10 Best Books of 2008

in Books | December 4th, 2008

Each year, The New York Times names its 100 Notable Books. Then, they short­en the list and name their top ten.

The Times pub­lished 100 Notable Books of 2008 last week­end, and now we have The 10 Best Books of 2008. We’ve list­ed the books below, along with links to the first chap­ter of most works. For more insight into what the book review team found spe­cial about each book, just click here.

Fic­tion

• Dan­ger­ous Laugh­ter: Thir­teen Sto­ries by Steven Mill­hauser (Excerpt)
• A Mer­cy by Toni Mor­ri­son (First Chap­ter)
• Nether­land by Joseph O’Neill (First Chap­ter)
• 2666 by Rober­to Bolaño (Excerpt)
• Unac­cus­tomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Excerpt)

Non-Fic­tion

• The Dark Side: The Inside Sto­ry of How the War on Ter­ror Turned Into a War on Amer­i­can Ideals by Jane May­er
• The For­ev­er War by Dex­ter Filkins (First Chap­ter)
• Noth­ing to be Fright­ened Of by Julian Barnes (First Chap­ter)
• This Repub­lic of Suf­fer­ing by Drew Gilpin Faust (First Chap­ter)
• The World Is What It Is: The Autho­rized Biog­ra­phy of V. S. Naipaul (First Chap­ter)

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Philip Roth on Indignation

in Books | December 2nd, 2008

Indig­na­tion is Philip Roth’s 29th book and his third nov­el in the past three years. Pret­ty good for a writer work­ing at 75. In this extend­ed inter­view with Michael Kras­ny (iTunes — Feed — MP3), Roth talks about Indig­na­tion, which takes read­ers back to the Kore­an War and col­lege life in con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca.

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The New Psychology of Time

in Psychology | November 30th, 2008

The Time Para­dox, a new book by Philip Zim­bar­do & John Boyd, puts forth an intrigu­ing argu­ment — our atti­tudes toward time, often uncon­scious ones, can strong­ly shape our per­son­al­i­ties and the kind of lives we lead. They can con­tribute to our hap­pi­ness and suc­cess, or our unhap­pi­ness and depres­sion.

The argu­ment goes some­thing like this: Not entire­ly know­ing­ly, we all focus on the past, present or future. And, in mod­er­a­tion, each focus can have some net good. Future-ori­ent­ed peo­ple tend to be ambi­tious and suc­cess­ful; present-ori­ent­ed peo­ple tend to have friends and fun; and past-ori­ent­ed peo­ple often have close fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships. But when we asso­ciate too strong­ly with one of these “time zones” (again often with­out real­iz­ing it), we run into prob­lems. When we’re too strong­ly focused on the future, we sac­ri­fice friends, fam­i­ly and fun. When we’re too present-ori­ent­ed, we leave our­selves open to hedo­nism and addic­tions. And when we cling to the past, we sim­ply get stuck in the past, and depres­sion usu­al­ly fol­lows. The upshot then is that we need to find a “tem­po­ral bal­ance,” and this applies not just to indi­vid­u­als, but to nations, reli­gious groups and social class­es as well. Accord­ing to Zim­bar­do and Boyd, larg­er social groups can tend toward dis­tort­ed sens­es of time. The Amer­i­can finan­cial cri­sis boils down to an extreme focus on the present, or a lack of con­cern for future con­se­quences. That’s essen­tial­ly what the big cred­it give­away was all about.

You may rec­og­nize Philip Zim­bar­do’s name. He’s a wide­ly rec­og­nized psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who was behind the famous Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment (1971). He has served as the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. And, last year, he pub­lished The Lucifer Effect, a New York Times best­seller.

To delve a bit more deeply into The Time Para­dox, you should watch (below) the engross­ing pre­sen­ta­tion that Zim­bar­do gave at Google’s HQ last month. Or you can lis­ten to this radio inter­view that aired recent­ly in New York City (iTunes Feed MP3). Last­ly, you can take a sur­vey on The Time Para­dox web site and learn more about your tem­po­ral bal­ance.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire, or The World From 1949 to 1989

in History, Video - Politics/Society | November 29th, 2008

If you could sync up a pho­to with every name and event men­tioned in Bil­ly Joel’s “We Did­n’t Start the Fire,” you’d have a mon­tage that offers a pret­ty good glimpse into the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. That’s what a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go grad stu­dent fig­ured out when he put this viral video togeth­er. We’ve added it to our YouTube playlist. Thanks Bob for the tip!

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Mozart’s Complete Works

in Music | November 29th, 2008

Just a quick heads up: Amazon.com is run­ning a pret­ty good look­ing deal on a box set of Mozart’s com­plete works. The pack­age includes 170 CDs of music. And it also comes with a cd-rom con­tain­ing essays on his works, artist bio’s, text and libret­ti’s. User reviews sug­gest that the record­ing qual­i­ty is quite high. The box set is being sold for $74.99, or 50% off the nor­mal list price. I’m not sure how long this sale will go on.

In the mean­time, if you’re more in the mood for some free Mozart, then spend some time with the clas­si­cal music pod­casts that we have indexed here.

The Birth Of A Tornado

in Science, Video - Science | November 26th, 2008

It’s almost eerie to watch how a tor­na­do takes shape. As you’ll see below, it starts with a wisp of noth­ing much and, with­in min­utes, morphs into a ter­ri­ble force. For more pre­cise details on how tor­na­does form, you can check out this dynam­ic pre­sen­ta­tion over at USA Today.

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Top 10 Amazing Biology Videos

in Biology, Science | November 26th, 2008

This week, Wired has post­ed a piece — Top 10 Amaz­ing Biol­o­gy Videos — that has start­ed swirling around the web. Here you’ll find some seri­ous videos (for exam­ple, a clip below show­ing high speed gene sequenc­ing in action) along­side some lighter videos that fea­ture, um, shrimp run­ning on a tread­mill. This piece is the log­i­cal fol­low up to Wired’s ear­li­er post: 10 Amaz­ing Physics Videos.

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Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash Together in 1969: Free MP3s

in Music | November 24th, 2008

Two Amer­i­can icons got togeth­er in Nashville in 1969 and record­ed at least 22 tracks togeth­er, includ­ing some well known clas­sics: Ring of Fire, I Walk The Line, Girl From the North Coun­try, and You Are My Sun­shine. You can lis­ten in on the his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion for free here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Peter Schiff on the Economy and What’s Coming Next

in Current Affairs | November 24th, 2008

Last week, we fea­tured a rather pre­scient video clip high­light­ing Peter Schiff and his warn­ings in 2006-07 that that our econ­o­my is in deep trou­ble. Since then, many have won­dered where Schiff sees things going next. So NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey (iTunes — Rss Feed — Stream) caught up with him on Fri­day and asked him just that: The upshot is nowhere good. We’ve got some deep, under­ly­ing prob­lems — prob­lems that go well beyond asset bub­bles. We’re head­ed for anoth­er Depres­sion. And it’s in part because all of the gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion is hurt­ing, not help­ing, things. There’s noth­ing very hope­ful here. But, if Schiff is right again, it could pay to lis­ten and get his take on what the future could look like.

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Hitler’s Real Estate Downfall

in Comedy, Current Affairs | November 20th, 2008

What hap­pens when you take the 2004, Acad­e­my award-nom­i­nat­ed Ger­man film Der Unter­gang (The Down­fall) and turn it into a spoof? Here, the “down­fall” is all about the decline of the hous­ing mar­ket, and how Hitler becomes just anoth­er man with a home under water. There are some clas­sic lines here, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you looked to buy a home in recent years. Thanks Bob for the tip.

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