Howard Zinn is arguably the most important American historian. He brought a radical transformation to the construction of history that was previously unheard of. By siding with the oppressed, the underprivileged, the victims, the poor and the weak, he made their voices heard through his writing. The People’s History of the United States is a…
Tag: Work Cited
During the period from about 1405 and 1750 why was religious toleration practiced in some places and not in others?
When we look at geo-political and social conflicts across the world today we can see how religion is a factor in most of the conflicts. In this backdrop, it is fair to claim that the world would be a more peaceful place to inhabit if more people practice religious toleration. What is true today has…
Critical Interpretation of Where Are You Going and Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates’
Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going and Where Have You Been? is a suspenseful and thrilling story. I found some aspects of it interesting while others superfluous. The following passages will lay out my critical interpretation of the story. Firstly, the characterization of the two main characters is very impressive. The mental makeup of…
A response to Jenni Russell’s ‘The Selfish Generation’
Jenni Russell’s article for the Guardian newspaper that appeared on 6th December 2003 raises contemporary problems in social interactions. She laments the fact that as individual, isolated consumers of a capitalist society, people are gradually losing their humanity. In its place, they are acquiring rather unsavory social tendencies, the most blatant of which is lack…
Film Review: The Station Agent
There are clear markers that set aside The Station Agent from mainstream American movies. The limited budget, the austere production style and the modest profiles of the cast actors all identify the film as belonging to the ‘independent’ genre. The off-beat story line and its central theme is also distant to conventional plots and themes. …
Review of the case study The Nez Perce Nation
The article titled The Nez Perce Nation talks about the history of one of the largest and powerful tribes to have inhabited the Plateau culture area. Once a flourishing indigenous civilization, the article documents Nez Perce’s decline and marginalization under the pressure of colonial settlers and Christian missionaries. As the commercial and territorial interests of…
Film review: Blow (2001) by Ted Demme
Blow (2001) is a biographical motion picture about the notorious American cocaine smuggler George Jung. The movie is an adaptation from the book Blow: How a Small Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All authored by Bruce Porter in 1993. The writing team of David McKenna and Nick…
A response to ‘Ending an Epidemic’ by Sadie F. Dingfelder
The article titled ‘Ending an Epidemic’ by Sadie F. Dingfelder first appeared in the March 2010 (Vol 41, No.3) edition of Monitor. It talks about the phenomenon of teen violence, especially carried out by their boyfriends or dates. Upon reading it, I felt appalled by what is happening to teenage girls across the country. The…
Reading Response to Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a popular science book published in 2005. The subject is the ‘human adaptive unconscious’, which is the cognitive phenomenon behind quick, frequent and automatic processes in the mind. Gladwell’s central thesis is that our minds can make fairly accurate judgments, without consuming much time and information. Gladwell…
Article summary: Beware Those ‘Beta Traps by Ben Levisohn
The article chosen for this exercise is titled ‘Beware Those ‘Beta Traps’’. Written by Ben Levisohn, it appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 29th October, 2011. The article cautions investors about the dangers of those stocks whose prices tend to behave with high volatility. The volatility of a stock’s price movement is mathematically represented…