From
Camels to Capital
Having
disappointingly failed to settle the question of whether a camel can pass
through the eye of a needle, Slate's "Dispatches & Dialogues" department
has moved on to new theological disputes (in addition to ongoing exchanges
about divorce and global
capitalism). Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve and a new
book, What It Means to Be a
Libertarian , is discussing libertarianism vs. communitarianism with America's leading
philosopher of community, Harvard Professor Michael Sandel. Andrew Sullivan,
former editor of the New Republic and author/editor of a new book about
gay
marriage, is debating that subject with David Frum of the Weekly
Standard . And John Goodman, not Roseanne's TV husband but the president of
the National Center for Policy Analysis, is exchanging words with the editor of
Slate over the rights and wrongs of a capital-gains tax cut.
Join the
Club
Exhausted by the ordeal of
trying to deny poor people a capital-gains tax cut, the editor turns this space
over to his colleague, Cyrus Krohn:
Users of "The
Fray," Slate's reader-discussion forum, have been clamoring for more than a
month for special Fray threads devoted to books. Because "The Fray" exists to
serve the Fraygrants, we arranged a real-time threaded discussion of Freud's
Civilization and Its Discontents last Sunday, March 9.
The thread attracted heavy
traffic--so much traffic that we were encouraged to corral a living author to
discuss his book with the Fraygrants. Our first "Book Club" guest is Po
Bronson, author of The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest , a novel
about a Silicon Valley startup. Bronson will join "The Fray" next Thursday,
March 20, at 7 p.m. EST to discuss his novel in a thread titled "Readings: Po
Bronson." Joining him will be Bill Barnes, whose review of The First $20
Million will run in Slate Tuesday, March 18.
Your assignment--if you
should decide to accept it--is to buy the book and read it cover to cover in
preparation for asking questions. If reading a whole book sounds like too much
work, click here for excerpts of the first two chapters from Bronson's
home page.
Or, suit
yourself, as Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates did. When told that
Slate had assigned a couple of chapters to its readers, he roared: "It sounds
like homework! Don't they know that that is why I dropped out of Harvard?"
--Michael Kinsley & Cyrus Krohn
