Eduardo Velásquez's A Consumer's Guide to the Apocalypse: Why There is No Cultural War in America and Why We Will Perish Nonetheless just popped up at on the online booksellers. The book won't be available until this summer, but here's a peek at the Amazon page.Book DescriptionWhat accounts for the apocalyptic angst that is now so clearly present among Americans who do not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy? Why do so many popular television shows, films, and music nourish themselves on this very angst? And why do so many artists—from Coldplay to Tori Amos to Tom Wolfe—feel compelled to give it expression?It is tempting to say that America’s fears and anxieties are understandable in the light of 9/11, the ongoing War on Terror, nuclear proliferation, and the seemingly limitless capacity of science to continually challenge our conceptions of the universe and ourselves. Perhaps, too, American culture remains so permeated by Protestant Christianity that even avowed skeptics cannot pry themselves from its grip.In A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse, Eduardo Velásquez argues that these answers are too pat. Velásquez’s astonishing thesis is that when we peer into contemporary artists’ creative depiction of our sensibilities we discover that the antagonisms that fuel the current cultural wars stem from the same source. Enthusiastic religions and dogmatic science, the flourishing of scientific reason and the fascination with mystical darkness, cultural triumphalists and multicultural ideologues are all sustained by the same thing: a willful commitment to the basic tenets of the Enlightenment.Velásquez makes his point with insightful readings of the music of Coldplay, Tori Amos, and Dave Matthews and the fiction of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons. Written with grace and humor, and directed toward the lay reader, A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse is a tour de force of cultural analysis.
About the AuthorEduardo Velásquez teaches political philosophy, science and the arts, literature, and popular culture at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He has taught or held residence at Lake Forest College, the University of Chicago, Haverford College, the University of Edinburgh, University College, Oxford, and at Denmark’s International Study Program, affiliated with The University of Copenhagen. He received his BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, all in political science. He is the editor of Love and Friendship: Rethinking Politics and Affection in Modern Times and Nature, Woman, and the Art of Politics.
Tim Harford is the author of The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, Why the Poor Are Poor--And Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!Like any author, I face the page 69 test with trepidation. It turns out that page 69 covers the bit of my book that the professional economists most admired. Other readers were more interested in tales of my travels in Cameroon, or my explanation of what an economist sees when looking at the Starbucks menu board. So, professional economists read on and everyone else, close your eyes and think about coffee.Many thanks to Tim for the input.
"Instead of focusing on the enormous complexity of a real economy, think of a very simple one-dimensional human challenge: the 100-meter sprint. The fastest sprinter will win the race. If you wanted all the sprinters to cross the line together, you could just change the rules of the race, ordering the fast runners to slow down and everyone to hold hands as they crossed the line. Or you could move some starting blocks forward and some starting blocks back, so that although each sprinter was running as fast as he could, obeying the usual rules and objectives of sprinting, the fastest had to cover enough extra ground that he would end up breaking the tape neck-and-neck with the slowest.
Economist Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that the same approach could work when trying to balance the excesses of competitive markets: instead of interfering with the markets themselves, the trick is to adjust the starting blocks by making lump-sum payments and levying one-time taxes.
An example of a lump-sum tax would be the government taxing everybody eight hundred dollars; or alternatively, taxing everyone over the age of sixty-five eight hundred dollars; or alternatively, taxing everybody whose surname of the birth certificate starts with H eight hundred dollars. The point is that unlike an income tax or a sales tax on coffee, a lump-sum tax doesn't affect anybody's behavior, because there is nothing you can do to avoid it. So unlike the sales tax, it doesn't lead to an efficiency loss. Similarly, an example of lump-sum redistribution would be the give eight hundred dollars to everybody whose name starts with H, a policy for which I would be happy to vote.
In the 100-meter sprint, lump-sum taxation is like moving the starting blocks back a few paces. Income tax and sales tax are like asking the best runners to run backwards. Both would have the effect of ensuring a more equal finish, but moving the starting blocks around doesn't slow anybody down.
In the context of a sprint, it fairly obvious that one of the ways to get a close result is to give the slower runners a head start. In the context of an economy, with literally billions of different goods, desires, raw materials and talents, the head start theorem is a much bolder claim. But it's true: you can allow the competitive economy to use every skill and every raw material, take advantage of every opportunity to trade, cooperate, educate, or invest... but still get a fair outcome by moving around the starting blocks and letting perfect markets do the rest.
