Context is everything. As Maya Jasanoff, the Harvard historian, asks, in lyrical terms: "If a writer harbored bias, shall we never speak his name? Or when he wrote with insight, might we read him all the same?" The questions appear in her review in The New Republic, of Christopher Benfey's If: The Untold Story of … Continue reading If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you
Tag: books
A brief foray into distraction’s history
This looks interesting: A Crisis of Short Attention Spans, 250 Years Ago By Natalie M. Phillips | January 01, 2017 When most people think of distraction, they think of flooded inboxes, cellphone beeps, Twitter feeds. An ever-present and unavoidable consequence of our fast-paced contemporary world, distraction is cast as a — if not the — … Continue reading A brief foray into distraction’s history
Duncan McCargo Receives Book Award
I was delighted to read that Duncan McCargo has received a prestigious Asia Society award - with a nice cash sum attached - for his book Tearing the Land Apart: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell University Press, 2008). Duncan's a colleague in the School of Politics and International Studies at Leeds; his approach … Continue reading Duncan McCargo Receives Book Award
Surviving Urban Sieges
I've been commissioned to write a review essay for Transitions Online, built around Peter Andreas' Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo (Cornell University Press, 2008). Just received my review copy from Cornell University Press. I've been looking forward to reading the book for a while, ever since … Continue reading Surviving Urban Sieges
MICHAEL A. INNES 