Wednesday Evening in the East Village: Bomb Magazine and Strand Book Store present A Conversation between Rachel Kushner, Hari Kunzru and Rivka Galchen at the Strand Book Store

Wednesday Evening in Greenwich Village: Siva Vaidhyanathan and "The Googlization of Everything" at the Strand Bookstore

After a long day of teaching at the fabulous School of Visual Arts, we walked from our last class ending at 5:50 p.m. down Second Avenue and across East 12th Street to the Strand Bookstore to catch an interesting talk by Siva Vaidhyanathan on his new book The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry), which he called a "scolding love letter."

Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, had -- according to a man behind us (who also said he went three days without going online and admitted he didn't understand what Twitter was) -- been on Brian Lehrer's WNYC show this morning (well, the man actually said Leonard Lopate's show, but who knows the difference anyway?). On the air, and in person this evening, Vaidhyanathan -- also the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity -- said his book is admiring of Google but wants to make us better and more thoughtful users of Google.

Google, he said, had had an uncharacteristically bad spring, given the European antitrust complaint (he noted Google has a much higher search share, well over 95% in nations like Portugal and the Netherlands, as opposed to its 70% share in the U.S.); the settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over the Google Buzz privacy debacle; and Judge Chin's rejection of the settlement agreement between Google, the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild. (We thought it was curious that the professor said the Authors Guild represents "only a small number of elite authors," not people like himself; we've been a member since 1978 and we're about as non-elite as they come.)

Basically the author is trying to raise our awareness of the mechanism of the Google search (because of teaching, we weren't online much today, but we must have done thirty or forty Google searches, including at least half a dozen as we're writing this). After twenty years of Web culture, Vaidhyanathan noted, we've settled some issues (remember the old Time cover story scaring all parents that the Web would morally corrupt their kids?) but the way we use the web unthinkingly -- as we Google dozens of times a day -- needs to be examined with more critical thought.

Saying that we are not Google's customers but its "worker bees" seemed shrewd. Google's customers are its advertisers and we, the searchers, are doing the scut work which enables Google to perfect its vaunted super-duper secret algorithm (although we've heard the formula no longer includes cocaine as it used to back in the day).

Really, Vaidhyanathan said, the purpose of the algorithm and the Google search, is not to improve the flow of information but to facilitate shopping -- not that there's anything wrong with that. And the personalization of the Google search is definitely helpful to us, as when, based on our previous search history, its results for, say, "jaguar" begin with hits on South American wildlife for some and British automobiles for others.

There was an incredibly interesting question-and-answer session that ended the author's talk and preceded his book signing. It was instructive to hear the questions people asked, from the man who felt like a somewhat helpless victim of Google to the woman who wanted to know how to get off old information that she didn't want people to see (that she pays the highest property tax in her county, for example; the answer, of course, is she can't get it off and those of us with active online presences know the best you can do is get stuff on which will knock the unwanted material down past the first page of results which few get to) to the guy who wanted to know about Google's position in China in relation to its "Don't be evil" motto -- all got intelligent, fairly detailed and patient answers and raised even more interesting questions.

We look forward to reading The Googlization of Everything when this long semester ends, and we're grateful to the Strand Bookstore and Siva Vaidhyanathan for tonight's event. It's been a while since we've been out on a weeknight but we've got tomorrow off thanks to Holy Thursday. (And if you want a much more comprehensive, reliable and intelligent take on tonight's talk, see the blog of Marie Sciangula, the very smart assistant director of instructional technology at Purchase College.}

Thursday Night at the Strand: Sean Wilentz and “The Age of Reagan”

We went to the Strand Bookstore on Thursday at 7 p.m. after hanging out in Union Square Park following dinner on a perfect warm and clear evening. Sean Wilentz, the distinguished historian, Princeton professor, Democratic party eminence grise and Bob Dylan scholar spoke about his latest book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.

What’s always remarkable about Prof. Wilentz when we see him is how we can still detect so much of the brilliant kid who sat across from us in homeroom at Midwood High School forty years ago and beyond. His hair is now grayer than it was blond, but he’s still got the same hairline he did at 17! Sean – we called him Robert back in the Johnson administration – was not only one of the smartest students in our school but also an incredibly nice guy. No wonder our friend, a certain literary agent also in our graduating class, used to make us listen to how she had a big crush on him.