The implication is that in a world of perfect markets, the only thing needed to ensure both fairness and efficiency is a "head start" strategy: a program of appropriate lump-sum taxes and subsidies that puts everyone on equal footing. The perfect markets then find every possible opportunity to make everybody better off from their revised starting points. The question is, can this be done in practice?"
The page 69 test is fun, but as a neutral party I'd have to say that to really verify the quality of a book like The Undercover Economist you need to read the whole thing. Fortunately, the book is about to get a lot cheaper because the paperback edition is coming out on January 31st.
"This is a book to savor."
--Richard Lowenstein, New York Times
"A worthy and often entertaining attempt to render 'the dismal science' considerably less dismal."
--Warren Bass, Washington Post Book World
"The Undercover Economist is a rare specimen: a book on economics that will enthrall its readers. Beautifully written and argued, it brings the power of economics to life. This book should be required reading for every elected official, business leader, and university student."
--Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, and author of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
"If you need to be convinced of the ever-relevant and fascinating nature of economics, read this insightful and witty book by Tim Harford. Using one interesting example after another, The Undercover Economist demonstrates how economic reasoning -- often esoteric and dull, but totally accessible in Harford's hands -- helps illuminate the world around us. Indeed, Harford's book is a tour de force."
--Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics, Columbia University; author of In Defense of Globalization
Harford spoke with Robin Young on the NPR show Here & Now.Dear Economist,Read Tim's answer.
Bikini waxes: boyfriends seem to like the results, but they hurt. What would you say were the costs and benefits?
Yours, Sylvia
N.M. Kelby is the author of Whale Season and other books.To ask what a person is reading is a dangerous thing. What’s the point of that? Are you interested in getting a book recommendation or trying to figure out what influences a writer? Or both? Or, do you just want to open up their brain and blow some dust off?Some readers may think the more fantastic scenario Nicole mentions is the one involving Dwight Yoakam and the movie talk, but I happen to know he really is planning on making the film version of Whale Season.
It’s a very complicated question.
I could tell you that right now, at this moment, I’m reading Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in French at while wintering in Versailles. A friend has just stopped by with a lovely red that he’s brought overfrom his vineyard.
Or, I could tell you that I’m reading Kinky Friedman while sitting at Stubbs in Austin waiting for Dwight Yoakam to finish his set so that we can talk about the movie we’re doing together. At my table, along with Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned, there would be some collards, fried okra (all smothered in hot sauce), and a BBQ sandwich (again, with hot sauce.) And a beer, probably a lite beer since I burned out my taste buds on the Texas Pete’s and don’t need the calories.
Both could be true.
Or, I could tell you this––I am sitting in my office with the space heater cranked on high because it’s 51 degrees in Florida and damp and I am working on my new book and I am behind deadline because it’s not easy to create an existential mystery and when I get stuck (which is often) I pick up one of the two books I am currently reading, Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon (love the hot air balloon scene) or Trader Vic’s Tiki Party by Steve Siegelman (which is not only features the history of Trader Vic, but some mighty fine chow).
You see, what you believe is your choice. I will, however, leave you with an inspirational quote from the P.T. Barnum of the restaurant world, Victor Jules Bergeron––“Make every drink as though it were to be the best you’ve ever made.”
William Landay is the author of the highly acclaimed Mission Flats, winner of the John Creasey Dagger as the best debut crime novel of 2003, and The Strangler, which hits the book stores on January 30th.As a writer, I bristle at the idea that any novel of mine could be captured in a single page. The unique power of a novel is in the cumulative effect of all those pages, the gradual brushing-in of detail after detail, the intimacy of all those hours spent with (fictional) people. Isn’t it?Many thanks to Bill for the input.
Well, sort of. I open my new novel, The Strangler, to page 69 and realize, with a gulp, “Actually, this is a pretty good sample of the book’s tone.”
Here is the scene: It is December 1963 in Boston. The city is still stunned by the Kennedy assassination and enthralled by the serial murderer already known as the Boston Strangler — who killed yet another woman on Saturday, November 23, the day after Kennedy was shot, as if to say, “I’m still here, I’m still the lead story.”
At the top of page 69, we are at Boston P.D. Station 16, in the Back Bay. It is the evening roll call. Having been caught in a corruption scandal, Detective Joe Daley has been demoted and forced to stand guard night after night at the Nativity scene in Boston Common. Joe’s brother Ricky has played a nasty trick on him: he distracted Joe, then stole the statue of the baby Jesus.
