. Our post got almost imme­di­ate­ly picked up on Digg.com, a mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar web­site, and its users cat­a­pult­ed the sto­ry to Dig­g’s home­page. Down­loads of Brown­worth’s pod­casts surged; the pow­er of Web 2.0 was kick­ing in. Brown­worth spec­u­lat­ed dur­ing an inter­view last week that the “Digg effect” wide­ly broad­ened the expo­sure of his pod­cast, and, soon enough, The New York Times was knock­ing on his door. By late Jan­u­ary, the pil­lar of Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism pub­lished a flat­ter­ing fea­ture: His­to­ry Teacher Becomes Pod­cast Celebri­ty. Then, it all start­ed again. Pod­cast down­loads spiked high­er, far exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous wave from Digg. More arti­cles and an NPR inter­view fol­lowed. Next came the book agents’ calls. … That’s, in short, how we got to last week’s announce­ment.

Brown­worth’s sto­ry, although unusu­al, is part of a grow­ing trend. Book pub­lish­ers seem increas­ing­ly will­ing to let the wis­dom of crowds iden­ti­fy pod­casts that trans­late into mar­ketable books, and then let the pod­casts stim­u­late book sales. This year, Mignon Fog­a­r­ty notably inked deals to release spin­off books and audio­books of her pop­u­lar Gram­mar Girl pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And giv­en that 12 Byzan­tine Rulers has been down­loaded 735,000 times just this year, Brown­worth and his new pub­lish­er felt right­ly jus­ti­fied in tak­ing a sim­i­lar approach.

We’ll grad­u­al­ly find out whether this devel­op­ing mod­el pro­vides a way for inno­v­a­tive pod­cast­ers to mon­e­tize their suc­cess­ful con­tent. In the mean­time, Lars is giv­ing it all a good go. He recent­ly gave up his New York teach­ing job, relo­cat­ed to North Car­oli­na (where his broth­er Anders pro­vides tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness sup­port), and is now ded­i­cat­ing him­self full-time to pod­cast­ing and writ­ing. It’s a big change, but a change worth mak­ing. “Web 2.0 has enabled me,” Brown­worth says, “to do things that I nev­er would have been able to do oth­er­wise. It’s a bit hum­bling to find myself on the ground floor of a rev­o­lu­tion, but this move is undoubt­ed­ly the most excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty I’ve ever had.”

We’re pleased to have played even a bit part in Brown­worth’s suc­cess. Keep an eye out for his book and, until then, give his pod­cast a good lis­ten: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site).

The Return of Dr. Strangelove?

in Books, Current Affairs, Film | September 7th, 2007

The Stan­ley Kubrick clas­sic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb cen­ters around a Sovi­et dooms­day device. If Rus­sia is attacked by nuclear weapons, the device will set off count­less nuclear bombs auto­mat­i­cal­ly, there­by ren­der­ing the Earth unin­hab­it­able. It was dark humor when Peter Sell­ers brought it to life on the sil­ver screen…but what if it’s real?

That’s just what a new book from the U.K. is argu­ing. Dooms­day Men by P. D. Smith pro­vides evi­dence that a Russ­ian dooms­day sys­tem called “Perimetr” went oper­a­tional in the mid-1980s, and still is. As Ron Rosen­baum points out in Slate, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly upset­ting news since Vladimir Putin recent­ly announced that Russ­ian nuclear bombers would recom­mence “strate­gic flights”–potentially armed with nukes. The prospect of war between the U.S. and Rus­sia might seem remote, but the return to nuclear pos­tur­ing is not a good sign for human­i­ty. Rosen­baum once inter­viewed some of the Min­ute­man com­man­ders who con­trol our own nuclear arse­nal and his arti­cle makes a great read:

“This dooms­day appa­ra­tus, which became oper­a­tional in 1984, dur­ing the height of the Rea­gan-era nuclear ten­sions, is an amaz­ing feat of cre­ative engi­neer­ing.” Accord­ing to Blair, if Perimetr sens­es a nuclear explo­sion in Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry and then receives no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Moscow, it will assume the inca­pac­i­ty of human lead­er­ship in Moscow or else­where, and will then grant a sin­gle human being deep with­in the Kosvin­sky moun­tains the author­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty to launch the entire Sovi­et nuclear arse­nal.

