Altre Concupiscenze by Giorgio Manganelli edited by Salvatore Silvano Nigro

 Altre Concupiscenze by Giorgio Manganelli edited by Salvatore Silvano Nigro published by Adelphi is a great book if you love books and reviews, because it will be inspiring, it will let you reflect

and maybe you'll discover new authors, or you will "read" them thanks to the words of Giorgio Manganelli under another perspective.

What after all we do with our modest work? Although we haven't written the book, we try to see the best in every page of every book so that  people will be intrigued and will buy the book in question. 

A reviewer is, as also writes Manganelli a passionate animal, someone lost in the pages he reads: the reviewer in general must try to find the originalities of a book underlying that peculiarities.

Reviews you'll read, are mainly literary ones: profound, felt, more than the description of the book there is the essence that the work inspired to Giorgio.

I found thrilling, interesting reading his reviews of books by Nabokov, Swift, Yeats, Calasso, Ennio Flaiano, Jack London. 

Beautiful.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Friendship in Twilight by Jack Miles and Mark C. Taylor

 What a beautiful, warm book is A Friendship in Twilight

Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life by Jack Miles and Mark C.Tyler published by Columbia Press. I warmly suggest to everyone this reading, because of its originality. These two professors of religion, one teaching at the University of California, the second at the Columbia, in fact are friends from...50 years, yes, from the time of their studies at Harvard University. 

They have always been closed friends during these long decades, and when the pandemic erupted in the entire world and the world itself was falling in a general lockdown, they decided that they would have written to each other in a daily base long e-mails, of substance, reporting facts, sharing their impressions on the pandemic, but also on the political internal situation of the USA, art, journalism and its role in the society, gardening, church, lessons, sharing facts, their personal daily frustrations. They started this private conversation, where we are priviledged guests and readers, March 15 2020, and January 6 2021 they had produced something like 1700 pages.

It appeared clear, as wrote Mark, that this pandemic deleted the idea that we were invincibles and that certain prblems experienced by humanity definitely over. Mark calls it: "The terror of the Sublime". That period was also Easter, but a completely different Easter. To Mark, this new horror was like the one experienced when the Twin Towers collapsed: the plague can teach us, writes Mark that we are not the center of the universe: in another passage of that e-mail written april 12 of the lesson never understood of 9/11 Mark asks to Jack Miles: will we learn the lesson of the plague before it is too late to change our tune? The USA remains the country with more departures for Covid: more than a million citizens lost their existence because of it. In the USA at that time there was Donald Trump as president and he didn't believe at this plague because of economical reasons: so, like Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson he adopted anti-vax measures, keeping the situation often, not anymore under control.

Trump is considered severely by these two friends: they understood that it was "a terrible error when Evangelical shifted their support from Carter to Reagan" writes Mark because that policy would have brought in recent times Trump and Trumpism. 

Beautiful. No other words for describing this book and this experiment.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Chant de Noel by Jose-Louis Munuera

 I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens every year. It was a real joy, this time, reading today a french graphic novel based on Dicken's novel: Chant de Noel

Une Histoire de Fantomes. Published by Dargaud rewritten by

José-Luis Munuera

There is some originality in this story because the main protagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge but a sensual but pretty cold lady, Elizabeth Scrooge, who once owned the activity with Bob Marley.

Elizabeth doesn't have a heart in her chest, but a stone: she criticizes everyone: she doesn't want to spend a dime for helping poor people; she complains with her niece because she appreciates Christmas, furious with Cratchit her employer because of the day-off of the 25th. She doesn't like Christmas, but more, she doesn't love people. Once returned home, she starts to see something strange: the phantom is Bob Marley and he tells her that from his death he hasn't known peace and that he would want to help her because if she wants, she could potentially change her destiny. She will receive the visits of three spirits tells her Bob. The phantom of the past Christmases, the one of the current Christmas and the one of the Future Christmases. What Elizabeth will see will create a lot unhappiness: she didn't remember a lot of situations of her remote past: because of her avidity she had lost her boyfriend: she doesn't know of Tiny Tim's illness,  the frail son of Cratchit: without cures he will die soon. Elizabeth, understands that also her departure will be lived as a joy because she hasn't been a good spirit, a good person in this world.

And of course, after this tour de force, se will abruptly change becoming someone completely different.

I loved the illustrations, very strong and powerful and the characterization of Elizabeth and the three spirits. I also loved the warmth transmitted by the rest of the protagonists in their houses.

A graphic novel I warmly suggest to everyone. And maybe the spirit of Christmas remains with you for the rest of the year!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I thank Netgalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Cahier Arendt Herne

 Le Cahier de L'Herne on Hannah Arendt

is dense, interesting, absolutely captivating. 

Hannah, born in Germany, studied in prestigious schools, before the advent of the war, when she was forced to go away, in Paris before, and then in the United States later. If most Jewish, emigrants in the USA refused to learnt that new language, blocked by the shock, and determined to remain anchored at the melancholic refugee of past and their homeland, Hannah learnt english very well, but she always, always found a profound and articulated relationship with Germany: she firstly returned there in 1949, and it will be her native language, German that will cement her future relationships with the land where she was born, continuing to think, as she confirmed, in german. Her language. The three questions Arendt will answer in his first book started in 1945 The Origins of Totalitarism are big: What did it happen? Why did it happen this? How, a horror like this one was possible? Three big questions, and two totalitarisms taken in consideration: the german and russian ones.

