admin August 22nd, 2007
(Frances) Today I held in my hands the first copies of my new book! I couldn’t help myself - I dropped one off at the local bookstore, where I was thrilled to learn five are on order.
Then I hurried to a coffee shop nearby to compose a response to The New York Times magazine Sunday cover story by Mark Lilla. His is just the thinking I hope Getting a Grip can help uproot. The professor seems, sadly, to have lost touch with the incredibly appealing and powerful heart and soul of democracy that our current, limited notion of it is betraying - at our great peril.
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admin August 13th, 2007
(Frances) I’m smiling. How could I not? Galley copies of Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad go to about ninety media and in only two weeks we get an email from a senior editor at O (Oprah’s magazine) eager to excerpt key passages about personal empowerment. Great! Then, yesterday, a Publishers’ Weekly review appeared. I was thrilled that the review contrasts “thin” and “living democracy” and noted my emphasis on learning the arts of democracy.
I was intrigued, though, that the PW review calls Getting a Grip a “manifesto-cum-workbook.” Manifesto? Hmmm…to me a manifesto is something fixed, a declaration that you implore others to sign. How ironic - the first of my books from which I draw inspiration for Getting a Grip is The Quickening of America and its final chapter is “What, No Manifesto?”
I see Getting a Grip as an anti-manifesto - an invitation … Continue Reading »
