Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, …gloom and doom. Some of us have spent a whole term brooding over Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov.  Not a laugh for 14 weeks!  It’s time to get some laughs from a Russian, turned American, writer.  ‘Seriously’, because Shteyngart has won, or almost won, numerous awards:   The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian.  In 2002, he was named one of the five best new writers by Shout NY Magazine. Absurdistan was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine, as well as a book of the year by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications. In June 2010, Shteyngart was named as one of The New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" luminary fiction writers. Super Sad True Love Story won the 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature. His memoir Little Failure was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography)

            In this SDG  our purpose will be to enjoy and laugh, for now. And later, we will be able to tell our grandchildren, when they  join PLATO, that we were in the first PLATO group to discover the greatest classic Russian/American writer of the 21^st century. 

Our country started with promise and promises.  Not all of those promises of equality, sovereignty and consent, were achieved or were even achievable.

In our core book, the Harvard historian Jill Lepore, in one volume, encapsulates the history of this country from the 1600s through 2016 and its aftermath.  It articulates the confusion of facts and fiction that have always been with us, as well as the deep and contradictory currents of our society continually swirling.  It is not just another history book, although it is a pleasure to read, and seems painfully honest and without excessive political bias.  

The question which it raises is if America has, and ever could have lived up to its stated ideals or whether a nation conceived in revolution must always be chaotic; whether the simplistic view of democracy ever worked.   It leads us through our history up to and through the 2016 election.  Its answer is in many ways disturbing, as it shines a light on the American experiment.  She says:

“The American experiment has not ended A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos.  A nation founded on universal rights will wrestle against the forces of particularism. A nation that toppled hierarchy of birth only to erect a hierarchy of wealth will never know tranquility. A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders. And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history.”

The story told contains much information that is new and fresh, and insights which need to be considered, even if rejected. Almost every page, while introducing us to new historical figures and clarifying others, is readily applicable to our present political, social and foreign policy situation.  Its focus is pointing out the counterbalancing ideas and movements during this period, highlighting people and events including some that we either do not learn about or fail to understand in context.

It’s a big sweeping book. It covers the history of political thought, the fabric of American social life over the centuries, classic “great man” accounts of contingencies, surprises, decisions, ironies and character, and the vivid experiences of those previously marginalized: women, African-Americans, Native Americans, homosexuals. It encompasses interesting takes on democracy and technology, shifts in demographics, revolutions in economics and the very nature of modernity.

It includes the relationship of the races from the early days,  the impact on secular polity of religious revivals, ongoing and pernicious response of the South to the Civil War, and its continuing struggle, the role of media, including the sometimes interchangeable  connection of polling and advertising to political discourse, the important role of women and how moral issues were the key to their admission into politics and the franchise, our history of authoritarianism and attention to important and interesting  people that appear in other histories only  in footnotes.

This is a great and fresh way of viewing the entire panorama of our history through 2016 and its aftermath in one well written and thoughtful volume.  

Jefferson said that the American experiment rests on three “self-evident” truths:  political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. In history many had the idea that in American, there existed the Lockean “state of nature,” a place for new beginnings. 

More than 20 years have passed since Apartheid “abruptly” ended, the euphoria has died, the initial hopes dashed, none of the constitutional promises have been kept, and the lingering effects of what has been called the world’s worst example of a system of racially based human society remain, both visible and hidden. Earlier histories of the Apartheid Era in South African history have been written, and have their place, but now, with the distance of 20+ years, it’s time to take another look at the history, evaluate its interpretations, and perhaps reach a better understanding.

The core book, Apartheid, 1948-1994, by Saul Dubow, analyses the Apartheid regime and its overturn. According to the author, a question not sufficiently addressed is “not why Apartheid was defeated, but how it survived so long.” He considers apartheid an idea as well as an ideology, and he argues that because the idea of apartheid was kept alive by the resistance movement, long after the ideology of apartheid had been silenced (or gone underground), reinvention and transformation have proven difficult. He also argues that in order to understand apartheid, we need to both “refamiliarize” ourselves with it - events, institutions, individuals - and “defamiliarize” it - that is, stand back and look at it from a distance so as to better see how unusual and curious it was. In the course of this SDG, we, too, will grapple with our understanding of apartheid and our understanding of recent South African history, and, perhaps, its significance for the world.

