Connect with Sam Harris

**Sam Harris is one of the five writers who eased me across the boundary from religion in general and Christian Science in particular. His early books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation  pushed him into the spotlight of those "New Atheists" eloquently exposing the deception and hazards of religious belief. I recently read his latest book, Waking Up, which deals with the nature of the self and meditation. Can't say I've crossed over into meditation territory but his ideas on consciousness intrigue me.

I also subscribe to his podcast. His latest is an interview with Joshua Oppenheimer who recently released his two films about the genocide in Indonesia in the mid 60s. The films are apparently devastatingly powerful and uniquely produced. Take a listen to this interview. Coming so close upon reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me it adds another splash of cold water to my white privileged life. Though I've been jailed, put on trial, successfully sued for $1 million, all for practicing my religion at the time, I am unscathed by prejudice and ignorance compared with those who have suffered in these ways.

Review of "Between the World and Me"

** Just finished this remarkable book. Here's the review I posted on Amazon of Between the World and Me:

Donald Trump may be a blowhard and a buffoon but he is a saint to the American Dreamers that Ta-Nehisi Coates identifies as the institutionalized oppressors of his people. These Dreamers vote for Trump in polls but will not get to vote for him in an election because, as Al Sharpton observes, he will forever be a Lounge act and not classy enough for the Big Room. There are a few, though, who are crafty enough to hide their racism under a veneer of good-heartedness, and they will get Dreamers' election votes. 

Coates maintains that the stain of racism goes so deep that it cannot be expunged. It must destroy itself as it destroys everything that it feeds on, including black bodies. This brief book, a collection of "letters" to his son is at once a searing indictment and a soaring paean to black struggle. The language is lofty while its gaze is gruesomely gritty. How many white people will read this and acknowledge their own complicity with black oppression?  And how many black people immersed in the Dream will wake up? I doubt there will be many.

And that is the irony of this book. It is an indictment so vast and convincing that prosecution is hardly imaginable. Even so, it is a poem so eloquent that it can't fail to move the reader. It will take its place in the canon of great American writing. 

Recent books read

**I read constantly. Some ideas come from friends and are related to some project or other. Some come from reviews in NYT and NYRB. I love a good long book because it saves me the hassle of finding another book. But sometimes there are several books I'm eager to read but am stuck on a long one (embarrassment of riches). In more or less chronological order, starting with the most recent, this is what I've read (links are for books from 2014 forward):

1. Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Speak - Louisa Hall
3. Some Remarks - Neal Stephenson
4. Seveneves - Neal Stephenson
5. Words Without Music - Philip Glass
6. The Sense of Style - Steven Pinker
7. Waking Up - Sam Harris
8. Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
9. Bad Faith - Paul Offit, MD
10. Does Altruism Exist? - David Sloan Wilson
11. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
12. Knocking on Heaven's Door - Katy Butler
13. Daemon - Daniel Suarez
14. Freedom - Daniel Suarez
15. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
16. The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time - Unger/Smolin
17. At Home in the Universe:  Stuart Kauffman
18. Triumphs of Experience - George Valiant
19. Satin Island - Tom McCarthy
20. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End - Atul Gawande
21. Let Me be Frank with You - Richard Ford
22. 10:04 - Ben Learner
23. This Changes Everything - Naomi Klein
24. The Children Act - Ian McEwan
25. Odds Against Tomorrow - Nathaniel Rich
26. Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki - Haruki Murakami
27. CyberStorm - Mathew Mather
28. The Martian - Andy Weir
29. The Last Magazine - Michael Hastings
30. No Place to Hide - Glenn Greenwald
31. The Director - David Ignatius
32. Think Like a Freak - Levitt/Dubner
33. Sting of the Drone - Richard Clarke
34. The Word Exchange - Alena Graedon
35. The Innocent - David Baldacci
36. The Target - David Baldacci
37. 10% Happier - Dan Harris
38. Flash Boys - Michael Lewis
39. The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
40. On Such a Full Sea - Chang-Rae Lee
41. Blowback - Valerie Plame
42. The Reason I Jump - Higashida/Mitchell
43. A Working Theory of Love - Scott Hutchins
44. The Facades - Eric Lundgren
45. Inferno - Dan Brown
46. Night Film - Marisha Pessl
47. Zealot - Reza Aslan
48. The Cuckoo's Calling - Galbraith/Rowling
49. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon
50. Intuition Pumps - Daniel Dennett
51. Immortality - Stephen Cave
52. C Street - Jeff Sharlett
53. A Ship without a Sail - Gary Marmorstein