Books

David Brooks takes the reader on a journey to the past, to a time when self-sacrifice conjoined with self-effacement created a moral ethos that was the de facto standard for the American culture. He homes-in on the principles of rendering good service, of doing what is good for the community, and paying homage to the greater good. 

We get old and what is erased? If that is the philosophical question to be explored in this sweeping work (no pun intended), then Ivan Klima answers it. It is difficult to fall in love with “Love and Garbage.” The title alone feels like the author is intent on destroying love the same way one would toss garbage into a incinerator to watch it explode. The narrative covers the protagonist’s childhood through to his adulthood—he is a great literary writer reduced to being a street sweeper by the Czech Communist regime that censors his work.