Andrew's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:50:25 -0800 60 Andrew's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)]]> 49124039 1201 George R.R. Martin Andrew 0 4.51 2011 A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/21
date added: 2023/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Fathers and Sons 2924651
This new translation, specially commissioned for the Oxford World's Classics, is the first to draw on Turgenev's working manuscript, which only came to light in 1988.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
]]> 215 Ivan Turgenev 019953604X Andrew 5 russian 3.97 1862 Fathers and Sons
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1862
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/03
date added: 2023/12/10
shelves: russian
review:
I am a bit biased for this book. I wrote my first college paper on it in a 19th century Russian literature class. The grader called my language "too flowery," which helped put me on track for a drier college style. I kept the paper I wrote and the main thesis was that Bazarov was never the nihilist he pretended to be, and that Odinstova forced him to become the romantic he always was. Reading it again, I am not sure he ever really became a romantic. He just had a little bit of romance and, after experiencing this, was unable to make the successful leap towards the stable "aristocratic" lifestyle his nihilist apprentice Arkady would later make with such ease. Although in my paper I referred opaquely to class distinctions, they remained underdeveloped and were far from the center of my argument. The attempts of the liberal landowners to transition their status during the end of serfdom, the generational gap between the fathers and sons, the nuanced distinctions between all of the families involved in terms of their expression of class and status � these were mostly lost on me. What struck me most in this last reading were the passages at Bazarov's home when his and Arkady's friendship is falling apart. The subtle ways bonhomie can turn to exchanges so hurtful the friendship is forever spoiled: I realized that no other works I have read had translated my own experiences of dying friendships and the mixture of growth, loss, and pain that comes with them. As I read these parts my head filled with memories both recent and decades past. From across 150 years and half a world away � it struck me as quite fresh and stayed with me for days.
]]> <![CDATA[The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin Classics)]]> 964338
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 222 John Mandeville 0141441437 Andrew 3 travel 3.39 1357 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin Classics)
author: John Mandeville
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1357
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/15
date added: 2023/03/19
shelves: travel
review:
Moseley's introduction to this book is very important for making sense of it. As he points out, much of the interesting in this book is in the radically weird bits � the people who survive on the smell of apples that are prominently discussed on the back of the Penguin edition cover � but the book is much more than that. It is part pilgrimage guide, part retelling of existing travel narratives, and part indulgence in the weird, monstrous, and wonderful. When I had picked up this book years ago I couldn't get myself beyond the latter category. I read the descriptions as the bizarre phantasies of a European culture that knew precious little about the world. The fact that Sir John Mandeville, whoever he was, didn't visit them made the book appear a forgery. Instead, like maps of the time, this book blends the partially known with the barely known. It recycles existing travel narratives, many from 13th century merchants and missionary-explorers (in particular Odoric of Pordenone) to the Mongolian states, as well as Crusader-era accounts, to give accounts of the "islands" (as I learned from the editor, the term often must means lands and not land surrounded by water) of Asia. At the fringes of these accounts, we meet the blemmyes, giants, and other impossible peoples. In fact, this fantastic accounts actually comprise little of the book. The discussions of Prester John and the religious wonders were common in contemporary accounts. Moseley argues that Mandeville has an agenda: in an early push back against ethnocentrism, he is suggesting that Christians shouldn't judge the drastically alterior in the world. God made all of these peoples, whether agreeable or not. Furthermore, strange habits elsewhere have analogs back at home, such as in marriage customs. Like Marco Polo's travels, the books sections are at times very descriptive and read a bit dry.
]]> <![CDATA[The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World]]> 55437277 An epic history of the Mongols as we have never seen them―not just conquerors but also city builders, diplomats, and supple economic thinkers who constructed one of the most influential empires in history.

The Mongols are widely known for one thing: conquest. In the first comprehensive history of the Horde, the western portion of the Mongol empire that arose after the death of Chinggis Khan, Marie Favereau shows that the accomplishments of the Mongols extended far beyond war. For three hundred years, the Horde was no less a force in global development than Rome had been. It left behind a profound legacy in Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, palpable to this day.

Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful sources of cross-border integration in world history. The Horde was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was a conduit for exchanges across thousands of miles. Its unique political regime―a complex power-sharing arrangement among the khan and the nobility―rewarded skillful administrators and diplomats and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative. From its capital at Sarai on the lower Volga River, the Horde provided a governance model for Russia, influenced social practice and state structure across Islamic cultures, disseminated sophisticated theories about the natural world, and introduced novel ideas of religious tolerance.

The Horde is the eloquent, ambitious, and definitive portrait of an empire little understood and too readily dismissed. Challenging conceptions of nomads as peripheral to history, Favereau makes clear that we live in a world inherited from the Mongol moment.]]> 377 Marie Favereau 0674244214 Andrew 4 3.79 2021 The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World
author: Marie Favereau
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West]]> 7134280 248 Morris Rossabi 0520262379 Andrew 4 travel, mongols 3.79 1992 Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West
author: Morris Rossabi
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: travel, mongols
review:
Rossabi shares the incredible story of Rabban Sauma, a 13th century Nestorian Christian Mongol who traveled from Beijing to Rome, Paris, and even Bordeaux. Sauma also spent time in contemporary Persia and Armenia when they were part of the Ilkhanate, as well as Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. On the face of it then, this 180 page book promises to be an excellent story given the first-hand source materials. Leading an embassy to gain European support for a war against the Mamluks, Sauma kept a diary and wrote a report for his fellow Nestorians. However, Sauma's account was heavily redacted by an early translator and compiler. The result is much of Rossabi's book is based on other primary and secondary accounts that flesh out the historical context of the period: its politics, religious diversity, and urban and architectural history. By the second half of the book, when Sauma is in Europe, much of Rossabi's narrative is evaluating the holy relics that Sauma writes most about � were they authentic? Where did they originate? Rossabi also devotes pages describing the buildings that Sauma did or didn't comment on. I felt that a discussion of authenticity in an early travel book was besides the point. More on Nestorian interest in pilgrimage and relics and its context with other pilgrimage traditions in Central Asia (such as Sufism) would have been more faithful as a cultural history. But Rossabi's approach seems to be more that of the philologist. It's an approach that curtails the wonder in the account; nevertheless, Rossabi provides a steady hand as he illuminates this under-appreciated early modern traveler. The book leaves us frustrated about what more we would learn if Sauma's account hadn't been redacted.
]]> <![CDATA[Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (Weatherhead Books on Asia)]]> 13696390
Much like the quasi-fictional adventures in map-reading and remapping explored by Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, Dung Kai-cheung's novel challenges the representation of place and history and the limits of technical and scientific media in reconstructing a history. It best exemplifies the author's versatility and experimentation, along with China's rapidly evolving literary culture, by blending fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a story about succeeding and failing to recapture the things we lose. Playing with a variety of styles and subjects, Dung Kai-cheung inventively engages with the fate of Hong Kong since its British "handover" in 1997, which officially marked the end of colonial rule and the beginning of an uncharted future.]]> 153 Dung Kai-cheung 023116100X Andrew 4 3.43 1997 Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
author: Dung Kai-cheung
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/16
date added: 2023/01/16
shelves:
review:
This book is rich with ideas, conveyed in 3�4 page chapters (of which there are 51 total) and presented in 4 thematic section. As stated in the book's introduction, the impressionistic stories feel a bit like Borges or Calvini, but they are also very much their own. I was impressed by how strongly Dung stuck to the theme of cartography. The book bursts with possible historical maps of Hong Kong that are very plausible. While most of the maps are (I believe) fictional, geographers and map enthusiasts will have seen many maps like them, whether they related to coasts, topography, urban zoning, or geology. My favorite section was the third, called "Streets." It reminded me much of popular Chinese urban gazetteers that explore the history of a place through its toponymy. There is no plot that unites the chapters or sections. Many of the chapters use the narrative device of a future archeology of maps to animate two or three interpretive camps that disagree about the meaning of street names, map legends, or some other visual device that has implications for understanding social life in the city. This is an effective way of driving the stories, but sometimes feels a bit silly or forced. The scholarly schools that are invoked are impossibly esoteric. Although I was compelled to read the book to completion (and I did), the longer I read it the fewer number of chapters I could get through in a single sitting. Dung's passages are simultaneously meditative and theoretical, which demands � and rewards � readers' attention.
]]> Dance Dance Dance 17800 Alternate cover edition here.

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.]]> 393 Haruki Murakami 0099448769 Andrew 4 4.06 1988 Dance Dance Dance
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2008/02/01
date added: 2022/06/09
shelves:
review:
I give this book 4 stars in relation to other Murakami I've read. This book is not the apex of his work, nor is it the worst. Its more or less what I would expect a random Murakami book I've read to be about. Fast paced Japanese life - "late-stage capitalism" - disconnectedness - fantasy - finding the extraordinary in very ordinary places. Murakami's biggest strength seems to be his ability to pull the extraordinary out of the ordinary without making it seem absurd or dorky. He channels our desire to pull beauty and mystification out of the most banal of banalities. In this case, its a call girl and scummy hotel - things that Murakami sees as portals to the fantastic.
]]> The Places in Between 95643 299 Rory Stewart 0156031566 Andrew 4 3.94 2004 The Places in Between
author: Rory Stewart
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2021/09/06
shelves:
review:
His walk really puts you “on the map:� snow, ruins, armed guards, diarrhea, and more. Rory walks across central Afghanistan sleeping in people’s homes and pretending to be a historian. Book is atmospheric and well-written, if its ethics are questionable. Tie-ins with Babur’s journey of conquest give a deeper stylistic flavor and elevate readers� pretensions of deeper understanding of this ostensibly timeless place. The differences in groups and their politics he highlights probably came into use in Rory’s later career as a neocolonial administrator. Whether it did any good is tough question in 2001.
]]> Did Marco Polo Go to China? 339204 A Description of the World, ranks among the most famous and influential books ever published. In this fascinating piece of historical detection, marking the 700th anniversary of Polo’s journey, Frances Wood questions whether Marco Polo ever reached the country he so vividly described. Why, in his romantic and seemingly detailed account, is there no mention of such fundamentals of Chinese life as tea, foot-binding, or even the Great Wall? Did he really bring back pasta and ice cream to Italy? And why, given China’s extensive and even obsessive record-keeping, is there no mention of Marco Polo anywhere in the archives?Sure to spark controversy, Did Marco Polo Go to China? tries to solve these and other inconsistencies by carefully examining the Polo family history, Marco Polo’s activities as a merchant, the preparation of his book, and the imperial Chinese records. The result is a lucid and readable look at medieval European and Chinese history, and the characters and events that shaped this extraordinary and enduring myth.]]> 208 Frances Wood 0813389992 Andrew 4
Wood makes two important points that call into doubt Polo’s presence in China: 1) that many of the most memorable and fantastical bits of Polo's stories only emerge in 16th century editions, and that no "original" copies exist (only copies of early copies, which in addition to suffering copying errors were also translated to other languages). This makes it hard to isolate Polo's voice from the embellishments of later copyists and publishers trying to sell a good story to their audiences; 2) that Polo leaves out many obvious aspects of Chinese geography and society that would later have a magnetic effect on the European imagination: the Great Wall, tea, foot binding, chopsticks, etc. This is odd because Polo was allegedly there for seventeen years. Even if Marco spent most of his time in a Mongolian ger yurt, it would have been hard for him to avoid tea and Chinese writing.

At this point it is important to note that the title of the book is "Did Marco Polo go to China?" not "Did Marco Polo actually go anywhere in Asia?" It could be said that Polo spent much time in the Mongolian-ruled lands of Central and Inner Asia, but nonetheless, Woods argues, his silence about important and enduring elements of Chinese culture is suspect, as are his frequent errors about the cities he claims to have visited, or even, possibly, spent time governing. There is a complementary silence in the Mongolian and Chinese sources about the role of any Polos, Italians, or even "Franks" in the positions and places Marco Polo claimed to have held and visited. Wood determines that Marco Polo probably never left the Black Sea, and that the Description is compiled from Persian guidebooks, Polo family knowledge, and other accounts from travelers who were moving around Eurasia at the time.

The skepticism seems reasonable to me, and I certainly will look at Polo's writings with a more critical eye, as a more measured Mandeville, giving distorted and embellished information rather than conveying fantasy for entertainment's sake. Polo gets a lot wrong, but the writings contained in the book are a fascinating source of early European knowledge about China that the Mongolian Empire's cosmopolitan character made available. The vast amount of scholarship about what Polo may or may not have seen has revealed a network of linguistic and geographic interaction that makes his story so hard to verify or completely disprove.]]> 3.34 1995 Did Marco Polo Go to China?
author: Frances Wood
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.34
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/06
date added: 2021/08/31
shelves:
review:
A fun and easily comprehensible book that examines the veracity of Marco Polo's "Description of the World." Wood writes with wit and with a deep knowledge of China. Many reviewers have nitpicked this book for "getting it wrong" and suggested that Wood lacks the necessary knowledge to write such a book. Though I have no deep knowledge of the materials, it seems odd to me how angry the reaction against the text is, but as Wood points out, it is unpopular to go against a powerful and deeply entrenched myth.

