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WORK TITLE: How Bad Writing Destroyed the World
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http://www.wellesley.edu/russian/faculty/weiner#cqe0Azp2Jy3AeA4o.97 * http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-bad-writing-destroyed-the-world-9781501313134/ * http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/how-bad-writing-ruined-the-world-review-adam-weiner-on-ayn-rands-influence-20170112-gtqdkr.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 98061101
Personal name heading:
Weiner, Adam
Found in: By authors possessed, 1998: CIP t.p. (Adam Weiner) pub.
info. (Assistant professor of Russian lit. at Wellesley)
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, associate professor of Russian, 1994-.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Adam Weiner is an associate professor of Russian at Wellesley College and the author of three books: By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia, Don’t Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies, and How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis.
Don't Try This at Home!
In Don’t Try This at Home!, Weiner applies physics to many of the stunts seen in Hollywood movies and tries to answer the question “Is that really possible?” Using subjects like Newton’s laws, the conservation of momentum and energy, circular motion, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics, Weiner shows the reader what is possible and what isn’t. He uses examples from big-budget movies such as Star Wars, Armageddon, and Mission: Impossible. Weiner also briefly covers the law of physics in cartoons.
Kendrick Frazier, in the Skeptical Inquirer, felt that the book was aimed at the general audience and could be enjoyed by all. He wrote: “The book is intended not just for students taking a first-year physics course but also for anyone interested in movies and physics.”
How Bad Writing Destroyed the World
About How Bad Writing Destroyed the World, a Publishers Weekly reviewer was taken with the book and wrote: “Weiner … promises a book about Russian writers, Ayn Rand, and the U.S. financial crisis. His delivery is impressive on the first, more than acceptable on the second, and lacking on the third.” Weiner tries to prove a link between Ayn Rand and the 2008 global financial crisis by showing that Rand, who grew up in Russia, was influenced by Russian writers at the time and that, in turn, Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve in the United States, was influenced by Rand. Some of the Russian writers covered by Weiner include Nikolay Chernyshevsky, author of the 1863 novel What Is to Be Done?; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and Sergey Nechayev. In his book, Weiner refers to Chernyshevsky as “one of the great destructive influences of the past century: first in his home country, where his writing helped spawn the Soviet Union, and now, of all places, in the United States, where his rational egotism continues to reverberate in American political and economic thought.”
A contributor on the Wellesley College Web site, wrote: “In an email interview, Weiner said he explains to his students that ‘a novel is unique not only as an artistic experience but also as a human one.’ When we read fiction, he tells them, ‘we allow another person—the author—into our heads to think our thoughts for us, the other’s words reverberating inside our skull in place of our own thoughts.’ In this way, ‘narrative literature is, when you stop to consider it, a form of mind control, though one trusts that the brainwashing will prove temporary.”’ The reviewer continued: “Books like Atlas Shrugged or, to take a different example, The Brothers Karamazov can have ‘a great and terrible power to sway some “suggestible” readers.’” “This is not at all to suggest that we need to censor any kind of book, but merely to point out one of the mechanisms by which art changes the world.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis, p. 56.
Science News, September 1, 2007, review of Don’t Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies, p. 143.
Skeptical Inquirer, November-December, 2007, Kendrick Frazier, review of Don’t Try This at Home!, p. 60.
ONLINE
Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au (January 20, 2017), review of How Bad Writing Destroyed the World.
Wellesley College Web site, http://www.wellesley.edu/ (January 11, 2017), “Two Wellesley Professors, Scholars of History and Literature, Provide the Media with Insight on Russia”; (May 11, 2017), author faculty profile.
Adam Weiner
Associate Professor of Russian
image: https://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/styles/faculty_profile_portrait_manual/public/weinera-square.jpg?itok=zMjaPsny
aweiner@wellesley.edu
(781) 283-2419
Russian
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin (Madison)
Teaches Russian language and literature; at Wellesley since 1994.
My book, By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia, was published by Northwestern University Press in 1998. I am currently working on a second book treating Vladimir Nabokov's fiction. A third book concerning the writers of the OuLiPo is on the horizon.
I enjoy teaching courses in the Russian language and in Russian and world literature.
