Customer Reviews

The Best of the Nation: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture

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I am not your typical Nation reader, not by any means. In fact I am pretty much so a right winger, but I was curious and thought I'd check out this collection. While I can't say it changed my mind any, in fact it might have done the exact opposite, this is a very interesting and well written piece of work. I do not agree with the politics of The Nation, but I must say they have some of the best contributors writing for them, and they do make you think about your own stances. If you actually agree with their politics, you probably already know about this book and have read it. If not, and you want to see what the other side believes, this is a great way to educate yourself.

This book is for those who missed out on the ~500 issues it draws from, or those who're curious about the ultimate tastes of Victor Navasky, publisher, and Katrina Vanden Heuval, editor. How do you filter the best of ten years? Interesting to ponder. These two must have been taking notes the whole time.

TheNation is a magazine it is good to have discovered. I found it when some soul regularly put big piles of free issues on a table in the English building at my college. A subversive act, no? If you consider progress subversive. It was kind of strange to read at first. Who were all these people mentioned? What were these groups? But once you get in synch with the vibe, the magazine becomes truly exciting and audacious. I don't know how some of these writers became so intellectually powerful, so incisive at tearing apart the fabric of the consensus trance and revealing the bloody insides of what a DeLillo character called The Festival of Death. Which world is this? This book will help you know, with respect to whether you can be helped.

Is TheNation provincial? Some say so, but I think not. What about its coverage of Russia? Latin America? Africa? The Middle East? Asia? Europe? America is the focus, of course, but would we want it different? How can we influence lands far away if we don't yet know the secrets of our own land? Isn't the most powerful machine a good one to examine if we'd like to twist the world history vector? And if you want to get into the foreign more than the magazine itself gives you, there are lots of book recommendations to be had--books that will take you wherever you want to go, and what's more, books that will explore the world in ways you may not have even dreamed of.

No relevent aspect of reality goes unnoticed in the textuality of The Nation, the books, the readers. The perceptual net is tight--the neurotic denial of perspectives is fully minimized here. How much is going on? Can you help people? What about armchair radicals? I have nothing against sitting in chairs. I find myself reading this book, and thinking, I'm totally unable to participate in struggle for justice X, yet--in a certain way, reading about it is enough. If we can't save the victims, we can at least know of them. There is infinite Pain going on, and it's hard to influence an infinity, but any decrease in pain is meaningful. Everything is meaningful.

Vanden Heuvel is to the left what Rush Limbaugh is to the right. Objectivity be damned!

However, the authors state their positions passionately and persuasively. Like one of the reviewers stated previously, if you have a conservative bent, the articles will make you really think about your position. If, on the other hand, you are more liberally inclined, these articles won't say anything that you haven't already heard.