Now, to Joe’s embarrassment, the watch commander at Station 16 is informing the cops before their shift to be on the lookout for a missing person. He announces, to raucous laughter,
“The missing child is described as follows. Height: twenty inches. Hair: none. Age: approximately two thousand years, give or take. Last seen wearing a diaper and blanket and emitting a strange heavenly glow. … The boy’s father — hold on, fellas, hold on now — the boy’s father is a very powerful man. I can vouch for that: I used to be an altar boy — I worked for the guy.”
Two things about the scene strike me strike me as good examples of what The Strangler is all about. First, there is the interplay of public and private. There are three main protagonists in the book, the Daley brothers, Joe, Michael, and Ricky. Each of the brothers becomes enmeshed in the criminal life of the city, in one dark corner or another. But it is the relationship of these three men — or boys in men’s bodies — that is the book’s heart. The title notwithstanding, this is really a book about family as much as it is about the Boston Strangler (or surviving the mean streets or any of the other tried-and-true themes of crime novels).
Second, there is the foundation of fact that underlies the novel. Part of the adventure of writing this story was the original research I did into the crime scene in Boston circa 1963. I got to know a couple of old cops, both fascinating guys, who gave me so much wonderful material that inevitably most of it had to be left out. This business about standing watch overnight at the Nativity scene as a punishment came directly from these two retired BPD cops, Jack Daley and Ed Tobin. It took them a while, Jack told me, before they realized it was easier just to pick up the damn statues, throw them in the trunk of the car, and set them up again in the morning, rather than stand around in the freezing cold all night. But the best story was Ed’s. One night he was stuck with this punishment duty, and the black sheep went missing. So of course he painted one of the white sheep black. Only to return the next night to find two black sheep. Out came the paint again.
This seems to me typical of the cop life: the gallows humor, the mix of terror and laughter. In a moment very like 9/11 — a shocking public murder in Dallas; in Boston the fear of madmen among us; anxiety everywhere — these cops still found time to laugh and play pranks on one another. Life went on. It has a way of doing that.
“Landay shows a truly sizzling Boston.”Back in 2003 Sarah Weinman reviewed Mission Flats for January M
— Kirkus Reviews
“…engrossing … Landay (Mission Flats) movingly explores the bonds of family and basic questions of honesty and loyalty. While the novel suggests another killer than the historical Boston Strangler, the emphasis remains on such themes as crime and punishment, love and honor, truth and justice.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Landay makes good use of his own experience as a prosecutor, but the real tension is in the moral ambiguities. Framed by the larger story of the Strangler, the inner tale masterfully portrays the insidiousness of greed, even within the Daley family. Good may triumph, but not at all clearly, and the many twists are truly shocking in the hands of this masterly plotter.”
— Library Journal
agazine: Ultimately, this first effort by Landay, a former assistant district attorney in Boston, is as much about the investigation of a crime as it is about the investigation of the complexities of people. Early reviews have compared him to the likes of Scott Turow, Dennis Lehane and John Grisham. It's my belief that it won't be long before future debut novelists will be compared to a list of authors topped by Landay himself. Mission Flats is much more than a remarkable debut; it's one of the best efforts in crime fiction so far this year. Whether that places undue expectations on the author's future career will, of course, remain to be seen, but with Mission Flats, he's off to a flying start.And The Strangler is one of the five books she's most looking forward to this year, a sentiment echoed by Jeff Pierce.
Read about the other four books.The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 1968)
Arguably the work that launched the modern disaster genre, this account of the Great Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889, still sets the standard for colorful, well-researched historical nonfiction. It was historian David McCullough's first book, but his trademark atmospheric style of narration is already in full bloom, evident in his rich portrayal of the proletarian steel town that had the misfortune of being located a few miles downstream from "the most exclusive resort in America." The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, where the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick spent their vacations, knew how to pamper millionaires, but it wasn't too careful about maintaining the earthen dam that supported its boating lake. The dam's collapse in a heavy storm sent a huge wall of water roaring down the valley toward Johnstown, ultimately killing more than 2,000 mostly working-class residents. McCullough turns this calamity into a subtle morality tale, showing how it foreshadowed the class conflicts that were later to bring the Gilded Age to a tumultuous close.
