A Truly Banned Book

To many young and rebellious teenagers, The Anarchist Cookbook would be your first memorable exposure to counter-culture. It was written by William Powell in response to the US involvement in Vietnam War. The central idea was that through violence the “common man” can bring political change. The book contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, acids, telecommunications modifications and hacking, growing and production of drugs amongst other things that will cause bodily harm. The author has long since renounced his views that led to the publication of his work. William Powell recently wrote: 

“The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in …Unfortunately, the book continues to be in print and with the advent of the Internet several websites dealing with it have emerged… I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should be taken out of print.”

There have been many rumors spread on the ownership of this book, including being automatically updated to probable terrorist list. Though it is legal to possess the literature it can be used against you as evidence if you were to be arrested on charges of terrorism, menacing or reckless endangerment. A most recent case was that of Ian Davison. In 2010, Davison and his son were imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws for manufacturing ricin (a toxin) and their possession of the Anarchist Cookbook was noted by the authorities. The Anarchist Cookbook is banned in many state-run libraries in the United States though many librarians fight that decision to this day.

Banned Books throughout History

Banned Books Week serves as a reminder that there are efforts underway to pull “questionable” books off of library shelves. The campaign was started in 1982 by activist Judith Krug, who was an avid first amendment and library activist. Banned Books Week is held in the last week of September in the United States and is also celebrated by Amnesty International. The events goal is to “teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society."

Some notable books that have been on the ban list for the context of the literature have been: A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck which highlights the honest approach of the brutality of pig farming, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis which contains scenes that are graphic enough to be banned from a lot of libraries and its release protested by Gloria Steinem for violence against women and All Quiet on the Western Front which was banned in Nazi Germany for being demoralizing and insulting to the Armed Forces of Germany. 

This coming week however, in celebration of Banned Books Week, Mark Twain’s “Eve’s Diary” will be unbanned. The trustee of Charlton Library in Massachusetts, Richard Whitehead, stated “On Tuesday, September 20, 2011 the board of library trustees unanimously voted to unban Eve's Diary. I think that Mark Twain would be very pleased and I'm sure that he would have something humorous to say about it.”

Heidegger's Birthday

This Monday, we celebrate the birth of one of humanity’s greatest and most influential philosophers, and coincidentally the subject of a For Beginners book, Martin Heidegger.  Know chiefly for his book Being and Time, Heidegger questioned the fundamentals of ancient Greek philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and their contemporaries.  He shifted the focus of philosophical questions from the nature of the people and objects in the world to their very existence.

Heidegger’s work is complex and notoriously difficult, dealing with questions of existence vs. nothingness, simply trying to explain why the world exists in the first place.  Core concepts include ‘Being,’ the condition which allows other things to come into existence; ‘beings,’ the objects and people who populate the world; the ‘Nothing,’ the default condition without existence; and Dasein, interpreted as the condition of caring, or a being for whom being is a question.

These concepts may seem commonplace for deep thinkers today, but it was Heidegger who brought them to the collective attention of the world.  Many important schools of thought are influenced by Heidegger.  His works have had an impact on theology, aesthetics, literary criticism, and cultural studies.  His ideas influenced some of history’s other great minds as well, including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan.

This year, we celebrate over a century of culture enriched by these powerful ideas.  Happy birthday, Martin Heidegger, may your revelations continue ‘Being’ remembered for years to come.

Atlas Shrugged Turns 54!

As the leaves start turning from a forest and woodsy green to the bright colors of pumpkin orange and autumn yellow. Tourists from around the world are gearing up to gaze on New England’s October foliage. But for the literary traveler another event will be unfolding in the next coming weeks. Written by the renowned Objectivist Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged will be turning 54 years old on October 10th, echoing her message of individualism and free will.

Ayn Rand’s first major literary success came about with the novel The Fountainhead. Her manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers before being picked up by Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1943. Her novel, which promoted individualism versus collectivism within the person, gained immense popularity by word of mouth selling over 6.5 million copies worldwide. Twelve years later Ayn Rand would publish her second most successful novel.

