Books

Two masters: Walter Russell Mead interviews Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the Hertog Forum. The context is their respective recent books, The Arc of a Covenant and Bibi ⁠— each is most gracious about the other’s.

One jarring note is that a couple of questions before the end, Bibi ends an answer with “Thank you,” as if ending the interview there and then. Am I imagining that? WRM however is having none of it; the next question is about Putin, which Bibi refuses to answer (the only such response ⁠— earlier I think perhaps there’s an inkling even he’s said a little too much). Instead of wilting, WRM asks him another question, then at some point chooses a judicious moment to end.

WRM says at the beginning that it’s intimidating interviewing Bibi, but if he is truly intimidated he does not let on, and his plummy slow delivery belies that.

And WRM gets the closing word, sealing Bibi’s masterful survey beautifully. I just wish WRM looked after himself a bit more physically ⁠— he’s a national, no, civilizational treasure, and it would be a shame to lose him prematurely. Bibi in contrast looks well-sprung, the hands wonderful.

Goldman is moved by Reacher:

Radical Protestantism leads the pilgrim from the “howling wilderness” and the “enchanted ground” of the Old World and leads him to the Canaan of the spirit. The question is addressed to, and answered by, the individual pilgrim. The Jew is born into the people of Israel; the Christian seeks adoption into the Israel of the Spirit. American Christianity retains the radical individualism of its Protestant forebears, who chose as individuals to become Americans. We have become Americans by adoption, and we have adopted the history of Israel as our national common memory. A profound parallelism is involved. The biblical Election of Israel was not a prize that God awarded to an unlikely nation of shepherds, but rather the outcome of Israel’s free choice to accept the Torah and the responsibility of election. It is our free choice to become Americans that is the cornerstone of our culture.

Reading comprehension is reduced when reading from an electronic device, this study reports.

A decline in reading comprehension on a smartphone may be caused, at least in part, by reduced sighing and increased prefrontal activity compared to that on a paper medium.

These days my favorite way to read is to broadcast my phone’s Kindle app onto the TV via Apple TV, viewing from a distancem which probably mitigates most of the problems discussed in this article.

Hijinks for the practicing intellectualoid: Mansfield on Machiavelli, acknowledging the Florentin’s modernity paternity.

With this panegyric to airport culture, Eva Wiseman riffs on a Vice story about young Britons going to the airport to get (earthly) high and hang out. As a Briton I find this awesome, even while as an Israeli I find it a bit pitiful (ie, just go to the beach!).

Mark Steyn rhapsodizes on Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Philosophy of Computer Science, an ongoing text by William J. Rapaport for an eponymous course at SUNY, Buffalo.

Hunger as Art is a 15-minute film by Israeli philosopher Daniel Milo, whose upcoming book Good Enough promises to be seminal. Via Venkatesh Rao’s ongoing exploration of mediocrity, Mediocratopia.

Goodbye, Judith Kerr, goodbye!

“The Moment” is an occasional column/blog by novelist Amit Chaudhuri in The Paris Review.

What an internet treasure. Standard Ebooks is ⁠— according to their web site ⁠— “a volunteer driven, not-for-profit project that produces lovingly formatted, open source, and free public domain ebooks.” These are some beautiful, consistently-designed ebooks. The epub version works a charm in iBooks.

Mark Leyner, regarding today, in The Paris Review: “The only reasonable response to this situation is to maintain an implacable antipathy toward everything. Denounce everyone. Make war against yourself. Guillotine all groveling intellectuals. That said, I think it’s important to maintain a cheery disposition.”

Read Parul Sehgal, book reviewer extraordinaire.

An essay: Sven Birkets on reading a book.

Alec Baldwin’s calm, grown-up, entertaining talk show, Here’s the Thing.

Aluf Benn interviews David Mamet.

On the rise of the ebook and how it’s just another step in the increasing convenience of distributing a written work, just as books typeset on paper are.

Where exactly is Hogwarts?

Arstechnica, the iOS 5 review. Featuring game-changers Siri and the iCloud.

Did Ken Kesey save the world?

The Joseph Epstein’s media diet.

Bill Clinton tells us what’s up and what to read. Interesting, though his recommending Paul Krugman, who seems to me unfailingly wrong about everything, stands as a warning.

With technology, our relationship to culture becomes less like a long-distance romance and more like marriage.

Theodore Dalrymple on J. G. Ballard and the socially isolating nature of modern architecture.