Wood makes two important points that call into doubt Polo’s presence in China: 1) that many of the most memorable and fantastical bits of Polo's stories only emerge in 16th century editions, and that no "original" copies exist (only copies of early copies, which in addition to suffering copying errors were also translated to other languages). This makes it hard to isolate Polo's voice from the embellishments of later copyists and publishers trying to sell a good story to their audiences; 2) that Polo leaves out many obvious aspects of Chinese geography and society that would later have a magnetic effect on the European imagination: the Great Wall, tea, foot binding, chopsticks, etc. This is odd because Polo was allegedly there for seventeen years. Even if Marco spent most of his time in a Mongolian ger yurt, it would have been hard for him to avoid tea and Chinese writing.

At this point it is important to note that the title of the book is "Did Marco Polo go to China?" not "Did Marco Polo actually go anywhere in Asia?" It could be said that Polo spent much time in the Mongolian-ruled lands of Central and Inner Asia, but nonetheless, Woods argues, his silence about important and enduring elements of Chinese culture is suspect, as are his frequent errors about the cities he claims to have visited, or even, possibly, spent time governing. There is a complementary silence in the Mongolian and Chinese sources about the role of any Polos, Italians, or even "Franks" in the positions and places Marco Polo claimed to have held and visited. Wood determines that Marco Polo probably never left the Black Sea, and that the Description is compiled from Persian guidebooks, Polo family knowledge, and other accounts from travelers who were moving around Eurasia at the time.

The skepticism seems reasonable to me, and I certainly will look at Polo's writings with a more critical eye, as a more measured Mandeville, giving distorted and embellished information rather than conveying fantasy for entertainment's sake. Polo gets a lot wrong, but the writings contained in the book are a fascinating source of early European knowledge about China that the Mongolian Empire's cosmopolitan character made available. The vast amount of scholarship about what Polo may or may not have seen has revealed a network of linguistic and geographic interaction that makes his story so hard to verify or completely disprove.
]]> <![CDATA[A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler]]> 126049 A Sense of the World is a spellbinding and moving rediscovery of one of history's most epic lives—a story to awaken our own senses of awe and wonder.]]> 382 Jason Roberts 0007161069 Andrew 3 4.09 2006 A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler
author: Jason Roberts
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2007/10/01
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
This book started out excited and interesting. The theme is a blind traveller who was publishing stories he wrote from a "noctograph," which allows the blind to write (there is a picture in the book). The book is full of interesting period information and tidbits about the life of this blind noble English traveller (he runs alongside his carriage on a daily basis for exercise. Unfortunately, the author's writing style is flowery and overblown. He chooses to write in a faux period style which, after a few hundred pages, grows tiring. I had to put the book down eventually, because the obnoxious writing style was annoying me too much and preventing the story from being told. This book could be half the size if the author had chosen to remove the distracting literary flourishes.
]]> <![CDATA[The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century]]> 18667855 Ěý
In May 1315, it started to rain. It didn’t stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe’s livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives—one eighth of Europe’s total population.
Ěý
William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland’s William Wallace, and the luckless Edward II and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history’s best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities.]]> 320 William Rosen 0670025895 Andrew 2 3.50 2014 The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century
author: William Rosen
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2016/12/20
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
As others have pointed out, this book's title has little relation to its contents. The book is mostly a military history of the Scottish wars for independence in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. "Climate change" is evoked more as a marketing gimmick than anything else. I picked up this book hoping to read about climate change and the Great Famine of the 14th century but ended up learning about Black Douglas' hobelars and England's continental European possessions. Rosen's writing is extremely tangential, and he can't resist throwing in any bit that may be novel to the reader. Other reviewers (and the blurbs on the back of the jacket) suggest that this is a strength and that he does it artfully. However, I found it very annoying. After failing to read about climate change (beyond a flourish in the introduction) or the Great Famine for 100 pages I was beginning to believe that this book was nothing but a prolonged tangent, but than I realized that is was nothing more than a history of Scotland and stopped waiting for it to recombobulate. Rosen insists on putting climate change in the story but can't seem to commit to what exactly it does. He suggests that manorialism was a "natural" "evolution" for a system to feed Europeans during the Medieval Warming Period (though resists such a determinist notion at other points in the text), and that its unraveling is related to climate - or to nationalism, which in turn emerged because of weak papal authority in some places, which was in turn driven by climate? No, he doesn't say that. But that is another problem - Rosen argues at the intro and in the conclusion that historians make their narratives arbitrarily, choosing which threads to pick up and which to neglect. But good historians both write powerful narratives and illuminate some element of causality or connection. Simply throwing down everything and saying pick your own adventure make for an annoying read and does a disservice to the readers.
]]> The Metamorphosis of Plants 6535036 156 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0262013096 Andrew 4 4.18 1790 The Metamorphosis of Plants
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1790
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/19
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
The introduction is insightful. The editor frames what it was that Goethe was doing and the introduces the key concepts and ideas that guide the work. Polarization, refinement of fluids, homology of plant structures - these ideas belong not just to plant physiology, but are empirically observable details that give us insight into the greater physical and metaphysical unity of nature. This edition contains many new photographs, as well as older drawings, that helpfully illustrate somewhat Goethe's quasi-technical writing. Poems have also been inserted to break up the rhythm of the text. The book's presentation gives off coffee-table pretensions, but why not? You will never think about plants in the same way again. Even the smallest weed contains within it the dogged drive to transform itself.
]]> <![CDATA[The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology]]> 742868
This book provides the first serious account of the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful millenarian and occult sects that thrived in Germany and Austria almost fifty years before the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.

These millenarian sects (principally the Ariosophists) espoused a mixture of popular nationalism, Aryan racism, and occultism to support their advocacy of German world-rule. Over time their ideas and symbols, filtered through nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party, came to exert a strong influence on Himmler's SS.

The fantasies thus fueled were played out with terrifying consequences in the realities structured into the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the hellish museums of Nazi apocalypse, had psychic roots reaching back to millenial visions of occult sects. Beyond what the TImes Literary Supplement calls an intriguing study of apocalyptic fantasies, this bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.]]> 293 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke 0814730604 Andrew 5 3.89 1982 The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology
author: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/30
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
I thought this book was going to mostly be about theosophy, but it ended up being about conspiracy theory. The parallels between QAnon and the various occult societies discussed in the book gave me pause. At the heart of their affinity is the belief that the world is full of hidden codes that only those in the know can interpret. In the case of the occultists in this book that means reading heraldry and timber beams in old houses for esoteric messages. These people were not at the margins of society. They held deeply racist views and feared losing their established social position to those they deemed racial (and religious) inferiors. There are also differences from today. For instance, many of the figures in the book pretended to have ancient noble priestly blood and took on fake “von� names. In the end, the book is less illustrative of how these theories directly informed Nazism than the dangers of a political and intellectual climate that nurtures absurdities and elevates frauds and lunatics.
]]> <![CDATA[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]> 10374 Lord Jim.

Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.]]> 400 Haruki Murakami Andrew 3 4.14 1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2021/06/09
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
I had fond memories of reading this 15 years ago. This time around I appreciated the “End of the World� scenario but found the modern Japan story grating. The book keeps momentum by switching between the stories but I could do without the latter. Too much description of food and sex. I don’t know how you could walk away from this and not view Murakami as sexist. Women just throw themselves at his male character.
]]> Old Demons, New Deities 34881501
Modern Tibetan literature is just under forty years old: its birth dates to 1980, when the first Tibetan language journal was published in Lhasa. Since then, short stories have become one of the primary modern Tibetan art forms. Through these sometimes absurd, sometimes strange, and always moving stories, the English-reading audience gets an authentic look at the lives of ordinary, secular, modern Tibetans navigating the space between tradition and modernity, occupation and exile, the personal and the national. The setting may be the Himalayas, an Indian railway, or a New York City brothel, but the insights into an ancient culture and the lives and concerns of a modern people are real, and powerful.

For this anthology, editor and translator Tenzin Dickie has collected 21 short stories by 16 of the most respected and well known Tibetan writers working today, including Pema Bhum, Pema Tseden, Tsering Dhondup, Woeser, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Kyabchen Dedrol, and Jamyang Norbu.]]> 286 Tenzin Dickie Andrew 5 currently-reading 4.12 Old Demons, New Deities
author: Tenzin Dickie
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:
Excellent selection of writings from Tibetan authors from within and outside of political China. Reading these stories alongside one another, the differences in personal background and location of upbringing of the authors are very clear. What they all share is the difficult act of navigating the new while still remaining faithful to family and tradition.
]]> <![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]> 40163119
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.

Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]> 441 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385521316 Andrew 5 4.47 2018 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
A great introduction to not only the Troubles, but to republican politics in general. Also a fascinating study in the slow unraveling of insurgency communities after violent hostilities come to an end: some become politicians, while others become alcoholics. It is also bewildering to read about the urban chaos of the Troubles, which provides a sad yet fascinating case of urban political geography.
]]> RED POPPIES 1282491 444 Alai 0618340696 Andrew 2 3.62 1998 RED POPPIES
author: Alai
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/08/30
shelves:
review:
I thought my problem with this book was going to be that it towed the Party line by portraying the Tibetan people as barbaric and subject to despotic theocracy. While it certainly did portray Tibetan people as barbaric and subject to despotic feudal power, my main issues lay elsewhere. All of the characters are so unlikeable and the protagonist - who is either an "idiot" or very smart - is quite repulsive. I pushed my way through the book to the end, but only because I was trying to recall whether it was a different novel than one I read 15 years ago about Tibetans being liberated by the CCP. It wasn't. I also wonder whether the translation of the book does a disservice. I have heard excerpts of the Chinese original spoken by Alai, and it read quite poetically. In this translation, the more stylistic passages are jarring given the crudeness and cruelty of the characters.
]]> The Sheltering Sky 243598 The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.]]> 342 Paul Bowles 0141023422 Andrew 3 3.92 1949 The Sheltering Sky
author: Paul Bowles
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1949
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/05/20
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A book where the retribution you hope the characters will face keeps you going. Passages of ennui-induced existential naval gazing less interesting than they wanted to be. Bowles has little empathy for “the natives� but also little for his tourists, so I suppose it equals out in the end (?)
]]> <![CDATA[The 39 Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)]]> 153492 100 John Buchan 1419151126 Andrew 4 3.62 1915 The 39 Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)
author: John Buchan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1915
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/05/20
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review:
Every brief chapter moves briskly along to a thrilling end. Better than the film and you can pick up the rich English vocabulary for landscapes of heath and moor. Being a patriotic book, it will fill you with sense of Ministry-approved satisfaction. Think a bit more about it and it’s uncomfortable. Anti-Semitic overtones resonate with the global conspiracism of our times.
]]> <![CDATA[On Ancient Central Asian Tracks]]> 1515519
Preface

This book is meant to present a succinct account of the explorations, antiquarian and geographical, which I had the good fortune to carry out in Chinese Turkistan and adjacent parts of innermost Asia. The years spent on hard travel in those little-known regions, difficult of access and trying in their physical features, remain among the happiest memories of my life. But more strenuous still and longer were the years needed for the elaboration of the abundant scientific results which my three Central-Asian expeditions had yielded.


By the publication of personal narratives on the first two journeys and of eleven heavy quarto volumes of detailed reports on all three, I may well believe my duty done in the matter of record. But with the exception of Rains of Desert Cathay, containing a full account of the personal experiences on my second expedition (1906-08), all the above publications have long ago passed out of print and are now difficult to secure.


Since the last of those labors were disposed of, fully twenty-seven years after my return from the first journey, I have been free to turn to new fields of archeological exploration farther south. But my recollections of those fruitful years spent in the deserts and mountains of innermost Asia are still as fresh and cherished as before. So when the President of Harvard University kindly invited me to deliver a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, Boston, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity offered to describe the travels and discoveries of those years in a condensed form suited for a wider public.


Considering the great extent and varied character of the explorations, it would have been still more difficult to achieve the requisite condensation had I not been able adequately to illustrate my account of them on the screen. This need made itse]]> Aurel Stein 8173031088 Andrew 4 3.79 1933 On Ancient Central Asian Tracks
author: Aurel Stein
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1933
rating: 4
read at: 2020/05/20
date added: 2020/05/20
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What really stuck with me from this book is, first, Stein’s evocative landscape descriptions, and second, the ease with which he and his assistants were able to literally pull out of the sand ancient artifacts. It’s worth a read if you are interested in either of these.
]]> <![CDATA[A History of the World in 12 Maps]]> 17674972 A fascinating look at twelve maps—from Ancient Greece to Google Earth—and how they changed our world

In this masterful study, historian and cartography expert Jerry Brotton explores a dozen of history’s most influential maps, from stone tablet to vibrant computer screen. Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we—literally—look at our present world.