Atlas Shrugged which was first published in 1957 is considered her Magnus Opus. The novel advocated “rational selfishness” or the principal that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes ones self-interest. It was hailed and scorned by critics after its debut on the #6 spot of the New York Times bestseller list.

Though largely criticized, Ayn Rand has attracted an energetic and committed fan base. So committed are her followers that they have even created a dating and networking website in her honor www.theatlasphere.com.

Want to know more about Ayn Rand and her philosophical views? For Beginners along with Dr. Andrew Bernstein provide a clear down-to-earth analysis of Ayn Rand and her works.

Constitution Day

On September 17, 1787, forty white men met in Philadelphia to sign a document which they had argued over in secret for four months. (A total of 55 delegates had been meeting since May 14). It was the United States Constitution, and since September 17 falls on a Saturday this year, the US has temporarily set the celebration date for September 16, a Friday.

The question is what Americans should be celebrating here. For some, the Constitution is an idol made of pen and paper instead of gold and jewels. It is something fixed and eternal. Its meaning was established once and for all by those 40 (or 55?) white men. Some people think that we can ascertain one meaning from those 40 (or 55?) white men; and, moreover, that that one meaning from 1787 should be applied today.

For others, the Constitution is more a process. Thus Edmund Randolph, one of the five men charged with drafting the Constitution, observed that “In the draught of a fundamental constitution,” it was necessary to “insert essential principles only, lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events...” Constitution supporter John Marshall (who later led the Supreme Court) would write in a famous opinion that “[The Constitution is] intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various CRISES of human affairs.”

So in intention and reality, the Constitution is a process. The critical question is who gets to play in the game. Another Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Charles Evan Hughes) claimed “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” If you are a mandarin—or simply a plutocrat who believes that judges should serve the rich—then this constitutes a comfortable position.  History, however, proves this false. Jefferson and Madison (1789-1799) and the New England states (1814-1815) said state governments should have a say. President Jackson did not like this version of states rights, and when South Carolina suggested it he threatened to invade South Carolina with an army. At another point, in reaction to a Supreme Court decision, he said “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

It is also fair to say that Union soldiers and discontented slaves had something to do with re-defining the Constitution in the 1860s. Rebellious farmers and workers forced the Supreme Court to change its position on political economy in 1937. (And in 1951 one of the justices (Owen Roberts) said as much, admitting that he changed his vote because he wanted to avoid “radical changes.”)

The Supreme Court takes a lot of credit for the impressive results of the mid-twentieth century US racial rights revolution. Yet southern whites ignored the Court until Blacks started sitting at lunch counters and marching in the streets in the 1960s. The American Black cause was helped because part of the USA white power elite worried about “coloured” people “going Communist” in Africa, Asia, and South America.

In my forthcoming book, U.S. Constitution for Beginners (For Beginners 2012), I have called the Constitution a “truce.” What should be celebrated about the Constitution Day is the degree to which ordinary people have a chance to define the ongoing terms of the truce. What is garbage about celebrating Constitution Day is the degree to which Ivy League mandarins and plutocrat puppets claim that ordinary people have no role in attempting to define the terms of the truce.

Certainly pundits and idol worshippers will be offended by this version of the Constitution. It smacks of mere power, things arbitrary, and opportunist compromise. Yet I can only read my Constitution and US history. How otherwise can a black slave be counted as 3/5 a person? How otherwise is segregation legal in 1896, and illegal in 1954? Or wage and hour regulation illegal in 1936, and legal again in 1937? How otherwise can some fictional entity be considered a human person for purposes of “free speech”? In the 1970s law professors discussed health care in terms of a constitutional right, now they question whether it has anything to do with the national economy.

On Constitution Day people should learn to see, and then do something about what their eyes and hearts tell them. Otherwise the mandarins, plutocrats and idolaters will do it for them.

