My (now former) condo complex had a big yard sale on Saturday morning. I took two of the kids out there to peruse the wares. First serious collection of books we come upon features five attractive volumes of popular political theory. The titles:
The Beginners’ Guide to Mao
The Beginners’ Guide to Marx
The Beginners’ Guide to Lenin
The Beginners’ Guide to Trotsky
The Beginners’ Guide to Einstein (?)
I stood and gawked for a moment. I wanted to tell the woman standing there: the only one you're missing is The Beginners’ Guide to Hitler.
I did buy a nice Oxford edition of MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom for a mere two bucks, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Comments (10)
Yes, it's funny how these murderous Communists are regarded as intellectuals. No one is ever ashamed to be associated with them or learning their ideas, as they are with Hitler.
Posted by Lydia | May 21, 2007 3:13 PM
The publishing industry is very diligent in providing introductory material. Big bucks in higher ed, too.
Horace once said, Qui coepit, dimidium facti habet. It's encouragement to think that once you begin, you've got half the job done. Was Horace kidding?
I'm finding a good number of Bloom's Closing of the American Mind lying for sale on blankets in the sun.
Posted by KW | May 21, 2007 3:38 PM
You never do run across Russell Kirk or Irving Babbitt at yard sales, do you? I did find a nice copy of Burke's 'Reflections...' once though.
I recently reread the first couple hundred pages of MacPherson and was a bit surprised by the pro-Northern bias. Not that I'd expect him to be pro-Southern, but it seemed like he's much more willing to give the North the benefit of the doubt on things than he is the South. I didn't notice this bias when I first read the book quite a few years ago, but then again, I hadn't at that time read any Southern views of the war.
Posted by Rob Grano | May 22, 2007 9:44 AM
Let's look on the positive side. She was getting rid of the books, wasn't she?
Posted by Trish | May 22, 2007 9:18 PM
Great golfer, the Lama.
Was the MacPherson in hardcover? If so, I'm going into full, emerald-eyed envy mode.
Posted by Dale Price | May 23, 2007 2:01 PM
Gunga ga lunga. Wait. Gunga la gunga.
It's about time someone picked up on that. Thank you, Dale.
The MacPherson is indeed hardcover. It's a solid "reading copy" as they say. Nothing great, but a nice find for two bucks.
Rob: have you read Shelby Foote?
Posted by Paul J Cella | May 23, 2007 2:26 PM
Paul:
No prob. Though I botched the quote slightly--it was "big hitter, the Lama."
Reading copy. I guess that's more a "light green" envy, after all. As you say, a nice find.
Posted by Dale Price | May 23, 2007 5:46 PM
"Rob: have you read Shelby Foote?"
Not yet. My daughter gave me his trilogy for Christmas by I haven't got to it yet. It's been highly recommended to me though, and I loved his contributions to the Ken Burns 'Civil War' PBS documentary.
One of the more enlightening books I've read on the Civil War is Robert Penn Warren's little essay THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR. His monographs on Jefferson Davis and segregation are quite good too.
Posted by Rob Grano | May 24, 2007 9:24 AM
Foote is a magnificent writer. He teaches lessons without lectures, but merely by the care and power of his narrative. The reader is not told that, say, Lee was a genius and Hooker a fool, or Sherman and Stonewall brilliant near-madmen, but rather shown that these things are true.
His great work earned the astonishing and oft-repeated praise from his friend Walker Percy of "an American Iliad." Before I started I thought this the sheerest hyperbole; now, not so much.
Posted by Paul J Cella | May 24, 2007 10:37 AM
Maybe I can read Foote along with the other gigantic trilogy I have waiting, Marion Montgomery's "The Prophetic Poet and the Spirit of the Age."
Posted by Rob Grano | May 24, 2007 2:37 PM