Txtng: the Gr8 Db8. (2008). Crystal, David. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Angel at the Fence
Angel at the Fence : the true story of a love that survived, by Herman Rosenblat was requested by a patron. This is a book that has been shown to be a fake Holocaust memoir.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Books About Legal Cases
Alan Dershowitz praises these accounts of momentous legal cases
1. The Leo Frank Case. Leonard Dinnerstein. Columbia University, 1968
Great trial accounts read like novels but are as documented as scientific papers. "The Leo Frank Case" meets this criterion. The reader can feel the bigotry toward the Jewish defendant, Leo Frank, who in 1913 was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old girl who worked in the pencil factory he managed. But Leonard Dinnerstein, ever the historian, mutes what must be his true level of anger at this overt prejudice. Not surprisingly, Frank was convicted and sentenced to death; surprisingly, after the trial, the lawyer for a black prosecution witness announced that his client, not Frank, had committed the murder. A few days before leaving office, Georgia Gov. John M. Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life, but a vigilante mob (including two former superior court justices) dragged Frank out of prison and lynched him. The vigilantes were photographed, but a grand jury refused to indict. A mob also descended on the governor's home but was dispersed by the Georgia National Guard. After his term ended, Slaton fled the state, not returning for several years. Eventually, Frank's innocence was proved by an eyewitness, and Georgia issued an apology in 1986 -- for the lynching, but not the false conviction.
2. Summer for the Gods. Edward J. Larson. Basic Books, 1997 345.7302 L
This book about the Scopes trial is an excellent counterweight to the distortion -- made famous by the play and movie "Inherit the Wind" -- that the case was a simple clash between good and evil. The reality was more complex. Yes, schoolteacher John Scopes was prosecuted in the 1920s by the state of Tennessee for teaching evolution, but the textbook he used was filled with racist pseudo-science. "Civic Biology" assured white, segregated high-school students that, among the "five races" of man, "the highest type of all, the Caucasians, [are] represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America." The book also proposed involuntary sterilizations of the "unfit." No surprise, then, that William Jennings Bryan, an egalitarian, would be outraged at this attack on the morality and religion that had formed the basis of his political career. Nor was Bryan the know-nothing Biblical literalist of "Inherit the Wind." For the most part, he got the better of Clarence Darrow in the arguments over the Bible, though not in the argument over banning evolution.
3. The Rosenberg File. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983. 345.0231 R
Great trial books can shatter myths. The liberal myth about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: They were innocent of passing secrets to the Soviets and were victims of an unfair trial. The conservative myth: The Rosenbergs were guilty and the trial fair. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton -- through interviews with the Rosenbergs' own defenders and with KGB defectors, and through the use of hard documentary evidence -- prove that Julius Rosenberg was guilty, Ethel was innocent (at least legally, if not morally) and both were victims of an unfair legal process that included ex parte communication between the judge and prosecutor. The authors also prove that the FBI knew Ethel was innocent but believed that, by threatening her with execution, the bureau could coerce her husband into revealing the names of other spies. When the gambit failed, the FBI felt it necessary to carry out the threat, even if that meant executing an innocent woman. Although a neoconservative ideological bent occasionally colors the fluid writing and flawless research, this is an eye-opening work of history.
4. History on Trial. Deborah E. Lipstadt. Ecco, 2005 940.5318 L
"History on Trial" is Deborah E. Lipstadt's compelling first-person account of her experience as the defendant in a libel suit brought in 1996 by British author David Irving, who was unhappy that she had described him in print as a Holocaust denier. As I wrote in an afterword for the book, the trial was a rare instance in which "truth, justice and freedom of speech [were] all simultaneously served." What was at stake in the case transcended Lipstadt's reputation and fortune. Her antagonist sought to put the Holocaust itself on trial. This worried survivors, concerned that their history was being subjected to a judicial test, with standards of evidence and proof that did not always produce truth. Moreover, under British law, truth was not necessarily a defense to defamation. Through the determination of Lipstadt and the brilliant legal work of her lawyer, Anthony Julius, especially his devastating cross-examination of Irving, the court ruled that she had written the truth -- Irving is indeed a Holocaust denier -- and that he had not been defamed. The verdict also helped to expand the right of truthful free speech in Britain.
