Sarah Vowell: The Wordy Shipmates

U.S. President Ronald Reagan

In January 1989, U.S. President Ronald Reagan issued his “Farewell Address to the Nation” from the Oval Office. And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

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“John Cotton is forty-six years old. He is the most respected, famous, and beloved Puritan minister in England. Getting him to bless the send-off of these relatively unimportant castaways would be like scoring Nelson Mandela to deliver the commencement address at the neighbor kid's eighth-grade graduation. In fact, once the colonists arrive in Massachusetts they will name their settlement Boston, in honor of Cotton's hometown.”

- Sarah Vowell, author of the book: The Wordy Shipmates

In November 2008, Virginia Heffernan wrote “Mayflower Power” for The New York Times. Sarah Vowell is a problem. She’s a problem like Sarah Palin, Cyndi Lauper and Kathy Griffin. She’s annoying. Or, really, she’s double-annoying, because she styles herself as annoying — provocative-annoying — and if you become annoyed by her you seem to be conceding the point. She’s gotten to you. Vowell, who constantly emphasizes how nerdy (meaning impressive) she finds her own interest in the Puritans, introduces figures like John Winthrop and Roger Williams as if no one’s ever heard of them. She delivers a farrago of free-floating pedantry — “the kind of smart-alecky diatribe for which I’ve gotten paid for 20 years” — having evidently made it her job to enlighten slacker Gen-Xers with a remedial history of our own nation. It’s not right. Vowell’s whole alt-­everything vibe is just dated enough to be cringey. And then there’s her Great Plains accent: can something so wholesome-soundin’ be real? And her politics. Perfectly early-millennium coastal (green, be good, Obama, etc.). Can she really take pleasure in plumping for an autofill ideology that’s so widely shared?

David Rakoff: Half Empty

Half empty or half full?

“Is the glass half empty or half full?” is a common expression, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism (half full) or pessimism (half empty); or as a general litmus test to simply determine if an individual is an optimist or a pessimist. The purpose of the question is to demonstrate that the situation may be seen in different ways depending on one's point of view and that there may be opportunity in the situation as well as trouble. This idiom is used to explain how people perceive events and objects. Perception is unique to every individual and is simply one's interpretation of reality. The phrase "Is the glass half empty or half full" can be referred to as a philosophical question.

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“I do tend to be an anxious fellow and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news. I appreciate honesty. I appreciate confronting something head on and being given all the details first — and then responding to them in whatever way I might. At best, it simply confirmed who I am to myself. It helps me. For me, it works.”

- David Rakoff, author of the book: Half Empty

In September 2010, Bill Scheft wrote “Nabob of Negativism” for The New York Times. The book jacket of “Half Empty,” David Rakoff’s third essay collection, contains not only the warning “No Inspirational Life Lessons Will Be Found in These Pages,” but the guarantee that the author will have you “positively reveling in the power of negativity.” It’s never clear whether the pessimism alluded to is Rakoff’s philosophy, Rakoff’s device or Rakoff’s publicist clearing his throat. Luckily, we don’t have to judge this book by its cover. The inherent problem with most collections is that the reader can’t help comparing entries, like a track handicapper setting the morning line. In his ambitious opening essay, “The Bleak Shall Inherit,” an interview with the psychologist Julie Norem (author of “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak”) sets Rakoff off on an attempt to construct his case for the defensive pessimism (expecting the worst so one will never be disappointed) imbued in the nine essays that follow. They don’t all follow, and it doesn’t really matter, in the same way it doesn’t matter whether you buy a film’s premise that Diane Lane can’t get a date.

“Writer Melissa Bank said it best: 'The only proper answer to 'Why me?' is 'Why not you?' The universe is anarchic and doesn't care about us and unfortunately, there's no greater rhyme or reason as to why it would be me. And since there is no answer as to why me, it's not a question I feel really entitled to ask. And in so many other ways, I'm so far ahead of the game. I have access to great medical care. My general baseline health, aside from the general unpleasantness of the cancer, is great. And it's great because I'm privileged to have great health. And I live in a country where I'm not making sneakers for a living and I don't live near a toxic waste dump. You can't win all the contests and then lose at one contest and say 'Why am I not winning this contest as well?' It's random. So truthfully, again, do I wish it weren't me? Absolutely. I still can't make that logistic jump to thinking there's a reason why it shouldn't be me.”

- David Rakoff, author of the book: Half Empty

Eamon Javers: Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage

In February of 2010, the author adapted pieces of his book for a piece for the political website, POLITICO, in which he said this: In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned. In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation. The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253. Read that POLITICO piece here.

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David Horowitz, Richard Poe: The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party

Conspirators of the world unite. Regardless of what side you fall on, conspiracy theories such as those in this book are interesting. Flip through a few of the pages offered up on Amazon.com or over a Kindle sample, and at almost every other paragraph, there's a claim, it seems, that should be qualified somehow. But there aren't that many foot notes or resources noted. That all said, it's a good read; interesting, somewhat persuasive. It's always good to mix things up. See The Daily Show's "spin" on the paranoia about Soros below.