-Steve Bachmann, author of U.S. Constitution For Beginners

Global Warming

Today, former Vice President Al Gore launched an aggressive new online campaign “24 Hours of Reality.” In an effort to dampen the influence of global warming debunkers with significant new evidence on the correlation between greenhouse emissions and recent disastrous weather experienced here in the United States and across the globe.

The presentations are comprised of 24 one hour live-streams presented by scientists, businessmen and activists all sharing their experiences through the projects website. The project will be presented in 13 different languages spanning across 24 time zones where Gore will conclude his presentation in New York City.

  

Al Gore catapulted the issues of global warming and brought it to the world’s attention with his 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” For Beginners along with Dean Goodwin, Ph.D. offers an in-depth analysis on this subject with Global Warming For Beginners (Printed on 100% recycled paper). We here at For Beginners understand that no one can do everything but all of us can do something.

Sources: http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/24-hours-of-reality-al-gores-latest-climate-change-project/245049/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/09/14/are-we-ready-for-al-gores-climate-reality/

24 Hours of Reality:

http://climaterealityproject.org/the-event/

Pluto and Changing Astronomy

Five years ago, the Milky Way galaxy held nine planets.  Then, the comparison of dwarf planet Eris to previous title holder of ‘Ninth Planet’, Pluto, forced a change that would cause textbooks worldwide to be rewritten and transform the way we defined planets forever.  In 2006, astronomists from all over Earth came together to determine a universal rule by which planets could be identified.

The decided the following:

• A planet orbits a sun
• A planet has enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape
• A planet must be the dominant gravitational body in its orbit

Pluto passes the first two tests, but within its far-flung orbit, known now as the Kuiper Belt, there exist many other objects of similar size or mass, including Eris, a round icy object larger and more massive than the previous ninth planet.  With these definitions in place, it became clear that Pluto no longer made the cut.  It, Eris, and several other bodies in the Kuiper Belt are now known as dwarf planets.

Every book on astronomy which endeavored to remain current had to be rewritten, which was no simple task.  Our own Astronomy For Beginners was no exception, and shortly after Pluto’s reclassification, a new version was published.  It just goes to show that nothing lasts forever.  Sorry, Pluto!

New Art by Poetry Illustrator Reuben Negron

Reuben Negron, illustrator for one of our most successful titles, Poetry For Beginners, has a new art show for his series of paintings called “This House of Glass” at the Like the Spice gallery.  The opening reception is this Friday night at 6:30.  

Like the Spice’s own website describes Negron’s exhibition best:

In these new works, each subject is a volunteer, drawn to Negron's project by his desire to unravel a particular knot in their recent memory. He adopts the role of confidant and digests innumerable morsels of honesty over several weeks or months. These conversations turn into visual collaborations between Negron and his model, conceived as a collective narrative told on their terms. He establishes trust with his subjects and ultimately a degree of untouchable intimacy through his pointed engagement. The paintings blossom from layered photographs of each subject in a space associated with his or her anecdote.  Tension builds between strength and fragility, loneliness and confidence, vulnerability and neglect, in Negron's mission to disclose the sitter's mind-frame. The singularity of reality fails in capturing the subject amid their tumultuous circumstances; thus Negron's images are composed of a string of moments rather than a single snapshot. His paintings capture an individual that has considered their own past yet exists in the present amid details of transpired events.

“This House of Glass” will be at Like the Spice from September 9^th until October 9^th, so be sure to stop in and admire his paintings this month in Brooklyn.  Until then, you can preview the series and view his other work on his blog.

Announcing the For Beginners Store

Now you can show your love for For Beginners books with items from our new CafePress store!  We have T-shirts, hoodies and pajamas in several colors for men and women, as well as kids’ clothing, hats, messenger bags, thermoses, mouse pads, iPhone cases and even food bowls for your pets.  Each is printed with the For Beginners eye logo and may have our title, URL or the ‘Know More, Read Less’ tagline. 

Follow the new button on our homepage or check out the store directly here.