5. Until Proven Innocent. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson. Thomas Dunne, 2007 364.1532 T
"Until Proven Innocent," an account of the Duke lacrosse case, should be ranked high among works that disprove the notion that those charged with serious crimes are invariably guilty and that those who are acquitted somehow beat the system. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson pillory not only the prosecutor in the supposed sexual-assault case -- he was eventually disbarred after charges against the three players were dropped before going to trial -- but also the president of Duke University and those on his faculty who were willing to sacrifice innocent students as a bizarre form of racial reparation. The Duke case demonstrates how contemporary political correctness, run amok, can deform the legal system just as dramatically as other prejudices have in the past.
Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" (Wiley, 2008).
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W88
1. The Leo Frank Case. Leonard Dinnerstein. Columbia University, 1968
Great trial accounts read like novels but are as documented as scientific papers. "The Leo Frank Case" meets this criterion. The reader can feel the bigotry toward the Jewish defendant, Leo Frank, who in 1913 was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old girl who worked in the pencil factory he managed. But Leonard Dinnerstein, ever the historian, mutes what must be his true level of anger at this overt prejudice. Not surprisingly, Frank was convicted and sentenced to death; surprisingly, after the trial, the lawyer for a black prosecution witness announced that his client, not Frank, had committed the murder. A few days before leaving office, Georgia Gov. John M. Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life, but a vigilante mob (including two former superior court justices) dragged Frank out of prison and lynched him. The vigilantes were photographed, but a grand jury refused to indict. A mob also descended on the governor's home but was dispersed by the Georgia National Guard. After his term ended, Slaton fled the state, not returning for several years. Eventually, Frank's innocence was proved by an eyewitness, and Georgia issued an apology in 1986 -- for the lynching, but not the false conviction.
2. Summer for the Gods. Edward J. Larson. Basic Books, 1997 345.7302 L
This book about the Scopes trial is an excellent counterweight to the distortion -- made famous by the play and movie "Inherit the Wind" -- that the case was a simple clash between good and evil. The reality was more complex. Yes, schoolteacher John Scopes was prosecuted in the 1920s by the state of Tennessee for teaching evolution, but the textbook he used was filled with racist pseudo-science. "Civic Biology" assured white, segregated high-school students that, among the "five races" of man, "the highest type of all, the Caucasians, [are] represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America." The book also proposed involuntary sterilizations of the "unfit." No surprise, then, that William Jennings Bryan, an egalitarian, would be outraged at this attack on the morality and religion that had formed the basis of his political career. Nor was Bryan the know-nothing Biblical literalist of "Inherit the Wind." For the most part, he got the better of Clarence Darrow in the arguments over the Bible, though not in the argument over banning evolution.
3. The Rosenberg File. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983. 345.0231 R
Great trial books can shatter myths. The liberal myth about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: They were innocent of passing secrets to the Soviets and were victims of an unfair trial. The conservative myth: The Rosenbergs were guilty and the trial fair. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton -- through interviews with the Rosenbergs' own defenders and with KGB defectors, and through the use of hard documentary evidence -- prove that Julius Rosenberg was guilty, Ethel was innocent (at least legally, if not morally) and both were victims of an unfair legal process that included ex parte communication between the judge and prosecutor. The authors also prove that the FBI knew Ethel was innocent but believed that, by threatening her with execution, the bureau could coerce her husband into revealing the names of other spies. When the gambit failed, the FBI felt it necessary to carry out the threat, even if that meant executing an innocent woman. Although a neoconservative ideological bent occasionally colors the fluid writing and flawless research, this is an eye-opening work of history.
4. History on Trial. Deborah E. Lipstadt. Ecco, 2005 940.5318 L
"History on Trial" is Deborah E. Lipstadt's compelling first-person account of her experience as the defendant in a libel suit brought in 1996 by British author David Irving, who was unhappy that she had described him in print as a Holocaust denier. As I wrote in an afterword for the book, the trial was a rare instance in which "truth, justice and freedom of speech [were] all simultaneously served." What was at stake in the case transcended Lipstadt's reputation and fortune. Her antagonist sought to put the Holocaust itself on trial. This worried survivors, concerned that their history was being subjected to a judicial test, with standards of evidence and proof that did not always produce truth. Moreover, under British law, truth was not necessarily a defense to defamation. Through the determination of Lipstadt and the brilliant legal work of her lawyer, Anthony Julius, especially his devastating cross-examination of Irving, the court ruled that she had written the truth -- Irving is indeed a Holocaust denier -- and that he had not been defamed. The verdict also helped to expand the right of truthful free speech in Britain.
