The Disposable American

Why do you think Uchitelle wrote this book?
It was written in 2006. How does it respond to the current economic climate?

November 12, 2009--The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uchitelle

Uchitelle’s account of layoffs in America addresses their necessity, overuse, and impact on workers. Uchitelle mentions three myths. Myth 1: Layoffs promise a payoff--a "revitalized corporate America," job security, full employment, and increased incomes. Myth 2: The people who are laid off must save themselves. They are to blame if they do not take the right actions to make themselves more valuable. Myth 3: The reasons for layoffs are entirely measured in dollars with out regard to the emotional and mental tolls on those laid off and those still on the payroll.

September 10, 2009: The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson

Before the Great War tore England apart and changed the way people lived forever, there was the glorious summer of 1911, when the country seemed full of promise and blissfully unaware of the coming storm. The Perfect Summer is Juliet Nicolson's portrait of that sunlit season, transporting us to a time nearly a century ago to experience the sights, sounds, and feelings of a society on the brink of a changing world. Drawing on rarely seen sources from royal and private archives, Nicolson reconstructs the lives of many key individuals and events in novelistic detail."--BOOK JACKET.

Book available August 13

An Infinity of Little Hours

Have you ever dreamed of a hermitage? What would it look like? Why would you go? What would you hope to find there? How long might you stay?

An Infinity of Little Hours - A video on a Carthusian Monastery

Einstein's Brain - a documentary featuring Thomas Harvey

Einstein's Brain, is a documentary about Kenji Sugimoto, a Japanese math and science professor, who embarks on a quest to find Albert Einstein's brain. His journey eventually leads him to Thomas Harvey in Lawrence, Kansas, where Harvey gives Sugimoto a small section of the brain for his very own.

Released in 1994 and filmed by British documentation Kevin Hull, this film is an interesting look into one man's obsession with Einstein and indicates a greater cultural fascination with the genius.

Here is part one of the film:



Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

May 14: An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order by Nancy Klein Maguire

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behavior and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s—the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality—and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster; or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not.

Publicaffairsbooks.com

Infinity of Little Hours is available April 8.