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Recently, a story out of the Canada Free Press website mentioned the book and author: Like a rotten fish, the reaction to the whole WikiLeaks thing stinks—as they say—from the head, meaning not only Obama but also his Capo di Tutti Capi, George Soros, whose major role in the political lives of both Hillary and Obama and their historically toxic anti-American agendas has been brilliantly, rivetingly, and illuminatingly spelled out in exquisite detail in The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe. See that CFP blurb here.

Nandan Nilekani: Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation

In India, a hot button issue is the UID debate. A universal sort of ID, a national number sort of akin to the social security personal identifier in the United States is in the works. The author recently opined on the issue, and was mentioned on an Economic Times webpage this way: With some activists opining that the unique identity number should not be linked to the government's rural employment scheme, MNREGA , UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani has said the 'Aadhar' number should not be the basis for any discrimination. Asked about activists like Jean Dreze, a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC), not favouring linking Aadhar to MNREGA, he said the number should not be used in such a manner that one gets discriminated against. "Aadhar should not be a basis of discrimination," he said at the annual Rajinder Mathur memorial lecture organised by The Editors Guild of India. [...] Nilekani said the Aadhaar number will be helpful in opening a bank account, getting a ration card and many other things especially for the poor and the migrant labourers. He said the number will enable inclusive growth and development for the deprived and will act as an instrument of social inclusion. In 2009, The Economist magazine covered the book and author this way:

NANDAN NILEKANI, the co-founder of Infosys, one of India’s biggest IT firms, is a corporate icon in his homeland. But to many readers outside the country he is best known for a stray comment he made to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in February 2004. His remark (“Tom, the playing field is being levelled”) inspired the title and thesis of Mr Friedman’s “The World is Flat”, a big-think book about offshoring and globalisation that sold millions. The publishers of “Imagining India”, Mr Nilekani’s admirable first book, must hope that many of those readers will be eager to hear the Indian side of the story, straight from the source. Not to disappoint them, Mr Nilekani provides a chapter on globalisation and two on information technology. But “Imagining India” is a very different book from Mr Friedman’s bestseller. Mr Nilekani, an intellectual trapped in an entrepreneur’s body, seeks to understand India through the “ebb and flow of its ideas” and debates. Some of these arguments are now resolved, even forgotten. Others have yet to be joined. A third category of ideas commands assent, but no action. And some arguments still burn white-hot.

Read that Economist piece here. See also: The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management, Doing Business in 21st-Century India: How to Profit Today in Tomorrow's Most Exciting Market, Doing Business in India For Dummies, The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767-1836 (Worlds of the East India Company). The author was a guest on The Daily Show in 2009, as well as a speaker at TED. See those videos just below.

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There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America

In September 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle said this about the author and book:

Philip Dray, the author of "There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Struggle of Labor in America," comes into the ring with fists flying, and he doesn't let up for a moment. If you love Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," you'll probably love Dray's history, too, with its pageantry and its celebratory prose that shines a bright light of compassion and understanding on ordinary workingmen, women and children. Yes, even American children with white skins toiled 10 hours a day in factories long before corporations moved overseas and put Indian and Pakistani kids to work making shirts and sneakers. Dispassionate historians might find Dray's narrative too often romanticized. They'd have a point. Indeed, his labor heroes tend to be "courageous," to speak "with all heart" and, when they're mowed down by the militia, the streets are awash in "carnage." Still, it's difficult if not impossible to omit colorful language from a book about American workers. The story of unions in America is, as Dray points out, an epic struggle that seemed at times to be fought between good and evil. Nineteenth century labor activists called their initially underground organization the Knights of Labor as though they sprang from the court of King Arthur. As Dray shows, workers saw themselves engaged in an apocalyptic battle to give birth to a new world of economic justice. They could not help but speak as though they were the saviors of humanity from the perceived evils of capitalism.

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The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean

Author Susan Casey spent five years following waves, surfers and ocean scientists. The result is her compelling nonfiction work "The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean," which conveys how it feels to be in the grasp of a sea monster. It is a sequel to her best-selling "Devil's Teeth," about white sharks that terrorize the Northern California coastline. After taking readers into the cold, clear danger beneath the surface, Casey now chases another oceanic phenomenon in a riveting tale that packs the narrative power and dexterity of Richard Preston's "The Wild Trees." She picks up where Sebastian Unger's "The Perfect Storm" ends by blending scientific mysteries with extreme-sport "why-do-they-do-this?" Casey gets closer than any spectator would dare, witnessing famous surfers in action from photographers' vantage points just yards away. Eventually, at a celebrated Maui break, she also shoots down the face of a colossal wave on the back of a Jet Ski.