5. Until Proven Innocent. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson. Thomas Dunne, 2007 364.1532 T
"Until Proven Innocent," an account of the Duke lacrosse case, should be ranked high among works that disprove the notion that those charged with serious crimes are invariably guilty and that those who are acquitted somehow beat the system. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson pillory not only the prosecutor in the supposed sexual-assault case -- he was eventually disbarred after charges against the three players were dropped before going to trial -- but also the president of Duke University and those on his faculty who were willing to sacrifice innocent students as a bizarre form of racial reparation. The Duke case demonstrates how contemporary political correctness, run amok, can deform the legal system just as dramatically as other prejudices have in the past.
Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" (Wiley, 2008).
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W88
Wizard of Tuskegee
After decades of neglect, Booker T. Washington is the subject of a timely reappraisal
Up From History. Robert J. Norrell
(Harvard University Press, 508 pages, $35)
A century ago, the most consequential black person in America was a biracial man who had been abandoned by his father and raised by his mother, and who favored a nonconfrontational style of politics. Sound familiar?
Bettmann/Corbis
Yet to the extent that Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) is remembered at all today, he is usually misremembered, which is a travesty. In 1881, Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute, a normal school in Alabama dedicated to educating recently freed slaves. He gained national prominence in 1895, after a famous speech in Atlanta where he called for racial conciliation and urged blacks to focus on economic self-advancement. The address would make him the central figure in American race relations for the next two decades.
Washington went on to advise four U.S. presidents and he dined at the White House with fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt, a black first. His 1901 autobiography, "Up From Slavery," was translated into seven languages and became the best-selling book ever written by a black. Andrew Carnegie called him the second father of the country. Many of America's other moneyed men, including John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, were admirers and major benefactors. Harvard and Dartmouth gave him honorary degrees. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells sang his praises, the latter calling him "a public man second to no other American in importance."
For two generations after his death, Booker T. Washington remained widely appreciated. Scholarly assessments of his achievements noted that Washington "alone represented a well defined school of opinion which was supported by the rank and file of the race" (Horace Mann Bond). And that "no president of a republic, no king of a country, no emperor of a universal domain of that day approached anywhere near doing as much for the uplift of humanity as did Booker T. Washington" (Carter G. Woodson).
Numerous schools, parks, streets and black-owned businesses were named in Washington's honor. He was the first black to have his likeness appear on a U.S. postage stamp and commemorative coin. In 1942, a Liberty ship was christened the Booker T. Washington. And in 1956, marking the 100th anniversary of Washington's birth, President Dwight Eisenhower created a national monument to the former slave.
But Washington's star began to dim in the 1960s, when the style of civil-rights advocacy was given over to protest, condemning authority and challenging the status quo at every turn. The thrust of Washington's message was self-improvement. His focus was the development of the black population of the rural South. His unwillingness to practice protest politics, however, has earned him the scorn of many modern-day critics, who dismiss him as too meek in his dealings with whites.
In "Up From History," a compelling biography, Robert J. Norrell restores the Wizard of Tuskegee to his rightful place in the black pantheon. Just as important, Mr. Norrell explains how ideological imperatives can cloud clear thinking, even among historians who should know better. We might forgive John Lewis, the 1960s civil-rights activist and current congressman, for suggesting that Washington deserved to be "ridiculed and vilified by his own people for working so closely with white America." Mr. Lewis, after all, earned his fame in a confrontational moment in American race relations. But when influential historians like John Hope Franklin, Rayford W. Logan and C. Vann Woodward -- all of whom wrote about Washington after World War II -- disparage the man, refusing to assess him fairly within the context of his time, something is amiss.
[Up From History] Shira Kronzon
Woodward -- who died in 1999, having inspired a generation of academic historians of the South -- faulted Washington for not attacking the "prejudices and injustices of the caste system and the barbarities of the mob (subjects he rarely mentioned)." And Woodward sneered: "The businessman's gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a more loyal exponent than the master of Tuskegee." Woodward also criticized Washington's hostility to unions and close ties to people like Carnegie. In Woodward's view, according to Mr. Norrell, Carnegie "had perpetrated a weak, colonial economy on the South."
