Book Description
Generation of Swine, the second volume of the legendary Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's bestselling "Gonzo Papers," was first published in 1988 and is now back in print.
Here, against a backdrop of late-night tattoo sessions and soldier-of-fortune trade shows, Dr. Thompson is at his apocalyptic best -- covering emblematic events such as the 1987-88 presidential campaign, with Vice President George Bush, Sr., fighting for his life against Republican competitors like Alexander Haig, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson; detailing the GOP's obsession with drugs and drug abuse; while at the same time capturing momentous social phenomena as they occurred, like the rise of cable, satellite TV, and CNN -- 24 hours of mainline news. Showcasing his inimitable talent for social and political analysis, Generation of Swine is vintage Thompson -- eerily prescient, incisive, and enduring.
Customer Reviews:
The more things change, the more they stay the same.......2006-05-10
This is another in a series of collections of Hunter's columns. The other compilations are:
The Great Shark Hunt (Gonzo Papers Vol. 1) about the 70's, mostly post Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,
Better than Sex (Volumen 3) about the 90's, and his final release before his untimely death,
Hey Rube (about the early 00's).
I should mention here that I'm only in my 20's, and the first administration I ever really paid attention to was the second Clinton term.
Reading this book and the other Gonzo Papers books, along with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, gives you a perspective on the past 30 years that is hard to find elsewhere in this context. Since these columns were written as critiques on current events, you get a feel for what was going on in the 70's, late 80's and early 90's. You find that for everything that has changed over the past 30 years, that politics is quite static. Corrupt presidents, sex-scandal plagued politicians, and more.
There's not too much to dislike about this book, assuming you enjoy Hunter's writing style. And it is valuable to those who can't get enough of Hunter's style.
History Redux.......2006-03-20
This review was originally used to comment on Hunter Thompson's Songs of the Doomed. Since most of the points I made in my review of that book apply here I will let that review stand in here. Obviously each book is formatted differently but whether Thompson was skewering the Nixon era, the Reagan era or the Bush eras the song is the same. And it aint pretty.
Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.
I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but in any case he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson's career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of timelines and for mass circulation media these works show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.
One should note that `gonzo' journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be `objective'. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter's way.
As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. Thompson was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the `dark side' of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson's work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.
His Worst Collection of Tripe.......2005-08-29
This collection of 100 or so newspaper columns is probably the worst material I have read of Thompson's. First of all, it starts OK, but then turns into a liberal rant for the last half of the book. In almost all cases, Thompson's wild and repeated predictions about the fall of Republicans never come to pass. In fact, not one of them came true.
It is a shame that a man with such insidious ability to write from the gut would allow himself to slide into the dark, slimy Left side of politics, all the while failing to report-much less admit-that the Left was as much if not more corrupt than the Right.
I would pass this tome of incoherent bloviating. His other works are far superior to this wasted cache of paper.
Take this in small doses.......2005-08-02
What we have here are over 100 op-ed pieces (about 2 1/2 book pages each) that ran in the San Francisco Examiner over a three-year period, December 1985 thru November 1988 and are now compiled in Gonzo Papers Volume 2 (Volume 1 was The Great Shark Hunt). These were originally meant to be read at the rate of one a week, but of course you can increase your speed on this compilation. However, I read them in a handful of sittings and suffered from severe overload. First of all, at this fast rate you get a good deal of duplication that waters down the overall affect Thompson was trying to create in his weekly column. Thompson reminds me of the famous Groucho Marx line: "Whatever it is, he's against it!" Just picked at random: "Any baboon with a healthy heart and good diction... could do Neil Frank's job (director of the National Hurricane Center). President Reagan: "...seems to be dumber than three mules." Frank Sinatra: "...is said to be smart, but he was fired and cut off from every casino in New Jersey when he tried to play blackjack by rules he learned in Nevada...They chased him out like a wino. It was an ugly thing to see." And these quotes all come from just one article. Pick a name or event from the headlines of these three years and you'll find a bombastic opinion from Thompson aimed directly at it. It is a fun and funny read. You'll find yourself thinking and speaking in the Thompson style. It's addictive. But, too much at one time can put you over the top. For more reasons than one, this would make for good bathroom reading material.
Hunter rants on 80s Sports, Gambling and Politics.......2005-05-01
The 80s must have been a tough decade for Hunter S. Thompson, and the writing shows it. Easy access to drugs, as well as a rising tide of Republicanism and Conservatism to rail again. On the the surface, this would make for great writing. In reality, this is not his strongest work. Great columns, as well as some of his legendary lucid lines, are interspersed with nominally coherent rants against the political powers that be. Perhaps that is to be expected from him in an anthology of his newspaper writings.
