British Politics has some interesting choices for the Big Read. I wholeheartedly endorse Robert Caro, of course, and I’m intrigued by his IF Stone selection, The Trial of Socrates. Izzy Stone was a great man and a unique journalist, and he applied his forensic abilities to the various Greek texts on the trial in 399BCE. Classical scholars gave Stone’s foray into their world fairly mixed reviews (Stone is particularly dismissive of political philosophy, including Plato), but his was certainly a fascinating exercise. And I must confess my own struggles to learn ancient Greek were provoked in small part by remembering that Stone had succeeded in learning the language in his 70s.
The New York Times gets around to writing a news story about the Eason Jordan op-ed. “Several journalism professors and commentators said Mr. Jordan had compromised CNN’s journalistic mission so the cable network could continue to report from Iraq.”