Reading, a novel concept (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Wednesday, 16 November 2005

Reading, a novel concept

The only place I ever seem to get any reading done (beyond that essential for my scholarship and teaching) is on airplanes, so I finally read Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization on my last interview junket—actually, I had it read by the time I got to the Frozen Tundra; I had to settle for finishing my Economist backlog on the way back.

It’s an enjoyable enough read, and Foer has a good, clear narrative style. My major quibble: I’m not sure soccer “explains” much of anything in the book; at best, it’s an indicator or reflection of the phenomena that Foer discusses.

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Welcome to Signifying Nothing, a weblog featuring serious (and frivolous) commentary from Chris Lawrence, an associate professor of political science at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, Georgia.
Chris was also formerly a contributor to Outside The Beltway.
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Signifying Nothing formerly featured the stylings of Brock Sides, a left-leaning philosopher turned network administrator currently residing in Memphis, Tennessee who now blogs at Battlepanda, and Robert Prather, a libertarian-leaning conservative economist and occasional contributor at OTB.

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