February 8th, 2007 by zen

VERTICAL EXPERTS THINKING HORIZONTALLY

I just saw this book for the first time today while reading Dr. Nexon’s post at The Duck of Minerva on the recent review in International Affairs.

Nexon and Neumann have a brilliant touchstone concept for Generation Y here. Even the students who dislike reading have read Harry Potter. A quick poll of my own students revealed a number just shy of 100% have read at least one book in the series and a slight majority have read them all. A large majority have watched every Harry Potter movie. They are saturated in all things Potter the way an earlier generation of baby boomers drank deeply of The Lord of the Rings.

Posted in duck of minerva, harry potter, horizontal thinking, IR, nexon | 3 comments

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  1. J.:

    February 9th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

    “They are saturated in all things Potter the way an earlier generation of baby boomers drank deeply of The Lord of the Rings.”

    Their loss. Rowlings will never match Tolkien’s brilliance.

  2. mark:

    February 9th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    Very much Agreed. But in all fairness, Tolkien was a philologist and Oxford lit professor in an era of high scholarship while Rowlings was, a welfare mom ? Can’t recall exactly but she wasn’t primed for success.

  3. Daniel Nexon:

    February 9th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

    Indeed. We decided to focus on Harry Potter both for the reasons Mark suggests and because there a host of interesting intersections with globalization, religious politics, and so forth. If we’d been going for our favorite young adult fantasy, some of us would’ve chosen different.

    Interestingly enough, I’ve heard that an American Political Science Association panel on Tolkein a few years was absolutely packed.