BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?

Subject: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 May 03 - 12:22 PM

This book was recently recommended to me, and I'm wondering if anyone here has read it. Came out around Christmas, I guess. The Amazon link to it is here:

"Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics"

The author is apparently a former Texas Neo-Con, who is now making a career out of exposing the Neo-Con right, but I haven't heard from anyone who read this or his other book written after his epiphany that lead him to stray from his Neo-Con homeland.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 May 03 - 12:29 PM

P.S. Apparently he strayed circa the 1996 election.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 May 03 - 06:34 PM

While you're at it you might read the couple of books that have come out lately about Karl Rove. REAL scarey stuff!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: GUEST,Arne Langsetmo
Date: 02 May 03 - 06:51 PM

I have "Made In Texas" and skimmed bits. I will read it.
Just finished "Bush's Brain" (not about Dubya, but rather
about the real "brain" behind the operation, Karl Rove).

Recommend both.

Also Grep Palast's "Best Democracy Money Can Buy"
(note that Palast's non-partisan; he goes after
Clinton and Gore as well when warranted, as well
as even such as the NRDC and EDF. . . .)

Cheers,

                            -- Arne Langsetmo

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 03 - 09:43 AM

Thanks for the recommendations SRS and Arne. I'll put those on my summer reading list then. I understand 'Made in Texas' is pretty short.

This week I'll be starting Susan Sontag's 'Regarding the Pain of Others'. It appears to be a very interesting work, discussing how the images of atrocities that have become so commonplace via TV and computer screens, influences the viewers, ie does the daily barrage of violent news images inure or incite us to violence, create apathy, etc. She examines the intersection of news and art that depicts images of war and disaster. The book is 130 pgs, which seems slim to me for such complex subject matter. We'll see how she pulls it off.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 May 03 - 01:44 PM

"Slim" volumes, if they're scholarly, can still take a long time to read. Some of the essays that appear in scholarly journals will typically be only 20-30 pages, and they can take quite a while to slog through. I haven't ready any Sontag, though. I don't know if this is the case with her. The hardest I've found to read: Eve Sedgewick and Judith Butler. Be sure to have a dictionary handy when you read anything by these two. Whole debates are spawned around Butler and her insistence of compressing her thoughts into the most hide-bound complicated scholarly jargon she can manage. (This would be the exact opposite of anything George Dubya might manage to scribble).

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone read book 'Made in Texas'?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 03 - 02:21 PM

SRS, while I do enjoy occassionally reading academic writing, I tend to steer clear of it for just the reasons you mention. I really admire good academics. But I admire good intellectual writers even more. The latter seem far less prone to the excesses of academic writers. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that writers don't have to focus their writing narrowly to keep directed at a specific audience. Good writers write for themselves first, and don't usually concern themselves with who their audience is, or what their audience will think. Academics do roughly the opposite, because they have to consider their academic discipline audience first.