Books

Before she was a star musician, Amanda Palmer worked as a living statue. Standing perfectly still, she'd pose in the middle of Harvard Square, dressed as a bride, and through insults, lobbed objects, meddling drunks, and distracting jokes, she'd practice the art of nonreaction for hours on end.

In the spring of 2010, Michelle Obama visited an elementary school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the gym, with news cameras rolling, she called on an apprehensive second grader who had raised her hand. Why, asked the girl, was the president “taking everyone away” who doesn’t have papers to live in the United States? “My mom doesn’t have any papers,” she told the first lady.

When Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting our Economy appeared in 2007, its subtitle was music to many ears. Short on facts and long on hyperbole, it wasn't very persuasive, but by then the growing fear that elite culture was capitulating to the vulgar ephemera of pokes and tweets had turned internet-bashing into something of a cult itself.

Think you've heard it all about the global financial crisis, the Internet distracting us into stupidity, dysfunctional and self-destructive politics, the demise of the nuclear family, and degenerating cities? Well imagine having predicted, written about, and imagined the consequences of all of these postmodern maladies -- before they ever happened. Meet Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the accidental futurists who have lived to see so many of their foresights become our daily reality.

“Just Google it!” has become a common cyber-snobbish response to questions that seem too trivial to merit a human conversation. But is it really an answer? Now that more and more Internet sites are tailoring their services to the idiosyncrasies of individual users, queries for “climate change,” “stem cells” and even “pizza” may yield different outcomes for different people. This may be an era when we are increasingly entitled to our own facts — but should we also be entitled to our own search results?

The greatest disparagement of the Carter presidency is the argument that it was, at its core, a fluke.

That an unremarkable governor from the South ran for president at a moment when the nation, ashamed and disheartened by the Nixon years, was in search of something good and decent. That an ambitious man from a small town who reminded us what was great about our country started his bid in Iowa, and campaigned there for nearly a year, in the same election that the national media first began paying attention to the caucus system.

The office where I met Clinton high in the UN headquarters building belongs to another era. It is an institution built for a world of the past -- one based on Cold War rivalries and the last century's balance of power. It was Clinton's first day in the cramped space, and his entourage of bodyguards and assistants were stumbling over one an- other in the confines. The Secret Service men dispatched a young press aide to inquire why so many UN staffers were loitering near the elevators, though it was clear that they were simply trying to catch a glimpse of the ex-president.

Over the past two years, New America Research Fellow and Atlantic Correspondent Brian Till interviewed more than a dozen former leaders from around the world, looking to cull their wisdom for another generation, and to ask whether they believe, in the long lens of history, that the post-Cold War generation will be judged harshly.

On Jan. 1, 1985, Stanley Ann Dunham, better known as Barack Obama’s mother, was living in Honolulu, where she had recently returned after years in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. That New Year’s Day, she recorded the following list of hopeful resolutions:

(1) Finish Ph.D. (2) 60K (3) in shape (4) remarry (5) another culture (6) house + land (7) pay off debts (taxes) (8) memoirs of Indon. (9) spir. develop (ilmu batin) (10) raise Maya well (11) continuing constructive dialogue with Barry (12) ­relations w/friends + family (corresp.)

The best-selling author of "Three Cups of Tea" and another book that cast light on the need to educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan may face a legal battle and a review from the book's publisher amid allegations that key stories in the books are false.

Greg Mortenson shot to worldwide fame with the book "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations ... One School at a Time," which describes his getting lost in an effort to climb K2, the world's second-highest peak, being rescued by Pakistanis in the village of Korphe and vowing to return there to build a school for local girls.