DDC 320-329: Beware the festering swamp

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

This Is How We Dewey:

  • 320 Political science
  • 321 Systems of governments & states
  • 322 Relation of state to organized groups
  • 323 Civil & political rights
  • 324 The political process
  • 325 International migration & colonization
  • 326 Slavery & emancipation
  • 327 International relations
  • 328 The legislative process
  • 329 Not assigned or no longer used

Ah yes, politics: the second of the Banned At Thanksgiving Dinner topics is finally at hand. Personally, I’m fascinated by politics (American specifically). Notice I didn’t say I love them: as a history nut I enjoy viewing current events in historical context, and also enjoy dissecting the various political narratives that come out of them, but horse-race politics disgust me. I’m a moderate through and through, leaning left on some issues and right on others, but I’m a radical in my view that cable news is generally a vapid abomination of journalism and that politics in the U.S. is a festering swamp of ego and soul-crushing skullduggery.

All that to say that I took extra care in this section to avoid those shoddy polemics by pundits, hucksters, and otherwise annoying public figures who for some cosmically sad reason make a lot of money saying stupid and/or wrong things on TV. There are so many of those books! But there are just as many interesting, well-written ones about a variety of political issues that you ought to check out.

The Dew3:

The Black Panthers Speak
Dewey: 322.42
Random Sentence: “Whose benefit are they concerned with, Huey P. Newton’s or black lawyers?”

Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America A Democracy
By Bruce Watson
Dewey: 323.1196
Random Sentence: “Beer cans flew, and a SNCC car’s tires were slashed.”

Will the Gentleman Yield: The Congressional Record Humor Book
Dewey: 328.7300207
Random Sentence: “I await with eager anticipation my trophy.”

Reply

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)