Reading the Past

The LA Times Book Review section is terrific once again:

Here is a great review from Jonathan Kirsch of Jack Beatty's deeply intriguing and thought-provoking book about the rise of the monied elite in the late 19th Century--and what that history tells us about this latest Gilded Age, or Age of Betrayal, in which we are currently living.

And this review by Phillip Lopate, about the riot in the New York City theater district in 1849, over whether an American-born or English-born Shakespearean actor was most faithful to the Bard, presents an amazing cultural history that I had completely missed, but tells us much about where we as a culture have degenerated and where we have improved our civilized ways.

And, here is a fascinating look at John Donne, who went from writing ribald and erotic poems to becoming a leading Protestant minister in the last years of his life. What struck me is how often our lives are conflicted and how often our personal commitments to our families play a role in how we lead our lives. I am also struck by the intersection between religion and sex (see, incidentally, this reivew about the cult of virginity in today's Washington Post Book World) and the way in which "class" in the economic sense and "class" in the cultural sense can sometimes merge.

Speaking of the LA Times, the newspaper's owners have made a rare good decision: Hiring Jim Newton as the new opinion-editorial editor. Newton is a veteran LA area reporter who has written a wonderful and great biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren (I just finished it recently, with only one quibble about Newton's surprisingly shallow view of the Warren Commission report on the murder of JFK). He understands California politics and history and has a sensible view of the world such that I expect, or hope for a dramatic improvement in the op-ed section of the paper, which suffered under his two predecessors.