This is an important read for those very in tune to his genre. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a better start if you haven't read anything of his before. It will also provide better context to his mindset in the 80s.
Book Description
Recovering lost voices and exploring issues intimate and institutional, this sweeping examination of Spanish California illuminates Indian struggles against a confining colonial order and amidst harrowing depopulation. To capture the enormous challenges Indians confronted, Steven W. Hackel integrates textual and quantitative sources and weaves together analyses of disease and depopulation, marriage and sexuality, crime and punishment, and religious, economic, and political change.
As colonization reduced their numbers and remade California, Indians congregated in missions, where they forged communities under Franciscan oversight. Yet missions proved disastrously unhealthful and coercive, as Franciscans sought control over Indians' beliefs and instituted unfamiliar systems of labor and punishment. Even so, remnants of Indian groups still survived when Mexican officials ended Franciscan rule in the 1830s. Many regained land and found strength in ancestral cultures that predated the Spaniards' arrival.
At this study's heart are the dynamic interactions in and around Mission San Carlos Borromeo between Monterey region Indians (the Children of Coyote) and Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and settlers. Hackel places these local developments in the context of the California mission system and draws comparisons between California and other areas of the Spanish Borderlands and colonial America. Concentrating on the experiences of the Costanoan and Esselen peoples during the colonial period, Children of Coyote concludes with an epilogue that carries the story of their survival to the present day.
Book Description
In the late 1800s American entrepreneurs became participants in the 400-year history of European economic and ecological hegemony in the tropics. Beginning as buyers in the tropical ports of the Atlantic and Pacific, they evolved into land speculators, controlling and managing the areas where tropical crops were grown for carefully fostered consumer markets at home. As corporate agro-industry emerged, the speculators took direct control of the ecological destinies of many tropical lands. Supported by the U.S. government's diplomatic and military protection, they migrated and built private empires in the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.
Yankee investors and plantation managers mobilized engineers, agronomists, and loggers to undertake what they called the "Conquest of the Tropics," claiming to bring civilization to benighted peoples and cultivation to unproductive nature. In competitive cooperation with local landed and political elites, they not only cleared natural forests but also displaced multicrop tribal and peasant lands with monocrop export plantations rooted in private property regimes.
This book is a rich history of the transformation of the tropics in modern times, pointing ultimately to the declining biodiversity that has resulted from the domestication of widely varied natural systems. Richard P. Tucker graphically illustrates his study with six major crops, each a virtual empire in itself--sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and timber. He concludes that as long as corporate-dominated free trade is ascendant, paying little heed to its long-term ecological consequences, the health of the tropical world is gravely endangered.
Average customer rating:
- A well-reasoned, if unabashedly passionate, contribution.
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The Degradation of American History
David Harlan
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
ASIN: 0226316173 |
Amazon.com
David Harlan writes in The Degradation of American History that "during the last thirty years history as ethical judgment has been driven into exile by history as contextual reconstruction." He charges that the relativistic quest for a value-free history--one that ignores what people in the past thought about their lives and times--is a false exercise in "history as objective truth." He is no kinder to postfeminist and multiculturalist schools of thought, proposing instead a kind of new traditionalism that recognizes the values that emerge from historical study. This is all fiery stuff, and sure to excite controversy among professional historians, Harlan's primary audience. Lay readers should find Harlan's book interesting, too, if for no other reason than that it draws clear lines of battle in a murky struggle.
Book Description
American historical writing has traditionally been one of our primary forms of moral reflection. However, David Harlan argues that in the disillusionment following the 1960s, history abandoned its redemptive potential and took up the methodology of the social sciences. In this provocative new book, Harlan describes the reasons for this turn to objectivity and professionalism, explains why it failed, and examines the emergence of a New Traditionalism in American historical writing.
Part One, "The Legacy of the Sixties," describes the impact of literary theory in the 1970s and beyond, the rise of women's history, the various forms of ideological analysis developed by historians on the left, and the crippling obsession with professionalism in the 1980s. Part Two, "The Renewal of American Historical Writing," focuses on the contributions of John Patrick Diggins, Hayden White, Richard Rorty, Elaine Showalter, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and others. Harlan argues that at the end of the twentieth century American historical writing is perfectly poised to become what it once was: not one of the social sciences in historical costume, but a form of moral reflection that speaks to all Americans.