"Woodward," Mr. Norrell writes, "surely knew that throughout his career Booker was fighting a defensive battle to save black education from official abandonment. But the historian refused to grant that much black education would not have existed but for the northern philanthropy that Washington promoted. To have acknowledged the good works of the rich men would have undermined his argument about the evil influence of big corporations on the South."
Mr. Norrell, a history professor at the University of Tennessee, says that this "present-mindedness of historians writing about race" is a function of the fact that many had themselves been activists and admired the accomplishments of civil-rights protest. "A presumption entered the thinking and writing that protest was correct," he writes, "and for most the only legitimate, means of improving minority conditions. By the mid-1960s Washington was understood to have been the enemy of activism, the Uncle Tom who delayed the day of freedom."
Aside from the intellectual dishonesty of judging Washington from the vantage point of modern times, it also happens that many of these assessments are wide of the mark. Far from condoning the racial injustices of his day, Washington said: "It's important and right that all privileges of the law be ours." He believed that "political activity alone" would not bring black progress, but he quietly financed court challenges to Jim Crow laws. Mr. Norrell notes that Washington made public protests against "lynching, disenfranchisement, disparities in education funding, segregated housing legislation, and discrimination by labor unions." And in 1899 he wrote: "I do not favour the Negro giving up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States."
Many criticisms of Washington in more recent decades have echoed those of his contemporary black nemesis, W.E.B. Du Bois, the political activist and social critic who belittled Tuskegee as "the capital of the Negro nation." Where Washington wanted to focus on the achievement of self-determination through independent black schools and businesses, Du Bois argued that civil rights were more important because political power was necessary to protect any economic gains.
Much has been made of this rivalry, but the relevant point is that the two men differed mainly in emphasis, not goals. Washington never renounced equal rights, and Du Bois acknowledged the need for vocational education as a means to self-improvement. Putting their differences into proper perspective is yet another way that "Up From History" serves as a useful corrective.
Jason L. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W10
Up From History. Robert J. Norrell
(Harvard University Press, 508 pages, $35)
Bettmann/Corbis
Booker T. Washington in 1906
Yet to the extent that Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) is remembered at all today, he is usually misremembered, which is a travesty. In 1881, Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute, a normal school in Alabama dedicated to educating recently freed slaves. He gained national prominence in 1895, after a famous speech in Atlanta where he called for racial conciliation and urged blacks to focus on economic self-advancement. The address would make him the central figure in American race relations for the next two decades.
Washington went on to advise four U.S. presidents and he dined at the White House with fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt, a black first. His 1901 autobiography, "Up From Slavery," was translated into seven languages and became the best-selling book ever written by a black. Andrew Carnegie called him the second father of the country. Many of America's other moneyed men, including John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, were admirers and major benefactors. Harvard and Dartmouth gave him honorary degrees. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells sang his praises, the latter calling him "a public man second to no other American in importance."
For two generations after his death, Booker T. Washington remained widely appreciated. Scholarly assessments of his achievements noted that Washington "alone represented a well defined school of opinion which was supported by the rank and file of the race" (Horace Mann Bond). And that "no president of a republic, no king of a country, no emperor of a universal domain of that day approached anywhere near doing as much for the uplift of humanity as did Booker T. Washington" (Carter G. Woodson).
Numerous schools, parks, streets and black-owned businesses were named in Washington's honor. He was the first black to have his likeness appear on a U.S. postage stamp and commemorative coin. In 1942, a Liberty ship was christened the Booker T. Washington. And in 1956, marking the 100th anniversary of Washington's birth, President Dwight Eisenhower created a national monument to the former slave.
But Washington's star began to dim in the 1960s, when the style of civil-rights advocacy was given over to protest, condemning authority and challenging the status quo at every turn. The thrust of Washington's message was self-improvement. His focus was the development of the black population of the rural South. His unwillingness to practice protest politics, however, has earned him the scorn of many modern-day critics, who dismiss him as too meek in his dealings with whites.
[Up From History] Shira Kronzon
Woodward -- who died in 1999, having inspired a generation of academic historians of the South -- faulted Washington for not attacking the "prejudices and injustices of the caste system and the barbarities of the mob (subjects he rarely mentioned)." And Woodward sneered: "The businessman's gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a more loyal exponent than the master of Tuskegee." Woodward also criticized Washington's hostility to unions and close ties to people like Carnegie. In Woodward's view, according to Mr. Norrell, Carnegie "had perpetrated a weak, colonial economy on the South."
