Plague Journal, Reading
What are you reading? If you are looking at this blog, I am certain that you are a person who reads often, varied materials from a number of sources.
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I subscribe to the New York Times Sunday edition. There is enough interesting, well written, relevant material to keep me dipping into the sections of the Sunday paper throughout the week.
I also subscribe to Bloomberg Businessweek. This is a business oriented magazine that reports on the trends affecting business, as well as the 
condition of selected companies around the world. The publication is a combination of economics and politics. These two dimensions of life have been intertwined since the beginning of the industrial era. I just read an article about the impact of the pandemic flareup on the recovery of Boeing and Airbus. These two premier airplane manufactures are gambling on emerging as dominant in world markets as well each is gambling on its own survival. Capitalism with dizzying stakes!
As for books, I am revisiting Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ my Friedrich Nietzsche translated by R. J. Hollingdale. These were written in the 1888, the last sane year of his life. Of the philosophers who have had a substantial effect on the texture and thought patterns of the 21st century, I think Nietzsche deserves to be first on the list. Nietzsche lived at the apogee of the industrial revolution. Industrial might and militarism would be unleashed in the trench warfare, poison gas attacks, and the inception of aerial bombing of civilian populations. Nietzsche identified the movement of nascent nihilism, the advent of politics with claimants to the role of superman leader, crass populist appeal to 
fanatical followers. Nietzsche is more relevant than ever to the current Trump administration here in the states.
I am also reading The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. The setting of the story is Dublin in 1918, three days in a maternity ward for expectant mothers showing symptoms of the flu. The mothers are quarantined together in an understaffed hospital. The arc of the story is only three days. A nurse, a female doctor rumored to be a rebel sought by the police, and a young volunteer change one another’s lives in unexpected ways. The language of the writing is vivid, superlative.
So what are you reading?
