the48er

Politics and Philosophy

The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman

The NY Times columnist's take on U.S. politics and economics since the 1800s is more lucid and concise than might have seemed possible. The nub of it is this: "Movement conservatives," harboring strong fascist sympathies and a longing for Gilded Age economic policies -- started taking over the GOP decades ago with the intention of completely dismantling the social safety net that America had known since the 1930s. Their pursuit of their diabolical agenda has resulted in social inequalities vast and grotesque beyond anything America had known since the Coolidge and Hoover administrations. Not only have they succeeded in making a travesty of the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, they've also co-opted the Democratic Party to the point at which many Dems have ended up to the right of Richard Nixon in the ideological spectrum. America, led by progressives, says Krugman, must forge "a new New Deal," beginning with the establishment of universal health care.

Krugman spoke with WNYC's Leonard Lopate; also with NPR's Robert Siegel; and with NPR's Scott Simon; and with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.

*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD

The Conscience of a Liberal ... published October 1, 2007 by W. W. Norton

The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the
Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party by Bruce Miroff

In the modern history of the Democratic Party, the McGovern insurgency was a watershed. ... [T]he party would never again look like the urban-labor coalition of the New Deal era. ... Liberal politics since 1972 cannot be understood apart from the repercussions of the McGovern campaign. It is a key to the enduring identity crisis of Democratic leaders and activists.

That from an SUNY-Albany poly-sci prof who, in refreshingly crisp prose, illuminates both the 1972 campaign and its political aftermath. Miroff shows that McGovern was not the New Left radical as which the GOP so effectively portrayed him (and as which he's still widely perceived), but an FDR / Henry Wallace liberal with mainstream ideological beliefs -- albeit those of an earlier generation. Solid research and many interviews help illustrate the legacies, good and bad, of a grimly concluded campaign that's still, 35 years on, essential to understanding the Democratic Party.

The Liberals' Moment ... published September 25, 2007 by University Press of Kansas

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West
by Mark Lilla

The author says that the West has experienced a "Great Separation" of politics and theology, which in most times and places have been inseparable. Tracing the Separation's roots to thinkers including Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, Lilla serves up a commendably lucid and accessible intellectual feast, covering several centuries of pertinent political philosophy and theology in a relatively slim volume. The stillborn god of Lilla's title is the deity of liberal theology, especially as it developed in late 19th and early 20th-century Germany. Because that liberal theology was largely bourgeois and complacent, says the author, it was "unable to inspire genuine conviction among a younger generation seeking ultimate truth." The too-subtly flavored theological tea helped create appetites for much stronger brews -- such as Nazism and Stalinism, which falsely promised precisely the kinds of grandiose, redemptive certitudes that 19th-century Christian and Jewish liberalism did not typically offer.

The Stillborn God ... published September 11, 2007 by Knopf

The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals by Todd Gitlin

The GOP bulldozer may be broken, says Gitlin, while the Democratic big tent may be ascendant. His analysis is grounded in systematic considerations of the histories of both parties since the 1960s. To the GOP's "entrepreneurs of the contemporary right" was added the "[r]eligious zeal" that's "the high octane in the Republican base." That spawned an authoritarian juggernaut bent on crushing opposition.

And here is one crucial advantage that Republicans hold over Democrats: it goes without saying that it is far easier to blend two constituencies than the Democrats' roughly eight: labor, African Americans, Hispanics, feminists, gays, environmentalists, members of the helping professions (teachers, social workers, nurses), and the militantly liberal.

Though some of these constituencies have been alienated from the Democratic Party since the 1960s, there are promising signs, says the author, that the factions are at long last learning to play well -- if not necessarily always happily -- with one another.