"Woodward," Mr. Norrell writes, "surely knew that throughout his career Booker was fighting a defensive battle to save black education from official abandonment. But the historian refused to grant that much black education would not have existed but for the northern philanthropy that Washington promoted. To have acknowledged the good works of the rich men would have undermined his argument about the evil influence of big corporations on the South."
Mr. Norrell, a history professor at the University of Tennessee, says that this "present-mindedness of historians writing about race" is a function of the fact that many had themselves been activists and admired the accomplishments of civil-rights protest. "A presumption entered the thinking and writing that protest was correct," he writes, "and for most the only legitimate, means of improving minority conditions. By the mid-1960s Washington was understood to have been the enemy of activism, the Uncle Tom who delayed the day of freedom."
Aside from the intellectual dishonesty of judging Washington from the vantage point of modern times, it also happens that many of these assessments are wide of the mark. Far from condoning the racial injustices of his day, Washington said: "It's important and right that all privileges of the law be ours." He believed that "political activity alone" would not bring black progress, but he quietly financed court challenges to Jim Crow laws. Mr. Norrell notes that Washington made public protests against "lynching, disenfranchisement, disparities in education funding, segregated housing legislation, and discrimination by labor unions." And in 1899 he wrote: "I do not favour the Negro giving up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States."
Many criticisms of Washington in more recent decades have echoed those of his contemporary black nemesis, W.E.B. Du Bois, the political activist and social critic who belittled Tuskegee as "the capital of the Negro nation." Where Washington wanted to focus on the achievement of self-determination through independent black schools and businesses, Du Bois argued that civil rights were more important because political power was necessary to protect any economic gains.
Much has been made of this rivalry, but the relevant point is that the two men differed mainly in emphasis, not goals. Washington never renounced equal rights, and Du Bois acknowledged the need for vocational education as a means to self-improvement. Putting their differences into proper perspective is yet another way that "Up From History" serves as a useful corrective.
Jason L. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W10
Books on Irrational Decision-Making
These books on irrational decision-making are eminently lucid, says Jonah Lehrer.
1. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Charles Mackay. 1841. 001.95M
There is nothing modern about financial bubbles. In this classic work, Charles Mackay compiled an exhaustive list of the "schemes, projects and phantasies" that are a recurring theme of economic history. From the tulip mania of 17th-century Holland, in which 12 acres of valuable land were offered for a single bulb, to the South Sea Bubble of 18th-century England, in which a cheerleading press spurred a dramatic spike in the value of a debt-ridden slave-trading company, Mackay demonstrates that "every age has its peculiar folly." He notes that even the most intelligent investors are vulnerable to these frenzies of irrational exuberance: Isaac Newton is reported to have lost a small fortune after the South Sea Co. went bust.
2. Judgment Under Uncertainty. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky. Cambridge, 1982
It's hard to overstate the influence of this academic volume, which revealed many of the hard-wired flaws that shape human behavior. For one thing, authors Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky -- all of them psychologists -- almost single-handedly dismantled the assumption of "rational man," which had been the standard view of human nature since Plato. In experiment after experiment, the psychologists demonstrated that, unlike the hypothetical consumers in economics textbooks, real people don't treat losses and gains equivalently, or properly perceive risks, or even understand the basic laws of statistics -- with sometimes severe consequences. For example, the failure of many investors to properly weigh losses -- people are irrationally loss averse -- makes these investors much more likely to sell stocks that have gone up in value. This leads, over time, to a portfolio composed entirely of shares that are declining in value, which is why the stocks that these investors sell tend to significantly outperform the stocks that they keep.
3. How We Know What Isn't So. Thomas Gilovich. Free Press, 1991. 153.43 G
Thomas Gilovich is an eminent psychologist at Cornell University, but he is also a lucid writer with a knack for teaching the public about its own mental mistakes. Consider the hot-hand phenomenon in basketball: Most fans are convinced that a player who has made several shots in a row is more likely to make his next shot -- he's in the zone, so to speak. But Gilovich, employing an exhaustive analysis of the 1980-81 Philadelphia 76ers, shows that this belief is an illusion, akin to trying to discern a pattern in a series of random coin flips and then predicting what the next flip will bring. The same logic also applies to "hot" mutual-fund managers, who are wrongly convinced, along with their customers, that they can consistently beat the market.