As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also conjures the worlds that produced these notable works of cartography and tells the stories of those who created, used, and misused them for their own ends.]]> 521 Jerry Brotton 0670023396 Andrew 5 3.77 2012 A History of the World in 12 Maps
author: Jerry Brotton
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/05/20
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I suppose you could quibble with the choice of maps, but Brotton does a fine job breathing life into these maps and the eras that produced them. I especially enjoyed the technical discussions, such as how globes used to be sold flat and you had to assemble them yourself.
]]> Around The World In 80 Days 1038673 183 Jules Verne 140695294X Andrew 5 The colonial tropes came across to me as more amusing and curious than directly offensive, though others might disagree. I really enjoyed the insight into the British Empire land/sea transport network of the period from the perspective of a traveller, although apparently Verne had not left France at this point in his life and constructed these stories mostly from newspaper clips.]]> 3.96 Around The World In 80 Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2014/06/16
date added: 2019/05/27
shelves:
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What a fun book. I was prepared to find it a bit tedious and set it aside after a few chapters, but instead I got plugged in and really had a phantastic time. The adventures of a bygone world of transportation innovation.
The colonial tropes came across to me as more amusing and curious than directly offensive, though others might disagree. I really enjoyed the insight into the British Empire land/sea transport network of the period from the perspective of a traveller, although apparently Verne had not left France at this point in his life and constructed these stories mostly from newspaper clips.
]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Andrew 2 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2019/03/08
date added: 2019/03/09
shelves:
review:
This book is an essay about human cruelty, moral aimlessness, and unhappiness extended to 466 pages by incorporating a lot of unnecessary material. Based on front material in the book, it seems to be built out of a world history course that Professor Harari offers. Most of the book's chapters are rehashes of popular non-fiction bestsellers. You have a quick retread of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel at the beginning, and the later chapters on empire and technology are the stuff of "How did the West do it?" genre? Harari injects some life to this by using alternative examples. Cortes not Pizarro, Dutch imperialism rather than British imperialisms. There are some interesting parts, such as the discussion of trading stock companies, but the books chapters run by so quickly, they seem primed more to deepen superficial prejudices rather than challenge them. For instance, the chapter on the scientific revolution impresses you with Western intervention and suggests that there was a holistic cultural context that encouraged it, but then at the end turns about face, and argues against the chauvinism of suggesting one culture is superior to another. Harari often turns to examples of Nazis and Communists at the ends of his chapters in order to quickly get to the extremes of any perspective. He throws out liberal humanism as non-biological, but then quickly throws us Hitler and Aryans to remind us that biology is bad too. In the end, Harari's work seems to have a strong religious bent, for good and for bad. Buddhists are the closest to realizing that the pursuit of happiness is a fool's errand, and humans endanger themselves by playing God. The psychological and science fiction arguments at the end of the book are the culmination of Harari's narrative thrust, but they are also unconvincing. Harari gets to his argument about happiness by unveiling the cliche that money can't bring happiness. A real cross cultural interrogation of the concept might have been more interesting. Finally, Harari argues that humans' scientific endeavors are caught up in what he calls the "Gilgamesh Project," the pursuit of a-mortality. But he also argues that science is always part of a "military-industrial-scientific" apparatus and that ultimately capital and violence shape the direction of research? Which is it? Life or death? He even dismisses a-mortality at the end of the book because long-lived people will be afraid of accidents or losing their friends. Harari frequently invokes dystopian images of inhumane factory farming that make animals miserable as perhaps the most glaring moral imperative. Harari is able to do this effectively because of the species-wide perspective that he takes - the domesticated chicken absolutely lives a pitiable, unnatural, and agency-deprived life. But after trashing humanism (the problematic ideology from which we draw our unmistakably selective and unequal deployments of "humane" treatment for our and other species) and after reducing other religious systems and moral frameworks to interchangeable cultural garments, why does Harari seem so moved by these animals? Is there another moral perspective that he would like to promote? How would he ground it? A post-humanism that respects all biological life? This extended essay would be more effective, and certainly more focused, if the answers to these questions were clearer.
]]> <![CDATA[Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy: China's Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands (New Cold War History)]]> 23371461
What Chinese policymakers confronted in Tibet, Khan argues, was not a "third world" but a "fourth world" Beijing was dealing with peoples whose ways were defined by statelessness. As it sought to tighten control over the restive borderlands, Mao's China moved from a lighter hand to a harder, heavier imperial structure. That change triggered long-lasting shifts in Chinese foreign policy. Moving from capital cities to far-flung mountain villages, from top diplomats to nomads crossing disputed boundaries in search of pasture, this book shows Cold War China as it has never been seen before and reveals the deep influence of the Tibetan crisis on the political fabric of present-day China.]]> 189 Sulmaan Wasif Khan 146962110X Andrew 0
The usage of empire in a loose sense if part of a recent historical and anthropological interest in re-defining empire in order to shed better light on the sleight of hand that converted empires into nations in the 20th century. How many imperial traits lingered on? Did the emperor simply changed clothes? Calling the PRC, India, and other states "empires" is tricky because it conceals as much as it reveals. New continuities surface, but in the search for similarities differences are confused. While the case can be made that the PRC in Tibetan is based on imperial land claims and colonial style rule, I am not convinced China is best understood as empire. The PRC committed so many resources to nation-building and ideological indoctrination, that I find it hard to think that "empire" best captures its historical project. I see the temptation to do so in the Tibetan case, but I think that the usage of the term "fourth world" also carries risks. In treating Tibet as a more or less stateless region in which empire-states coordinate political and economic interests, we are encouraged to forget plateau state formations. We also leave unchallenged our own conceptions of "state" and political power. ]]> 3.89 2015 Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy: China's Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands (New Cold War History)
author: Sulmaan Wasif Khan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2016/07/27
date added: 2018/07/18
shelves:
review:
A slim book that covers border tensions between India and China in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Khan traces what he calls the PRC's shift from "empire-lite to a harder, heavier form of empire." This phrase will be repeated over and over again throughout the book. He sees Tibet as a "forth world" zone that rests between two third world powers. At this point in time post-colonial countries were trying to hammer out a third world way modus vivendi that rested on the principles of peace and non-interference. The Tibetan border zone, as a forth world zone, makes this modus vivendi difficult. The title of the book alludes to the inscrutable identities of the people living in the Tibetan borderlands. They had professions that could work across Himalayan borders (such as the grain-for-salt trade) and backgrounds that reflected the diverse nature of the peoples in this zone (such as the Kaji - a mixture of Kashmiri Muslim and Tibetan cultural traits). These people were often suspect of spying. Khan argues that their actions put Beijing - which feared political dismemberment and spies - on edge, and helped accelerate the collapse of an Afro-Asian third world pact and the arrival of the "harder, heavier form of empire" in Tibet. This form of empire manifests itself through the creation of unitary identities and hardened boundaries.

The usage of empire in a loose sense if part of a recent historical and anthropological interest in re-defining empire in order to shed better light on the sleight of hand that converted empires into nations in the 20th century. How many imperial traits lingered on? Did the emperor simply changed clothes? Calling the PRC, India, and other states "empires" is tricky because it conceals as much as it reveals. New continuities surface, but in the search for similarities differences are confused. While the case can be made that the PRC in Tibetan is based on imperial land claims and colonial style rule, I am not convinced China is best understood as empire. The PRC committed so many resources to nation-building and ideological indoctrination, that I find it hard to think that "empire" best captures its historical project. I see the temptation to do so in the Tibetan case, but I think that the usage of the term "fourth world" also carries risks. In treating Tibet as a more or less stateless region in which empire-states coordinate political and economic interests, we are encouraged to forget plateau state formations. We also leave unchallenged our own conceptions of "state" and political power.
]]> History of Madness 770903 Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'âge Classique, few had heard of a thirty-four year old philosopher by the name of Michel Foucault. By the time an abridged English edition was published in 1967 as Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault had shaken the intellectual world.

This translation is the first English edition of the complete French texts of the first and second edition, including all prefaces and appendices, some of them unavailable in the existing French edition.

History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the exclusion and confinement of lepers. Why, Foucault asks, when the leper houses were emptied at the end of the Middle Ages, were they turned into places of confinement for the mad? Why, within the space of several months in 1656, was one out of every hundred people in Paris confined?

Shifting brilliantly from Descartes and early Enlightenment thought to the founding of the Hopital General in Paris and the work of early psychiatrists Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke, Foucault focuses throughout, not only on scientific and medical analyses of madness, but also on the philosophical and cultural values attached to the mad. He also urges us to recognize the creative and liberating forces that madness represents, brilliantly drawing on examples from Goya, Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud.

The History of Madness is an inspiring and classic work that challenges us to understand madness, reason and power and the forces that shape them. "]]> 736 Michel Foucault 0415277019 Andrew 4 4.26 1961 History of Madness
author: Michel Foucault
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/26
date added: 2018/06/28
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I must admit, I didn't read this entire book. However, I do feel I read enough of it to get the general idea. Foucault is trying to distance himself from history here. He dislikes the "victorious" narrative of history and instead seeks to build an anthropology based around one aspect of the human sciences, employing the method of "archaeology." Borrowing Nietzsche's genealogy approach, Foucault excavates various uses of confinement or separation of the "madman" overtime, and looks at shifts and discontinuities in the usage of madness and how society (of course, always French) seeks to deal with them. First the mad are put in boats and floated out to see, then they are kept in general penal facilities, and then put in their own special asylums, where even more shades of madness can be teased out. The mad are deemed unreasonable and unintelligible by society, and therefore no attempt is made to hear their voice, which Foucault represents as "silence" or a "murmur." Rational man, throughout all of these periods, finds it necessary to find a mad Other and cordon him off. Reason needs an intelligible unreason in order to define itself. Enter "homo dialecticus." In the appendix we see a hint of what may be Foucault the cultural theorist, hypothesizing that humans need unreason, in the form of dreams, fantasies, madness, etc., in order to define our existences. In the end, however, it is hard to get to any idea of a real "truth" beneath these dialectics, as each side is a cultural construct. In this text, we also see the beginnings of Foucault's ideas about sites serving as technologies of policing, which he will expand in later works dealing both with external policing and internal "self-care."
]]> Dead Souls 224155 402 Nikolai Gogol 0679776443 Andrew 4 3.94 1842 Dead Souls
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1842
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/06/27
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I always thought that this book would be darker, given its title and reputation (Gogol destroyed two manuscripts of Part II). But is actually a humous and absurd romp in the vein of Gogol's short stories. The dead souls are simply deceased peasants that the protagonist attempts to gather from a motley assortment of Russian land holders in order to mortgage them and establish himself. Part I follows the protagonist Chichikov as he attempts to collect the dead souls. Part II is based on manuscript drafts and leaves out large passages of the book. Stylistically, it also reads like a draft and has a distinct shift in tone.
]]> <![CDATA[A Stranger in Tibet: The Adventures of a Wandering Zen Monk]]> 1434834 A Stranger in Tibet To reach the "forbidden city" of Lhasa was the dream of generations of Western explorers. But until 1900 when Kawaguchi Ekai, a young Zen monk, donned a disguise and walked all the way there, few foreigners had ever done so. Clinging staunchly to his chastity; leaving a trail of broken hearts across the Himalayas; oppressed by the cultural impossibility of bathing, yet frequently almost drowned in river crossings; often lost and on the verge of starving or freezing to death; robbed by highwaymen, and taken for a spy; speaking fluently the language of a people he preferred not to understand. This brave, bigoted, and enterprising traveler was eventually to cross Tibet from west to east, study in one of the country's greatest monasteries, and keep his secret there for over a year. His first full length biography is based on memories and the information gathered by the author.]]> Scott Berry 0870118919 Andrew 3
In the end, I was left wondering if it might have been more informative if Berry had just written an introduction to a reprint of the monk's original travel narrative.]]> 4.02 1989 A Stranger in Tibet: The Adventures of a Wandering Zen Monk
author: Scott Berry
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/06/27
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review:
A unique entry into the travel to Tibet genre that follows a Japanese monk. The good includes some compelling narration, in particular in the beginning when our protagonist encounters physical danger near Mt. Kailash, as well as the author's ability to contextualize these travels. The bad is that Berry provides a bewildering amount of background information about late 19th century Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, perhaps contextualizing the events to a fault. As a reader I was lost by this information and skeptical of Berry's mastery of it. For instance, he insists on using a numbering system for reincarnations of the Panchen Lama that refuses to number post hoc designations. I have never encountered any contemporary scholar doing this but Berry insists on it, while not using the same logic for the numbering of the Dalai Lamas.