Oth­er con­tent worth explor­ing:

• How to Learn 21 Lan­guages with Your iPod
• 25 UC Berke­ley Cours­es Avail­able via Free Video
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Free Audio­book
• James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Free Pod­cast
• Best­selling Nov­el­ist Sells Sto­ry Ideas for $1
• Sub­scribe to our feed in a read­er

New eBook Initiatives from Amazon and Google

in Books, Google, Technology | September 7th, 2007

In case you missed it, The New York Times pub­lished a piece yes­ter­day pre­view­ing two new efforts to bring elec­tron­ic books to the mass mar­ket. In Octo­ber, Amazon.com will roll out the Kin­dle (check out leaked pic­tures here), an ebook read­er, priced some­where between $400 to $500, that will wire­less­ly con­nect to an e‑book store on Amazon’s site, from which read­ers can down­load books in elec­tron­ic for­mat. (Think iTunes for ebooks.) Mean­while, Google will start “charg­ing users for full online access to the dig­i­tal copies of some books in its data­base” and share rev­enue with pub­lish­ers. The whole idea here is to dis­rupt the $35 bil­lion book mar­ket in much the same way that the Apple has dis­lo­cat­ed the music mar­ket with the iPod. But whether con­sumers will see dig­i­tal books as hav­ing com­pa­ra­ble advan­tages to the iPod remains TBD, and the doubters are cer­tain­ly out there. Read more here. And, in the mean­time, if you want a lot of free audio­books, check out our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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A Bungled Beauty Pageant and Our Reason for Being

in Uncategorized | September 3rd, 2007

By now, mil­lions of web users have watched Miss Teen South Car­oli­na explain in mor­ti­fy­ing fash­ion (see below) why many Amer­i­cans can’t find the Unit­ed States on a map. And, in their own unin­tend­ed way, her com­ments effec­tive­ly answered the ques­tion posed to her. Edu­ca­tion sim­ply isn’t what it should be in Amer­i­ca. And that holds true for many oth­er nations.

All of this sets the stage for explain­ing Open Cul­ture’s rea­son for being. Put sim­ply, we try to put peo­ple, no mat­ter what their age or where they live, in a posi­tion to con­tin­ue learn­ing and improv­ing them­selves. With the help of our pod­cast col­lec­tions, you can now start learn­ing over 25 for­eign lan­guages, lis­ten to over 100 audio­books, includ­ing clas­sic works in lit­er­a­ture, poet­ry and phi­los­o­phy, and take over 75 com­plete cours­es from some of the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties (MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Oxford, etc.). Our pod­cast library includes many more edu­ca­tion­al resources as well, and the best part is that they’re com­plete­ly free. Hours of free edu­ca­tion are at your dis­pos­al when­ev­er you want it. To ben­e­fit, you sim­ply need the desire and the will, and the abil­i­ty to use pod­casts. (If you don’t know how, sim­ply read our Pod­cast Primer. We’ll get you up to speed.) We hope that you prof­it from these pod­cast col­lec­tions and our dai­ly posts (sub­scribe to our feed), and, if they can ben­e­fit a friend, please let them know about us at www.oculture.com.

P.S. For those who want to bone up on geog­ra­phy, check out Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures on iTunes. This infor­ma­tive course was taught by Mar­tin Lewis at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

On the Road: The Original Scroll

in Books | August 31st, 2007

Jack Ker­ouac’s “On the Road” is turn­ing 50 this month, some­thing we recent­ly not­ed. And to com­mem­o­rate the event, Viking has just pub­lished the orig­i­nal draft of the nov­el (check it out here) that Ker­ouac banged out in three quick weeks, in a New York apart­ment, on eight long sheets of trac­ing paper, which he lat­er taped togeth­er to cre­ate a 120-foot scroll (see pho­to). This new pub­li­ca­tion offers a repro­duc­tion of Ker­ouac’s first draft and lets you see how the beat clas­sic changed from ini­tial draft to pub­li­ca­tion. In the scroll, Ker­ouac uses the real names of friends instead of pseu­do­nyms, and some of the details are a lit­tle more graph­ic. If you want to see footage of Ker­ouac read­ing from “On the Road,” feel free to refer back to our post on August 15.

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Vis­it our Audio­books Pod­cast Col­lec­tion for free down­loads of major lit­er­ary works.

100 Great American Speeches

in Audio Books, English Language, History | August 30th, 2007

Amer­i­can Rhetoric has com­piled its list of the top 100 Amer­i­can speech­es, all of which can be con­ve­nient­ly accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speech­es list­ed here are known for their elo­quence, and many for the piv­otal role they played in effect­ing major polit­i­cal and social change. The com­pi­la­tion lets you lis­ten to F.D.R. lead­ing the US through the Depres­sion ( “There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself” ) as well as through World War II with his Fire­side Chats. Then, there is Tru­man and Kennedy ( “Ich bin ein Berlin­er” ) fight­ing the Cold War, Nixon bol­ster­ing sup­port for the Viet­nam War with his “Great Silent Major­i­ty” speech, and Mar­tin Luther King ( “I Have a Dream” ) and Mal­colm X ( “The Bal­lot or the Bul­let” ) press­ing for civ­il rights in their dif­fer­ent ways.

The speech­es can be heard large­ly in full, and, while most are polit­i­cal in con­tent, some gems are not. Take for exam­ple William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address, Ursu­la Le Guin’s “A Left-Hand­ed Com­mence­ment Address,” and Elie Wiesel’s “The Per­ils of Indif­fer­ence.” Give these speech­es some time, and it might be a while before you come back up for air.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Check out our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion
• Voic­es of Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents
• Vin­tage Radio Archive
• Mal­colm X at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty 1964