Tales from the crypt

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Contributing Writer

Articles by Joe Martin

Good fences and bad neighbors

By Joe Martin | June 12, 2013

An English village rests quietly beyond the reach of magistrates, civil law and the church. The surroundings are sumptuous and bucolic. But the hardscrabble residents who derive a living from the soil of the commons are too immersed in their day-to-day subsistence efforts to dwell for long in aesthetic contemplation of their rich, natural setting. Their intimate involvement with the land from which they coax their simple livelihood nurtures a sense of place that is practical and utilitarian. Work is an unending, ever-challenging affair. ...

Coke isn’t it

By Joe Martin | May 15, 2013

The polymath and Pulitzer Prizewinning author Jared Diamond has produced an enticing tome: “The World Until Yesterday.” He explains that “before 3400 BC there were no states anywhere, and in recent times there have still been areas beyond state control, operating under simpler traditional systems. The differences between those traditional societies and the state societies familiar to us are the subject of this book.” As a physiologist, ornithologist and ecologist, Diamond is at home in an impressive mix of scientific fields. ...

Elegant interiors

By Joe Martin | March 27, 2013

Book Review: Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro

Stories simple and elegant. These are the forte of Alice Munro. And what a pleasure it is to encounter her splendidly crafted works. An indisputable master of short fiction, Munro’s tales are replete with poignant insights into the vagaries and complexities of human beings. Her subtle observations are drawn with the hand of an assured and affectionate artist. ...

Giving voice to civil disobedience

By Joe Martin | March 6, 2013

Book Review: Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009 by Howard Zinn

A passionate historian, dedicated teacher and activist, the late Howard Zinn declared repeatedly that the study of history should never be a placid exploration of the past, and it should never be confined to academia. Indeed, a thorough grasp of history is an indispensible key to understanding urgent political and economic issues of the present. It is vital that this historical perspective incorporate the vantage of the poor, the outcast, the marginalized and the working class. ...

Technobabble

By Joe Martin | February 13, 2013

Book Review: Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

This brief but important volume was originally an e-book and then made its way to paper and print. Authors Brynjolfsson and McAfee are knowledgeable technophiles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have an urgent message: We are on the verge of evermore complex and astounding technological developments. And the rate of change is getting faster. Tasks once the domain of human labor will increasingly become the domain of refined machines. ...

Not-so-honest Abe

By Joe Martin | January 9, 2013

Book Review: The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter

Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, and he died the following day. Others, including Secretary of State William Seward, were also targets of Booth’s conspiracy, but they would all survive. Only days before, Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the ferocious Civil War. The country was in the process of establishing what course the United States would follow in the wake of the war’s prodigious bloodletting. Lincoln’s assassination was a staggering blow to a nation still reeling from the internecine conflict. ...

Rising from the flames

By Joe Martin | December 26, 2012

Book Review: Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America by Jonathan Kozol

It has been 45 years since Jonathan Kozol published his first book “Death at an Early Age,” which detailed the abysmal conditions endured by indigent black children in Boston’s inner city public schools. It was a shocking exposé of pedagogical indifference and institutionalized violence for which Kozol received the National Book Award. The epigraph to that work is a quote from psychoanalyst Erik Erickson, who averred, “[T]he most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.” ...

Dead wrong

By Joe Martin | December 12, 2012

Book Review: The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair

A malicious fiend is afoot in early Victorian London. Impoverished residents in the city’s teeming rookery, or slum — awash in desperation, prostitution and drug use — are being ambushed in the night and murdered. As if this random string of homicides was not bad enough, the hapless victims of the nocturnal killer are being decapitated. Their headless bodies are the only evidence left behind. In “The Thing about Thugs” Indian author Tabish Khair limns an engrossing, multifaceted thriller enriched by a diverse cast of colorful characters. ...

Words and deeds

By Joe Martin | November 7, 2012

Book Review: The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa

Roger Casement was born a middle-class Protestant in Dublin, Ireland, in 1864. As a youth he dreamed of adventure and exotic places, and his extraordinary life took on truly panoramic dimensions. His first taste of Africa came in 1883. Casement worked for a Liverpool shipping line that sent him to a port close to the mouth of the Congo River. By the time he was 30, Casement had spent most of his adult life on what many then called the “Dark Continent.” Eventually he was appointed British consul, initially in Bomo, Congo. ...