Blogs > Cliopatria > Modern History Notes

Mar 7, 2011

Modern History Notes


by Cliopatria


David Corn and Siddhartha Mahanta,"From Libya with Love," Mother Jones, 3 March, and Corn,"Monitor Group and Qaddafi: Still Spinning?" Mother Jones, 3 March, expose the Monitor Group's public relations effort for the Qaddafi regime. Jon Wiener,"Professors Paid by Qaddafi: Providing 'Positive Public Relations'," The Notion, 5 March, gets a reply from Benjamin R. Barber, 6 March.

Alan Hirschfeld,"An Engine of Perpetual Revolution," WSJ, 26 February, reviews Edward Dolnick's The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World and Laura Snyder's The Philosophical Breakfast Club; and Alexander Fabry,"Eggs and Metaphysics," Daily Beast, 5 March, reviews Snyder's The Philosophical Breakfast Club.

Sheila Rowbotham,"The Revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg," Guardian, 5 March, reviews Annelies Laschitza, Georg Adler, and Peter Hudis, eds., The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, George Shriver, trans.

Lance Esplund,"The Bad Boy of Montparnasse," WSJ, 26 February, and Brad Gooch for Daily Beast, 5 March, review Meryle Secrest's Modigliani: A Life.

Benjamin Ivry,"A Blazing Defense of Individualism," Jewish Daily Forward, 25 February, reviews"Carlo Michelstaedter. Far Di Se Stesso Fiamma" ("Carlo Michelstaedter: Transform Yourself Into a Flame"), an exhibit at the National Savings Bank Foundation in Gorizia, Italy.

Finally, farewell to Hazel Rowley, the Australian-born biographer of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Wright, Christina Stead, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.


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Jeremy Young - 3/8/2011

Barber's response to the Weiner piece is breathtaking in its tone-deafness. Does he really not understand that, by taking money from a group funded by Gaddafi, he was surrendering his objectivity on the regime, even if he would have written the same things anyway? Before I read his self-defense, I thought he was just misguided and wrong about Gaddafi. Now it seems he really has no understanding of where the ethical boundaries are in terms of taking money from people you claim to be studying objectively. He really doesn't see a difference between taking money from a foundation established by J.P. Morgan over a hundred years ago, and taking money from an active dictator who's specifically earmarked the money for PR purposes? Very sad -- I really enjoyed his Jihad vs. McWorld, too.