"Gary Krist's smart page-turner, "The White Cascade," documents [the Wellington] disaster with verve, humanity and purpose. Krist's story goes beyond the recounting of a tragic event and becomes a study of individual heroism and failure, corporate avarice and the era's misguided faith that humans and their technology could tame Mother Nature...To research the book, Krist mined personal journals of the passengers, telegrams, letters, the inquest testimony, later court proceedings, newspapers and a veritable library of books on railroading. The results couldn't be more pleasing, as Krist crafts a tale of drama and compassion while slipping in a social history of railroads and their effect on the economic boom in the Northwest in the early years of the 20th century."--Marshal Zeringue
Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin: A Memoir of Addiction.As it happens, page 69 contains a passage that was one of the earliest I wrote, long before I thought of writing a book. It begins ‘I watched the glaze of headlights…’ and I wrote it for myself, trying to capture the most immediate images of the recollections I had of working the streets as a prostitute. It is also the passage that was chosen to feature on the back cover of the Australian edition. So I guess it is representative.Many thanks to Kate for the input.
The page shows me in the midst of the grittiest part of the book, when I was hopelessly addicted to heroin, on the night I started working as a street prostitute. The language is deliberately taut and terse, but I was also attempting to pick out vivid details, to wind the reader into the situation alongside me. There is sex, there’s a little brutal candour, and there’s a very tight focus on myself as the subject and the conduit for the reader to enter this reality. It’s not a nice page, but it’s not a nice scene.
Whether it’s representative of the tone and so on… The book spans a period of five years, and several different milieux which all have their own tone, presentation, and mood. This page comes in the most disheartened and disheartening stage, when things were desperate: earlier, there are more lyrical chapters about life as a boho student, and later, there are dialogue-less passages about life on the streets, where speech seems barely relevant as I, as the protagonist, am entirely sucked, mute, into a lonely and brutal reality. The book changes tone again about halfway through, and the latter chapters are more open-feeling, as suits the experiences described.
For a book about heroin and prostitution, I must say that I deliberately included not very much droning description of sex or drug-taking. I chose to explicitly illustrate the sex on this page, because it was such a key moment. Those looking for titillation might try a different book!
Excerpt from page 69:
I watched the glaze of headlights, the windscreens of oncoming cars: a series of trapezoids with the silhouette of a single, male driver. One pulled up in front of me; I reached over and opened the door; slid in. The smell of an unfamiliar car. A woolly-haired, middle-aged man looking at me. It was happening.
‘Hi, I’m Lucy,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
‘How much for a headjob?’
We pulled out into the traffic and he drove us to a side street. Winter-bare plane trees shaded us from streetlights; the air outside was foggy with cold. With the engine off, everything seemed very quiet. All around us, houses were full of family lives. The lights were golden down here.
I got out a condom from the handful Jake had given me. The man looked as nervous as I was; he abruptly lifted his hips and pulled down his pants. He was hard. I started to bend across to his lap, got caught on the seat belt. ‘Just a minute,’ I tittered. Jesus, I sound like an idiot. ‘Okay.’
Down I went. Condom on. It didn’t take long. I remembered I’d been told I was good at this. I hoped I was giving value for money. What if he bashes me? What if he…Shit, Jake told me to get the money first. I kept on tonguing; the unfamiliar smell, the sense of this man’s face above me, looking down at the back of my head, the sound of his breathing.
A gasp, a pulse in the flesh between my lips, a sharp scent; it was over.
In My Skin is the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material, subverting popular assumptions about addiction and prostitution while making the extraordinary seem commonplace and the ordinary deeply alluring. The subject matter, fascinating though it is, is secondary. Such are her powers to tap into the universal while telling a cracking good tale, Kate Holden could make the story of a tongue-tied troglodyte thrilling.Asked in this Q & A how she, as a former bookseller, would recommend her book, Kate replied: "I’d say it’s a good read if you want an excursion into a darker side of Australian urban life, and that the author does a nice turn in the use of semi-colons."
--Guardian
What makes her story memorable is not her fall into darkness or her rise back into health, but her changing, self-serving, probably self-saving ways of thinking about herself as she stays in the same horrible place.
--Boston Sunday Globe
Its searing intellectual and emotional honesty and the quality of the writing easily sets In My Skin apart from most other my-substance-abuse-hell memoirs.
--Independent
Holden’s vivid narrative voice lends a gritty poetry to her tale. . . . The book’s power to shock rests in its contrasts. . . . She conjures with glittering clarity the sense of invincibility that comes with the first taste of adult life, the belief that drugs can make love and art transcendent, the conviction that you are in control. In My Skin is a compelling story of love and squalor that retains humanity and sympathy.
--Observer
Verdict—better than sex.
--Canberra Review
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