Probably the last times we saw him were in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, when we used to catch him and his sister Amy Wilentz (who's also produced some amazing nonfiction books) a few blocks south in Greenwich Village, at their family-owned E.S. Wilentz’s Eighth Street Bookshop, our favorite bookstore of all time in New York (and the only one besides Gotham Book Mart to carry our little chapbook, Disjointed Fictions, back when it came out thirty summers ago in 1978). Since then he’s produced one incredibly good book after another, combining rigorous scholarship with a terrific style that makes him a pleasure to read; he deservedly won the Bancroft Prize for his magisterial The Rise of American Democracy

Sean’s current book title, to those of us of a certain age, recalls first of all Arthur Schlesinger’s The Age of Jackson, and while we haven’t finished it yet, it probably sums up our age, at least as far as public policy and the national mood are concerned.

Why is Ronald Reagan the defining political figure of our times? Why has the conservative ascendancy lasted far longer than any previous period of conservative or liberal political dominance? How did Reagan manage to change the dynamic of political discourse and move the country to the right for so long that only now is his era fading away?

In a forty-minute fascinating talk, interspersed with brief readings from the book – among them Jerry Ford’s musing on the bicentennial even as Reagan almost defeated him for the Republican nomination in 1976 and a telling moment from Reagan’s second term, prefiguring the Iran/Contra fiasco, when he insisted on paying tribute to fallen Nazi soldiers at Bitburg – Prof. Wilentz laid out the argument of his book.

Probably we can’t do his thesis much justice here – read the book for yourself, and you can start with reviews like this one -- but Sean worked a lot like a fiction writer, telling a fascinating narrative with all kinds of compelling characters, like the young White House chief of staff with the very strange views he discovered in letters and documents in the Richard B. Cheney papers at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library. (“Being a historian means you get to read a lot of dead people’s letters,” said Sean, “but for this book I got to read some living people’s letters.”) Did you know that Cheney and Rumsfeld back in the 1970s tried to get Robert Bork installed as CIA director? (The job ultimately went to George H.W. Bush.) Sean Wilentz’s book is filled with interesting details like that, along with an analysis of how Reagan first transformed himself from a sunny, surprisingly sophisticated performer who worshipped FDR into the star and the firmament of the American conservative movement, starting with the little part that made Reagan Reagan, his 1964 speech on behalf of Goldwater, “A Time for Choosing.”

Maybe it takes a liberal Democrat like Wilentz – to fairly appraise Reagan’s presidency amid a passel of Reagan books that are either hagiography or demonic portraits.

Sean spent a long time taking maybe twenty questions, including his recent opinions on the “insanity” of the Democratic nomination rules (OK, we were there in Miami Beach at the 1972 convention when everything started to change). Tina Brown, sitting in the first row with Harold Evans, asked an interesting question wondering how Reagan managed to reconcile his buoyant man-of-the-world Hollywood temperament with his very right-wing, rather callous political worldview. Sean said, “He was the first Reagan Democrat, a little ahead of his time.”

Reagan’s age is over, our historian tells us, even if McCain wins the Presidency. But we’ll never get back to a 70% top income tax rate, and so parts of Reagan’s legacy aren’t going to go away for quite some time to come.

Sean Wilentz is a graceful stylist whose books are not the usual dry fare of the academic historian. But, hey, he’s from Brooklyn before most of today’s Brooklyn writers were born. Even people who hated Ronald Reagan will enjoy The Age of Reagan.

Publishers Weekly covers Richard Grayson's WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK's innovative review copies policy

In its September 17, 1979 issue, Publishers Weekly featured a news item covering the innovative review copies policy for Richard Grayson's book With Hitler in New York:

NOTICE SENT TO PW'S STRAIGHT-FACED EDITOR:

The Taplinger Publishing Company has announced that it will pursue an innovative policy in regard to review copies of "With Hitler in New York," the book of short stories by Richard Grayson ("Grayson pokes fun at American life . . ." PW, April 23). Review copies will bypass critics and be sent directly to the Strand Book Store in New York City.

"This efficient system," observed the author, who originated the plan, "will save postage and bothersome packaging for literary critics."

Reviewers may now contact Taplinger and request that copies of "With Hitler in New York" be sent directly to the Strand rather than to their homes or offices. The book will be credited to each reviewer's account by the bookstore.