Totalitarism after all build something that doesn't exist, transforming a plurality of people in unity: with, also the complete destruction of the exterior and interior freedom. Arendt thought that totalitarism was a new phaenomenon in the political scenarios of the times: it was in grade, to build new political systems, destroying completely the past governments, but also juridic, socials and politic traditions. And to Arendt totalitarian regimes didn't appear for case or because there was a charismatic leader behind: no. There are more profound reasons interconnected with the problematic of our times. Which were the problematics of the past century? The atomization of the world, desolation intended as a person abandoned by everyone, including by himself/herself: mutism without dialogue: the idea of didn't find the proper place in the world. To Arendt totalitarism can be one of the answers to the problems of the modern man, finding these regimes as originals. Without sense to this existence, and thanks to the appearance of desolation, very different from other human feelings, the advent of Totalitarism.

Of course man should have rights. Hannah was sure of it and explained that we aren't born equals. We become equals because members of a group, because we want to give rights to everyone: man acts in a world that it is free for building, changing world and society with and only equals. These words permitted to change the most important Declarations: in particular the Declaration universelle des droits de l'Homme 1948, but in particular the statut of refugees. 

Hannah Arendt tried a lot of times to touch the Palestinian discussion with a public appeal signed by most intellectuals in particular when there was the war in 1967. Noam Chomsky, Umberto Terracini, a member of the italian communist party, Aldo Zargani signed this petition. 

Writing a rapport on the language and terminology used by Eichmann during the trial, Hannah arrives at the conclusion that it was impossible to communicate with Eichmann: he didn't see the reality. But also examining the language in profoundity, the birth of the idea of the banality: what produced by Germans has been the most horrific scenario never seeen in the modern world: but in their terms that one was what they did in a daily base. The banalité du mal. A banality that after all it's the product of the relationship of the man with himself. Arendt wrote that the regime prepared historically and politically walking corpses: dismantelling their rights, men became superfluous. With the time Arendt modified the position from mal radical to the banalitè du mal. She wrotes that to her the mal is extreme, true, but never radical. Like a fungi it expands itself on its surface.

What is the role of intellectuals in the society? It is, to Hannah biggest than not for any other individual because power and interest sometimes can have limits. Telling the truth is the only responsability of the intellectuals if they want to be called intellectuals. There are deviant voices: citizens, politicians: everyone affirming their own voice. Intellectuals, affirms Arendt musn't represent the conscience of the nation. 

A beautiful cahier, erudite, dense, explores with great fascination the entire intellectual history of Hannah Arendt and the one of this tribulated world.

I thank L'Herne for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Prayer Map for Hope and Healing Barbour Staff

 The Prayer Map for Hope and Healing

is a new book compiled by Barbour Staff. I missed their books so badly. They have  a special touch for sure. In this new one, a spiral journal, you can creatively add your prayers. Composed by spreads, each of them  will encourage you to write down what you think, compiling lists, adding thoughts, prayers, in a process that at the end will let you show creatively, what you asked to God, and how He answered back to you in this sorta of written dialogue with Him!

Beautifully colored and creative. I highly suggest it to everyone. Perfect for a Christmas Gift!

I thank NetGalley for the copy of this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Little Homesteader: A Winter Treasurey of Recipes, Craft, and Wisdom by Angela Ferraro-Fanning

 Little Homesteader:

A Winter Treasurey of Recipes, Craft, and Wisdom by Angela Ferraro-Fanning is the best book for introducing to younger readers the winter-time. Sometimes considered bored, this time of the year is plenty of great activities outdoor and indoor. Passing through delicious recipes, to the outdoor activity of tapping a tree for making syrup, the book analyzes also the wildlife during the winter-time and how you can help to feed birds during this difficult season. Plenty of great activities for Christmas's Time, I simply know that this book will conquer all the family!

This book is also helping nature becase as remarked, it is printed on recycled paper made from 100% post consumer waste.

Highly recommended.

I thank Netgalley for the ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

From the Fires of War: Ukraine's Azov Movement and the Global Far Right by Michael Colborne

 From the Fires of War:

Ukraine's Azov Movement and the Global Far Right by Michael Colborne,is a new book released  by Ibidem. An illuminating book this one by Colborne who followed pretty closely these past years Azov: the final analysis, this journalist is specialized on the far right in Eastern Europe is that there is not another movement strong and well connected in the national territory as the Azoz one. In general these movements of extreme right are whispers, and there is not a lot of publicity around them: Azov does the opposite. The movement possesses also publishing houses and it is supported by influential Ukrainians. Books released by their publishing houses are the ones of people of radical right, italians, Germans, it's not important where they are from: it's important the message that they want to communicate. They have published books on Unabomber, for example. 

 

The book opens with some lines of The March of Ukrainian Nationalists written in 1929 and adopted in 1932. 

There is an accurate historical reconstruction of the birth of Ukraine, and its destiny during the centuries. Ukrainians are still looking at the golden period of Cossacks because of that bravery, patriotism. 

The book is divided in six chapters. 

Largely treated the conflict started in 2014,and the role played by the Azov.

I suggest to everyone this reading because it can be understood much better the Ukrainian way of thinking in relationship with other States as well.

Anna Maria Polidori