In the end, I was left wondering if it might have been more informative if Berry had just written an introduction to a reprint of the monk's original travel narrative.
]]> Narcissus and Goldmund 4196 Narcissus & Goldmund tells of a young man, Goldmund, who wanders throughout Medieval Germany upon leaving Catholic monastery school in search of the meaning of life &, thus, meaning for his life. Narcissus, a gifted young teacher at the cloister school, befriends him, as they are only a few years apart & Goldmund is very bright. Goldmund admires Narcissus, & Narcissus has much fondness for him in return. After straying too far in the fields one day on an errand gathering herbs, Goldmund comes across a beautiful woman, who kisses him & invites him to make love. This encounter is an epiphany. He realizes he was never meant to be a monk. He's filled with the desire to experience everything, learn about life & nature in his own hands-on way. With Narcissus' support, he leaves the monastery & wanders around the countryside, setting the scene for a story contrasting the artist with the thinker. It spans many years, detailing specific incidents where Goldmund learns important things. He often muses on these experiences & the ways of life.
The influence of Nietzsche's theory of the Apollonian versus Dionysian spirit is evident. The polarization of Narcissus's individualist Apollonian character is contrasted to the passionately zealous disposition of Goldmund. In the spirit of The Birth of Tragedy, Hesse completes the equation by creating Goldmund as an Apollonian artist, highlighting the harmonizing relationship of the main characters.
Goldmund develops into a completely rounded character as he comes to embody both Apollonian & Dionysian elements, thus capturing Nietzsche's conception of the ideal tragedy. He embodies the entire spectrum of experience, lusting for the gruesome ecstasy of the Dionysian world yet capturing & representing it thru artistic creativity.
Like most of Hesse's works, the main themes are the struggle between human being & nature & the union of polar opposites. Goldmund represents art & nature, the feminine mind, while Narcissus represents science, logic, god & the masculine mind. These feminine & masculine qualities are drawn from Jungian archetypal theory, & are reminiscent of some of his earlier works, especially Demian. Throughout the novel, Goldmund increasingly becomes aware of memories of his own mother, which ultimately results in his desire to return to the Urmutter.]]> 312 Hermann Hesse 0553058681 Andrew 3
This duality resonates with the ideal typing presented in Hesse's Siddhartha, but is here presented in a medieval European setting. I found this duality a bit ridiculous and conventional. I suppose that Hesse was writing in a time of intellectual exploration of the psyche (Freud, Jung, etc.) and the desire to appeal to archetypal personality types was tempting. This is most clear, and most challenging to 21st century tastes in Hesse's essential and essentially sexist assignment of the male to intellectualism and the female to carnal knowledge and artistic accomplishment. Goldmund's pursuit of the "mother image" and irresistibility to every woman he encounters (they are all his muses) I found to be the most difficult to read and absurd passages of the book. And there are many many of them - far too many of them.

I had almost given up on the book when the best part of it started - the plague. Hesse's evocative descriptions of the slow desolation of the plague landscape and the behaviors of zombie-like urban and rural residents were very compelling to read. This is also the point in which Goldmund's coming-of-age seemed to make sense - he was actually learning something besides seduction, though we still encounter cases of women apologizing to Goldmund for not being attractive enough to please him due to the waste they have experienced from infection.]]> 4.09 1930 Narcissus and Goldmund
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1930
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/06/27
shelves:
review:
Hesse divides male humanity into two camps: the intellectual and the artist. The narrative of the book traces the artist Goldmund as he realizes where his talents lie and comes to master them. This leads him through a life of hedonism in which he pursues his muses at all costs. Narcissus the cleric and scholar is fascinated by Goldmund's journey of self-discovery and indulgence for art's sake because Goldmund is to him an ideal type. Both he and Goldmund are pursuing universal truths in their own ways.

This duality resonates with the ideal typing presented in Hesse's Siddhartha, but is here presented in a medieval European setting. I found this duality a bit ridiculous and conventional. I suppose that Hesse was writing in a time of intellectual exploration of the psyche (Freud, Jung, etc.) and the desire to appeal to archetypal personality types was tempting. This is most clear, and most challenging to 21st century tastes in Hesse's essential and essentially sexist assignment of the male to intellectualism and the female to carnal knowledge and artistic accomplishment. Goldmund's pursuit of the "mother image" and irresistibility to every woman he encounters (they are all his muses) I found to be the most difficult to read and absurd passages of the book. And there are many many of them - far too many of them.

I had almost given up on the book when the best part of it started - the plague. Hesse's evocative descriptions of the slow desolation of the plague landscape and the behaviors of zombie-like urban and rural residents were very compelling to read. This is also the point in which Goldmund's coming-of-age seemed to make sense - he was actually learning something besides seduction, though we still encounter cases of women apologizing to Goldmund for not being attractive enough to please him due to the waste they have experienced from infection.
]]> The Politics of Resentment 32991280 With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the "liberal elite". Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate's social identity matches our own. Using Scott Walker and Wisconsin's prominent and protracted debate about the appropriate role of government, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics, regardless of whether urban politicians and their supporters really do shortchange or look down on those living in the country. The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment no less than partisanship, race, or class plays a major role in dividing America against itself.]]> 256 Katherine J. Cramer 022634925X Andrew 4
Cramer continuously comes back to the the us-them dynamic of rural-urban relations. This is important because it is not simply about a rejection of lifestyles, but a resentment towards the instrumental interest in these areas that politicians looking for votes, scientists looking for data, and tourists looking for vacation homes express. Rural and urban places seem to exist on two entirely different planes. When people from these places interact, they hardly communicate and rarely have the sorts of meaningful social interactions that lead to better mutual understanding. Reading the book I recalled my experiences in Door County last summer. I found that at a local grocer the inventory was sharply divided between high price-tag hummus, wines, and imported cheeses, and low price potato chips and two-liter soda bottles. I made a sardonic joke about the presence of the expensive foods in the store and then felt embarrassed when a shopkeeper overheard me and cast a baleful look. Hailing from sunny and urbane California today, there was something deeply distressing to me about the shopkeeper's reaction. I didn't want to be out of place - but I clearly was. The next day we were at Peninsula State Park and a conversation with a park ranger turned towards the role of "people from Madison" in trying to preserve a deteriorating three-story wooden observation tower. To the ranger the structure was decrepit and should be replaced. Likely it would provide a good deal of work to a local contractor to tear down this structure and pour the concrete and furnish the wood for a replacement. A new structure would take some time to build but would eventually be an inspiration to those who create it. To the urban folk in "Madison," however, the old tower represented childhoods of Malickian place-memories that would be thoughtlessly snuffed out by a myopic local community. Lucky for the urbanites, the State Parks system answers to higher authorities (or at least it would have before the age of Scott Walker). The urban folks want bourgeois sentiment, the rural folks want local jobs and pride in the meaningful constructive activity that is barely possible in the condominiums and small lots of cities. The divisions attributed to these worldviews - rural and urban - have become self-conscious political identities through which Wisconsin personhood is understood.

What I wanted to know more after reading this book was how the attitudes of suburbanites, especially those in the highly conservative areas of southeastern Wisconsin fit into the equation. Around Wisconsin's liberal cities are suburbs who share many of the politics of resentment and rural consciousness described in this book. Yet many of them are white-collar. They don't do "real work" and they get a very high return on their tax dollars. They also have a great deal of political power in the state. In my extensive experience, many are overtly racist and savor the schadenfreude of Walker's destruction of state workers' benefits. They clearly resent liberal areas, but it is harder for me to understand how their resentment of urban areas has come to be, as they are frequent denizens of urban worlds and enjoy the fruits of urban cultural production. Perhaps part of the answer is something left entirely out of this book - the role of social media and rumor mongering in 21st century politics.]]> 4.02 2016 The Politics of Resentment
author: Katherine J. Cramer
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/01/19
shelves:
review:
Cramer heads north into the Wisconsin beyond its great cities - Milwaukee and Madison - and finds a "rural consciousness" that has recently had a major impact on state politics. The rural consciousness is marked by a resentment towards urban folks from Milwaukee and Madison, the imperiousness of their formal knowledges, the state bureaucracy with which they are associated, and the money that they appear to be inefficiently and unfairly channeling towards their own communities. Cramer's research is based upon years of research visiting Wisconsin's up-north and outstate (a term that I, a native Wisconsinite from the southeastern portion of the state had never heard) areas and speaking to locals at coffee klatches and diners. She finds that people there feel excluded from the political process. They see very few returns on their taxes and they have a hard time getting by despite all of the hard work that they do. Furthermore, when representatives of the state, such as the DNR or UW-Madison natural sciences research teams, enter the area, they tend to be dismissive of the opinions of the local people. The locals are seen as hindrances and ignored or excluded. Another powerful perception is that state employees such as teachers and bureaucrats live on comfortable salaries and receive substantial insurance and retirement benefits. Yet they clearly don't do any "real work" - manual labor - and are viewed as affiliates of the urban axis living high off rural folks' labor. The image that emerges is less one of hatred against urban diversity and the darkness of ignorance, as liberals and the media often portrays rural areas, but of people with rational-enough perspectives on their relatively low incomes, high financial burdens, and the smugness with which they are treated.

Cramer continuously comes back to the the us-them dynamic of rural-urban relations. This is important because it is not simply about a rejection of lifestyles, but a resentment towards the instrumental interest in these areas that politicians looking for votes, scientists looking for data, and tourists looking for vacation homes express. Rural and urban places seem to exist on two entirely different planes. When people from these places interact, they hardly communicate and rarely have the sorts of meaningful social interactions that lead to better mutual understanding. Reading the book I recalled my experiences in Door County last summer. I found that at a local grocer the inventory was sharply divided between high price-tag hummus, wines, and imported cheeses, and low price potato chips and two-liter soda bottles. I made a sardonic joke about the presence of the expensive foods in the store and then felt embarrassed when a shopkeeper overheard me and cast a baleful look. Hailing from sunny and urbane California today, there was something deeply distressing to me about the shopkeeper's reaction. I didn't want to be out of place - but I clearly was. The next day we were at Peninsula State Park and a conversation with a park ranger turned towards the role of "people from Madison" in trying to preserve a deteriorating three-story wooden observation tower. To the ranger the structure was decrepit and should be replaced. Likely it would provide a good deal of work to a local contractor to tear down this structure and pour the concrete and furnish the wood for a replacement. A new structure would take some time to build but would eventually be an inspiration to those who create it. To the urban folk in "Madison," however, the old tower represented childhoods of Malickian place-memories that would be thoughtlessly snuffed out by a myopic local community. Lucky for the urbanites, the State Parks system answers to higher authorities (or at least it would have before the age of Scott Walker). The urban folks want bourgeois sentiment, the rural folks want local jobs and pride in the meaningful constructive activity that is barely possible in the condominiums and small lots of cities. The divisions attributed to these worldviews - rural and urban - have become self-conscious political identities through which Wisconsin personhood is understood.

What I wanted to know more after reading this book was how the attitudes of suburbanites, especially those in the highly conservative areas of southeastern Wisconsin fit into the equation. Around Wisconsin's liberal cities are suburbs who share many of the politics of resentment and rural consciousness described in this book. Yet many of them are white-collar. They don't do "real work" and they get a very high return on their tax dollars. They also have a great deal of political power in the state. In my extensive experience, many are overtly racist and savor the schadenfreude of Walker's destruction of state workers' benefits. They clearly resent liberal areas, but it is harder for me to understand how their resentment of urban areas has come to be, as they are frequent denizens of urban worlds and enjoy the fruits of urban cultural production. Perhaps part of the answer is something left entirely out of this book - the role of social media and rumor mongering in 21st century politics.
]]> <![CDATA[Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape]]> 17885385 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý Yi-Fu Tuan has established a global reputation for deepening the field of geography by examining its moral, universal, philosophical, and poetic potentials and implications. In his twenty-second book, Romantic Geography , he continues to engage the wide-ranging ideas that have made him one of the most influential geographers of our time. In this elegant meditation, he considers the human tendency—stronger in some cultures than in others—to veer away from the middle ground of common sense to embrace the polarized values of light and darkness, high and low, chaos and form, mind and body. In so doing, venturesome humans can find salvation in geographies that cater not so much to survival needs (or even to good, comfortable living) as to the passionate and romantic aspirations of their nature. Romantic Geography is thus a paean to the human spirit, which can lift us to the heights but also plunge us into the abyss.]]> 205 Yi-Fu Tuan 0299296806 Andrew 4 3.89 2013 Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape
author: Yi-Fu Tuan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/12/05
shelves:
review:
Compelling ideas about the human need for romance in a time when geography is increasingly about maintenance and care-taking. Examples are drawn from literature and explorers' autobiographical writings. Resonance here with prior Tuan writings such as Escapism and the Good Life. Tuan's concepts of civilization and the good are more sophisticated than they are in usual speech, and he slowly complicates their relationship with the romantic until we get a nuanced humanistic understanding of the role of the sublime landscape in the 20th century.
]]> Empire of the Summer Moon 7648269 In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.

S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun.

The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being.

Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend.

S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told.

