Zweig, Downey, Brookfield, Collins et al.

Since my last post, I've read two issues of The Economist, two issues of Eclectic Reading, the latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which contained some explosive statements about unions that no one has picked up on as yet, and an issue of The New Scientist.

And, of course, I've been reading Zweig,The Tide of Fortune; Conflicts; biographies of Romain Rolland and Emile Verhaeven; Jeremiah (a play)which sold 20 000 copies(!); Les heures etoiles de l'humanite; Passion and Pain, more short stories; The world of Yesterday, his memoirs; in the collection Romans, theatre, et nouvelles, Clarissa and a play based on Kleist's Penthesilea; the essay Mysteres de la creation artistique; and his book on Brazil. I have his journals and perhaps one or two books left to read, and I am therefore almost at the close of his works, and I have concluded, shockingly enough, that he was a lightweight. The stuff is not profound, and he managed not to be a profound man, it would appear.

I also read a book by Stephen Brookfield, Discussion as a Way of Teaching. There was much here that is helpful, and of course his previous book on reflective teaching changed my professional life; a biography of Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, which was also superficial, by Kirstin Downey; and a fascinating book on the Portfolios of the Poor, by Collins and Murdoch, about how very poor people in developing countries manage their finances. There is a lot of very smart thinking going on in these ultimate underdogs.