The Bulldozer and the Big Tent ... published September 10, 2007 by Wiley

The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the
Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai

A NY Times Magazine writer surveys some of the entities now shaping the Democratic Party. These include "billionaires" (e.g., George Soros), Howard Dean, MoveOn, and progressive bloggers. Bai treats neither the rich donors nor the bloggers gently, and he's been scorned in many blogs. He casts Leftblogosphere as something of a tactics-obsessed, anti-GOP hatefest that need to clarify what it's for -- and that's akin to

the Parisian public square in the days of the Bastille -- not a place where townspeople came to carefully consider what their leaders had to say, but where the mob gathered to make demands and mete out its own kind of justice.

There's no missing the large elements of truth in both the bloggers' criticisms of Bai (many of which echo Joan Walsh's Salon review of The Argument) and Bai's of them. Nevertheless, The Argument is entertainingly written and in many ways enlightening. It should be useful for provoking the kinds of introspection and vigorous debate needed to make the Democratic Party something more than merely "not Bush."

Bai was featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation and on WBUR's On Point.

The Argument ... published August 16, 2007 by Penguin Press HC

Feingold: A New Democratic Party by Sanford D. Horwitt

In what appears to be a volume timed to coincide with a now abandoned Feingold presidential bid, Horwitt offers a sometimes cursory and mostly laudatory biography of one of the Senate's more principled members. Those already familiar with Feingold won't find too many surprises; those not familar with him perhaps should be. This book's offers a good means to get that way. The author concludes,

Time and again, Russ Feingold has turned conventional political wisdom on its head, succeeding politically by speaking boldly, sometimes taking controversial but principled positions and fighting corporate power when it's exercised to the detriment of ordinary Americans and the common good. In short, it is the kind of politics that used to be more characteristic of the Democratic Party before many of its leaders lost their moral compass. ... Within the Democratic Party, Russ Feingold represents a serious, authentic alternative to his party's Washington establishment. Perhaps his own electoral successes, prominence and reformer's vision will inspire many others to become Feingold Democrats.

Feingold ... published July 24, 2007 by Simon & Schuster

The Audacity of Hope:
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

As books by pols go, Obama's second memoir is a cut above. Though it occasionally slips into glib populism, it does so far less frequently and less crassly than many other such volumes. And it would seem that Obama actually wrote the book himself, which is a good thing; he writes with strength, good humor, and well-chiseled prose. But what's most appealing is the author's persuasively sincere intention not only to view a rich spectrum of political shadings in their best possible lights, but also to encourage serious democratic engagement, even on the parts of those whose perspectives he doesn't necessarily share. And if several reviewers have justifiably taken him to task for superficial or less than accomplished treatments of some issues, it's easy to accept the notion that he's still a work in progress. Better yet, one gets the sense that he might think that condition's the only reasonable one from which to pursue his chosen field.

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD

The Audacity of Hope ... published October 17, 2006 by Crown

Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats
Can Win Without the South by Thomas F. Schaller

The old Confederacy is a political graveyard for Democrats, says Schaller; they should concede it until they can win consistently in other key regions. Specifically, he advises them to consolidate their strongholds in the Northeast and on the West Coast, build on their existing strengths in the Midwest, and cultivate the Southwest and interior West. Schaller envisions politically isolating conservative white southerners in their own region -- much as they were isolated and politically marginalized from the Civil War until the New Deal, when their party (then the Democrats) controlled the old Confederacy and little else. With the exceptions of Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, that party was shut out of the White House for over 60 years. Schaller's arguments are interesting and provocative -- as are those of Steve Jarding and Dave Saunders, who advocate being competitive in the South now. And then there's Howard Dean's 50-state strategy, and ...

Whistling Past Dixie ... published October 3, 2006 by Simon & Schuster

Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and The Drive For Permanent Power by Thomas Byrne Edsall

A senior political reporter for the Washington Post (and frequent contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, et. al.) looks at how Republicans have risen to near-total dominance of American politics, and how they plan to stay that way. Edsall also explores how Dems play into GOP strategies and undermine their own interests. One of the many disturbing aspects of the book is Edsall's discussion of what he calls "anger points." He shows how GOP operatives have grown adept at micro-targeting: using sophisticated databases to identify individual homophobes, white racists, gun nuts, primitivist religious fanatics, etc. Once these fine Americans have been identified to a high degree of probability, it's an easy matter to see to it that they're exposed to plenty of broadcast and print materials designed to inflame their most bestial fears and hatreds, motivating them to get out and vote GOP: the party of God-fearin', gun-totin' white folk.