]]> 371 S.C. Gwynne 1416591052 Andrew 3 4.22 2010 Empire of the Summer Moon
author: S.C. Gwynne
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2017/12/04
date added: 2017/12/04
shelves:
review:
Good overview of the military history of the region, with some insights into Comanche culture and society. The book is hardly about Quanah Parker, who gets a few chapters at the end, but is mostly used as a device to keep you turning the pages. I am unfamiliar with which archaic forms of comparative sociology the author was using to get the descriptors "low-barbarian" and "late Stone Age" to describe the Comanche. These terms are insulting and almost made me put down the book. Many contemporary authors feel they need to go out of their way to dispel romantic myths about indigenous peoples, but simply re-inscribing arrogant, ethnocentric, and inaccurate 19th century social teleologies does not a corrective make.
]]> <![CDATA[The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)]]> 26153424 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the rural political consciousness and the resentment of the “liberal elite.� Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more who we are as people and how closely a candidate’s social identity matches our own. Using Scott Walker and Wisconsin’s prominent and protracted debate about the appropriate role of government, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics, regardless of whether urban politicians and their supporters really do shortchange or look down on those living in the country.

The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment—no less than partisanship, race, or class—plays a major role in dividing America against itself.]]> 225 Katherine J. Cramer 022634911X Andrew 0 3.99 2016 The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)
author: Katherine J. Cramer
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West]]> 813118
"Lopez lifts the veil on America's romantic vision of Tibet to reveal a country and a spiritual history more complex and less ideal than popular perceptions allow. . . . Lively and engaging, Lopez's book raises important questions about how Eastern religions are often co-opted, assimilated and misunderstood by Western culture."� Publishers Weekly

"Proceeding with care and precision, Lopez reveals the extent to which scholars have behaved like intellectual colonialists. . . . Someone had to burst the bubble of pop Tibetology, and few could have done it as resoundingly as Lopez."� Booklist

"Fascinating. . . [A] provocative exploration. Lopez conveys the full dizziness of the Western encounter with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism."—Fred Pheil, The Buddhist Review

"A timely and courageous exploration. . . . [Lopez's] book will sharpen the terms of the debate over what the Tibetans and their observers can or should be doing about the place and the idea of Tibet. And that alone is what will give us all back our Shambhala."—Jonathan Spence, Lingua Franca Book Review

"Lopez's most important theme is that we should be wary of the idea . . . that Tibet has what the West lacks, that if we were only to look there we would find the answers to our problems. Lopez's book shows that, on the contrary, when the West has looked at Tibet, all that it has seen is a distorted reflection of itself."—Ben Jackson, Times Higher Education Supplement]]> 283 Donald S. Lopez Jr. 2913158145 Andrew 4 4.03 1998 Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West
author: Donald S. Lopez Jr.
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/17
date added: 2017/10/13
shelves:
review:
Very interesting book that will stay with me for a while. The part on the Tibetan Book of the Dead was especially surprising. I am simultaneously both more and less interested in Tibetan Buddhism.
]]> <![CDATA[Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War]]> 9359823 307 Carole McGranahan 0822347717 Andrew 5 4.36 2010 Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War
author: Carole McGranahan
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/09
date added: 2017/09/09
shelves:
review:
Can't recall the last time I read through a 200+ page academic title in two days. I guess I did have the free time - but the book is simply written well. It doesn't give a clear structure at the beginning, but does something better - it keeps you page turning. By the end the arguments are driven home. Chapter 9 is especially enlightening about violence vs non-violence in the Tibetan exile community and the strains that nonviolence have placed on its resistance veterans and their struggle.
]]> <![CDATA[The Story of a Stele: China's Nestorian Monument and Its Reception in the West, 1625-1916]]> 6030647 208 Michael Keevak 9622098959 Andrew 4
Keevak also includes many reproductions of reproductions of the Stele's cross, which, across centuries of rubbings, drawings, and photographs, was rarely accurately reproduced. Missionaries, scholars, and adventurers glossed it as St. Thomas's cross, the Maltese cross, or other early "Eastern" iterations. They left out the dragons and clouds around it, or presented them in ways that did not reflect the true design accurately. This discussion goes a long way in illustrating how the stele has resisted being pinned down in the Western imagination and has encourage myth-making.

The final discussion of the Da Qin Pagoda was fun to read, as I made a trip to find it myself in 2015. The "museum" built next to it was closed when I visited, and the only caretaker I found, an old monk staying in a one-room brick house at he pagoda's base, ensured me that the structure was Buddhist. For him, the reconstruction of the stele nearby was just a lie for tourism purposes. I wish Keevak had cleared up a little better the actual providence of the pagoda, but then, I must remember the subtitle of the book. ]]> 4.25 2008 The Story of a Stele: China's Nestorian Monument and Its Reception in the West, 1625-1916
author: Michael Keevak
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/09/01
shelves:
review:
As the subtitle says, this book is not a history of the monument, but a history of Westerners writing about the monument. This history covers roughly the same time period as modern Western engagement with China (starting from the Jesuit times onward), and so the book is in many ways a history of trends in sinology. Jesuits collected information about the stele (and many other aspects of China) and transported them to Europe, where Jesuit compilers such as Athanansius Kircher found a wide audience for them. Other Europeans, often Protestant, would debate the findings, even proposing that they were a "pious fraud." Kircher's writings were some of the first to show Chinese characters accurately (and inaccurately, depending on which of Kircher's texts are consulted) in Europe. As time went on the stele and its characters would anchor discussions of Christianity in China, Confucianism, Chinese historiography, and the qualities of the Chinese writing system. The stele has been read as variously Catholic, Nestorian, and more recently part of the religion of the "Jesus Sutras" that melds Christianity with Daoism.

Keevak also includes many reproductions of reproductions of the Stele's cross, which, across centuries of rubbings, drawings, and photographs, was rarely accurately reproduced. Missionaries, scholars, and adventurers glossed it as St. Thomas's cross, the Maltese cross, or other early "Eastern" iterations. They left out the dragons and clouds around it, or presented them in ways that did not reflect the true design accurately. This discussion goes a long way in illustrating how the stele has resisted being pinned down in the Western imagination and has encourage myth-making.

The final discussion of the Da Qin Pagoda was fun to read, as I made a trip to find it myself in 2015. The "museum" built next to it was closed when I visited, and the only caretaker I found, an old monk staying in a one-room brick house at he pagoda's base, ensured me that the structure was Buddhist. For him, the reconstruction of the stele nearby was just a lie for tourism purposes. I wish Keevak had cleared up a little better the actual providence of the pagoda, but then, I must remember the subtitle of the book.
]]> Lincoln in the Bardo 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 Andrew 3 3.75 2017 Lincoln in the Bardo
author: George Saunders
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/08/14
date added: 2017/08/14
shelves:
review:
Some great imagery in this book ("matterlightbloom"). I also liked the usage of historical(?) sources. But the book felt like a drawn out short story with drawn out short story characters. The humor and reader engagement was good and I would like to see what else is in Saunders' mind.
]]> Freedom 7905092
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
(jacket)]]> 562 Jonathan Franzen 0374158460 Andrew 3
Franzen's narration made the characters hard for me to like, though I find that they pop into my head quite often. Some of the images and vignettes he imparts are pretty striking, almost as versions of memories or feelings that I half-remember from my own life. As the book wore on, it felt that Franzen's presence behind the characters became stronger, less hidden and more difficult to avoid. In the end the voices seem somewhat the same, whichever character is speaking. Even when, towards the end, the book is supposed to switch to the first-person perspective of Patty (as an autobiographical note), Franzen writes it as third-person and gives her the same (male-cum-Franzen sounding) narration that backs the other characters. The total result is odd, it feels like each character is an avatar of the author: all of them slowly coming to terms with themselves as facets of the author's personality, whose great moral position is, above all, protecting endangered bird species (and freedom).]]> 3.78 2010 Freedom
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/24
date added: 2017/08/06
shelves:
review:
I read this over the course of the year, putting it down for most of that period. The writing can be very engaging but very exhausting. Franzen follows multiple characters from one midwestern family as they grow older without ever growing out of the desires for recognition and alternate self visions that have shaped their relationships with one another and with key friends. Sex is often used to by characters feeling trapped in their situations and trying to signal their emotional and foundational otherness from those they are most close to. Affairs are the ultimate escape, but never truly satisfying ones.

Franzen's narration made the characters hard for me to like, though I find that they pop into my head quite often. Some of the images and vignettes he imparts are pretty striking, almost as versions of memories or feelings that I half-remember from my own life. As the book wore on, it felt that Franzen's presence behind the characters became stronger, less hidden and more difficult to avoid. In the end the voices seem somewhat the same, whichever character is speaking. Even when, towards the end, the book is supposed to switch to the first-person perspective of Patty (as an autobiographical note), Franzen writes it as third-person and gives her the same (male-cum-Franzen sounding) narration that backs the other characters. The total result is odd, it feels like each character is an avatar of the author: all of them slowly coming to terms with themselves as facets of the author's personality, whose great moral position is, above all, protecting endangered bird species (and freedom).
]]> <![CDATA[A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)]]> 18762181
A Landscape of Travel investigates the contested meanings and unintended consequences of tourism for those people whose lives and livelihoods are most at stake in China's rural ethnic tourism the residents of village destinations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Ping'an (a Zhuang village in Guangxi) and Upper Jidao (a Miao village in Guizhou), Jenny Chio analyzes the myriad challenges and possibilities confronted by villagers who are called upon to do the work of tourism. She addresses the shifting significance of migration and rural mobility, the visual politics of tourist photography, and the effects of touristic desires for "exotic difference" on village social relations. In this way, Chio illuminates the contemporary regimes of labor and leisure and the changing imagination of what it means to be rural, ethnic, and modern in China today.

More about the ]]> 304 Jenny Chio 0295993669 Andrew 0 3.50 2014 A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China)
author: Jenny Chio
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2017/08/06
date added: 2017/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433]]> 696798 This new biography, part of Longman's World Biography series, of the Chinese explorer Zheng He sheds new light on one of the most important "what if" questions of early modern history: why a technically advanced China did not follow the same path of development as the major European powers. Written by China scholar Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He outlines what is known of the eunuch Zheng He's life and describes and analyzes the early 15th century voyages on the basis of the Chinese evidence. Locating the voyages firmly within the context of early Ming history, itaddresses the political motives of Zheng He's voyages and how they affected China's exclusive attitude to the outside world in subsequent centuries.]]> 238 Edward L. Dreyer 0321084438 Andrew 2
The bad is that the book is not well written. Parts are repetitive and the author's desire to give multiple (and comprehensive) historical (and linguistic) glosses for the many dynasties along Zheng He's itinerary is distracting. The chapter on boat building presumes a high familiarity with naval vocabulary that easily loses the reader. Dreyer occasionally defines terms only after using them for several pages, others are never explained. The position of the chapter in the center of the book is also distracting and makes more difficult an already tortuous read. I wish the author had spent more time thinking about the audience (ostensibly it is students) and making the book more engaging. Part of the power of the myth of Zheng He is its ability to seize the imagination through its great boats, exotic locales, and giraffes. It was discouraging to watch this story turn so dull.]]> 3.48 2006 Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433
author: Edward L. Dreyer
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2017/06/26
shelves:
review:
The good is that the book has a lot of facts and the author is working from primary sources. After reading the book it will be very clear why the dominant myth of Zheng He and his benevolent treasure ships doesn't hold up. Dreyer lays out the chronology of all seven expeditions and gives a detailed itinerary of each stop on the journey. These ships were loaded with fighting troops that enforced the emperor's desires - that all local kings and chiefs pay fealty to the emperor and that troublemakers in the guise of pirates and usurpers be suppressed. Dreyer has a strong handle on the sources and makes clear, at certain points, persistent problems of interpretation of the sources and biases in the sources that distort information. For instance, Dreyer shows that the defeated pirate leader Chen Ziyu at one point sought to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor. This allows him to suggest that compilers of China's official histories may have used the term "pirate" to consciously misrepresent the nature of the military action.

