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“City of Quartz,” Mike Davis’ masterpiece, was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which was the author photo, which became the focus of the Nation magazine’s review. There, Marshall Berman wrote that Mike looked like “an aging, ravaged light-heavyweight” who “doesn’t want company.” Berman confessed he was so turned off by the photo that the book “lay on my night table for weeks” before he started reading it. So began Davis’ ambivalent career in the intellectual trenches, declaring his independence by defying the convention of the warm, inviting author photo.

… continued at LATimes.com, HERE   10-26-2022

A brilliant radical reporter with a novelist’s eye and a historian’s memory.

Mike Davis, author and activist, radical hero and family man, died October 25 after a long struggle with esophageal cancer; he was 76. He’s best known for his 1990 book about Los Angeles, City of Quartz. Marshall Berman, reviewing it for The Nation, said it combined “the radical citizen who wants to grasp the totality of his city’s life, and the urban guerrilla aching to see the whole damned thing blow.”

… continued at TheNation.com, HERE   10-26-2022

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What will Republicans do if they win control of the House in the midterms? Now they’ve said something about that, officially: they call it their “Commitment to America.” Chris Lehmann calls it “a grab bag of cultural resentments papering over an anemic policy wish list.”

Also: The Trump years are not the only time American democracy has been threatened; the World War One years, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was president, were another. That’s what Adam Hochschild argues –his new book is “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.”  10-20-2022

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Latino voters hold the keys to Democratic victories in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, Harold Meyerson argues. New polling data highlights the possibilities – and the problems.

plus: Joe Biden has just made marijuana legalization a campaign issue–the Democrats should run with it, says John Nichols.

Also: Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan, from “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962 to “Murder Most Foul” in 2020. Greil has a new book out, it’s called “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in 7 Songs.”  10-20-2022

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Joe Biden has just made marijuana legalization a campaign issue–the Democrats should run with it, says John Nichols.

Also: Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan, from “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “Murder Most Foul.” He has a new book out, it’s called “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in 7 Songs.”  10-13-2022

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LA’s political scandal is about the racism of some Latino politicians. Harold Meyerson has the big picture: Ethnic succession is the history of urban politics in the US. In America today, progressives need ethnic and racial alliances, and the participants in this taped conversation have to go.

Also: Nurses have taken the lead in the wave of this year’s labor activism. The largest private-sector nurses’ strike in American history took place recently in Minnesota. Bryce Covert reports a key front in the fight for better health care in America.

Plus: There’s a novel, which is sort of about the murder of Emmett Till in Money Mississippi in 1955, written by a professor at USC, that’s been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The author is Percival Everett, and the book is called “The Trees.” John Powers comments. (originally broadcast in October 2021).  10-13-2022

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Nurses have taken the lead in the wave of this year’s labor activism. The largest private-sector nurses’ strike in American history took place recently in Minnesota – 15,000 nurses walked off the job for three days in the Twin Cities and the Twin Ports. Other nurses threatened strikes in half a dozen other places. Bryce Covert reports a key front in the fight for better health care in America.

Plus: Dahlia Lithwick talks about some of the heroes of the Trump years: the women lawyers who fought him on the big issues—the Muslim ban, neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and voting rights. Her new book is “Lady Justice.”  10-6-2022

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Should Bernie Sanders run in the Democratic primaries in 2024? Bhaskar Sunkara, President of The Nation, says “yes” IF Biden doesn’t. Sanders transformed American politics and, Bhaskar argues, he remains a uniquely important figure for Democrats and the left.

Plus: can Republicans win control of the Senate? Trump’s candidates are the GOP’s biggest problem, starting in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. The Nation’s National Affairs Correspondent, John Nichols has our analysis.

Also: 20 years before the January 6 attack on the capitol, a Republican mob attacked a central hub of government operations claiming the vote count in the presidential election that year was fraudulent, trying to reverse the results. That was the “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Miami, a Republican effort long before Trump. The Nation’s DC Bureau Chief, Chris Lehmann reviews that history.  10-6-2022

“Michael Wolff’s wonderful review of Jared Kushner’s memoir says “everyone hated Jared” (September 9). But what about Ivanka?”
Letter to the TLS, Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 7, 2022,
Here:   https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-decline-of-metaphysics/
(more…)

Ken Burns Gets at the Nasty Underbelly of American History – THENATION.COM

David Nasaw in conversation with Jon Wiener on the new PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust.

Jon Wiener:  Before I saw the new Ken Burns documentary, I thought, “We already know this history. We’ve been reading about it our whole lives.” Ken Burns knows that. He’s got one of his historian experts, Daniel Mendelsohn, saying, “You think you’ve heard it all, but trust me: you haven’t.” I ended up agreeing with him completely. I found the show riveting. What did you think?

David Nasaw:  I agree totally. I began watching it almost as a duty. I didn’t think I was going to learn anything, or be nearly as moved as I was. It is an extraordinary accomplishment. It comes at the right time. I hope it gets the widest possible viewing, that it makes its way into high schools and colleges. It’s remarkable, especially because it gets at the nasty underbelly of American history.

… continued at TheNation.com, HERE   9-29-2022