Most of our generation learned of the history of civilization from the perspective of “Western civilization”.

Muslim success or failure was defined by their clashes with the outposts of Christian civilization, but only as these conflicts influenced European history.  We also learned how Islamic civilization preserved science and art in the Dark Ages, but not much else. To many of us the history of Muslim civilization was peripheral to world history.

The authors of our two core books: Destiny Disrupted, and No god but God, capture in  colorful, understandable, and very readable language the rich story of world history from the perspective of the Muslim community. The authors introduce the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history from an Islamic perspective.  

They clarify how these two great civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was ultimately affected by its slow recognition that Europe -a place it long properly perceived as primitive- had somehow hijacked its destiny.

The story they tell moves from before and during the lifetime of Mohammed, through a succession of far-flung empires, to the interaction with European colonialism and the revolt against European domination, to the modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11 and the current struggles within Islam.

This is a fascinating and enlightening story. Our two very readable core books,  are available in inexpensive used editions. There will be about  70 pages of reading each week.

Please join us in looking at world history from the perspective of the one billion people who are Muslims.

Here's a transcript of our two minute pitch:

In the year 610, according to the Christian calendar-- in an obscure place in the Arabian Peninsula that probably no Europeans even knew existed-- a prosperous caravan trader meditating in an isolated cave- perceived he was hearing messages from an entity he knew as the archangel Gabriel. 

 The caravan trader was Mohammad --and he perceived Gabriel told him he was to spread the God’s message as God’s final prophet.

  The message Mohammad took from that cave ultimately was spread by his followers and   converts to encompass to ¼ of the World’s population today.

So, what is Islam?  Is it A religion?  A community? A way of life?.  A prescription for a society?  A state?

What made it so appealing?

 How and why did it spread, and spread so quickly? What happened in its interactions with the West, from crusades, to colonialism, through two world wars, and afterwards?

  Are its tenets compatible with the modern world?

 Is what’s happening in the Islamic world today-- a clash between two civilizations, a conflict within Islam between competing philosophies, or a civil war within Islam.

 What is its future?

  We’ll examine all this and more—and try to understand   world history from the perspective of the ¼ of the world’s population with a different perspective than our western eyes.

 Along the way, we will also be reading selections from some of the finest Islamic writers –– and looking at examples of Islamic art and architecture.”

There is lots of reading --about 70 pages a week -- but our two core books are very well written and easy to follow.

 Come Join Us …As We Try to See the World and its history Through Islamic Eyes 

America has harbored imperial ambitions since its founding. Its focus shifted in the twentieth century, from acquiring territory to penetrating foreign countries and influencing their governments to support US strategic and economic interests. That shift is the result of a decisive embrace of interventionism, aimed at extending US power throughout the world. Withdrawal from overextended military commitments could strengthen America.  Tied to American Imperialism is the concept of American Exceptionalism, a belief in the unique character of America that not only made it distinct but better than any heretofore identity.  Not only was it "exceptional" but prime for exportation.

