February 2009

Where Did Motown Come From?

by The University of Michigan Press February 25, 2009

by Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert This year Motown celebrates its 50th anniversary, which makes it a good time to ponder some basic questions about the company that has come to define music in Detroit. Why did it happen in Detroit? What were the musical and extra-musical sources of the Motown Sound? Detroit was a city that grew faster than any other large American city in the 20th century so that by mid-century it had almost two million people. This included a sizeable African-American population, which meant that there was a larger pool of talent to draw on than elsewhere [...]

Arthur Kempton salutes Motown

by The University of Michigan Press February 19, 2009

On Christmas Day of 1968, the breaking dawn disclosed Motown in its fullest flower. Five of America’s ten most popular records had been made and sold by a company seeded a decade earlier in a backwater of culture commerce by a scuffling thirty-year old black songwriter with money borrowed from family who already considered him chronically unsuccessful. And still, on late Friday afternoons, the proprietor of black America’s biggest enterprise prowled the offices of what was, by then, the most effective organization in the history of the music business, admonishing any within whose pace had slackened to keep working. “Haven’t [...]

Is War Glorified Torture?

by kris bishop February 17, 2009

excerpt from “Abandoning Torture but What About War?” by Dave Swanson If we can move beyond torture, do we not have a responsibility also to think for a moment about the obvious fact that torture is not the cruelest thing we do? Torture offends us, in part, because the torturer is not at risk, but neither are most pilots dropping bombs. And how exactly does the risk taken by ground troops mitigate the suffering of those they wound, kill, and terrorize? One book I find helpful in this is “Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty,” by Paul Kahn, an exploration [...]

America at Risk / Part 1: Wages of Empire

by kris bishop February 2, 2009

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them? The Transatlantic Predicament / p. 15by Pierre Manent “The current lull in the transatlantic shouting match is a good time to survey the situation on the Western front, although relief at our renewed comity risks blinding us to the huge continental drift that has already taken place. The dispute about Iraq brought to life [...]

America at Risk / Part 2: Creeds and Parties

by kris bishop February 2, 2009

EXCERPTS from America at Risk, a new collection of writings by eminent thinkers and writers asked to address the question that must be addressed by the Obama Presidency: What are some of the greatest dangers facing America today and what might be done to meet them? Defending Liberty: Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Public Power / p. 57by William A Galston “Life would be simple in the political community of civic republican dreams, where religion is wholly ‘civil,’ where citizens fly to the assemblies, where parents care only whether their slain warrior sons fight bravely and whether their city [...]

← Previous Entries