Word: points
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...another interesting character I met this summer. The Romanian-born grandmother of my Israeli friend, Eti at one point was rumored to have earned a PhD in Art History. Now, Eti, who lives in a beautifully furnished apartment in Tel-Aviv, has one passion: The Bold and the Beautiful. As the newest American in town, I was fielded anxious questions about the current status of the scandalous affairs of characters with names like Simone and Stephan. Although she has lost two out of her five children in Israel's successive wars, Eti had no interest in discussing politics, past...
Watson stopped at one point to offer advice to his audience...
This treatment of history, of course, requires a careful reader willing to recognize the author's point of view and take his judgments with a grain of salt. But this approach is still more useful than statements of fact, and less boring. Through personal stories, Lemann is able to address the problems arising from American values without mounting direct and unfounded attacks on the beliefs themselves. He is, therefore, able to present a subtle and complex argument, recognizing both the merits and the problems with different social constructions without sounding indecisive...
...subject of Purdy's sincerity is precisely the pervasive cult of irony whose brand Hodge wears, to whom "Believing in nothing much, especially not in people, is a point of vague pride, and conviction can seem embarrassingly nave." In response to the culture of irony that mocks because it does not have the faith to believe or love, Purdy resolves to "speak earnestly of uncertain hopes." The fragility of hope in the ironic world, he asserts, is not a reason to give up on hoping: "I have written this bookso that I will not forget what I hope...
...course of his pursuit of common things--"the things we all rely upon that can be preserved by attention running beyond narrow interest"--Purdy advocates for the envisioning of public life as three "interrelated ecologies." The ecological paradigm is important: Purdy's point is that the restoration of public life depends upon recognition of the codependence of every position in the ecological web. Thus Purdy conceives of understanding human interpersonal responsibility as "moral ecology," individual responsibility to the public sphere as "social ecology," and environmental responsibility as, well, "ecology." Not, perhaps, the neatest of aphoristic parallelisms in an American environmentalist...