Ever since my future mother in law gave me a special gift, I have been fascinated with Archaeology, including the gift,  the famous book by C.W. Ceram, Gods, Graves, and Scholars.  Yes, I am an Indiana Jones fan through and through,  It is such a thrill to read about Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter unearthing the ruins of King Tut's tomb.  Also, I am intrigued with the lost cities of the Olmec, Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.  It is a special privilege to view the cable show, Expedition Unknown, and experience the Smithsonian and National Geographic as well as the Nova offerings on Archaeology.  Over the years I am joined (in spirit) with the expeditions to find Nifertiti and Cleopatra tombs.  Two of my favorite archaeologists and finders remain Schliemann and Elgin as well as the Leakeys.  Their personalities left something to be desired, but they were men and women who preserved the past and presented to the world their findings.  As an armchair archaeologist I have collected museum and excavation boardgames that have brought to life Mesopotamia, the Middle East, Far China, Atlantis, Teotihuacan,  Machu Picchu and Cuzco.  Two of my favorite "digging" films are Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mummy (various versions) that have archaeological implications.  What can we learn from Archaeology much more than digging up the past, scraping shards of dirt, or brushing an unearthed statue?  It is a rewarding study of how scientists, fortune hunters, and collectors go to the ends of the Earth to find what other civilizations were like.  Their unearthing, as tiresome and tedious as it may be, reveals worlds we thought could never be brought back to life. 

        After 13 rounds of on again, off again trade negotiations that began last year, the U.S. and China agreed this month (October, 2019) to a partial truce in their trade war of tariffs and counter-tariffs.  But distrust remains high, and tensions over technology, investment, and economic ties have become increasingly entangled in ideological divisions.  Are the tensions between the U.S. and China really about trade dominance, or is this a great power competition for economic and strategic supremacy?

        The Chinese political-economy is a sui generis entity of remarkable definitional complexity.  The scale of its growth is unparalleled.  It is run by an authoritarian government which nonetheless leaves most sectors mostly free to make profits.  Its state-owned enterprises are lumbering behemoths, inefficient but largely profitable.  The banking industry is huge and run for the good of the state, rather than for financial imperative.  And the whole system is underpinned by a Communist party structure.

        China is an "abnormal" economic power, for sure.  Media coverage has soared because China's rise is now challenging the world's geopolitical balance of power.  Yet one is likely to read about its possible financial collapse as its emergence as the world's largest economy.

        To understand why there is such extreme variation in perceptions about China's economy is the goal of this SDG.  Understanding these differences is critical to forging more constructive relations between China and the rest of the world.

        To this end, we will use Yukon Huang's Cracking the China Conundrum as our core book, supplemented by a course packet containing up-to-date topical materials from news media and think tanks.  Yukon Huang is an American economist of Chinese origin.  He worked at the World Bank for years and at the end of the 1990s was the World Bank's first country director for China.  He currently is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. and a frequent featured commentator on China for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Every four years our nation goes through a political paroxysm of (pick one):  furious activity, anxiety, fear, or loathing.  The Presidential election -- this year may be the worst ever.  The nation has gone through a grueling time since the 2016 election.   Now, not only must we choose our president & vice-president, 1/3 of all Senators, all members of the House of Representatives, countless governors and state legislators – we are faced with two very different philosophies of governance. 

This SDG proposes to study Election 2020 in each of the three terms in 2020.  While we will focus on the Presidential race, we’ll also discuss important local and national trends & issues as they emerge.

During the course of the year, we'll cover:  election funding; PACs and SUPER PACs; how to win friends & votes:  advertising/PR/events; endorsements & what they mean; analyses of all debates; media coverage – fair and balanced, or…; geographical differences; polls & pollsters; real issues and phony issues; friends and foes; is honesty the best policy?; how do politicians approach/avoid talking about issues, and any and all relevant news.

By this point, the Presidential field is pretty narrow.  Competition for the Vice-Presidential slot is increasing.  Primaries are over, and platform discussions begin.  And then… conventions.

 Election 2020 #3 – Fall 

We will discuss how the campaigns are faring… and then, after the results are in, we’ll analyze them.

Note:  Since committing to a year-long course may be difficult or impractical, persons will initially sign up for Winter Term.  Those who wish to stay in the course will have priority for the nest term(s).  Open spaces will be filled at registration.

Darwin presented the evolution of life as branched like a tree. This idea has been upended by evolutionary biology through studying  life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level using DNA sequences. This reexamination of the history of all life has replaced Darwin's branching tree with a much more complex maze of branches.

