TroySchneider.com

At long last, my review of Tarleton Gillespie's book on copyright in the digital era -- Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture -- is done and published in the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. (Just to be clear, though: The 9-month lag time was due almost entirely to my procrastination, not to RCCR or my editor, David Silver.)

I'll post the review to the articles archive soon, but for now you can find it here -- and see Gillespie's response here.

On FedBlog today, Tom Shoop reports that author and Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay is among the winners of this year's $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grants."

I'm in the process of reviewing Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture, which (so far) is a very smart look at an issue that's of great personal and professional interest to me. So rather than just scribble in the margins, I thought I'd drop random questions, observations and interesting factoids here as I work my way through the book.

I would say this is the first of many posts in a series, but hopefully there won't be too many -- the review itself is due soon...

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

First things first -- cover photo and subtitle notwithstanding, Michael Lind's "Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics" is not about Bush.

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

As this week's other review makes clear, managing a common resource for the greater good is no easy task. And as William Sargent shows in "Crab Wars," these shared commodities can take on surprising (and smelly) forms.

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

Few Americans understand post-traumatic stress disorder, much less choose to read entire books on the subject. Combine disturbing clinical accounts of Vietnam veterans' psychological and emotional damage with an allegorical reading of Homer's "Odyssey," and one could be forgiven for assuming the target audience is a half-dozen classically educated psychiatrists.

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

After George W. Bush's victory over über-wonk Al Gore in 2000, one might assume that "intellectual" had become a dirty word in presidential politics. After all, Bush repeatedly made it clear that he had no interest in "reading a 500-page book on public policy or something," while Gore seemed to downplay that fact that he had written such a book.

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

To develop a thorough understanding of the dangers terrorists still pose to the United States, one would need to religiously scour the national and international press reports, read between the lines of the government's various threat advisories, and file countless Freedom of Information Act requests for documents both past and present.

Or one can simply read Rohan Gunaratna's new book.

Book Review, NationalJournal.com

When Bill Clinton and, later, to a lesser extent, George W. Bush were questioned about their efforts to avoid Vietnam, the underlying pretext was that a president must understand the culture and capabilities of the military he commands. And while the politics may not have always been pretty, the point is a valid one.