32
Kamata,
Japan in the Passing Lane
, 124.
33
Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Managers Find âQuality Time' on a Brainstorming Retreat,”
The New York Times
, Jan. 11, 1994: A7; González, “Brave New Workplace,” 107.
34
J. P. Womack, D. T. Jones, and D. Roos.
The Machine That Changed the World
(New York: Harper Collins, 1990), 200-203.
35
Kamata,
Japan in the Passing Lane
, 75.
36
R. Ofshe and Margaret T. Singer, “Attacks on Peripheral versus Central Elements of Self and the Impact of Thought Reforming Techniques,”
Cultic Studies Journal
3:1 (1986): 6.
37
González, “Brave New Workplace,” 116.
38
Kamata,
Japan in the Passing Lane
, 48.
39
Alejandro Lugo, “Cultural Production and Reproduction in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: Tropes at Play among Maquiladora Workers
,
”
Cultural Anthropology
, 5:2. (1990): 178-180.
40
Kamata,
Japan in the Passing Lane,
156-157.
41
Mike Parker,
Inside the Circle: A Union Guide to QWL
(Boston: South End Press, 1985), 19; González, “Brave New Workplace,” 115.
42
Parker,
Inside the Circle,
20; González, “Brave New Workplace,” 116.
43
P. C. Thompson, “U.S. Offered Unusual Class on Diversity,”
New York Times
, Apr. 2, 1995: 34.
44
R. E. Lane,
The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). Quoted in Barbara S. Held, “The Negative Side of Positive Psychology,”
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
44:1 (Winter 2004), 9, 24.
CHAPTER 5: THE ILLUSION OF AMERICA
1
Andrew J. Bacevich,
The Limits of Power
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), 172.
2
David Barstow, “One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex,”
New York Times
, Nov. 29, 2008: 172.
3
Robert Bellah,
Habits of the Heart
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985), 285.
12
George Orwell,
The Collected Letters, Essays and Journalism of George Orwell. Vol, 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950
. Eds. Sonia B. Orwell and Ian Angus (Boston: David R. Godine, 2000), 67.
13
Vasily Grossman,
Life and Fate
, trans. Robert Chandler (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 410.
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without Eunice. She watched and transcribed everything from professional wrestling, to reality television shows, to the scenes described in the chapter on pornography. She edited and rewrote passages. She clarified incomplete thoughts, challenged shaky assertions, and added paragraphs that always enhanced the points I was trying to make. She stayed up many nights long after I had gone to bed, reworking sections of the book. Nothing I write is published before it goes through her hands. Our marriage is a rare combination of spiritual and intellectual affinity. “She'is all States, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is,” as John Donne wrote in his poem “The Sunne Rising”:
Princes doe play us; compar'd to this,
All honor's mimique; all wealth alchimie.
Thou, sunne, art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus.
I am deeply indebted to The Nation Institute and the Lannan Foundation. The support of these organizations permitted me to write this book. I am especially grateful to Hamilton Fish, Ruth Baldwin, Taya Grobow, and Jonathan Schell, as well as Peggy Suttle and Katrina vanden Heuvel at
The Nation
magazine. Carl Bromley at Nation Books is a remarkably talented and brilliant editor, a fine writer and scholar in his own right, who helped shape and guide this book. In an age when editing seems to be a dying art, he upholds the highest standards of the craft. He loves books and ideas, and his insight and enthusiasm are infectious. It was a privilege to work with him. Michele Jacob, whom I have worked with before, handled publicity and book events with her usual efficiency. Patrick Lannan and Jo Chapman
at the Lannan Foundation have been constant and steadfast supporters of my work. It was Patrick, who has done more than perhaps anyone in the country to nurture, promote, and protect great writing, who first gave me Sheldon Wolin's
Democracy Incorporated.
The Reverend Coleman Brown, my professor of religion at Colgate University and mentor, once again guided me through the writing. Coleman generously shared his profound wisdom, at once always humbling and always correct. His voice of compassion and deep insight into the human condition serve to temper the tone of my writing and pull me back from the edge of despair to remind me, and my readers, that good exists and is never as powerless as it appears.
John Timpane, a fellow lover of books, poetry, and theater, again edited the final manuscript. All my final manuscripts end up in his hands at my request. John, the greatest line and content editor in the business, is the Olympian authority who makes the last decisions on what is in or out, what should be changed and what amended. No writer could be in better hands, even if he has a hard time accepting my supremacy at Balderdash.
Chris Hebdon, a student at Berkeley, worked tirelessly on the book. He attended the seminar on positive psychology, did all the interviews and recordings, and wrote up the proceedings. The chapter on positive psychology is largely his work. Chris is a very talented young man whose conscience is as impressive as his intellect, which must make some of his professors very uncomfortable. My son Thomas, whose integrity is matched by a superb intellect, as well as a maturity and sensitivity that extend far beyond his years, worked during his Christmas vacation from Colgate University on the book in the Princeton University library. Robert Scheer and Zuade Kaufmann, who run the Web magazine
Truthdig
, where I write a weekly column, care deeply about maintaining the standards of great writing and reporting. I am fortunate to count them as friends and write for their site. Gerald Stern, Anne Marie Macari, Mae Sakharov, Rick McArthur, Richard Fenn, James Cone, Ralph Nader, Maria-Christina Keller, Pam Diamond, June Ballinger, Michael Goldstein, Irene Brown, Margaret Maurer, Sam Hynes, Tom Artin, Joe Sacco, Steve Kinzer, Charlie and Catherine Williams, Mark Kurlansky, Ann and Walter Pincus, Joe and Heidi Hough, Laila al-Arian, Michael Granzen, Karen Hernandez, Ray Close, Peter Scheer, Kasia Anderson, Robert J. Lifton, Lauren B. Davis, Robert Jensen, Cristina Nehring, Bernard Rapoport, Jean Stein, Larry Joseph, Wanda Liu (our patient and skillful Mandarin
tutor), as well as Dorothea von Molke and Cliff Simms, who together run one of the finest bookstores in America, are part all of our cherished circle. Cliff was one of the most prescient critics of the manuscript and greatly improved its sharpness and focus. Thanks as well to Boris Rorer, Michael Levien, who recommended David Foster Wallace's brilliant essay on the porn industry, and the staff at Bon Appetit, where I buy my daily baguette.
Lisa Bankoff of International Creative Management, as she has for all my books, negotiated contracts and eased the maddening minutiae of putting this book together. I am fortunate to be able to work with her.
My children, Thomas, Noëlle, and Konrad, are my greatest joy. After years in which I have witnessed too much violent death and suffering, they are the balms to my soul, the gentle reminders that trauma can be slowly healed through love and that redemption is possible.
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