4. The Winner's Curse. Richard H. Thaler. Princeton, 1992.
In 2000, the Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to the richest contract in baseball history after participating in a blind auction. If the team had consulted Richard H. Thaler's "The Winner's Curse," it would have known that such auctions invariably lead to irrational offers -- and, indeed, the Rangers' bid (a 10-year contract for $252 million) overshot the next highest offer by about $100 million. In addition to documenting how bidders at auctions operate, Thaler -- a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago -- examines other anomalies, such as the stock market's seasonal fluctuations (nearly one-third of annual returns occur in January) and the surprising unselfishness of people playing economic games. When given $10 and told to share the money with someone else, most people don't keep it all, or even most of it. Instead, they tend to split the cash equally, which is neither selfish nor rational. As Thaler notes, people have a powerful instinct for generosity, which can lead them to do things that flagrantly violate the model of Homo Economicus.
5. Predictably Irrational. Dan Ariely. HarperCollins, 2008.
Dan Ariely is a mischievous scientist: He delights in duping business students, getting them to make decisions that, in retrospect, seem utterly ridiculous. In "Predictably Irrational," an engaging summary of his research, Ariely explains why brand-name aspirin is more effective than generic aspirin even when people are given the same pill under different labels (paying more produces the expectation of better results, and the headache complies), and why the promise of getting something without paying for it -- such as free shipping, or a free T-shirt if we buy two other shirts -- prompts shoppers to spend more money than they would have in the absence of the offer. (In other words, we go broke trying to save a buck.) In one of his most famous experiments, Ariely showed how exposing people to a few random digits can later dramatically influence how much they bid for wine: Higher numbers lead to higher bids. The lesson, Ariely says, is that the rational brain is a feeble piece of machinery.
Mr. Lehrer is the author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist." His latest book, "How We Decide" (Houghton Mifflin), will be published next month. 700.105 L
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W8
* FIVE BEST
* JANUARY 24, 2009
1. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Charles Mackay. 1841. 001.95M
There is nothing modern about financial bubbles. In this classic work, Charles Mackay compiled an exhaustive list of the "schemes, projects and phantasies" that are a recurring theme of economic history. From the tulip mania of 17th-century Holland, in which 12 acres of valuable land were offered for a single bulb, to the South Sea Bubble of 18th-century England, in which a cheerleading press spurred a dramatic spike in the value of a debt-ridden slave-trading company, Mackay demonstrates that "every age has its peculiar folly." He notes that even the most intelligent investors are vulnerable to these frenzies of irrational exuberance: Isaac Newton is reported to have lost a small fortune after the South Sea Co. went bust.
2. Judgment Under Uncertainty. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky. Cambridge, 1982
It's hard to overstate the influence of this academic volume, which revealed many of the hard-wired flaws that shape human behavior. For one thing, authors Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky -- all of them psychologists -- almost single-handedly dismantled the assumption of "rational man," which had been the standard view of human nature since Plato. In experiment after experiment, the psychologists demonstrated that, unlike the hypothetical consumers in economics textbooks, real people don't treat losses and gains equivalently, or properly perceive risks, or even understand the basic laws of statistics -- with sometimes severe consequences. For example, the failure of many investors to properly weigh losses -- people are irrationally loss averse -- makes these investors much more likely to sell stocks that have gone up in value. This leads, over time, to a portfolio composed entirely of shares that are declining in value, which is why the stocks that these investors sell tend to significantly outperform the stocks that they keep.
3. How We Know What Isn't So. Thomas Gilovich. Free Press, 1991. 153.43 G
Thomas Gilovich is an eminent psychologist at Cornell University, but he is also a lucid writer with a knack for teaching the public about its own mental mistakes. Consider the hot-hand phenomenon in basketball: Most fans are convinced that a player who has made several shots in a row is more likely to make his next shot -- he's in the zone, so to speak. But Gilovich, employing an exhaustive analysis of the 1980-81 Philadelphia 76ers, shows that this belief is an illusion, akin to trying to discern a pattern in a series of random coin flips and then predicting what the next flip will bring. The same logic also applies to "hot" mutual-fund managers, who are wrongly convinced, along with their customers, that they can consistently beat the market.
