The Book Shopper

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I am feeling a little guilty that I have not posted anything in two weeks, but I have been reading a couple of relevant books that merit mentioning at least:

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (1969) by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull 

I picked up a tattered paperback of this classic mix of corporate satire and self-help. The Peter Principle is simply: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." This principle is still meaningful at least to someone like myself who has worked in both a large corporate organization and a supersized educational institution. How often have we seen this in our own work lives, where a person who does their job well, is promoted and becomes  ineffective because the qualities that made them productive worker bee, don't translate to the next level? (We could be that person ourselves?!?) Fortunately,  the book does offer coping strategies. My favorite, known as "creative incompetence," is doing your job very well, but purposely developing a flaw that keeps you from being considered for promotion such as dressing oddly or sporting a continually bad haircut. Probably riding public transportation (at least in Atlanta) would count as well. 

This article from Forbes explains more of the timelessness of this book.

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (2014) by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto 

Like most people who grew up in the States, my understanding of the settlement of the New World jumps directly from Christopher Columbus to the first settlements at Jamestown.  But Fernandez-Armesto goes to great detail  to explain that  Spain played an equal if not greater role than the British in colonizing  the United States.   Spain established settlements as early as 1521 in present-day Puerto Rico and  partially settled Florida and New Mexico decades before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  From reviews I have read (I haven't finished it yet), the book's strength is its insights into this fresh perspective of how the United States was settled. However, whether it adequately deals with the current issues is up for debate.  See an article from The Wall Street Journal here or The Economist here.   Either way, reading  A Hispanic History couldn't be more timely considering the interest in courting the Hispanic vote and the heated "debates" surrounding immigration.  

 

 

 

 

 

About Lincoln

Shelby Foote on Abraham Lincoln:

It's almost impossible to overpraise Lincoln. He's beyond our comprehension and as a big a man as anyone wants to think he was. But the sanctification of him has covered up some of his most important points. He had qualities that people don't recognize because they are hidden under saintliness. He had a certain steeliness and an ability to analyze himself that's almost incredible in any human being. And he had absolutely no humility, but he had a covering modesty. He's one of the few men I've ever read about who could abide having another man think he was a fool. If someone thinks I am a fool, I'm going to be very fast to disabuse him of that notion. Lincoln would sit back and wait for his opportunity to demonstrate when it would really count. If an opponent of some sort thought he was a fool, Lincoln had him exactly where he wanted him. He could do things like that. This steely quality to his mind that would enable him to analyze a situation and analyze his own position in that situation is one of the most remarkable things about him.

The saintliness has covered up another side to him. I've forgotten the figures now of how many warrants for execution Lincoln signed during the Civil War. Lincoln was know as the man who wouldn't let a little soldier boy who slept on his post be shot. He signed a great many warrants for execution. Jefferson Davis never signed one...Davis said the poorest use could be made of a soldier is to shoot him.

 

This excerpt is from an interview that Foote had with Dick Cavett in 1979 from the book Conversations with Shelby Foote,  edited by William C. Carter, University of Mississippi Press, 1989.

Happy Birthday, President Lincoln.

 

 

Denial in Disgraced

One of the nuances in Disgraced, the 2013 Pulitzer-prize winning play that finishes up a short run at the Alliance Theatre here in Atlanta, is the cameo appearance (photo above) of another Pulitzer Prize winner -- Ernest Becker's nonfiction classic on how humans repress the acknowledgement of their mortality -- The Denial of Death (1973). After the production I found my yellowed, heavily underlined,  paperback of Denial. Here's an excerpt from the book, which explains this repression in more detail. Click on the image to enlarge it for easier reading:

In the play, which examines Muslim-American identity issues, the Jewish character Issac pulls out a copy of Denial and refers to a scene from the 1977 film Annie Hall where Woody Allen suggests to Diane Keaton that she read the Becker book instead of her selection - a book about cats. 

After some thought  I understood the playwright's choice in Denial, as the lead character, the Pakistani-born Amir, does initially deny his Muslim roots, which leads to tragic consequences. But I think that there is more worth investigating.

Thanks to the Alliance for providing the promotional photo for the blog and a reminder about an author I should be re-reading in the near future.