The bad is that the book is not well written. Parts are repetitive and the author's desire to give multiple (and comprehensive) historical (and linguistic) glosses for the many dynasties along Zheng He's itinerary is distracting. The chapter on boat building presumes a high familiarity with naval vocabulary that easily loses the reader. Dreyer occasionally defines terms only after using them for several pages, others are never explained. The position of the chapter in the center of the book is also distracting and makes more difficult an already tortuous read. I wish the author had spent more time thinking about the audience (ostensibly it is students) and making the book more engaging. Part of the power of the myth of Zheng He is its ability to seize the imagination through its great boats, exotic locales, and giraffes. It was discouraging to watch this story turn so dull.
]]> <![CDATA[SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome]]> 25013067 Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even two thousand years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty. From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 ce―nearly a thousand years later―when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, S.P.Q.R. (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of Rome") examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation. Opening the book in 63 BCE with the famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this “terrorist conspiracy,� which was aimed at the very heart of the Republic, demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of Rome’s subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, S.P.Q.R. reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and familiar characters―Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus, and Nero, among others―while expanding the historical aperture to include those overlooked in traditional histories: the women, the slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side of Rome’s glorious conquests. Like the best detectives, Beard sifts fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record, refusing either simple admiration or blanket condemnation. Far from being frozen in marble, Roman history, she shows, is constantly being revised and rewritten as our knowledge expands. Indeed, our perceptions of ancient Rome have changed dramatically over the last fifty years, and S.P.Q.R., with its nuanced attention to class inequality, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

]]> 606 Mary Beard 0871404230 Andrew 4
My favorite parts of the book were about everyday life and there were only a few chapters devoted to these topics. However, Beard intersperses interpretations of Roman jokes and insightful tidbits (Cicero's disappointment at not being given a triumph, we are invited to imagine the props he prepared drooping) that help illuminate the age. From the beginning of the book we learn about the problems of Roman historiography, an approach which allows us to be students with the necessary tools for skeptical appraisal of available sources. I have read negative reviews of this book here that criticize the author precisely because she enlivens the texts with jokes, popular culture appropriations, and because she has a healthy skepticism about the histories of Livy, Tacitus, and Gibbon. I have much more interest in the topic because Beard chose to invite us to see Rome as a place always being rebuilt and recast, as alive and breathing rather than as a civilizational fossil that must be idolized. Some people seem to relish in the serious stoicism of Rome's modern mythology of Rome and feel an aura of impenetrable authority in the only way to review history. Bah humbug.

By main criticism is that there was too little review of what we were learning as the book progressed. After reading about someone, their name would later be invoked for the controversies, political shifts, and moral lessons attached to them, yet often I had already forgotten who did what. Still Beard does an admirable job keeping enough of them (there are so many of them!) straight. I also didn't understand the point of ending the book at 212 CE. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of the author's (already huge) area of expertise or because the book had to end somewhere. I didn't understand why the expansion of citizenship to all was a natural way to end the book if it did little to solve the social tensions that the author had made very clear plagued Rome from the beginning. During the introduction this seemed like a reasonable point to conclude the book, but after reading it I felt we deserved more of an explanation for why exactly 212 CE should be considered extraordinary.]]> 4.08 2015 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
author: Mary Beard
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/15
date added: 2017/06/26
shelves:
review:
Mainly a political history. Beard is a terrific writer. The story she tells is challenging, asking the reader to engage with Rome's history as neither mythology nor clearly retrievable past, but a dialectic between the two. Romans were constantly looking back and narrating their own past as they sought to learn from it to frame their present. The book begins with the tensions between Cicero and Catiline, as the former accuses the latter of tyrannical plotting. Cicero draws from Roman history to make his case. This approach turns out to be a common frame and we watch as Rome's unresolved tensions - between citizen and noncitizen, rich and poor, insider and outsider, patrician and plebe - shape a thousand years of Roman history.

My favorite parts of the book were about everyday life and there were only a few chapters devoted to these topics. However, Beard intersperses interpretations of Roman jokes and insightful tidbits (Cicero's disappointment at not being given a triumph, we are invited to imagine the props he prepared drooping) that help illuminate the age. From the beginning of the book we learn about the problems of Roman historiography, an approach which allows us to be students with the necessary tools for skeptical appraisal of available sources. I have read negative reviews of this book here that criticize the author precisely because she enlivens the texts with jokes, popular culture appropriations, and because she has a healthy skepticism about the histories of Livy, Tacitus, and Gibbon. I have much more interest in the topic because Beard chose to invite us to see Rome as a place always being rebuilt and recast, as alive and breathing rather than as a civilizational fossil that must be idolized. Some people seem to relish in the serious stoicism of Rome's modern mythology of Rome and feel an aura of impenetrable authority in the only way to review history. Bah humbug.

By main criticism is that there was too little review of what we were learning as the book progressed. After reading about someone, their name would later be invoked for the controversies, political shifts, and moral lessons attached to them, yet often I had already forgotten who did what. Still Beard does an admirable job keeping enough of them (there are so many of them!) straight. I also didn't understand the point of ending the book at 212 CE. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of the author's (already huge) area of expertise or because the book had to end somewhere. I didn't understand why the expansion of citizenship to all was a natural way to end the book if it did little to solve the social tensions that the author had made very clear plagued Rome from the beginning. During the introduction this seemed like a reasonable point to conclude the book, but after reading it I felt we deserved more of an explanation for why exactly 212 CE should be considered extraordinary.
]]> <![CDATA[Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West]]> 11797365 A New York Times bestseller, the shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.

In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden's harrowing narrative of Shin's life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.]]> 205 Blaine Harden 0670023329 Andrew 3 3.99 2012 Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
author: Blaine Harden
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/06/25
shelves:
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Harrowing tale worth reading, but the text is marred by repetition (constant rehearsal of information that I must wonder is for the sake of extended the page count) and faulty logic (such as the stated lack of importance of family in the camp, but what seems to be its apparent actual importance as the story plays out). The book reads like a very drawn out "long read" magazine article. It is also often hard to tell whether supporting information is based on one first-hand account, many such accounts, or other information (such as from an NGO). However, the book is worth a read if you are unfamiliar with these camps. I can't help but wonder if it was similar treatment to the prisoners of Camp 14, even to a limited degree, that led to the deplorable death of Otto Warmbier.
]]> <![CDATA[SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome]]> 28789711 SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.]]> 606 Mary Beard 1631492225 Andrew 4 4.04 2015 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
author: Mary Beard
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/15
date added: 2017/06/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned]]> 84557 Easy Rawlins fans might initially find themselves disappointed by the absence of a mystery to unravel. But it's a gripping inner drama that unfolds over the pages of these stories, as Socrates comes to grips with the chaos, poverty and violence around him. He tries to get and keep a job delivering groceries; takes in a young street kid named Darryl, who has his own murder to hide; and helps drive out the neighbourhood crack dealer. Throughout, Mosley captures the rhythms of Watts life in prose both lyrical and hard-edged, resulting in a haunting look at a life bounded by lust, violence, fear and a ruthlessly unsentimental moral vision.

]]> 208 Walter Mosley 1852427027 Andrew 4 4.17 1997 Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
author: Walter Mosley
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/06/01
shelves:
review:
At first, I thought the book was going to be chapter by chapter vignettes of Socrates doing the right thing in various scenarios. Instead, we find that Socrates is himself conflicted and often torn about how to help people, and readers end up inhabiting his evaluative process. The resulting ethics we are presented with disrupt expectations about race, class, religion, and prejudice. Good read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History]]> 17910054
In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.]]> 336 Elizabeth Kolbert 0805092994 Andrew 3 4.13 2014 The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
author: Elizabeth Kolbert
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2017/05/26
date added: 2017/05/26
shelves:
review:
The book is written as an episodic scientific travelogue. The author travels around the world climbing into caves, visiting research labs, and sailing to remote islands, all the while interviewing quirky scientists. Many of the chapters are compelling, but the overall effect is uneven. Towards the last few chapters I was getting annoyed at the formula. Topics also include historical engagement at the beginning with the ideas of Cuvier and Darwin, which continue to inform scientific perspectives today. We also learn some very sad stories about auks and fungi. The best chapters are on ocean acidification, forest fragmentation, and species mobility in the New Pangaea. The Neanderthal chapter didn't fit well, and the closing chapter is a disappointment. I was also bothered by how slowly the author rolls out the six extinctions, like readers can't be trusted to learn them all in the introduction lest they put the book down. Overall, I did enjoy the book - it is an accessible introduction to a timely subject.
]]> <![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 29496076 Ěý
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,� roamed � virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.]]> 359 David Grann 0385534256 Andrew 5 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/05/11
shelves:
review:
Gripping read - I had to slow myself down as not to finish it in two days. What a tragic story.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller]]> 71148
For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."]]> 208 Carlo Ginzburg 0801843871 Andrew 3 3.98 1976 The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller
author: Carlo Ginzburg
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/05/07
shelves:
review:
Fascinating method. Ginzburg uses inquisition documentation to reveal the oral and textual roots of a 16th century heretic. The author wants to show how we might be able to grasp peasant culture in the period without being restricted by upper-class representations of the poor. The conclusion is that there was a significant amount of intellectual syncretism among clever villagers who read available books through their own interpretive lenses, and that there was even an amount of "oral" or popular influence on the works of humanists in the postmedieval period. Materialist readings of cosmogony, relativist understandings of belonging to a religion, and criticism of priests that don't do any work but accumulate wealth suggest the local roots of a peasant radicalism that is given articulation by the spread of literature and literacy, but not determined by it. The structure of the book was somewhat frustrating. It consists of sixty or so small chapters of two to four pages and there is little suggestion of what will come next. Ginzburg also doesn't illuminate certain ideas in the main text that would have been helpful for the reader (e.g. "the legend of the three rings").
]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]]> 92057
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.

An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcolm X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, and the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.]]> 466 Malcolm X Andrew 4 4.35 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X
author: Malcolm X
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/03/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Archeology of Violence 927436 200 Pierre Clastres 0936756950 Andrew 3 4.17 1977 Archeology of Violence
author: Pierre Clastres
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/02/24
shelves:
review:
Title essay is extremely interesting, but some of the included essays are forgettable. Also see de Castro's very stimulating introduction. If you are considering picking up one of the two essay collections, grab Society Against the State first/instead.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957]]> 17287091
“The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a â€liberation.â€� In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence.â€� So begins Frank Dikötter’s stunning and revelatory chronicle of Mao Zedong’s ascension and campaign to transform the Chinese into what the party called New People. Following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, after a bloody civil war, Mao hoisted the red flag over Beijing’s Forbidden City, and the world watched as the Communist revolution began to wash away the old order. Due to the secrecy surrounding the country’s records, little has been known before now about the eight years that followed, preceding the massive famine and Great Leap Forward.

Drawing on hundreds of previously classified documents, secret police reports, unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, eyewitness accounts of those who survived, and more, The Tragedy of Liberation bears witness to a shocking, largely untold history. Interweaving stories of ordinary citizens with tales of the brutal politics of Mao’s court, Frank Dikötter illuminates those who shaped the “liberation� and the horrific policies they implemented in the name of progress. People of all walks of life were caught up in the tragedy that unfolded, and whether or not they supported the revolution, all of them were asked to write confessions, denounce their friends, and answer queries about their political reliability. One victim of thought reform called it a “carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind.� Told with great narrative sweep, The Tragedy of Liberation is a powerful and important document giving voice at last to the millions who were lost, and casting new light on the foundations of one of the most powerful regimes of the twenty-first century.]]> 400 Frank Dikötter 1620403471 Andrew 3
The book has a lot of information in it, but it often feels piecemeal and I was overwhelmed by it. There are few characters to follow, but when some of them show up later, it is often hard to remember what they had done earlier. I am speaking here less of Mao or Liu Shaoqi than the minor offenders and intellectuals who brought up as examples over and over. The text goes back and forth between policy promulgation in the upper echelons of the party and the experiences of people on the ground (this is stated focus of this "People's History"), but there is a clear dissonance between the two. The former reads more narratively, as an assessment of Mao's character as a political chameleon attempting to consolidate his rule, while the latter sprawls chronologically as the pain of foolish policy implementation. So the structure of each chapter is: Mao find himself in a new situation - policy is changed, people suffer. I found myself wishing there was more of a narrative or even an argument to hold the book together. There isn't a conclusion or epilogue, the book simply has a closing paragraph that teases the next volume in the series.

I did enjoy reading about the General Line, the Socialist High Tide, the Rectification Campaign, and other often over-looked political winds. The discussions of Manchuria were also fascinating, as it the region turns from a Japanese colony to Soviet sphere of influence to the "Great Northern Wilderness." Also the book was highly readable.]]> 4.09 2013 The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
author: Frank Dikötter
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/19
date added: 2017/02/19
shelves:
review:
Traces the series of campaigns and programs executed by the Chinese Communist Party over the course of the period in question. It runs up until 1958, when Dikötter's book on the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine (published prior to this book) picks up the chronology.

The book has a lot of information in it, but it often feels piecemeal and I was overwhelmed by it. There are few characters to follow, but when some of them show up later, it is often hard to remember what they had done earlier. I am speaking here less of Mao or Liu Shaoqi than the minor offenders and intellectuals who brought up as examples over and over. The text goes back and forth between policy promulgation in the upper echelons of the party and the experiences of people on the ground (this is stated focus of this "People's History"), but there is a clear dissonance between the two. The former reads more narratively, as an assessment of Mao's character as a political chameleon attempting to consolidate his rule, while the latter sprawls chronologically as the pain of foolish policy implementation. So the structure of each chapter is: Mao find himself in a new situation - policy is changed, people suffer. I found myself wishing there was more of a narrative or even an argument to hold the book together. There isn't a conclusion or epilogue, the book simply has a closing paragraph that teases the next volume in the series.