4. The Winner's Curse. Richard H. Thaler. Princeton, 1992.
In 2000, the Texas Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez to the richest contract in baseball history after participating in a blind auction. If the team had consulted Richard H. Thaler's "The Winner's Curse," it would have known that such auctions invariably lead to irrational offers -- and, indeed, the Rangers' bid (a 10-year contract for $252 million) overshot the next highest offer by about $100 million. In addition to documenting how bidders at auctions operate, Thaler -- a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago -- examines other anomalies, such as the stock market's seasonal fluctuations (nearly one-third of annual returns occur in January) and the surprising unselfishness of people playing economic games. When given $10 and told to share the money with someone else, most people don't keep it all, or even most of it. Instead, they tend to split the cash equally, which is neither selfish nor rational. As Thaler notes, people have a powerful instinct for generosity, which can lead them to do things that flagrantly violate the model of Homo Economicus.
5. Predictably Irrational. Dan Ariely. HarperCollins, 2008.
Dan Ariely is a mischievous scientist: He delights in duping business students, getting them to make decisions that, in retrospect, seem utterly ridiculous. In "Predictably Irrational," an engaging summary of his research, Ariely explains why brand-name aspirin is more effective than generic aspirin even when people are given the same pill under different labels (paying more produces the expectation of better results, and the headache complies), and why the promise of getting something without paying for it -- such as free shipping, or a free T-shirt if we buy two other shirts -- prompts shoppers to spend more money than they would have in the absence of the offer. (In other words, we go broke trying to save a buck.) In one of his most famous experiments, Ariely showed how exposing people to a few random digits can later dramatically influence how much they bid for wine: Higher numbers lead to higher bids. The lesson, Ariely says, is that the rational brain is a feeble piece of machinery.
Mr. Lehrer is the author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist." His latest book, "How We Decide" (Houghton Mifflin), will be published next month. 700.105 L
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W8
* FIVE BEST
* JANUARY 24, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Presidential command
In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined his view of presidential power by noting that the American president is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the so-called nuclear football, which can be used to launch an immediate nuclear attack. "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Mr. Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
Presidential Command
By Peter W. Rodman
(Knopf, 351 pages, $27.95)
President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!"
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11
* BOOKS
* JANUARY 12, 2009
Bookshelf
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
By Peter W. Rodman
(Knopf, 351 pages, $27.95)
President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!"
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11
* BOOKS
* JANUARY 12, 2009
Bookshelf
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL
Saturday, January 10, 2009
A Writer Ponders His 'Reader'
Schlink on the war-torn past and the movie version of his bestseller
Bernhard Schlink, 64 years old, has waited more than a decade for his story about love and betrayal, "The Reader," to be transformed into a film -- rights were originally acquired by Harvey Weinstein and Miramax Films in 1996. The movie version, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, opened nationwide this weekend.
Mr. Schlink's novel tells the story of 15-year-old Michael Berg, who is seduced by Hanna Schmitz, a 36-year-old streetcar conductor. Hanna then disappears from his life, only to later re-emerge as a courtroom defendant in a war-crimes trial. Their relationship, always conflicted, allows the narrator to reflect on the Holocaust, cruelty and pride. The book has been translated into 40 languages since it came out in 1995.
WSJ: Did the generation gap portrayed here between the World War II generation and their children ever narrow?
Mr. Schlink: No. There was a sense of speechlessness. The parents didn't share much of their experience in the war, or with the Third Reich, or their experiences directly after the war. The kids often had contempt for the involvement of their parents, and they didn't share those thoughts, either. Neither talked much to the other.
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader' - The Weinstein Company
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
The law students in the novel and the film project enormous moral superiority. What is the response today when your students study the actions of the World War II generation?
It's different. It has lost much of its emotional intensity because they didn't experience that generation directly. They read about it and see movies about it, but for my generation the intensity of the moral superiority came from being entangled with the guilt of the older generation and having to decide how to deal with it. Do we distance ourselves? What is our own guilt? This emotional conflict isn't there for students who today learn and study about that time.
One of the key scenes involves a moment where Hanna looks at the judge and asks what he would have done in her situation. In the movie, there is no answer. Was that a lost opportunity?
