Weekend Bookchat

Frank Schaeffer knows the Evangelical Christian culture from the inside: his father, Francis Schaeffer, was in his words “Evangelical royalty” and a frequent guest at the White House during the Ford, Reagan and Bush I eras. He eventually broke with his father’s view of Christianity for reasons he explains in  Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.

Last week, Schaeffer published an op-ed piece calling out McCain and Palin for their hatemongering and open encouragement of the GOP lunatic fringe. He talks about that piece, and his new book, in the clips posted here.

Schaeffer is the author of several books, notably Baby Jack, a novel about the family of a Marine killed in Iraq, and the acclaimed “Calvin Becker Trilogy” of novels about a young man coming of age in a fundamentalist family. Read more about him here.

* * * * *

Congratulations once again to Paul Krugman, the first blogger to win a Nobel Prize! He also seems to know a thing or two about economics. For your one-stop roundup of all things Krugmanesque, turn to Marginal Revolution and this excellent rundown of links concerning the Nobel laureate’s many books.

* * * * *

This week was rich in schadenfreude for progressives, but one of the tastier morsels was served up by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who pretty much wiped the floor with winger Byron York when the National Review hack tried to blame dark-skinned people for the current financial crisis. Taibbi recently published his first book, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, and . . . well, you know Christmas is just around the corner. Just saying.

* * * * *

An interview with historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States. A review of a book collecting some of the late Charles Bukowski’s essays. Orhan Pamuk on booksellers and literary culture in Turkey.

Farewell to Milton

I doubt this was the Nobel Prize academy’s intent, but the awarding of the laurel in economics to Paul Krugman really brings down the curtain on the age of Milton Friedman. Just as Friedman’s dogmas about free markets and deregulation were the foundation for the shaky edifice of conservative “max out the credit cards and let magic marketplace fairies pay the bills” economic thinking, Krugman’s sobersided views on how government intervention helped set the stage for sustained and widespread prosperity in mid-20th-century America can guide us as we dig ourselves out of the pit into which Milton’s Minions have thrown us. With books like The Great Unraveling and The Return of Depression Economics, Krugman gave us the number of the truck that was about to hit America’s (and the world’s) financial markets. 

(Friedman, let it be noted, was a Rutgers boy before he became one of the Chicago Boys. Krugman teaches at Princeton. So how’s that for your Jersey connection?)

Here’s how Krugman gave Friedman his due as an economist last year, even while explaining how and where Friedman drove over a cliff.