Two Wellesley Professors, Scholars of History and Literature, Provide the Media with Insight on Russia
January 11, 2017
image: https://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/styles/news_0_image/public/assets/dailyshot/kremlin_wiki_pavelkazachkov_0.jpg?itok=Q9iPRSau
Two Wellesley Professors, Scholars of History and Literature, Provide the Media with Insight on Russia
Credit: Kremlin photo by Pavel Kazachkov. Creative Commons license, 2012.
As Russia and the Kremlin’s relationship with the United States continues to dominate the headlines, two Wellesley professors have offered their commentary on very different issues related to the country. Nina Tumarkin, Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Slavic Studies and professor of history, spoke to Southern California Public Radio about the White House’s sanctions against Russia in response to election-related cyberhacking. Adam Weiner, associate professor of Russian, wrote an essay for Politico magazine on a little-known Russian writer.
Tumarkin is a historian of Russia who has researched the Soviet era; her books include The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia and Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia. Tumarkin was one of only six Soviet experts who briefed President Ronald Reagan and key cabinet members before Reagan’s historic first meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1985 at the Geneva Summit.
In her conversation as a guest on AirTalk, Tumarkin discussed the current situation with Russia and the United States and gave her thoughts on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetorical and political strategies responding (or rather, not responding) to recent U.S. sanctions. She also commented on what to expect from the incoming Donald Trump administration. Every administration for the past three decades has “wanted to re-set the relationship” with Russia, or the Soviet Union, she noted, so Trump’s plan to attempt to do so is not unique. Tumarkin also said we are in a “new Cold War” and the best way to end it may be to first examine the common ground Reagan and Gorbachev established in the 1980s.
In an email interview, Tumarkin said forecasting what 2017 holds for Russia with any certainty is often impossible, “because the Kremlin is predictably unpredictable.” One major story, however, may be the country’s domestic issues. “The world’s largest producer of oil, whose economy depends heavily on energy exports, will have to struggle through the consequences of continued very low oil prices in the year of Vladimir Putin’s reelection campaign, when necessary spending cuts and raised taxes might be seen to harm his chances in the 2018 election,” she said. On the global stage, Tumarkin said, she anticipates the Kremlin will attempt to mount an “effective intervention in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in France and Germany, with the goal of dividing and weakening the European Union, its most formidable nearby opponent.”
As the new administration seeks to understand how to deal with Russia, Tumarkin said that from a historian’s perspective it is essential to remember that Russia has for centuries “been a state-centered polity in which the state was a dominant entity apart from—and not representative of—local interests.” When he became president in 2000, she said, Putin “declared ‘state-centeredness’ to be one of his country’s core imperatives, and his actions have borne out its continued importance.”
Weiner is the author, most recently, of How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis. His essay in Politico magazine, “The Most Politically Dangerous Book You’ve Never Heard Of,” explores “how one obscure Russian novel launched two of the 20th century’s most destructive ideas.” He writes how Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and popularizer of an ideology based on self-interest, was influenced by Russian utopian author Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Weiner labels Chernyshevsky “one of the great destructive influences of the past century: first in his home country, where his writing helped spawn the Soviet Union, and now, of all places, in the United States, where his rational egotism continues to reverberate in American political and economic thought.” Weiner specifically draws connections between Rand and Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose deregulations, he argued, played a role in the 2008 financial crisis.
In an email interview, Weiner said he explains to his students that “a novel is unique not only as an artistic experience but also as a human one.” When we read fiction, he tells them, “we allow another person—the author—into our heads to think our thoughts for us, the other’s words reverberating inside our skull in place of our own thoughts.” In this way, “narrative literature is, when you stop to consider it, a form of mind control, though one trusts that the brainwashing will prove temporary.” Books like Atlas Shrugged or, to take a different example, The Brothers Karamazov can have “a great and terrible power to sway some ‘suggestible’ readers.” “This is not at all to suggest that we need to censor any kind of book, but merely to point out one of the mechanisms by which art changes the world.”
