Take out a subscription to the New Statesman and you will get a free copy of Noam Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects. Fair enough, of course, that a left magazine should offer a book by a leading left intellectual.
However, if you go for the direct debit option:-
# Subscribe today and receive 12 issues for just £1 each.
# Plus receive a free copy of The Case for God by Karen Armstrong.
At this point classicists howl O tempora! O mores! while other old New Statesmen readers say, WTF? How has the New Statesman suddenly got religion - and not even rigorous closely-argued religion but a lot of fluffy God is everything kind and compassionate that nice people can approve of? The true believers presumably don’t care for this agnosticism that dares not speak its name, and secular leftists just feel pissed off.
I was once given a subscription to the New Statesman and they chucked in Sweet Freedom, a feminist book. That was back in the 1980s.
So here’s a suggestion for a thesis:- Subscribing To These Views: Deconstructing the Free Books Offers in the New Statesman. The writer traces what books were offered with a subscription, starting from the beginning of the magazine’s life with Sweatshop Conditions in the East End; then moving on to Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation; through to The Nation’s Health; The Tragedy of Indochina; Beyond the Cold War and so on
As for The Spectator, subscribe and you get 6 bottles of wine.
However, if you go for the direct debit option:-
# Subscribe today and receive 12 issues for just £1 each.
# Plus receive a free copy of The Case for God by Karen Armstrong.
At this point classicists howl O tempora! O mores! while other old New Statesmen readers say, WTF? How has the New Statesman suddenly got religion - and not even rigorous closely-argued religion but a lot of fluffy God is everything kind and compassionate that nice people can approve of? The true believers presumably don’t care for this agnosticism that dares not speak its name, and secular leftists just feel pissed off.
I was once given a subscription to the New Statesman and they chucked in Sweet Freedom, a feminist book. That was back in the 1980s.
So here’s a suggestion for a thesis:- Subscribing To These Views: Deconstructing the Free Books Offers in the New Statesman. The writer traces what books were offered with a subscription, starting from the beginning of the magazine’s life with Sweatshop Conditions in the East End; then moving on to Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation; through to The Nation’s Health; The Tragedy of Indochina; Beyond the Cold War and so on
As for The Spectator, subscribe and you get 6 bottles of wine.
Case for God
Case of wine
Don't judge Karen Armstrong by the blurb. She's a serious historian of religion, and not fluffy in any sense of the word.
Posted by: Norman Lamont (no relation!) | 05 August 2010 at 01:10 PM
... and 'How has the New Statesman suddenly got religion?' most likely a deal with whoever publishes Armstrong's book. If the deal on offer had been Jeremy Clarkson you'd have had that.
Posted by: Norman Lamont (no relation!) | 05 August 2010 at 01:12 PM
I have to say I don't know how these deals work. But would a publisher offer Jeremy Clarkson and wouldn't the NS think it would make them look a bit crap if they took up that offer?
Posted by: Rosie | 07 August 2010 at 10:25 PM