Month: May 2004

How Los Angeles re-made its Mexican Past: historian WILLIAM DEVERELL explains — his new book is Whitewashed Adobe. Mike Davis called it “a landmark in Los Angeles’ difficult conversation with its past.”

Plus: our Iraq update with IAN WILLIAMS, UN correspondent for The Nation; his book Deserter: George Bush’s War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past, will be published by Nation Books in July.

Also: JONATHAN SCHELL of The Nation Institute talks about war, terrorism and protest; his new book is A Hole in the World.

Women, men and torture in Iraq: KATHA POLLITT, columnist for The Nation, comments.

Plus: REBECCA SOLNIT won the 2004 award for criticism from the National Book Critics Circle. Now she argues that despite the gathering political, environmental, and cultural gloom, we need “an imagination adequate to the possibilities.” Her new book is Hope in the Dark.

Also: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl“ was written 50 years ago as a cultural weapon and a call to arms. JONAH RASKIN talks about the most influential poem of the second half of the 20th century; and we’ll listen to Ginsberg reading. Jonah’s new book is American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation.

Web extra: the Gallup Poll approval ratings say Bush will lose in November.

. . . and check out the Cost Of War website.

Israel’s Gaza pullout plan: even Israel’s defense minister calls the Israeli settlements in Gaza a “historic mistake.” But the Likud party last week voted 60-40 against the plan. This Saturday night Peace Now takes to the streets in Tel Aviv to demand “Remove the Settlements.” What’s next for Ariel Sharon? AMY WILENTZ, former Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, has comment and analysis; she wrote the novel Martyr’s Crossing about Israelis and Palestinians.

Plus: the strange story of a 1913 murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta — and the lynching of the man accused of the murder — not a black man, but a Jew, Leo Frank. How and why an all-white jury convicted Frank largely on the testimony of a black man: STEVE ONEY tells that story: his book is The Dead Shall Rise: The Lynching of Leo Frank.

Also: May 17 is the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were “Inherently unequal.” Historian ERIC FONER co-edited a special issue of The Nation arguing that the promise of equality in education, and the rest of American life, remains unfulfilled.

Web extra: The Zogby Poll predicts Kerry will win in November.