How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis
263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis
Adam Weiner. Bloomsbury Academic, $19.95 trade paper (252p) ISBN 978-1-501-31311-0
Weiner (By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia) promises a book about Russian writers, Ayn Rand, and the U.S. financial crisis. His delivery is impressive on the first, more than acceptable on the second, and lacking on the third. The Russians include Nikolay Chernyshevsky, author of the largely forgotten 1863 novel What Is to Be Done, which Weiner describes as a "jarring cacophony of disparate elements" and a "great source of inspiration for the Russian revolutionary movement"; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who, Weiner says, thought Chernyshevsky was "at the center of a secret terrorist organization"; and Sergey Nechayev, a murderous revolutionary who refashioned himself after Chernyshevsky's antihero, Rakhmetov. Weiner's literary criticism, focusing on political and philosophical themes, is solid up to and including his explication of Rand's Atlas Shrugged, written by a woman who, Weiner reminds us, grew up in St. Petersburg at a time when Chernyshevsky's influence there was "ubiquitous and unassailable." Weiner's conclusion that "unfettered capitalism is no more a utopia than the chained collective" effectively damns both Chernyshevsky and Rand in one sentence. Readers who expected more about the U.S. financial crisis than a few brief mentions of Alan Greenspan, who called Rand's deeply flawed novel "a magnificent masterpiece," won't find that in this otherwise fine book. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis." Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2016, p. 56. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460900407&it=r&asid=d5eac186dbaf65536f249ef65b76f280. Accessed 8 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460900407
Don't Try This At Home! The Physics of Action Movies
Kendrick Frazier
31.6 (November-December 2007): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! The Physics of Action Movies. Adam Weiner. Kaplan Publishing, New York, 2007. 264 pp. Softcover, $17.95. How many times have you, when watching an action scene in a movie or on television, wondered, Could that really happen? David Weiner, a physics teacher in a college prep school in La Jolla, California, here deconstructs, demystifies, and debunks our favorite action movie sequences. He calls on physics and physical principles in all his analyses, and, unlike some similar books on the science of action heroes and the like, he analyzes scenes quantitatively. The level of physics is fundamental; the math level is algebraic. The book is intended not just for students taking a first-year physics course but also for anyone interested in movies and physics.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Frazier, Kendrick
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Frazier, Kendrick. "Don't Try This At Home! The Physics of Action Movies." Skeptical Inquirer, Nov.-Dec. 2007, p. 60. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA170731932&it=r&asid=8702f50fa1ffd9d8ec2bf6af4a53c0a7. Accessed 8 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A170731932
Don't Try This At Home: The Physics of Hollywood Movies
172.9 (Sept. 1, 2007): p143.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Science Service, Inc.
http://www.sciencenews.org
DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME: The Physics of Hollywood Movies ADAM WEINER
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Many of the sequences in today's action movies, which feature such escapades as driving a car on an asteroid, drilling to the core of Earth, or surviving a horrific crash with little more than bumps and bruises, leave the viewer asking one question: "is that really possible?" In a book that will appeal to movie buffs and physics students alike, Weiner offers humorous insights into the physics behind famous action scenes in movies such as Mission: impossible, Star Wars, and Armageddon. Also a primer on basic physics, the book introduces such topics as Newton's laws, the conservation of momentum and energy, circular motion, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics. Within this context, Weiner then explains the physics at work in various movie scenes and reveals what is possible and impossible. The book concludes with additional film reviews and a brief look at physics in popular fairy tales and cartoons. Kaplan, 2007, 254 p., b&w illus., paperback, $17.95.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Don't Try This At Home: The Physics of Hollywood Movies." Science News, 1 Sept. 2007, p. 143. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA169308642&it=r&asid=32dcae7d58e14d7b74d8e12c0242774f. Accessed 8 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A169308642
January 20 2017
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How Bad Writing Ruined the World review: Adam Weiner on Ayn Rand's influence
Steven Carroll
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How Bad Writing destroyed the World. By Adam Weiner.
How Bad Writing destroyed the World. By Adam Weiner. Photo: Supplied
Auden might have changed his mind about poetry making nothing happen had he read this. The "bad writing" refers to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Adam Weiner, and there's a fair share of bad writing in his book, maintains that her novel did make something happen: the 2008 global financial crisis. He reaches back to 19th-century Russian literature (Rand was Russian-born) and the popular 1863 novel What is to be Done?, whose sanctioning of greed and egoism Rand replicated a century later. It's nothing new to say the zealots of economic rationalism read Rand, but Weiner says that, in the case of the influential Alan Greenspan (a Rand disciple), she more or less programmed him and set him loose on the world, a key figure in creating modern, market capitalism with its "greed is good" slogans and unregulated egos.