Building Red America ... published August 28, 2006 by Basic Books

Welcome to the Homeland: A Journey to the Rural Heart
Of America's Conservative Revolution by Brian Mann

Talk of red states vs. blue states misses the real American divide, says a public radio reporter based in New York's sparsely populated Adirondacks. The real divide, says Mann, is between urban and suburban "metros," who trend toward progressivism; and exurban and rural "homelanders," who are likely to be very conservative. Mann observes that while homelanders represent a small minority of Americans -- only about 55 million vs. roughly 250 million metros -- homelanders dominate American politics, and their dominance is growing. Part of the reason is that the Founders built a powerful rural state bias into the Constitution. For example, even though Republicans hold 11 more U.S. Senate seats than do Democrats, because many GOP senators are from low-population states, Republican senators represent about 4.5 million fewer Americans than do their Democratic counterparts. But appearances notwithstanding, says Mann, "homelanders aren't robbing the store. To a remarkable degree, they own the store; and they plan a complete remodeling."

Welcome to the Homeland ... published August 22, 2006 by Steerforth

Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer by Brooke A. Masters

Eliot Spitzer appears poised to become New York's next governor, which would instantly make him one of the nation's most highly visible and influential Democratic officials. That being the case, Masters has done us a favor by producing a biography that's not only timely, but that's also won wide praise for its fairness. She shows how Spitzer rose to fame as a New York attorney general intent on using his prosecutorial powers not so much to put corporate bad guys away as to get them to change the way they do business. Critics, on the other hand, often accuse him of having more interest in headlines than in justice. Although Masters reveals elements of truth in such suspicions, her overall take on Spitzer is guardedly optimistic. Said she, "[H]e is ambitious and wants badly to be governor but for policy reasons rather than simply personal aggrandizement. He really thinks he can improve New York and American government."

Spoiling for a Fight ... published July 25, 2006 by Times Books

Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving,
Left-Wing Freak Show by Geoffrey Nunberg

Like George Lakoff, linguist Nunberg looks at how right-wing extremists have perverted the English language on behalf of their economic and social agendas -- the "Death tax," for example, or the "Clear Skies Act." The problem goes far beyond a few snappy turns of phrase, though; citizens not only on the right but in the center and on the left as well have fully and deeply internalized the Right's warped vocabulary. Nunberg makes the case that the conservatives' linguistic sabotage is so widespread and deep-rooted that it will be very difficult to repair. Throughout, he maintains not only a preternaturally sharp eye, but also a pitch-perfect sense of humor:

A recent article in Demographics Today reports that the majority of brie consumers are Republicans -- not surprising, considering that brie is a lot easier to find in the gourmet shops in upscale suburbs than in grocery stores in working-class neighborhoods. But whoever actually buys the stuff, it's hard to think of anything that stands in better for the right's stereotype of liberals -- soft, pale, runny and French.

Terry Gross interviewed Nunberg on NPR's Fresh Air.

Talking Right ... published July 3, 2006 by Public Affairs

The Age of Fallibility:
Consequences of the War on Terror by George Soros

Soros donated over $20 million to progressive 527s such as MoveOn.org in an effort to defeat George Bush in 2004, and he's long been involved in other democratization projects worldwide, aiming to foster what he calls an Open Society. But in his latest book he expresses his concerns that America's less open since 9/11, and that our nation

has become a "feel-good" society, unwilling to face unpleasant reality. That is why the public could be so grievously misled by the Bush administration. ... America has fallen into the hands of extremist ideologues, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who believe that the truth can be successfully manipulated. They have successfully manipulated a born-again president and a feel-good public.

