James william gibson author of a mass
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Shortly after Oklahoma City, Gibson began to study environmental conflicts. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession.
Max Weber, the famous German sociologist, repeatedly lamented that the modernization process involved what he called “the dis-enchantment of the world, meaning that the old pre-modern way of seeing all of nature as alive and having some kind of conscious spirit was being replaced by a notion that nature was just a collection of inanimate resources for human use.
Since 1995 Gibson has published over a dozen articles and op-eds on Ballona for LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. For example, Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years in a giant redwood and it became known as “Luna,” a being that has a right to live.
Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose.
Sara Levine
Author Tour Dates for The Hitch
Wednesday01/14 | Chicago, IL | EXILE IN BOOKVILLE In conversation with Lindsay Hunter Fine Arts Building, 410 S Michigan Ave, Suite 210 Click here for event info
| 7 PM |
Wednesday01/21 | Milwaukee, WI | BOSWELL BOOK COMPANY In conversation with Jane Hamilton 2559 N Downer Ave Click here for event info
| 6:30 PM |
Saturday01/24 | Chicago, IL | PRINTER’S ROW WINE BAR Group reading 719 S Dearborn St | 2 PM |
Tuesday01/28 | Brooklyn, NY | BOOKS ARE MAGIC (Montague location) | 7 PM |
Wednesday02/04 | Chicago, IL | WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST In conversation with Kathleen Rooney 5233 N Clark St | 7 PM |
Saturday04/18 | Los Angeles, CA | LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS | |
Sunday04/19 | Los Angeles, CA | LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS |
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Author Tour Dates for Language City
Tuesday03/10 | New York, NY | MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK Moderated by Monxo Lopez, MCNY’s Curator of Community Histories
Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Distinguished Lecture in Urban History series
Supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council
Event info here | 6:30 PM |
Authors
James William Gibson, 49, lives in Los Angeles and is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach.
29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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While writing The Perfect War in the early and mid-1980s Gibson began to study the cultural and political traumas caused by America’s defeat in Vietnam.
The book was published by Hill and Wang in 1994, and received considerable attention after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. In contrast, environmentalists want us to understand plants and animals, land and sea as living, animate beings, just the way our ancestors did. He began to search the emerging paramilitary culture, where men fantasized themselves as warriors fighting outside the corrupt establishment to restore the country’s sense of virtue, power_and masculinity.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. With fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, Gibson wrote Warrior Dream: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America.
“Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity. Not far from his home in Los Angeles, developers planned to build the largest “in-fill development” in American history, a new edge city with 30, 000 residents and 20,000 office workers, generating over 200,000 car trips a day.Gibson subsequently became a consultant to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
He continues to study changes in America’s war culture, publishing essays in several edited collections, op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, and book reviews for The Washington Post and The Dallas Morning News.
But the constant confrontation with killing and death got old.
He attended graduate school at Yale University, and wrote his thesis on how the U.S. military conceptualized and fought the Vietnam War, and why, despite overwhelming technological superiority, it was defeated by the Vietnamese. The battle between developers and activists is still ongoing.
Gibson is currently writing a book on the environmental movement’s efforts to change how our culture understands nature.
“The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, attending college at the University of Texas at Austin. This new project, called Playa Vista, is intended to be built on the Ballona Wetlands and adjoining uplands, the last 1100 acres of open space on the Los Angeles basin floor.