I did enjoy reading about the General Line, the Socialist High Tide, the Rectification Campaign, and other often over-looked political winds. The discussions of Manchuria were also fascinating, as it the region turns from a Japanese colony to Soviet sphere of influence to the "Great Northern Wilderness." Also the book was highly readable.
]]> <![CDATA[Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization]]> 27070255
Connectivity is the most revolutionary force of the twenty-first century. Mankind is reengineering the planet, investing up to ten trillion dollars per year in transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure linking the world’s burgeoning megacities together. This has profound consequences for geopolitics, economics, demographics, the environment, and social identity. Connectivity, not geography, is our destiny.

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle and the South China Sea to explain the rapid and unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets—a race China is now winning, having launched a wave of infrastructure investments to unite Eurasia around its new Silk Roads. The United States can only regain ground by fusing with its neighbors into a super-continental North American Union of shared resources and prosperity.

Connectography offers a unique and hopeful vision for the future. Khanna argues that new energy discoveries and technologies have eliminated the need for resource wars; ambitious transport corridors and power grids are unscrambling Africa’s fraught colonial borders; even the Arab world is evolving a more peaceful map as it builds resource and trade routes across its war-torn landscape. At the same time, thriving hubs such as Singapore and Dubai are injecting dynamism into young and heavily populated regions, cyber-communities empower commerce across vast distances, and the world’s ballooning financial assets are being wisely invested into building an inclusive global society. Beneath the chaos of a world that appears to be falling apart is a new foundation of connectivity pulling it together.

Praise for Connectography

“Incredible . . . With the world rapidly changing and urbanizing, [Khanna’s] proposals might be the best way to confrontĚýa radically different future.â€� â€� The Washington Post

“Clear and coherent . . . a well-researched account of how companies are weaving ever more complicated supply chains that pull the world together even as they squeeze out inefficiencies. . . . [He] has succeeded in demonstrating that the forces of globalization are winning.� —Adrian Woolridge, The Wall Street Journal

“Bold . . . With an eye for vivid details, Khanna has . . . produced an engaging geopolitical travelogue.� � Foreign Affairs

“For those who fear that the world is becoming too inward-looking, Connectography is a refreshing, optimistic vision.� � The Economist

“Connectivity has become a basic human right, and gives everyone on the planet the opportunity to provide for their family and contribute to our shared future. Connectography charts the future of this connected world.� —Marc Andreessen, general partner, Andreessen Horowitz

“Khanna’s scholarship and foresight are world-class. A must-read for the next president.� —Chuck Hagel, former U.S. secretary of defense]]> 496 Parag Khanna 0812988558 Andrew 3 3.82 2016 Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
author: Parag Khanna
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/06
date added: 2017/02/06
shelves:
review:
At one point I picked up this book after having set it down for a bit. It took me 30 pages to realize that the bookmark had been misplaced and that I was rereading material. The book is quite hypnotizing, Khanna packs in a lot of factoids on infrastructure investment and geoeconomic ties, but the book has a weak structure. Chapters are on particular themes and subsections on smaller aspects- but there is nothing binding then together. Chapters could be twice or half as long and I wouldn't notice. The mantra is always: the world is increasingly connected, and though there may be bad consequences, in the end it will be for the better, particularly if we act smart. Often his optimistic assertions seem naive, willfully avoiding more difficult points. If we move to a world of connected city-states, then what happens to the places off the connectography? Are they doomed to resource extraction? Or are they simply abandoned? Khanna also forgets why the nation-state and its territorial borders were so desires in the first place: agricultural dependability, soldiers, security in a larger territory, etc. Since this book was published there has been an upwelling of anti-connectivity sentiment. It would be hard to imagine this from Khanna's narrative, which downplays challenges to its comprehensive model. Still the book raises some interesting ideas as Khanna makes the case that connections of all the kinds are the best ways to show the modern world. I only wish the argument had been more compelling and less exhausting of its readers.
]]> John James Audubon 16888
Here Richard Rhodes vividly depicts Audubon’s life and career: his epic wanderings; his quest to portray birds in a lifelike way; his long, anguished separations from his adored wife; his ambivalent witness to the vanishing of the wilderness. John James Audubon: The Making of an American is a magnificent achievement.]]> 544 Richard Rhodes 037571393X Andrew 4 4.08 2004 John James Audubon
author: Richard Rhodes
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2017/01/04
date added: 2017/01/04
shelves:
review:
Rhodes delves deep into Audubon's correspondences and reveals a man's struggles to attain his ambitions and sustain his family's fortunes. Much of the book reads like an epistolary novel, with Audubon and his wife Lucy expressing their love and doubt as Audubon tries to make it as a naturalist and artist in the elite circles (comprised of those willing to buy Audubon's engravings) of Europe and America's coastal cities. Rhodes does a good job illustrating how Audubon responds to historical winds, including the economic depression that drove him from trading in Kentucky to full time bird illustration. Though we get a glimpse into the late Audubon's thinking about environmental destruction, the Audubon Rhodes portrays is mostly cool to the death that his art requires. He mixes adoration for brave eagles and tenderness for certain birds with a general indifference (or blindness?) towards killing thousands upon thousands of birds big and small. I found this the hardest to wrap my head around. Having read nothing about Audubon, I assumed he would become a conversationist late in his life. But he seems instead to be a typical European coming to the new world and treating its resources as though they were inexhaustible. This view never really changes, and I was disappointed to end the book learning nothing about how this hunter and artist of birds became so singularly tied to habitat and wildlife conservation. Though disappointed to learn nothing of this, I still enjoyed Rhodes' story, which unfolds at a steady pace. He knows much about the American frontier at the time and illustrates Audubon's world well, including the social dynamics between England, France, and the planters of the American south. The need for honor, distinction, and the need to maintain one's station (or rise above it) pervade Audubon's relationship with his family and those who assist and challenge him over his career. Fortune shifts over time as characters meet success and failure at different junctures in their lives. The American frontier was anything but stable for those making do from it in the early 19th century.
]]> <![CDATA[In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis]]> 7662209
Li Zhang, who is from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, turns a keen ethnographic eye on her hometown. She combines her analysis of larger political and social issues with fine-grained details about the profound spatial, cultural, and political effects of the shift in the way Chinese urban residents live their lives and think about themselves. In Search of Paradise is a deeply informed account of how the rise of private homeownership is reconfiguring urban space, class subjects, gender selfhood, and ways of life in the reform era.

New, seemingly individualistic lifestyles mark a dramatic move away from yearning for a social utopia under Maoist socialism. Yet the privatization of property and urban living have engendered a simultaneous movement of public engagement among homeowners as they confront the encroaching power of the developers. This double movement of privatized living and public sphere activism, Zhang finds, is a distinctive feature of the cultural politics of the middle classes in contemporary China. Theoretically sophisticated and highly accessible, Zhang's account will appeal not only to those interested in China but also to anyone interested in spatial politics, middle-class culture, and postsocialist governing in a globalizing world.]]> 264 Li Zhang 0801448336 Andrew 4 The book starts out a bit slow. She covers several real estate magnates (probably too strong a term) and how they came to get their jobs. As the state retreats from providing housing, private developers have moved in, but many developers are either still state-owned or semi-public, semi-private entities that blur public and private interests. This leads to corruption. The second half of the book is fascinating, as Zhang interviews and distinguishes between three urban classes: the rich, middle-class, and lower income. Commodity housing has let to a sorting of where people live, an erosion of public space, tensions over shitting pets, and even the commodification of women's bodies. Beautiful green homes seem to require beautiful thin women to fill them. Zhang even covers divorce and the growing role of houses and cash as measurement for love. This book is of the Hu Jintao era, so it would be interesting to get an update for the age of Xi.]]> 3.36 2010 In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis
author: Li Zhang
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2016/12/14
date added: 2016/12/14
shelves:
review:
Zhang is an anthropologist who traces the rise of classed living communities in Kunming, China.
The book starts out a bit slow. She covers several real estate magnates (probably too strong a term) and how they came to get their jobs. As the state retreats from providing housing, private developers have moved in, but many developers are either still state-owned or semi-public, semi-private entities that blur public and private interests. This leads to corruption. The second half of the book is fascinating, as Zhang interviews and distinguishes between three urban classes: the rich, middle-class, and lower income. Commodity housing has let to a sorting of where people live, an erosion of public space, tensions over shitting pets, and even the commodification of women's bodies. Beautiful green homes seem to require beautiful thin women to fill them. Zhang even covers divorce and the growing role of houses and cash as measurement for love. This book is of the Hu Jintao era, so it would be interesting to get an update for the age of Xi.
]]> <![CDATA[Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution (The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures)]]> 22859742 280 James Ferguson 0822358956 Andrew 4 4.17 2015 Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution (The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures)
author: James Ferguson
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/11/22
date added: 2016/11/22
shelves:
review:
Ferguson is a very accessible writer who can illuminate unfamiliar ideas quickly and easily. I got sucked into the introductory chapter and enjoyed the subsequent sections. Unfortunately the book feels repetitive, it is constantly references earlier or later chapters and often summarizes the sections the arguments of those chapters. By the end I felt like I was rereading the book. This being said, the engagement with the "Give a man a fish" idiom is very clear and the argument about the "rightful share" compelling not only in the Global South but in increasingly automated Western economies. If we rethink humans' raison d'ĂŞtre (must we be "productive" as social-cum-moral imperative?) we can perhaps reimagine both what a good life is and how it is provisioned.
]]> <![CDATA[The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate]]> 13330422 In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world.
Ěý
In The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe’s pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.
Ěý
Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan’s porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India’s main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.
Ěý
A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century’s looming cataclysms.
]]> 432 Robert D. Kaplan 1400069831 Andrew 2 suspended-readings 3.76 2012 The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2016/11/08
shelves: suspended-readings
review:

]]> <![CDATA[China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa]]> 18373202 304 Howard W. French 0307956989 Andrew 4 3.80 2014 China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
author: Howard W. French
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/11/08
date added: 2016/11/08
shelves:
review:
Fascinating look into China's growing economic connections with Africa. French's interviews reflect many of the same findings that sociologist C.K. Lee wrote about in her 2009 article in the China Quarterly. French finds that most Chinese in Africa look down upon the locals, unconsciously mimicking many of the same slanders that can be found in racist colonialist discourse. Africans are indolent. They can't learn. They waste their money. They need to be directed by a greater, more knowledgeable center. The center is not, in this case, Europe, but China. Fujianese and Hunanese members of China's "lost generation" (they lost out on a decent education during their teens and twenties during the Cultural Revolution) come to Africa as traders in petty goods but end up exploiting natural resources, purchasing land, or opening hotels. Managers from state enterprises in China gain control of copper mines and exploit local labor, failing to provide workers dealing with caustic chemicals even the most rudimentary of protective gear and importing unskilled Chinese labor that takes jobs now-casualized Zambians could have filled. Chinese-built prestige architectural projects build public support through spectacle, an alternative to Western financial support that corrupt officials siphon away. Given the West's history in Africa, it is no surprise that China is being given opportunities by governments across the continent, but given Chinese economic migrants prejudices and hard-nosed materialist desires, French leaves us wondering whether the Chinese will stay in Africa just long enough to plunder it further. Perhaps a better collaboration is possible, but it won't occur as long as Africa is seen primarily as a money tree.
]]> <![CDATA[The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination]]> 22104602 A study of water at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure in Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London.

Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between visible and invisible domains of urban space, in the tanks and buckets of the global South and the vast subterranean technological networks of the global North. In this book, Matthew Gandy considers the cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Tracing the evolving relationships among modernity, nature, and the urban imagination, from different vantage points and through different periods, Gandy uses water as a lens through which to observe both the ambiguities and the limits of nature as conventionally understood.

Gandy begins with the Parisian sewers of the nineteenth century, captured in the photographs of Nadar, and the reconstruction of subterranean Paris. He moves on to Weimar-era Berlin and its protection of public access to lakes for swimming, the culmination of efforts to reconnect the city with nature. He considers the threat of malaria in Lagos, where changing geopolitical circumstances led to large-scale swamp drainage in the 1940s. He shows how the dysfunctional water infrastructure of Mumbai offers a vivid expression of persistent social inequality in a postcolonial city. He explores the incongruous concrete landscapes of the Los Angeles River. Finally, Gandy uses the fictional scenario of a partially submerged London as the starting point for an investigation of the actual hydrological threats facing that city.]]> 362 Matthew Gandy 0262028255 Andrew 4 3.67 2014 The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination
author: Matthew Gandy
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/31
date added: 2016/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cosmos And Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint]]> 1261663 Illustrating the importance of both cosmos and hearth with examples from his country of birth, China, and from his home of the past forty years, the United States, Tuan proposes a revised conception of culture, the "cosmopolitan hearth," that has the coziness but not the narrowness and bigotry of the traditional hearth. Tuan encourages not only being thoroughly grounded in one's own culture but also the embracing of curiosity about the world. Optimistic and deeply human, Cosmos and Hearth lays out a path to being "at home in the cosmos."]]> 216 Yi-Fu Tuan 0816627304 Andrew 4 3.82 1996 Cosmos And Hearth: A Cosmopolite’s Viewpoint
author: Yi-Fu Tuan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/10/31
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger]]> 316767
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible.

