I.F. Stone
Aug. 11th, 2007 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumWhen I was a whelp, Stone was still around. I recall reading a magazine article by him, this was when I was a journalism student. I'd seen the name, but not read any of his stuff.
So when a copy of, "The Trial of Socrates" came into my folks store (where I spent 15-20 hours a week), I snagged it. Man, that was one hell of a book. It showed Stone in all his glory.
How, he wondered, did so strong a bastion of free speech as Athens, come to condemn a man for speaking? His conclusions (in short, Socrates used the Athenian courts to commit suicide) were solid. Why? Because he dug into the material, looked into the primary sources.
There's a lot more in that book (my lack of sympathy for Plato comes out of it).
Dan Froomkin opened a recent column like this, The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81.
He was, if you hadn't guessed, talking about I.F. Stone.
It's a solid piece, and worth reading, as is the biography Froomkin refers to.
Better yet, get one of Stone's books, and read that. Find a copy of Stone's Weekly, and read that.
If you really want to take it to heart, find some document dump, or a hearing transcript, and do what Stone did them, read it.
Then write.
So when a copy of, "The Trial of Socrates" came into my folks store (where I spent 15-20 hours a week), I snagged it. Man, that was one hell of a book. It showed Stone in all his glory.
How, he wondered, did so strong a bastion of free speech as Athens, come to condemn a man for speaking? His conclusions (in short, Socrates used the Athenian courts to commit suicide) were solid. Why? Because he dug into the material, looked into the primary sources.
There's a lot more in that book (my lack of sympathy for Plato comes out of it).
Dan Froomkin opened a recent column like this, The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81.
He was, if you hadn't guessed, talking about I.F. Stone.
It's a solid piece, and worth reading, as is the biography Froomkin refers to.
Better yet, get one of Stone's books, and read that. Find a copy of Stone's Weekly, and read that.
If you really want to take it to heart, find some document dump, or a hearing transcript, and do what Stone did them, read it.
Then write.