While Soros has been one of the Bush administration's most adamant critics, he's not thrilled with Democrats, either. He says that they

show no sign of engaging in a profound rethinking. On the contrary, Democrats have been so spooked by the Republican charge that they are soft on defense, that they are determined to outdo the Republicans in the war on terror. ... [T]he Democratic Party does not stand for the policies that I advocate; indeed, if it did, it could not be elected. ... I feel obliged, however, to support the Democratic Party until the Republican Party is recaptured from the extremists.

Soros spoke with NPR's Scott Simon.

The Age of Fallibility ... published June 12, 2006 by PublicAffairs

Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew
Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein

Over 300 years after his death, Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is on most scholars' short lists of essential Western philosophers. In his own day, fame and influence arrived while he was still young, and he was among best-liked, most famously congenial of intellectuals, sought for his affability as well as his brilliance. Unfortunately for Spinoza, however, his philosophical exaltation of reason led to excommunication from Amsterdam's Jewish community. "It is hard for us to appreciate the loneliness of Spinoza's secularized spirituality," says Goldstein, a novelist and philosophy prof. "For an individual of the early seventeenth century to live outside the bounds of a religious identity ... was all but unthinkable." He persevered nonetheless in advocating such ideals as freedom of thought and speech, unfettered scientific exploration, and the separation of church and state. Goldstein strikes a comfortable balance amidst the competing demands of biography, history, and philosophy, delivering a satisfying portrait of modernity's herald.

Betraying Spinoza ... published May 30, 2006 by Schocken

Stranger in a Strange Land by Gary Younge

Younge's a NYC-based correspondent / opinion columnist for Britain's The Guardian. His columns are also regular features in such popular U.S. progressive venues such as The Nation, Tom Paine.com and Common Dreams. In this, his third book, the Brit with roots in Barbados offers his perspectives on America through a selection of some of his best Guardian columns. Of his coming to America Younge said,

I came less in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville than that other great chronicler of American civilisation, the Trinidadian socialist CLR James. Not so much transatlantic as Black Atlantic. Coming from a nation that had interned the Irish and massacred the Mau Mau, the only thing I found exceptional about Abu Ghraib was that the perpetrators there had been caught on camera.

His outsider's perspectives are occasionally startling even to Americans who agree with his lefty politics; one sometimes wonders what country he's talking about. But that's the point: a fresh set of eyes, free from many of the habits of mind we Americans bring to our own navel gazing.

Stranger in a Strange Land ... published May 26, 2006 by New Press

Saving General Washington: Why Everything the Right Wing Tells You About Your Country's Founders Is Wrong by J.R. Norton

A senior producer for The Al Franken Show and former Middle East editor for the Christian Science Monitor says that the "authoritarian Republicans" who now control the federal government have inverted America's founding principles. They "never met a powerful government program they didn't like," whereas the founders believed that any given government is "necessarily comprised of flawed individuals with sometimes selfish interests that must be checked and monitored." The true heirs to the founders' principles, the author argues, are today's progressives. Norton seasons his arguments with generous measures of humor, such as those provided by intermittent pages from The Alternative Universe Daily Spectator, a satirical newspaper covering the news we'd like to read.

Saving General Washington ... published May 18, 2006 by Tarcher

How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values
From a President Run Amok by Glenn Greenwald

So lucid, incisive and bipartisan a blogger is Greg Greenwald -- a New York First Amendement and civil rights attorney -- that Russ Feingold even quotes him in congressional hearings. And he's created quite a stir with this work -- produced with the aid of volunteer bloggers -- about the Bush administrations's arrogation of vast and decidedly unconstitutional powers. Says Greenwald,

[T]he concentrated and unlimited power now claimed by President Bush constitutes a true crisis for the United States ... it has the potential to fundamentally change our national character, to irreversibly restrict our individual liberties and to radically alter our core principles. It is not hyperbole to observe that we are moving away from the founding principles of our constitutional republic towards theories of powers that the founders identified as the hallmarks of tyranny.

A remarkable video and bloggers' endorsements helped spur the book's impressive pre-publication sales.