This was out of the San Jose Mercury; you can find that article here. The Daily Show had Casey on as a guest, below is that interview. Case also wrote: The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks, Women Invent!: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World.

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The Daily Show - December 9, 2010 - Edmund Morris

Edmund Morris Episode #15157 Edmund Morris believes a politician as multifaceted and complex as Theodore Roosevelt couldn't run for presidency now. (07:01) Tags: Edmund Morris, interviews, books, Theodore Roosevelt, history, death, elitism, business, environment, national parks, hunting

Watch the full episode here. See also: Theodore Rex (Modern Library Paperbacks), The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Modern Library Paperbacks), Edmund Morris's Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy Bundle: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

The Daily Show - December 9, 2010 - Michelle Williams

December 08, 2010 - Michelle Williams Views: 217,281 Aired: 12/08/10 Episode 15156 Julian Assange is arrested, and Michelle Williams describes Harvey Weinstein's full frontal assault.

See also: Wendy and Lucy, Me Without You, Mammoth

The Daily Show - December 7, 2010 - Seth Green

December 07, 2010 - Seth Green Views: 117,530 Aired: 12/07/10 Episode 15155 John Oliver describes trickle-down economics, and Seth Green admits to dating "Star Wars" in college.

View the full show here. See also: Without a Paddle (Widescreen Edition), AIRBORNE, The Green Hornet Movie Seth Rogen Jay Chou Car Poster Print - 22x34, Greg the Bunny - The Complete Series

The Daily Show - December 6, 2010 - Hugh Shelton

December 06, 2010 - Hugh Shelton Views: 186,486 Aired: 12/06/10 Episode 15154 Tulsa renames its holiday parade, and Hugh Shelton discusses civilian control of the military.

View the full episode here. See also: Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, Secrets of Success: North Carolina Values-Based Leadership, The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, by Gen. Hugh Shelton (Author), Ronald Levinson (Author), Malcolm McConnell (Author) Without Hesitation [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD], Known and Unknown: A Memoir

The Daily Show - December 2, 2010 - Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff Episode #15153 Stacy Schiff describes Cleopatra's angular face and her suicide after the death of Mark Antony. (06:54) Tags: Stacy Schiff, interviews, books, history, lookin' good, death, Cleopatra. Aired: 12/02/10Viewed: 36,798.

View the webpage for the entire Daily Show interview here. See also: Cleopatra: A Life, Saint-Exupery: A Biography, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff (Author)Cleopatra: A Life [Hardcover]

The Daily Show - December 1, 2010 - Sting

Sting Episode #15152 Sting never thinks a new place on tour is going to be awful because being a rock star is different than being a comedian. (06:00) Tags: Sting, interviews, celebrities, music, rock 'n' roll, Hanukkah, holidays, New York City, travel. Aired: 12/01/10Viewed: 46,369.

Check the full interview out, here. See also: If On A Winter's Night..., Sting Live In Berlin [Blu-ray], Sting - All This Time

The Daily Show - November 30, 2010 - Susan Casey

Susan Casey Episode #15151 Susan Casey talks about the scientists and surfers who study and explore huge waves. (07:22) Tags: Susan Casey, interviews, books, oceans, surfing, jet skis, science, tsunamis, sports, lookin' good. Aired: 11/30/10Viewed: 49,046.

Check the full interview and show out here. See also: The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks, Women Invent!: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World, by Casey'sThe Wave(Hardcover)(2010)(The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean)

The Daily Show - November 29, 2010 - Judah Friedlander

Judah Friedlander Episode #15150 In "How to Beat Up Anybody," Judah Friedlander demonstrates an air attack on Bigfoot and explains why everyone needs to levitate. (06:04) Tags: Judah Friedlander, interviews, books, celebrities, TV, martial arts, Bigfoot, fights, weight/obesity, America, North Korea, Kim Jong-il Aired: 11/29/10Viewed: 47,548.

Check the show out here, at TheDailyShow.com. See also: How to Beat Up Anybody: An Instructional and Inspirational Karate Book by the World Champion, 30 Rock and Philosophy: We Want to Go to There (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series), How to Beat Up Anybody: An Instructional and Inspirational Karate Book by the World Champion [Paperback], I'm Not High: (But I've Got a Lot of Crazy Stories about Life as a Goat Boy, a Dad, and a Spiritual Warrior)

The Daily Show - November 18, 2010 - Philip K. Howard

Philip K. Howard Episode #15149 Philip K. Howard believes America's current political system conspires to argue about things that aren't relevant. (04:27) Tags: Philip K. Howard, interviews, lawyers, books, government, education, school, Tea Party, reform. Aired: 11/18/10. Viewed: 43,015.

Check the full episode out here. See also: Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America, The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom, Dinner for Architects: A Collection of Napkin Sketches, Lecture Notes: Medical Law and Ethics