Celebrating Olympic Day

Every year on June 23, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world celebrate Olympic Day by participating in competitions, runs, educational programming, and all kinds of other activities. The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) has been working to assist communities across the country with their celebrations. Their goal was to ensure that at least one of the 10,000 Olympians and Paralympians in the U.S. would be able to attend each event to share their experiences. Olympic Day encourages fitness and mass participation in sports, along with promoting ideals like fair play, perseverance, respect, and sportsmanship.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved Olympic Day in January of 1948 as a way to commemorate June 23, 1894, the date when the IOC was established through the work of Pierre de Coubertin to revive the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) of nine countries held ceremonies for the first Olympic Day, but today people from more than 160 countries are taking part in Olympic Day events.

To brush up on your knowledge of the Olympic Games before the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, take a look at The Olympics For Beginners. It’s a great way to learn more about the history of your favorite sporting events.

Coffee House Publisher and Founder to Retire

The publisher of Coffee House Press, Allan Kornblum, has announced that he is retiring from the company, which he founded back in 1973. Associate publisher Chris Fischbach will be taking over for him as publisher. Kornblum is now in the process of writing a memoir as he finishes working on fundraising projects and systems cleanup for the company. In an interview with the Twin Cities Daily Planet, Kornblum affirmed that Fischbach is the right person to carry on his vision for the company and suggested that “other baby boomer founders should explore ways to let a new generation lead, while continuing to contribute.”

In 2000, Coffee House published Bonnie Morris’s Girl Reel, a memoir focusing on her love for film and desire to see images of strong women represented onscreen. Morris is also the author of Women’s History For Beginners, which will be available in February 2012 in both print and e-book form.

Happy Birthday, Sartre!

Today, join us in celebrating the birthday of Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, French existentialist and one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He heavily influenced authors, artists, and political thinkers worldwide.

Not only was Sartre a famous philosopher, he was also a novelist, playwright, political activist, and more. His areas of study were diverse and included phenomenology, ontology, ethics, Marxism, and anarchism. Sartre frequently associated with other well-known writers and artists, such as Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, and Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he maintained a lifelong relationship. He wrote a wide variety of plays, screenplays, stories, and novels (for example, Nausea), philosophic essays (Being and Nothingness, Critique of Dialectical Reason), and critical essays (Saint Genet).

Sartre coined the term “existentialism” to describe ideas based on the work of philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the previous century. Part of this philosophy was the belief that “existence precedes essence.” Sartre argued that it is our freedom, not human nature, that determines our actions. He also explored the idea of “bad faith,” his term for self-deception, and nothingness, or non-being, which he believed was a way to gain freedom.

To learn more about Sartre and his philosophies in a fun way, check out Sartre For Beginners. For even more information, you can also read Existentialism or Philosophy For Beginners or some of our other comic book-style volumes on well-known philosophers.

Understanding Austen

Miranda Seymour has an excellent article in the New York Times today which discusses the importance and approachability of Jane Austen’s work.  The article is a book review on the surface; Seymour gives her impressions of two recent releases by Austen scholars, A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz, and Why Jane Austen? by Rachel M. Brownstein.  However, by discussing the distinct viewpoints on Austen that Deresiewicz and Brownstein put forth in their books, Seymour teases out similarities between the two and the distinct challenges facing those who are first approaching Austen’s writing.  

“The truth is that young readers don’t easily attach themselves to Austen,” Seymour says.  A Jane Austen Education starts with Deresiewicz revealing his initial distaste for Austen and her contemporaries.  Unable to see Austen’s craft or the importance of the her characters’ behavior, Deresiewicz saw only, “nothing more than a lot of chitchat among a bunch of commonplace characters in a country village.”  In Why Jane Austen? Brownstein takes and even more skeptical stance, saying, “Students are best introduced to Austen’s novels by being informed, for example, that the title ‘Mr. Knightley of Donwell Abbey’ conceals the code words ‘knightly’ and ‘donewell.’ ”

Neither author can be said to have understated the value of Austen’s work.  Both authors maintain that the works are crucial reading.  The challenge for new readers seems to be easing into the books with enough explanation to get a good sense of what the story means, without getting so much explanation as to feel patronized.  It seems a good primer on Jane Austen is needed.  Look for Jane Austen For Beginners in 2012.