In The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, David Quammen weaves together the stories of scientists and their genetic discoveries as they built a new view of the history of life that shows that DNA can be passed not between individuals but between species.

According to one reviewer, the book is “A masterful history of a new field of molecular biology . . . . [An] impressive account of perhaps the most unheralded scientific revolution of the 20th century. . . . A consistently engaging collection of vivid portraits of brilliant, driven, quarrelsome scientists in the process of dramatically altering the fundamentals of evolution, illuminated by the author's insightful commentary.” 

The book is well-written and the SDG should be a joy for those who are interested in new developments in evolutionary biology.

We shall study what distinguishes the great composers from the merely good.

Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic of The New York Times, recently published a book, in which he presents 17 indispensable composers. He is a writer of immense musical knowledge who shares his insights about many favorite pieces.

The book is intended as a guide and perfectly fulfills its aim: it presents highly readable mini-profiles of the greats. The author is entertaining, highly enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable.

Each of our presentations can be illustrated by musical examples played (via computer) in the class.
We strongly encourage you to do so; a tutorial will be provided.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once stated: "My most important problem was destroying the line of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic."    Although the term was first used by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925, It is commonly thought of as a Latin American movement.  It is related to surrealism, but it is focused on the material object as opposed to its German roots of surrealism's more cerebral and subconscious reality.  In 1949, French-Russian Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, developed his related concept marvelous realism. Magical Realism refers to literary fiction with supernatural elements presented in an otherwise real-world setting thus revealing the magical in this world.  Fables, folk tales, and myths ae brought into contemporary social relevance.  The narrator doesn’t explain fantastic events, the story proceeds as if nothing extraordinary happened.       In Latin America, magic realism contains another feature: politics.  This is a "Third World" society.  Brutal police and army regimes, arbitrary cruelty, murder, corrupt dictators and the underlying, unspoken hand of the “American Company” are ever present in its fiction.   Amongst the sensory exuberance of the Latin American landscape, Magic is the only explanation for the unreasonable reality of daily life that surrounds the powerless individual. And his only hope.

Since the early eighteenth century, theists and secularists have hotly debated whether moral law requires God.  The preponderance of contemporary opinion is a resounding “no.”  Most philosophers, scientists, and writers about ethics have discarded God.  But the theists have not gone away; they have continued to put forward compelling arguments against the secular theories.  In this s/dg we will examine the arguments on both sides of this very important debate, as well as some middle grounds.  (N. b.:  We will not be debating the need for religion, but rather the need for metaphysical truth.)  We will read, among others, W. T. Stace, C. S. Lewis, George Mavrodes, Thomas Nagel, and Richard Taylor.  There will be no core book.  A packet of photocopied articles will be provided.  Most of these articles are written by philosophers, making this a challenging, but rewarding, s/dg. 

 This SDG takes its title from that of our core book by primatologist Frand de Waal.  This is science at its enjoyable best.  We learn about ourselves from looking in the mirror of our cousins’ eyes. De Waal writes about cooperation, conflict resolution, deception, altruism, fairness, and the evolutionary origins of morality.  He’s the director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Georgia.  He  has spent years observing and interacting on a daily basis with both bonobos and chimpanzees, our two closest relatives.  He provides us many anecdotes and insights from those years of personal involvement.

The short story holds a central place in Russian literature. Many of their authors; Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn,  acclaimed giants of Russian literature, are well known.   But, many of these writers have only recently become known to the English-speaking world.   Taken all together the gamut of human experience they portray is great.  Some stories are tragic.  But, there is comedy -- from Pushkin's subtle wit to Kharm's dark absurdism, Dostoevsky's graveyard humor, and Zoshchenko's satirical vignettes on life after the 1917 Russian Revolution.  All of them responded to the twists and turns of Russian history.  But as we shall see, humanity, in different times and different places, does not vary that much.

