In the single month of September 1993, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicated or disciplined six of its members. These six individuals–some of them intellectuals, some activists, and some both–were soon dubbed the “September Six.” In The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism, Sara M. Patterson challenges readers to think more deeply about the events of that month and the era in which they unfolded. Patterson argues that the clever alliterative phrase “September Six” masks our ability to see that what happened that month was part of a much broader, decades-long cultural and theological debate over the nature of the church and its restoration narrative. During those decades the institutional church invested in and policed a purity system, expecting believers to practice doctrinal, familial, and bodily purity. Dissenters within the institution pushed back, imagining instead a vision of the Restoration that embraced personal conscience, truth-seeking and telling, and social egalitarianism at its core. Both sides were profoundly shaped by the cultural milieu that surrounded them. What happened in September 1993 continues to echo in the church today, having lasting effects on the institution, its believers, and the broader culture.

Octavio Paz has long been known for his brilliant essays as well as for his poetry. Through the essays, he has sought to confront the tensions inherent in the conflict between art and society and to achieve a unity of their polarities. The Siren and the Seashell is a collection of Paz’s essays, focusing on individual poets and on poetry in general. The first five poets he treats are Latin American: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, José Juan Tablada, Ramón López Velarde, and Alfonso Reyes. Then there are essays on Robert Frost, e. e. cummings, Saint-John Perse, Antonio Machado, and Jorge Guillén. Finally, there are Paz’s reflections on the poetry of solitude and communion and the literature of Latin America. Each essay is more than Paz’s impressions of one person or issue; each is the occasion for a wider discussion of cultural, historical, psychological, and philosophical themes. The essays were selected from Paz’s writing between 1942 and 1965 and provide an overview of the development of his thinking and an exploration of the ideas central in his works.

What were ancient scribes doing when they copied a manuscript of a literary work? This question is especially problematic when we realize that ancient scribes preserved different versions of the same literary texts. In Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Raymond F. Person Jr. draws from studies of how words are selected in everyday conversation to illustrate that the same word-selection mechanisms were at work in scribal memory. Using examples from manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, Person provides new ways of understanding the cognitive-linguistic mechanisms at work during the composition/transmission of texts. Person reveals that, while our modern perspective may consider textual variants to be different literary texts, from the perspective of the ancient scribes and their audiences, these variants could still be understood as the same literary text.

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Petronius (C. or T. Petronius Arbiter), who is reasonably identified with the author of this famous satyric and satiric novel, was a man of pleasure and of good literary taste who flourished in the times of Claudius (41–54 CE) and Nero (54–68). As Tacitus describes him, he used to sleep by day, and attend to official duties or to his amusements by night. At one time he was governor of the province of Bithynia in Asia Minor and was also a consul, showing himself a man of vigour when this was required. Later he lapsed into indulgence (or assumed the mask of vice) and became a close friend of Nero. Accused by jealous Tigellinus of disloyalty and condemned, with self-opened veins he conversed lightly with friends, dined, drowsed, sent to Nero a survey of Nero's sexual deeds, and so died, 66 CE.

The surviving parts of Petronius's romance Satyricon mix philosophy and real life, prose and verse, in a tale of the disreputable adventures of Encolpius and two companions, Ascyltus and Giton. In the course of their wanderings they attend a showy and wildly extravagant dinner given by a rich freedman, Trimalchio, whose guests talk about themselves and life in general. Other incidents are a shipwreck and somewhat lurid proceedings in South Italy. The work is written partly in pure Latin, but sometimes purposely in a more vulgar style. It parodies and otherwise attacks bad taste in literature, pedantry and hollow society.

Apocolocyntosis, "Pumpkinification" (instead of deification), is probably by Seneca the wealthy philosopher and courtier (ca. 4 BCE–65 CE). It is a medley of prose and verse and a political satire on the Emperor Claudius written soon after he died in 54 CE and was deified.

The Loyalists who supported the British during the American Revolution have frequently been neglected in accounts of that conflict. Nevertheless, Loyalists made significant efforts to assist British forces in restoring royal control of the thirteen colonies. This was especially true in South Carolina, where backcountry Loyalists under almost-forgotten leaders such as Joseph Robinson and Euan McLaurin challenged the Revolutionary movement in 1775. Although their initial efforts were unsuccessful, Robinson, McLaurin, and hundreds of their followers eventually made their way to British East Florida, where they organized into a provincial regiment called the South Carolina Royalists. Operating in concert with British efforts, the Royalists were part of many notable actions from 1778 to 1781, including the defenses of East Florida and Savannah, Georgia, and the battles of Briar Creek, Stono Ferry, Musgrove’s Mill, and Hobkirk’s Hill. A second provincial regiment created in 1780, Major John Harrison’s South Carolina Rangers, saw considerably action in operations against partisans under Francis Marion. When the British were forced to evacuate their backcountry posts in 1781, the Royalists, Rangers, and three troops of Provincial Light Dragoons raised earlier in the year withdrew first to Charleston and then East Florida. From there, many went to Canada at the war’s end, with others dispersing to different British colonies to begin new lives after their strenuous but unsuccessful effort on behalf of king and country.
            In South Carolina Provincials: Loyalists in British Service During the American Revolution, historian Jim Piecuch provide the first comprehensive history of those South Carolinians who took up arms to assist the British during their attempt to quell the rebellion in the South. Based on primary source research including records rarely consulted, the result provides a much clearer picture of the American Revolution at the local level in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas.
 

