Entries for February 21, 2006

I am reliably informed that Karl Rove's latest reading is historian Robert Wiebe's 1975 book The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning of America. It's a carefully written book, and every sentence is chock-full of meaning and the result of Wiebe's wide-ranging scholarship. You can't doze off in the middle of a paragraph without getting totally lost.

It's interesting that the president's chief political and policy adviser can find the time and the mental energy to read such a demanding book. (Though not demanding financially: You can buy a copy on amazon.com for as little as $1.24.)

I don't go to the movies all that often, but last weekend I went to see The Boys of Baraka and found myself deeply moved.

Boys is a documentary focusing on four boys from the ghetto of Baltimore who are sent to a boarding school in Kenya. There is good footage of the Baltimore slum where they're from and the scenery in Kenya where they go.