 The CIA is known for secret assassinations, thrilling spy encounters and international blunders.   This course looks at the history of the CIA, beginning with the OSS in WWII to recent involvement in the execution of foreign policy through covert operations.  The subject matter will be a world tour of foreign policy though the last 70 years. We will attempt to understand how this agency has shaped not only American diplomacy, but the perception of America throughout the world.  Current opinion polls show that a majority of Americans view the CIA favorably, but have significant concerns with respect to the CIA and privacy and the CIA and civil liberties.  How do we balance democracy with unseen government intervention?  There is a rich assortment of reading materials that invite serious discussions about spying, covert actions, and if a secret bureaucracy is needed to preserve American freedoms.  

When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over Europe in the early days of WW II, London became a refuge for the European leaders of several occupied nations, who escaped there to continue the fight.  As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known as "Last Hope Island."  In her books Last Hope Island and Citizens of London, Lynne Olson argues that England did not stand completely alone: the people of occupied Europe and the expatriate leaders did far more for their own liberation than historians have recognized, and the Americans in London who worked tirelessly for US involvement, played a significant role in raising American awareness and sustaining British morale. 

    Are you curious about who were the Plantagenets and how they influenced the founding fathers of America? Join us for an exciting trip back to the Middle Ages where we will explore Dan Jones’ riveting narrative history The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England. Dan Jones entertains and educates us with stories about this powerful family of leaders and misfits. We will read about the murder of Thomas Becket; Richard’s battles against Saladin on the Third Crusade; the Barons’ war against John and the ratification of the Magna Carta; Edward II’s romance with Piers Gaveston and his dismal abdication in 1327; Edward III fighting alongside The Black Prince, capturing the King of France and creating the Order of the Garter.  Let us not forget the Queens: Matilda, who plunged the country into a bloody civil war rather than give up her right to the throne; and Eleanor of Aquitaine, trumpeted as the most beautiful woman in Europe, who was first the Queen of France and later the Queen of England and the mother to two kings – only to be locked away for years by her husband, Henry II.

    It all starts with Geoffrey, Count of Anjou a handsome, belligerent, redheaded Frenchman born in France in 1113. He customarily wore a sprig of yellow broom blossom (Planta genista) in his hat. He never made it to England but his descendants, known as the Plantagenets, ruled England for more than two centuries from his son Henry II, crowned in 1154, to Richard II, who lost the crown in 1399 to Henry Bolingbroke.  England’s Henry I (fourth son of William the Conqueror) had twenty-two illegitimate children but his only son and heir died a tragic death.  Henry I chose his daughter Matilda, the former Empress of the Holy Roman Empire to be his heir.  He married her off to Geoffrey – she was 26 and he was 15. After becoming better acquainted, they had three sons – the eldest of whom was ultimately crowned King of England.  Henry I died in France and his nephew Stephen of Blois raced across the Channel to crown himself King of England.  Matilda, having none of this, enlisted the aid of her half-brother Robert Earl of Gloucester and started a civil war in England.  The ensuing period has become known as The Anarchy when “It was as if Christ and his saints were asleep.”  

    The Plantagenets invented England as a political, administrative and military entity, and as a political force to be reckoned with on the European continent. They helped invent the very idea of the England we know today and gave it many of its laws and political habits, which American founders borrowed when it came time to create our own government. 

    Please join us as we discuss Henry II, Richard Lionheart, John (was he really so bad?), Henry III, Edward, Edward II , Edward III, the Black Plague, the Black Prince, Robert the Bruce, the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers and the commencement of the Hundred Years’ War, and Richard II, along with Matilda, Eleanor, Becket, de Montfort, the Magna Carta, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the reality behind Ivanhoe and Robin Hood.  Gripping storytelling - The Plantagenets is a satisfying as well as an enjoyable read.  There is no need for added goblins in this real life Game of Thrones. There will be crowns for all.

Building on a project launched by David Eggers, the very strange Sarah Vowell brings together a collection of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and category-defining gems. Among the 28 pieces are contributions by Ta-Nehisi Coates ("My President Was Black"), Louise Erdrich ("How to Stop a Black Snake"), Lin-Manuel Miranda ("You'll Be Back"), and George Saunders ("Who Are All These Trump Supporters?").