How Would a Patriot Act? ... published May 15, 2006 by Working Assets Publishing

Fight Club Politics by Juliet Eilperin

The House has in many ways ceased to serve its constituents, says a veteran Capitol Hill reporter. While Eilperin shows that many political techniques have been used to render the chamber dysfunctional, one stands out as more anti-democratic and destructive than the rest: aggressive partisan redistricting, which creates unassailable (and therefore unaccountable) House seats. Eilperin says most

congressional experts agree on what a fair system would look like: It would limit redistricting to once a decade in order to reflect the latest population figures. It would place a priority on fostering competitiveness, ensuring minority representation, creating geographically compact districts, and achieving a congressional delegation that reflects the state's overall political balance.

"Unfortunately," some of those experts also believe that

though many Americans have become increasingly frustrated with Congress, as shown by recent polls, they have yet to recognize how election-proof districts have made lawmakers less accountable to voters and more inclined to fight petty partisan battles.

Fight Club Politics ... published April 15, 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield

Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out
by Bill Katovsky

Twenty stories of people who've struggled -- sometimes at great personal cost -- to bring integrity to public life. These tales both inspire and lend grim credence to the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished. Former Sen. Max Cleland says that after losing three limbs to a grenade in Vietnam, the Saxby Chambliss / Karl Rove smear campaign against him was like a second grenade:

I won't ever run for office again. I can't handle it. Because it did me in. It's too much physically and emotionally. So probably my best venue is out of the limelight. I'm like an old combat commander. I've been in combat too long. I was in combat for nine years, from October 1995 to just recently. I have known both military and political battles. I have been traumatically wounded by both. Winston Churchill said that politics is a lot like war, except in war, you get killed once. In politics you get killed many times.

Others who tell of conscientious public lives -- sometimes rewarded with bitter dregs -- include Rand Beers, Daniel Ellsberg, Paul Hackett, Paul Krugman, Randi Rhodes, Coleen Rowley, and John Sellers.

Patriots Act ... published April 1, 2006 by The Lyons Press

Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen

A Nobel-prizewinning economist and one of the world's most widely revered public intellectuals argues that we're all shaped by many identities: e.g., female, accountant, step-parent, vegetarian, city dweller, etc. Pigeonholing ourselves or others into one primary identity (e.g., conservative Christian or Muslim fundamentalist) to the exclusion of the rest, though, is dehumanizing and potentially lethal. Says Sen,

The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness.

The book developed in conjunction with Sen's Hitchcock lectures last May. They may be seen as two different streaming video programs, here and here.

Identity and Violence ... published March 27, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company

America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama

One of neoconservatism's leading lights jumps ship, saying that his old pals now in the Bush administration have gotten things terribly wrong by ignoring some of their movement's basic principles. Fukuyama says the invasion of Iraq was an egregious violation of the neoconservative notion that "social engineering" (e.g., trying to "democratize" the Middle East) is usually a dumb and doomed idea from the get-go.

The author provides a small loophole for his comrades by primarily blaming Iraq on Cheney and Rummy, who "were not known as neoconservatives before their tenures." Nevertheless, neoconservatism's "good name" has been so badly tarnished that rehabilitation may not be possible; it's time for a new approach. This he calls "realistic Wilsonianism," and spends much of his tome teasing out what that might mean.

Fukuyama was featured on NPR's Morning Edition last Monday. He's also launched a website with Zbigniew Brzezinski and others.

America at the Crossroads ... published February, 2006 by Lorem Ipsum

Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah

A Princeton philosophy prof suggests a congenial middle ground between absolutism and relativism. Appiah likens his vision of "cosmopolitanism" ("world citizenship"; a doctrine that dates to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers) to a "conversation" in which all participants must be respected, and many arguments are likely to go peacefully unsettled. Says Appiah,

I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement but because it will help us get used to one another -- something we have a powerful need to do in this globalized era. If that is the aim, then the fact that we have all these opportunities for disagreement about values need not put us off. Understanding one another may be hard; it can certainly be interesting. But it doesn't require that we come to agreement.