Poetry Contest Winners!

Our Poetry Contest 2011 for National Poetry Month has ended. We want to thank everyone for their submissions. The judge of the contest and author of Poetry for Beginners, Margaret Chapman, picked the following three winners:

The first place winner is Chaouki  Mkaddem  with her poem “Patriot.” Chaouki will be receiving a copy of Poetry for Beginners as well as a For Beginners book of his choice.

The second and third runners up will also receive a copy of Poetry for Beginners.

Our second place winner is Rene Angulo Trujillo for the poem “SunofMan”

Our third place winner is  Vivekanand Jha for the poem “Hands Heave to Harm and Hamper”

 

Celebrating Søren: Happy Birthday, Kierkegaard!

Welcome back readers! Today, we’re going to jump right in with another personality spotlight – we’re celebrating the birthday of that great modern philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.

A Danish thinker and a religious man, Kierkegaard was a Protestant who lavished criticisms on his nation’s clergy. Kierkegaard placed a huge importance on the role of each person in his or her own faith (as opposed to the importance of an organization, like the Danish National Church). He argued that science and faith were not at odds, but different ways to understand different things.

Science showed facts and truths necessary for practical life; he argued it didn’t (and couldn’t) shine any light on an “objective faith.” For Kierkegaard, faith gave meaning, but that meaning was always “subjective,” or different depending on each person who held it. The later years of his life were characterized not by a struggle between science and faith, but between personal faith and faith-as-explained-by-the-church. He is counted often among the existentialists – part of his argument for embracing faith was his conviction that life was better with than without it.

If you’d like to learn more about his fascinating ideas, laid out in a concise, easy-to-read format, take a look at Kierkegaard For Beginners, one of our many philosophy For Beginners titles. You can even take a primer on philosophy itself, with Philosophy For Beginners – a survey of many great minds through history, and a great way to make starting this difficult subject easier.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Death Penalty Declared Unconstitutional

After 29 long years in jail, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, has had his death sentence overturned in what may become a landmark case, Reuters reports.

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania examined whether Abu-Jamal received a fair sentencing after he was found guilty of murder of Daniel Faulkner, a police officer. Not only did the court find problems in his sentencing, they declared Abu-Jamal’s sentence unconstitutional. The reasoning behind the ruling is based on testimony that revealed an agenda on the part of court staff, and especially the judge. One court stenographer recalled the judge offered to “help fry the….”

Tensions run high as his case has come to represent the debate over the death penalty and the lasting problem of racism in the criminal justice system, and arguments continue that the entire trial may have been illegitimate. Black Issues Magazine highlighted the details of Abu-Jamal’s appeal released via the Associated Press, “showing the appeal contended that the trial judge was racially hostile and that a state Supreme Court justice should not have participated in the case because he was a former prosecutor.” Though the court upheld the earlier verdict, even a transition to a life sentence would mean greater freedom within prison for Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal has been an activist, radio journalist, and supporter of improvements in education and civil liberties even through his decades in prison. He actually reviewed our own Black Holocaust For Beginners, one of our several titles focusing on black history, for the Black Educator. He continues to do radio spots and write, despite efforts by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to limit his communications. The Media Alliance, aggregating news from the Society of Professional Journalists and elsewhere, reported that “courts ruled the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' denial of access unconstitutional on the grounds that Abu-Jamal was being unfairly targeted. Pennsylvania lawmakers responded in 1996 by passing the ‘Mumia Law’--a California-style blanket ban on face-to-face prisoner interviews.” Events like this one fueled outrage among Abu-Jamal’s supporters, and among opponents of the death penalty.

Are mistakes that are not legally recognized for decades proof of inexcusable ethical problems with capital punishment, or do you think that the flaws are an unavoidable part of an otherwise necessary system? Feel free to weigh in in our comments section below.