Shakespeare, Time Travel, Macbeth

The Shakespeare Standard has an interview with Invisible Hand author James Hartley today, and his new "Shakespeare Moon" series sounds intriguing. The plot takes a contemporary kid back to Scotland and entangles him with the events of Macbeth. I think that's a fantastic idea. I never understood why high schools insisted on inflicting Julius Caesar on students as their first introduction to Shakespeare. Yes, yes, it's got "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears" but it's really not one of the most riveting plays. But Macbeth?  It's got sex. It's got intrigue. It's got WITCHES. Start out with Macbeth and you might just end up with a kid who likes Shakespeare.

Here's the sales pitch:

The Invisible Hand is about a boy, Sam, who has just started life at a boarding school and finds himself able to travel back in time to medieval Scotland. There he meets a girl, Leana, who can travel to the future, and the two of them become wrapped up in events in Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, and in the daily life of the school. The book is the first part of a series called Shakespeare´s Moon. Each book is set in the same boarding school but focuses on a different Shakespeare play.

This is Dr. Seuss in 1941

NEVER FORGET

Today is Multicultural Children's Book Day

There are book lists and recommendations all over the Internet today, suggestions to widen the horizons of readers.

Because Science is not a Liberal Conspiracy

Because, science!!

Tuesday read

Hannah Arendt died nearly 42 years ago, but her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is newly relevant. Your local library almost certainly has a copy of the book, which is a landmark work of social criticism and analysis.

Here's the Wikipedia article about the book. Here's the book description from Amazon:

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.