The judge was well trained and serious, a career judge who knew what it meant to reply. He wasn't secure enough, or hadn't thought deeply enough, to have an answer. That's because the answer isn't simple. Once you have entangled yourself in that kind of system, there is no solution for struggle within the system. You are stuck. She didn't understand what the job as a guard meant. But she began the job, and she did it with a lack of moral awareness.
[Bernhard Schlink, who wrote the book on which the film is based] Keystone/Landov
Bernhard Schlink, who wrote the book on which the film is based
There seems to be an increase of interest in material relating to WW II and the Holocaust. Why now?
A very good friend of mine, the novelist Joyce Hackett, told me that after all the years of moral ambiguity associated with the Bush administration there is heightened interest in moral problems where there is a clear answer. If we talk about the Holocaust, the answers are very clear. And if you talk about war crimes, the answers in WW II are also very clear. That makes sense to me.
The movie follows the book's narrative closely, with the exception of the use of flashbacks. Did you worry about the possibility of confusing the audience?
It was an attempt to anchor the story in the here and now. It was also an attempt to explain the ending that David Hare, the script writer, gave the movie. The book ends with the protagonist finally writing down the story. That couldn't have been the end of the movie. So David invented an ending where the protagonist tells the story to his daughter. This is why he gave [scenes set in] the present a presence earlier in the film. I understood that and respected it. I think moviegoers are pretty movie-smart and won't get confused.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W9
BOOKS - JANUARY 10, 2009
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
A Writer Ponders His 'Reader'
Bernhard Schlink, 64 years old, has waited more than a decade for his story about love and betrayal, "The Reader," to be transformed into a film -- rights were originally acquired by Harvey Weinstein and Miramax Films in 1996. The movie version, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, opened nationwide this weekend.
Mr. Schlink's novel tells the story of 15-year-old Michael Berg, who is seduced by Hanna Schmitz, a 36-year-old streetcar conductor. Hanna then disappears from his life, only to later re-emerge as a courtroom defendant in a war-crimes trial. Their relationship, always conflicted, allows the narrator to reflect on the Holocaust, cruelty and pride. The book has been translated into 40 languages since it came out in 1995.
WSJ: Did the generation gap portrayed here between the World War II generation and their children ever narrow?
Mr. Schlink: No. There was a sense of speechlessness. The parents didn't share much of their experience in the war, or with the Third Reich, or their experiences directly after the war. The kids often had contempt for the involvement of their parents, and they didn't share those thoughts, either. Neither talked much to the other.
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader' - The Weinstein Company
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
David Kross and Kate Winslet play conflicted lovers in 'The Reader'
The law students in the novel and the film project enormous moral superiority. What is the response today when your students study the actions of the World War II generation?
It's different. It has lost much of its emotional intensity because they didn't experience that generation directly. They read about it and see movies about it, but for my generation the intensity of the moral superiority came from being entangled with the guilt of the older generation and having to decide how to deal with it. Do we distance ourselves? What is our own guilt? This emotional conflict isn't there for students who today learn and study about that time.
One of the key scenes involves a moment where Hanna looks at the judge and asks what he would have done in her situation. In the movie, there is no answer. Was that a lost opportunity?
[Bernhard Schlink, who wrote the book on which the film is based] Keystone/Landov
Bernhard Schlink, who wrote the book on which the film is based
There seems to be an increase of interest in material relating to WW II and the Holocaust. Why now?
A very good friend of mine, the novelist Joyce Hackett, told me that after all the years of moral ambiguity associated with the Bush administration there is heightened interest in moral problems where there is a clear answer. If we talk about the Holocaust, the answers are very clear. And if you talk about war crimes, the answers in WW II are also very clear. That makes sense to me.
The movie follows the book's narrative closely, with the exception of the use of flashbacks. Did you worry about the possibility of confusing the audience?
It was an attempt to anchor the story in the here and now. It was also an attempt to explain the ending that David Hare, the script writer, gave the movie. The book ends with the protagonist finally writing down the story. That couldn't have been the end of the movie. So David invented an ending where the protagonist tells the story to his daughter. This is why he gave [scenes set in] the present a presence earlier in the film. I understood that and respected it. I think moviegoers are pretty movie-smart and won't get confused.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W9
BOOKS - JANUARY 10, 2009
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
A Writer Ponders His 'Reader'
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Goddess of the tango galaxy
Berkeley, CA : Seal Press.
Art and science -- Latin America.
New Haven. Yale University Press. 2006.
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