Tag Archives: barack_obama
My January 2010 in Books
Haphazard Notes on Reading Books from January 2010 Books A View from Above by Wilt Chamberlain The Other Side of the River by Alex Kotlowitz The Book of Basketball By Bill Simmons The Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne Michelangelo & … Continue reading →
Filed under 2010, history, sports
Tagged as 2010, alex_kotlowitz, apple, art, autobiography, barack_obama, basketball, bill_simmons, david_byrne, e-reader, gaza, graphic_novel, haiti, history, ipad, israel, joe_sacco, martin_luther_king_jr, michelangelo, michigan, NBA, palestine, race_relations, ross_king, sports, technology, wilt_chamberlain
Best Books of the Decade?
I don’t believe we’ve already reached this year’s season of lists, much less that we’ve reached the point where “Best Blanks of the Decade” lists are being circulated. But, as Pete Lit points out, we’ve already got the Times Online … Continue reading →
Filed under literature
Tagged as adichie, alex_ross, azar_nafisi, barack_obama, bob_dylan, claire_messud, cormac_mccarthy, dave_eggers, freakonomics, jonathan_safran_foer, kazuo_ishiguro, lists, literature, lynne_truss, malcolm_gladwell, marjane_satrapi, naomi_klein, persepolis, philip_roth, salman_rushdie, steven_levitt, uchicago, uk, zadie_smith
The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation
Early this year, I read Pauline Maier’s document history of the Declaration of Independence. It looked at the Declaration as the end point of a process and made some fascinating comparisons to other document sources, the conventions of the day, … Continue reading →
Filed under 2009, history, literature, sociology
Tagged as 2009, barack_obama, declaration_of_independence, drew_hansen, history, human_rights, march_on_washington, martin_luther_king_jr, pauline_maier, politics, race_relations, USA
Catching Up: March and April 2009
The trouble with this kind of endeavor is that when you fall behind, you tend to fall way behind! I’ll blame Sudhir Venkatesh’s “Off The Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor“ for getting me behind on this project. … Continue reading →
Filed under 2009, africa, chicago, history, human rights, photography, sociology
Tagged as 2009, africa, barack_obama, chicago, harold_washington, history, human_rights, jm_coetzee, liberia, michael_maren, peace_corps, photography, politics, poverty, sociology, somalia, uchicago, UN, urban, USA, USAID, venkatesh, waiting_for_barbarians
First Take: Paul Tough on Geoffrey Canada in “Whatever it Takes…”
I bought a copy of Paul Tough’s “Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America” for a very specific reason. The level of seriousness of the discussion about a Chicago neighborhood applying for one of President Obama’s … Continue reading →
Filed under 2009, education, sociology
Tagged as 2009, barack_obama, chicago, education, geoffrey_canada, harlem_childrens_zone, history, nyc, paul_tough, race_relations, sociology, uchicago, USA
William Julius Wilson
I got the opportunity to hear William Julius Wilson speak at the University of Chicago this week (on the topic of “Race in the Age of Obama”). Back in the day, as an undergrad sociologist at UCHICAGO, I read quite … Continue reading →
Filed under 2009, events, sociology
Tagged as 2009, barack_obama, events, race_relations, recommendations, sociology, the_wire, uchicago, william_julius_wilson