Cosmopolitanism ... published January 9, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company

The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the
Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart

Many of the fundamental intellectual and spiritual dichotomies of the modern world were clearly represented by two of the West's philosophical giants when Leibniz went to visit Spinoza in 1676. The author skillfully presents compelling 17th-century personalities and dramas in this highly readable genealogy of Big Ideas. Says Stewart -- who holds a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford,

[T]he two greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century remain unsurpassed, and should perhaps be considered the twin founders of modern thought. We lived in an age defined by its reaction to Spinoza and to all that he recorded in his philosophy. And there is no more compelling expression of this reaction than the philosophy Liebniz developed in the long years after his return from Holland. Contemporary debates concerning the separation of church and state, the clash of civilizations, and the theory of natural selection, to name just a few examples, are all continuations of the discussion that began in November 1676.

The Courtier and the Heretic ... published January 9, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company

Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kołakowski

A widely revered Marxist humanist combines in a single 1,200-page behemoth the 3-volume history of Marxism he wrote in the 1960s and '70s; included are a few brief but interesting new comments. Though he's a Marxist, Kołakowski's long been a leading critic of the vast chasm between that ideology's theories and its real-world malpractice. This volume probably constitutes (for now) the definitive history of Marxism.

That's not to say that Kołakowski claims to have written objective history (now there's an oxymoron), but given his well-earned stature, one disputes his interpretations at one's own risk. Starting with Plotinus, he devotes nearly 80 pages to an exploration of some of Marx's intellectual forebears before providing a reasonably exhaustive (but never exhausting; he writes well, and P.S. Falla's translation scans smoothly) exposition of the development of early Marxist thought. Book Two ("The Golden Age") deals with the period of the Second International (1889-1914), while the final section is titled, presciently enough, "The Breakdown."

Main Currents of Marxism ... published November 7, 2005 by W. W. Norton

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch

Leo Damrosch delivers what as of now likely constitutes the definitive English-language biography of one of the most influential thinkers and writers in human history. Rousseau wrote the Social Contract, pioneered the idea of the noble savage, helped launch Romanticism, and fueled the American and French revolutions. Many of his beliefs still influence, directly and indirectly, U.S. K-12 education. Says Damrosch,

My intention is to integrate the story of Rousseau's extraordinarily original writings with the story of the tumultuous life that produced them, to use wherever possible his own words and those of others who knew him, to make the insights of modern scholarship available for the general reader, and to suggest why his ideas have had such electrifying effects. The standard biography in English, by the political scientist Maurice Cranston, is exhaustively detailed, but almost willfully ignores the stranger aspects of Rousseau's experience.

Damrosch, however, thoroughly explores those "stranger aspects" -- without gratuitous salaciousness or tongue clucking; no mean feats, considering Rousseau's often despicable personal behavior.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius ... pub'd November 1, 2005 by Houghton Mifflin

Voltaire Almighty by Roger Pearson

Voltaire's decadence notwithstanding (he was a backstabbing self- promoter and war profiteer who wrote smutty letters to a niece with whom he had a long affair), he often sacrificed his own comfort and liberty for ideals such as civil liberties and religious tolerance. His writings, central to The Enlightenment, laid intellectual groundwork for U.S. independence and the French Revolution. Says Pearson,

Voltaire valued freedom above all else. In the short memoirs he wrote in 1758-9 he commented: 'I hear much talk about freedom, but I do not think that there has ever been a private individual in Europe who has achieved the kind of freedom I have. May those who have the will and the means follow my example.' Perhaps this remark may stand, if not as his lesson to us (since we cannot all win the lottery), then as his epitaph. For it was above all by his example that he contributed to a sea-change in 18th-century European opinion. Rich, insubordinate, articulate, shrewd, cussed and courageous, Francois-Marie Arouet endeavored to say and do as he himself -- by the light of reason -- saw fit. And he strove to enable others to do the same. He managed both.

Voltaire Almighty ... published October 13, 2005 by Bloomsbury USA