Is there a common theme to these essays? Not really. Is there a common message? Still less so. The same can be said of those popular New Yorker collections "from the 1940s", "from the 1950s", and so on. What then can participants expect? The deeply pluralist sensiblilities of a mostly younger generation of writers—a generation for whom "consensus" and "over-arching agreement" are alien constructs. The New Yorker too conveyed a common sensibility—the New Yorker "style"—but during more innocent, less divisive times.

This SDG examines eleven exceptional films made by women filmmakers around the world that offer a variety of themes: gender, class, race, globalization, the family, coming-of-age, religion, capitalism, and art.  Genres include comedy, drama, horror, thriller, western, and documentary..

The directors, from seven countries and cultures, bring personal styles and insights to their work, and feature both male and female protagonists.  One of the questions we'll ask is about the differences brought to their films by nationality and race.  And what might a woman bring to films that a male filmmaker might miss?   And does a woman necessarily brings a feminist or political vision to a film? Finally, is there "a female gaze?"

This is a Film Studies course with emphasis on film analysis.  We are interested in how how the art of film--narrative, mise en scene, cinematography, music, sound, editing, acting, expresses each director's unique vision.

Participants should be very comfortable using computers and DVDs. 

When we hear the words "Quantum Physics" many of us I mmediately change the subject.  It just seems too obscure and difficult to comprehend. Yet, every day we rely on quantum physics for it allowed scientists to create what powers our world:  the silicon transistors and LEDs in you smartphones; nuclear reactors; the lasers that scan your food in the supermarket. Although you may not realize it, the development of quantum physics is one of science's greatest achievements and made our modern life possible. 

Most of us will never understand the mathematics that is foundation of quantum physics. If you ask a room full of physicists to explain quantum physics, you may start a street fight; even they find it confusing and weird. That does not meant that we aren't curious about it and interested in understanding it. 

Adam Becker gives us such an opportunity. His book, What is Real?: The Unfinished Quest For the Meaning of Quantum Physics, sketches the historical development of quantum mechanics and introduces us to the fascinating story of how physicists have tried (and fought with one another) to explain this area of physics. Perhaps the most famous brawl of all was the debate between Einstein and Bohr where Bohr's "Copenhagen interpretation" carried the day. That did not, however, silence the debate, and Becker introduces us to a fascinating cast of rebels who have dared to challenge the Copenhagen interpretation ever since. Becker places this story in the context the interactions between physics, politics, and culture throughout the 20th century. 

Becker's monograph is highly readable and accessible to scientists and non-scientists alike. He explains the concepts, including  Schrödinger’s infamous cat, that have divided physicists in understandable language that does not require familiarity with quantum physics.  This should be a fascinating SDG for PLATO members.

NOTE: This SDG was offered in W 2017 by Lee Molho.

          Grand Tour is an apt metaphor to describe our core book and this SDG.     

                                                    It is a story of discovery with many twists and turns, put together by our tour guide, the masterful Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee.  We'll take in every major advance in the field from 1850 to 2016, we'll meet the scientists as they do their work, and we'll understand their motivation for what they are doing.

       Our Grand Tour starts in Ancient Greece with the Pythagoreans and Aristotle.  Very soon we are riding with Charles Darwin on the Beagle.  We visit the garden of a Russian monk, Thomas Hunt Morgan's cages of buzzing fruit flies, and we attend the birth of the new science of genetics.   
        That's barely the beginning of the tour offered by our superlative new core book, which we will follow closely. This is top-drawer science writing--clear and understandable for a general audience, novelistic in pace and character detail, eruditely written, engaging, and informative.

       If you have ever wanted to understand modern biology, not only some of the science but also its social and moral implications, the light that science shines on what race, sex, and gender really are, and where biotechnology is rushing to take us, you will enjoy this SDG.