#66, The 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time, The Hollywood Reporter

The legendary figure who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, and Richard Linklater offers a no-holds-barred look at the deals and details that propel an indie film from a dream to distribution.

Pierson, a producer’s representative, explains how he has helped filmmakers with no profile at the time to get their work made, sold and seen by the world, sharing stories about Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, Moore’s Roger & Me and Linklater’s Slackers, plus Hoop Dreams, Clerks and many others. Chats with Kevin Smith serve as interstitials between chapters.

On politics, pleasure, and poetry.

Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, was born in 427 BC. In early manhood an admirer of Socrates, he later founded the famous school of philosophy in the grove Academus. Much else recorded of his life is uncertain; that he left Athens for a time after Socrates’ execution is probable; that later he went to Cyrene, Egypt, and Sicily is possible; that he was wealthy is likely; that he was critical of “advanced” democracy is obvious. He lived to be 80 years old. Linguistic tests including those of computer science still try to establish the order of his extant philosophical dialogues, written in splendid prose and revealing Socrates’ mind fused with Plato’s thought.

In Laches, Charmides, and Lysis, Socrates and others discuss separate ethical conceptions. Protagoras, Ion, and Meno discuss whether righteousness can be taught. In Gorgias, Socrates is estranged from his city’s thought, and his fate is impending. The Apology (not a dialogue), Crito, Euthyphro, and the unforgettable Phaedo relate the trial and death of Socrates and propound the immortality of the soul. In the famous Symposium and Phaedrus, written when Socrates was still alive, we find the origin and meaning of love. Cratylus discusses the nature of language. The great masterpiece in ten books, the Republic, concerns righteousness (and involves education, equality of the sexes, the structure of society, and abolition of slavery). Of the six so-called dialectical dialogues Euthydemus deals with philosophy; metaphysical Parmenides is about general concepts and absolute being; Theaetetus reasons about the theory of knowledge. Of its sequels, Sophist deals with not-being; Politicus with good and bad statesmanship and governments; Philebus with what is good. The Timaeus seeks the origin of the visible universe out of abstract geometrical elements. The unfinished Critias treats of lost Atlantis. Unfinished also is Plato’s last work, Laws, a critical discussion of principles of law which Plato thought the Greeks might accept.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plato is in twelve volumes.

Plautus (Titus Maccius), born about 254 BCE at Sarsina in Umbria, went to Rome, engaged in work connected with the stage, lost his money in commerce, then turned to writing comedies.

Twenty-one plays by Plautus have survived (one is incomplete). The basis of all is a free translation from comedies by such writers as Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. So we have Greek manners of Athens about 300–250 BCE transferred to the Roman stage of about 225–185, with Greek places, people, and customs, for popular amusement in a Latin city whose own culture was not yet developed and whose manners were more severe. To make his plays live for his audience, Plautus included many Roman details, especially concerning slavery, military affairs, and law, with some invention of his own, notably in management of metres. The resulting mixture is lively, genial and humorous, with good dialogue and vivid style. There are plays of intrigue (Two Bacchises, The Haunted House, Pseudolus); of intrigue with a recognition theme (The Captives, The Carthaginian, Curculio); plays which develop character (The Pot of Gold, Miles Gloriosus); others which turn on mistaken identity (accidental as in the Menaechmi; caused on purpose as in Amphitryon); plays of domestic life (The Merchant, Casina, both unpleasant; Trinummus, Stichus, both pleasant).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plautus is in five volumes.

Leonard Plotnicov offers a fascinating study of the urbanization of tribal Africans. His study is based on extensive interviews with residents of Jos, Nigeria over a two-year period. The participants come from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds, and Plotnicov portrays the difficulties associated with assimilation into a Westernized society.

Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia discusses the lived experience of urban development, redevelopment, and change in Ulaanbaatar. The fast rates of urbanization occurring in many parts of the world are often buoyed by increased investment of capital and ensuing construction, giving rise to other less visible effects among those living in cities—including diverse economic practices, politics, and ethics. Construction becomes a solution to the provision of housing but also simultaneously becomes a problem when economic processes fail to work as they should, or people are dispossessed of land to make way for further urban change.   
Rebekah Plueckhahn explores the inherent contradiction between solution and problem-making as experienced by residents of Ulaanbaatar during a tumultuous period in Mongolia’s economic history. She examines the ways residents attempt to own forms of real estate and, in turn, physically shape the city and its politics and urban economic forms from within. This book interlinks the intimate space of the home with ideologies of the national economy, urban development and disrepair and the types of politics and ethics that arise as a result.
 

The view that China has become increasingly assertive under President Xi Jinping is now a common trope in academic and media discourse. However, until the end of Xi Jinping’s first term in March 2018, China had been relatively restrained in its use of coercive economic measures. This is puzzling given the conventional belief among scholars and practitioners that sanctions are a middle ground between diplomatic and military/paramilitary action.
Using a wide range of methods and data – including in-depth interviews with 76 current and former politicians, policy-makers, diplomats, and commercial actors across 12 countries and 16 cities – Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics: Rhetoric and Restraint in China’s Diplomacy examines the ways in which China had employed economic sanctions to further its political objectives, and the factors explaining China’s behaviour. This book provides a systematic investigation into the ways in which Chinese decisionmakers approached sanctions both at the United Nations Security Council and unilaterally, and shows how China’s longstanding sanctions rhetoric has had a constraining effect on its behaviour, resulting in its inability to employ sanctions in complete alignment with its immediate interests.

Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance and a leading figure in the circle of Lorenzo de'Medici "il Magnifico" in Florence. His "Silvae" are poetical introductions to his courses in literature at the University of Florence, written in Latin hexameters. They not only contain some of the finest Latin poetry of the Renaissance, but also afford unique insight into the poetical credo of a brilliant scholar as he considers the works of his Greek and Latin predecessors as well as of his contemporaries writing in Italian.

Ezra Pound here recreates for the English-speaking world the great poetry of ancient China. The 305 odes of the Classic Anthology are the living tradition of Chinese poetry. Since the fifth century before Christ, they have been as familiar to literate Chinese as the Homeric poems were to the ancient Greeks. Indeed, Confucius held that no man was truly educated until he had studied the odes.

Anthony Powell’s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published—as twelve individual novels—but with a twenty-first-century twist: they’re available only as e-books.

The eighth volume, The Soldier’s Art (1966), finds Nick in the thankless position of assistant to a rapidly rising Major Widmerpool. The disruptions of war throw up other familiar faces as well: Charles Stringham, heroically emerging from alcoholism but a mere shadow of his former self; Hugh Moreland, his marriage broken, himself nearly so. As the Blitz intensifies, the war’s toll mounts; the fates are claiming their own, and many friends will not be seen again. 

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--Chicago Tribune

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times

"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

 

“The most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.”--Kingsley Amis

The faith in science as an ally of political and economic progress, which Franklin and Jefferson made so firm a part of the American tradition, has been undermined by the very success of the scientific revolution. Has science become so powerful that it cannot be controlled by democratic processes? Is the scientific community acquiring a privileged role in government something like that of the ecclesiastical estate in the medieval world?

Writing from first-hand experience in government administration and his service on three presidential advisory panels, as well as from extensive research, Don K. Price describes how science and technology have weakened the independence of private corporations and broken down some of the checks and balances on which we have relied for the protection of freedom. In this connection he recounts the recent attempts to set up a national program of oceanographic research, showing that the more advanced the scientific and technological programs are, the more difficult it is to contain them within the normal departmental structure and the more likely they are to bypass the regular lines of responsibility. He then faces the question of whether science is leading us toward some new type of centralized power in which its own processes, rather than those of representative democracy, will determine our policies.

He argues, on the contrary, that the more scientific the sciences become, and the more competent to help in the understanding of public issues, the more freedom of choice they provide for responsible politicians. Science can be translated into political decisions only if its knowledge can be mixed with political purpose. This is done through a chain of responsibility that runs from the scientists to the professionals (like engineers and physicians), and on to administrators and politicians.

Within this set of relations, Mr. Price suggests, we are developing a new system of checks and balances. For whether science leads toward tyranny or freedom depends not on a nation’s state of technological progress, but on what it believes. The freedom of science owes less to the nineteenth-century ideas of laissez-faire and parliamentary sovereignty than to the older tradition on which the American revolution based its separation of church and state and its federal system.

Mr. Price examines the ways in which the President and Congress make use of scientific advice. He sees less reason to fear that authority will be unduly centralized in either the legislative or executive branch, under the American system, than that executive agencies and Congressional committees with common interests in technological programs may acquire power and influence without adequate responsibility.