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Just today I began reading "The German Genius", the industrial-sized history of German Kultur recently published by Peter Watson. At 856 pages it's the second largest book I own behind only Victor Hugo's burning but only half-engulfed Les Miserablés.

My interest in the book is motivated by a simple question: What is Germany? 

Since my initial exposure to German and after having visited Germany on more than one occasion, I am left with the impression of a deep fracture between the Germany of my American imagination and the embodied Germany of today. Indeed, my repeated visits to book stores and libraries in search of a history of Germany are always frustrated by the narrow but over-sold window which opens up (muddily, I might add) upon the years between 1933 and 1945. The awkward amalgam of American fetishism for the technologies of war-making ("Fighter Planes of World War II") as well as an undying obsession with the gratuitous violence enacted upon minorities in other countries ("Auschwitz: a New History") produces a cartoonish understanding of Germany. (In fact, one of the most popular graphic novels today is "Maus", a history of Nazi Germany told through a comic book mice.) 

I often try to imagine if historians reduced U.S. history to its corresponding exterminations and institutional racisms for the kind of popular public consumption that drives World War II literature: "Tools and Technologies of Slavery", and "Native Americans: The Extermination of Those People". This is no apologetic for what should rightly be a thoroughly condemning examination of the atrocities of the past. But I suspect, first, that such a narrow view of Germany misses important historical events (if you'll excuse a momentary lapse into historical fundamentalism), and second that a focus on World War II in Germany creates a moral landscape which valorizes warfare and justifies American aggression in its purported incomparability to the Holocaust.

Watson's claim is to deal directly with both the history of Nazism and German history without compressing one under the teleology of the other. It's a book I expect to take the better part of this year to complete. But having launched effortlessly into the first 100 pages of rewarding and well-composed text this evening, I expect the time to be worth it.
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I have been following Bryson's writing closely since 2000 after I gobbled up his non-fiction writing to date. This is his latest book. Following on the success of A Short History of Nearly Everything, I guess he decided another social history of a subject would attract readers. (His other books are a mix of travel narrative and memoir.) At Home is a social history of the house. The title is an overstatement and an understatement. The overstatement is, it's really just about Northern European and American homes in the past 300 years. The understatement is, the topic of "houses" –rooms, gardens, building materials– is really just a way to organize a book about nearly everything else. At Home is not so much a tour of homes as it is a provocation to write about whatever and whoever can be connected through archival citation to parts of the home. It makes for a wonderful ride and I come away from each chapter astonished with how Mr. Bryson charges otherwise dry historical minutiae with illuminating prose and top-notch story telling.

Interesting side note: this is the first full-length book I've read entirely on my Kindle.
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I have to admit it. When I wrote the last entry, I already had Jacek Utko in mind. You may have read Newspaper Troubles: Part 1 and thought: "that's so 2008". I agree. But since nothing has changed, I don't feel redundant. 

To summarize: newspapers are great. But they suck. That is, newspapers provide important, timely news in print form, and there's nothing like reading on real paper. (Sorry Kindle.) Furthermore, we should stave off the tabloidization of everyday news as long as possible. And I just can't imagine a world without lots of quality, local reporters. 

But newspapers suffer from a failure of imagination. It's like the automobile: 100 year old technology running on the fumes of advertising. Newspapers could –and should– become more relevant by submitting to a complete redesign process.

Which brings us to Utko. His approach to newspaper design is cutting-edge. It will leave you wondering, "why didn't someone think of that earlier? And why aren't more newspapers doing this now?" 

So watch. Enjoy. Then send this video to the editor of your local paper.

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I’m sitting in a coffee shop on Sunday afternoon. It’s a hot, lazy afternoon. I have the advertisement-stuffed edition of Raleigh’s News and Observer, and a similarly thick New York Times. I start with the local paper. I saw a headline about “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which I intend to read this summer, and I want to get to it right away. 

Not so fast. As I pull the Observer out of the bag, several large and awkwardly sized flyers begin to slide out. I intervene by wedging the paper between the top of my tummy and the table edge. My reflex cost me some dignity with those around me as my arms took turns winding around under the paper and scooping it onto the table. I noticed a small ink smear in the middle of my yellow shirt. Once on the table, the paper was no less a threat; it flopped open and rested against my coffee cup, which waited for a slight nudge from Section B to send it splashing onto the floor. My phone has also gone missing. I found it sandwiched behind the comics but in front of the classifieds. In a single moment, my tiny table had gone from Haussman’s Paris to Rio’s favela.

After a few minutes of shuffling about, moving each item at least three times – table to nearby chair, chair to book bag, book bag back to table – I had managed to reinstate some order. I had also managed to butter my hands in newspaper ink; my hands, in turn, had left smears on my laptop, my phone, other parts of the newspaper, and probably not a few places between my neck and my forehead. Undaunted and thoroughly committed to reading the news (as I’ve heard this is an important thing to do – or at least gives the impression that one is learned), I snatched the Arts & Living section from the mangroves of the Sunday edition and started to read.

That is to say, I read the title and stared at a stylized graphic intended to sum up Mockingbird. I could do no more at this point because the article started below the fold, and I had not yet opened it full-length. Even the top half of a newspaper is large by reading standards. My phone, on which I read much of my email, has a three inch screen. The Kindle has a six inch screen. The book I’m reading currently has eight-inch pages, though the text is probably only six and a half inches diagonally. My laptop has a thirteen-inch screen, and I often read pdf’s just fine. The top half of the newspaper alone measures around sixteen inches. (I’m counting with the bend of my index finger here.) Sixteen inches! Western society hasn’t printed reading materials on pages that large in centuries. But remember that’s just the top half. Altogether, an unfolded front page yields an astonishing 28 inches. An entirely open newspaper spread renders to the reader an unfathomable 38 inches – about as larger (or a little larger) than most flat screens sold for living room use in the US.

When I opened up the paper to its full size, able now to read the article and see the corresponding picture, I had to make a choice: hold it like a giant wet lasagna noodle, or drape it over the table like a bath towel. I opted for the former, and started to read the article titled “Does ‘Mockingbird’ still matter?” The title’s provocative title is elaborated upon by interviews with local citizens and national writers, who answer the title question with heartfelt but not entirely homogenous reflection. I am just getting into the article when, in the middle of the fourth paragraph, the sentence I’m reading ends without conclusion or a period. I see this:

SEE ‘MOCKINGBIRD’, PAGE 4D

I turn the front page of section D over (which, as I've said, means I'm holding a large TV in front of me) and I am immediately taken in by pictures of modern dance, the Mona Lisa, and gazpacho. Focus. I turn the page again scanning for my article. A fold in the crease of the page buckles, and the top and bottom thirds flips under enough to obscure several articles which now appear to start over the horizon of the page. I try to shake it back into shape, but my right thumb hadn’t pinched 6D through 14D, and several pages begin to slide. I lay it on the table, shake the pages together, and try again. This time I get the paper to hold its shape, and I find my article. Of course, by this time I have forgotten what exactly I was reading and I can’t infer enough from the sentence fragment to avoid going through the process all over again. I try to keep the newspaper in place and just move my head around to the front, contorting my left arm out of my line of sight. I find the first half of the sentence, but I don't even bother reading it.

By now my arms are too tired to hold the paper vertical in a Normal Rockwell position. I bring the edges back together, flip the top down and toss it on the chair beside me. It lays there with a pathetic bubble where the folds failed to line up, mistreated, unread, and ready to be recycled. I find the same article online for free and read it top to bottom on one continuous page in a matter of minutes.

(Better yet, if you have the new Safari web browser, you can use the “reader” feature to view an easy-to-read version of the article.) 
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