"[A] wholly admirable work. This book will be talked about for years."—Library Journal
Customer Reviews:
A well-reasoned, if unabashedly passionate, contribution........1999-06-23
Harlan lucidly outlines the current status of historiography, particularly American, in light of the persistent influence of post-structuralism. Leading historians, such as Joyce Appleby, would do well to learn from his observations, suggestions, and style.
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The Degradation Of The Democratic Dogma
Henry Adams , and
Brooks Adams
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing
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The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History
ASIN: 1417915986 |
Book Description
1920. This new book is a record of the gathering of data in the department of human government by three generations of America's most distinguished thinkers, whose lives cover almost the entire period of the American experiment. Here are included three brilliant essays-expressing and emphasizing the creed which has become the heritage of Henry Adams. The result may be summed up in this remarkable conclusion: Vox populi non est vox Dei. As in physics, so also in mind and administration. The theory of averages leads ever to a lower level. The perfect plebiscite, the democratic ideal, is the synonym not of perfect truth but of disaster and confusion. Contents: The Heritage of Henry Adams; The Tendency of History; A Letter to American Teachers of History: The Problem and The Solutions; and The Rule of Phase Applied to History. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
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Dubya: The Toxic Texan: George W. Bush and Environmental Degradation
Donald C Lord
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
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ASIN: 0595351034 |
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The United States is suffering from dangerous smog, dirty water, and other unhealthy environmental hazards. However, only a handful of us are aware that each year, tens of thousands of Americans die prematurely from environmental causes. Much of this death and destruction is caused by the deceit of our own government.
The federal government, which is supposed to protect the environment, is doing the opposite—and getting away with it. Justifiably, the world is focusing on the threat of terrorism, but much of the world is also focusing on an equally dangerous threat—environmental destruction. It may be true that thousands have perished in terrorist attacks, but the fact is that millions worldwide die from environmental causes every year. Air pollution, unsafe water, and other environmental hazards are killing more people now than ever before—and the costs of global warming will increase that number dramatically. Many nations are already fighting this war, especially in Europe, but the United States has not yet joined the battle.
Author Don Lord, PhD, charges that it is the responsibility of the United States government to protect all its citizens. Until those in government positions work together to stop pollution, citizens of the United States will remain at great risk.
Download Description
The United States is suffering from dangerous smog, dirty water, and other unhealthy environmental hazards. However, only a handful of us are aware that each year, tens of thousands of Americans die prematurely from environmental causes. Much of this death and destruction is caused by the deceit of our own government.
The federal government, which is supposed to protect the environment, is doing the opposite-and getting away with it. Justifiably, the world is focusing on the threat of terrorism, but much of the world is also focusing on an equally dangerous threat-environmental destruction. It may be true that thousands have perished in terrorist attacks, but the fact is that millions worldwide die from environmental causes every year. Air pollution, unsafe water, and other environmental hazards are killing more people now than ever before-and the costs of global warming will increase that number dramatically. Many nations are already fighting this war, especially in Europe, but the United States has not yet joined the battle.
Author Don Lord, PhD, charges that it is the responsibility of the United States government to protect all its citizens. Until those in government positions work together to stop pollution, citizens of the United States will remain at great risk.
Book Description
Now in a concise edition created expressly for students and general readers, this widely hailed study traces the transformation of the tropics in modern times. Exploring the central role of the United States in the ongoing devastation of tropical lands, Richard Tucker highlights the unrelenting pressure caused by the demands of U.S. consumerism. The forced domestication of varied natural systems ultimately led to a devastating decline in biodiversity. The author brings his analysis to life with a series of vivid case studies of sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and timber-each a virtual empire in itself. All readers who are interested in environmental degradation and its links to the world economy will be enlightened by this nuanced history.
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Latin America & the Caribbean: A Continental Overview of Environmental Issues (Hillstrom, Kevin, World's Environments.)
Kevin Hillstrom , and
Laurie Hillstrom
Manufacturer: ABC-CLIO
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1576076903
Release Date: 2003-12-02 |
Product Description
If we Americans never aimed for blight, why have we so often degraded our environment, depleted our resources, poisoned our water, and polluted our air? Greed and negligence, perhaps; and yet the histories Don Scherer collected tell a different story - a story of results foreseeable but unforeseen, predictable but unintended. To continue down the historical path toward our nation's environmental degradation will confound our hopes and thwart our aspirations. But, this outcome is by no means inevitable. We Never Aimed for Blight reveals the patterns that lead to degradation. And, once revealed, these avenues to disaster can be avoided. Though his historical analyses and case studies, Scherer's considerable accomplishment is to explain what causes environmental degradation and, at the same time, to give us the key to prevention and reversal.
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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Songs of the Doomed : More Notes on the Death of the American Dream
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