But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential.

Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.]]> 392 Marc Levinson 0691123241 Andrew 4 3.79 2006 The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
author: Marc Levinson
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/10/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Water and the California Dream: Historic Choices for Shaping the Future]]> 27037156
With extensive use of oral histories, contemporary newspaper articles and autobiographies, Carle provides a rich exploration of the historic changes in California, as imported water shaped patterns of growth and development. In this thoroughly revised edition, Carle brings that history up to date, as water choices remain the primary tool for shaping California’s future. In a land where climate change is exacerbating the challenges of a naturally dry region, the state’s damaged environment and reduced quality of life can be corrected, Carle argues, if Californians step out of the historic pattern and embrace limited water supplies as a fact of life.]]> 288 David Carle 1619026171 Andrew 4 4.17 2016 Water and the California Dream: Historic Choices for Shaping the Future
author: David Carle
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2016/07/27
date added: 2016/07/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)]]> 26195578
Ěý From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off.Ěý Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.]]> 160 Kristen R. Ghodsee 022625755X Andrew 5 4.29 2016 From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
author: Kristen R. Ghodsee
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/07/20
shelves:
review:
Typically, after reading these "how-to" academic books, I feel let down. They teach me one or two memorable tips, but they mostly feel like a waste of time. Luckily, Ghodsee's book bulges with helpful hints that challenge me to improve my writing. For instance, I am avoiding writing "weak verbs" in this review (even though several of them already pepper it). Perhaps it was the right book at the write time. I struggle with portraying my data without being overly descriptive or overly obtuse. But this book provides some ways forward. She shows how fiction and nonfiction stylistic insights can enliven the deadest of fieldnotes. Most of all the book reminded me that writing a readable book is a laudable and obtainable goal. I recommend it.
]]> <![CDATA[From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)]]> 26195611
Ěý From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off.Ěý Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.]]> 160 Kristen R. Ghodsee 022625741X Andrew 5 5.00 2016 From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies That Everyone Can Read (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
author: Kristen R. Ghodsee
name: Andrew
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/07/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future]]> 7816424
The world's population is exploding, wild species are vanishing, our environment is degrading, and the costs of resources from oil to water are going nowhere but up. So what kind of world are we leaving for our children and grandchildren? Geoscientist and Guggenheim fellow Laurence Smith draws on the latest global modeling research to construct a sweeping thought experiment on what our world will be like in 2050. The result is both good news and bad: Eight nations of the Arctic Rim (including the United States) will become increasingly prosperous, powerful, and politically stable, while those closer to the equator will face water shortages, aging populations, and crowded megacities sapped by the rising costs of energy and coastal flooding.

The World in 2050 combines the lessons of geography and history with state-of-the-art model projections and analytical data-everything from climate dynamics and resource stocks to age distributions and economic growth projections. But Smith offers more than a compendium of statistics and studies- he spent fifteen months traveling the Arctic Rim, collecting stories and insights that resonate throughout the book. It is an approach much like Jared Diamond took in Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse , a work of geoscientific investigation rich in the appreciation of human diversity.

Packed with stunning photographs, original maps, and informative tables, this is the most authoritative, balanced, and compelling account available of the world of challenges and opportunities that we will leave for our children.]]> 336 Laurence C. Smith 0525951814 Andrew 3 3.78 2010 The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future
author: Laurence C. Smith
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2016/07/01
date added: 2016/07/12
shelves:
review:
Smith's writing will keep you turning the pages. He has in depth knowledge of so many environmental "mega-trends" that every page delivers an interesting fact about climate change, natural resources, and the politics of the Arctic. The book takes the tone of other hard science related tell-alls and therefore risks coming across as environmentally deterministic - changes in the climate will melt the north, then people may move to the north, then the "aboriginal" populations of Nunavut and Alaska will have greater economic and political power. The author suggests that the hardest part of such a futurist "thought experiment" is planning the political future. While he well illustrates the reasons why fossil fuels are likely to remain of primary importance, political and demographic forecasts are difficult to predict. Moreover, while he acknowledges that political futures are hard to predict (those pesky humans! thinks the climate scientist) I feel that he underestimate the likelihood that central governments of the NORC states won't simply rescind on political agreements with indigenous communities if they deem it politically expedient. They have done it before, why not do it again? Indeed, Smith assumes that all of the NORCs will play be the rules, except for Russia, which mostly plays by the rules. But the international legal system in place works to serve some parties at the expense of others, if not in theory, then in practice. There is no reason the ground rules wont change or be rejected in the future if the North really does become the honey pot Smith is predicting. And so, it seems to me, that the most difficult part of the model is the human element, which no number of computations will be able to predict. This being said, the book was still a stimulating read, and a number of awkward metaphors and puns aside, I would recommend it those curious.
]]> Tibet: A History 10638859 324 Sam Van Schaik 0300154046 Andrew 5
These sorts of histories are no doubt hard to write, but they can also be hard to read. Characters come onto the scene for half a chapter and then disappear completely as the next generation takes the scene. This is why the book was easy to put down for a long period of time; there wasn't much of an arch besides the angel of history to keep me going. Still, this book is a great resource for the very long and convoluted history of what we call Tibet.]]> 4.17 2011 Tibet: A History
author: Sam Van Schaik
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2016/07/12
date added: 2016/07/12
shelves:
review:
Spatially and religiously, a well balanced history of Tibet. I thought the strongest points were the author's commitment to giving us a rich understanding of divisions within Tibet over 1500 years of history. We explains the genesis of all the major, and many of the minor, schools of Tibetan Buddhism and their political roles in U, Tsang, Kham, and Amdo. While the book tends to be more of a history of Central Tibet, van Schaik still tends to the history of its larger, more powerful neighbors without ever reducing Tibet and Tibetan politics to an epiphenomenon of say, China.

These sorts of histories are no doubt hard to write, but they can also be hard to read. Characters come onto the scene for half a chapter and then disappear completely as the next generation takes the scene. This is why the book was easy to put down for a long period of time; there wasn't much of an arch besides the angel of history to keep me going. Still, this book is a great resource for the very long and convoluted history of what we call Tibet.
]]> <![CDATA[The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia]]> 2772672
Sneath argues that aristocratic power and statelike processes of administration were the true organizers of life on the steppe. Rethinking the traditional dichotomy between state and nonstate societies, Sneath conceives of a "headless state" in which a configuration of statelike power was formed by the horizontal relations among power holders and was reproduced with or without an overarching ruler or central "head." In other words, almost all of the operations of state power existed at the local level, virtually independent of central bureaucratic authority.

Sneath's research gives rise to an alternative picture of steppe life in which aristocrats determined the size, scale, and degree of centralization of political power. His history of the region shows no clear distinction between a highly centralized, stratified "state" society and an egalitarian, kin-based "tribal" society. Drawing on his extensive anthropological fieldwork in the region, Sneath persuasively challenges the legitimacy of the tribal model, which continues to distort scholarship on the history of Inner Asia.]]> 288 David Sneath 0231140541 Andrew 3
He gets to this point by drawing from the anthropological and historic record of many such groups: Mongols, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turks, etc. In an approach widely panned by his many reviewers, Sneath deconstructs the terms for "clan," "tribe," "people," and other such political/social keywords and shows that they could also be read to reflect terms that we associate much more strongly with landed aristocratic societies. Sneath has to be careful as he does this because he does not want to dredge up earlier essentializations of nomadic pastoralists as part of teleological structure that locks them in as any sort of alternative feudalism. Instead, he reduces the definition of a "state" entirely to a social relation that entails powers disparity. Rather than egalitarian nomads or an almost-feudal society, we get society-states divided into commoners and rulers; the common people having little sense of kinship or connection beyond their immediate family. Sneath also reverses the long-standing narrative of gradual colonial fixation of these groups onto territories. For him, the commoners (who he often implies were either slaves or the equivalent of slaves) were always bound to place while the aristocrats moved. Colonial states' contribution here was only in cartographically fixing names to these pasturage places. These names were derived from the local nobility.

I suppose how convincing you will find Sneath's argument is equal to how convincing you find his methodology. Does his deconstruction hold up? If so many people (Barfield, Khazanov, Golden, among others) say it doesn't, then why should we value Sneath's opinion over theirs? I found that the alternative arguments analyses from the cases he was challenging (which are often in the footnotes) were equally plausible as those offered by Sneath. Everyone is doing a degree of interpretation. If this book wasn't so polemical I think I would find it more convincing.]]> 4.00 2007 The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia
author: David Sneath
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2016/06/18
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:
The essence of Sneath's compelling argument is that Inner Asian nomads were never organized into segmentary kinship lineages, instead, they were "headless states:" shifting alliances of aristocratic households.

He gets to this point by drawing from the anthropological and historic record of many such groups: Mongols, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turks, etc. In an approach widely panned by his many reviewers, Sneath deconstructs the terms for "clan," "tribe," "people," and other such political/social keywords and shows that they could also be read to reflect terms that we associate much more strongly with landed aristocratic societies. Sneath has to be careful as he does this because he does not want to dredge up earlier essentializations of nomadic pastoralists as part of teleological structure that locks them in as any sort of alternative feudalism. Instead, he reduces the definition of a "state" entirely to a social relation that entails powers disparity. Rather than egalitarian nomads or an almost-feudal society, we get society-states divided into commoners and rulers; the common people having little sense of kinship or connection beyond their immediate family. Sneath also reverses the long-standing narrative of gradual colonial fixation of these groups onto territories. For him, the commoners (who he often implies were either slaves or the equivalent of slaves) were always bound to place while the aristocrats moved. Colonial states' contribution here was only in cartographically fixing names to these pasturage places. These names were derived from the local nobility.

I suppose how convincing you will find Sneath's argument is equal to how convincing you find his methodology. Does his deconstruction hold up? If so many people (Barfield, Khazanov, Golden, among others) say it doesn't, then why should we value Sneath's opinion over theirs? I found that the alternative arguments analyses from the cases he was challenging (which are often in the footnotes) were equally plausible as those offered by Sneath. Everyone is doing a degree of interpretation. If this book wasn't so polemical I think I would find it more convincing.
]]> Travels in Siberia 7966160 Travels in Siberia, Frazier reveals Siberia's role in history--its science, economics, and politics--with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we'll never think about it in the same way again.

With great empathy and epic sweep, Frazier tells the stories of Siberia's most famous exiles, from the well-known--Dostoyevsky, Lenin (twice), Stalin (numerous times)--to the lesser known (like Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the empress for copying her dresses) to those who experienced unimaginable suffering in Siberian camps under the Soviet regime, forever immortalized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.

Travels in Siberia is also a unique chronicle of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, a personal account of adventures among Russian friends and acquaintances, and, above all, a unique, captivating, totally Frazierian take on what he calls the "amazingness" of Russia--a country that, for all its tragic history, somehow still manages to be funny. Travels in Siberia will undoubtedly take its place as one of the twenty-first century's indispensable contributions to the travel-writing genre.

]]> 529 Ian Frazier 0374278725 Andrew 4 3.90 2010 Travels in Siberia
author: Ian Frazier
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/09/01
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire]]> 11006684 405 Roger Crowley 0571245943 Andrew 5 4.14 2011 City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire
author: Roger Crowley
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2014/09/01
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:

]]> The Birth of Territory 17673921
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý

The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered.]]> 512 Stuart Elden 0226202569 Andrew 4 3.78 2013 The Birth of Territory
author: Stuart Elden
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/01
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China 221 B.C. to AD 1757 (Studies in Social Discontinuity)]]> 718533 348 Thomas J. Barfield 1557863245 Andrew 4
Barfield has been accused for forcing history to meet his theory. He appears to be making a great deal of interpretation here. And he mostly seem to rely on the official Dynastic histories of China that have been translated into English. So he basically takes his fieldwork experience among Afghan pastoralists and tries to imagine what 2000 years of tribes may have been thinking. I would find this extremely difficult to by if the final book didn't read so plausibly. So I still like it, with reservations.]]> 4.27 1989 The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China 221 B.C. to AD 1757 (Studies in Social Discontinuity)
author: Thomas J. Barfield
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2016/06/26
shelves:
review:
Barfield reads Inner Asian history through the lens of political anthropology of steppe societies. This allows for fascinating theories about Chinese-steppe interactions. Rather than present a simplistic steppe and sown narrative, Barfield reveals two types of steppe strategies against China (outer and inner frontier policies) and shows how Manchurian groups diverged drastically from either Chinese or steppe political formations. Manchurian groups (Manchu, Khitan, Jurchen, among others) were able to use a system of dual administration, and shrewd political maneuvering to both directly rule Chinese subjects, and pacify or divide the steppe.

Barfield has been accused for forcing history to meet his theory. He appears to be making a great deal of interpretation here. And he mostly seem to rely on the official Dynastic histories of China that have been translated into English. So he basically takes his fieldwork experience among Afghan pastoralists and tries to imagine what 2000 years of tribes may have been thinking. I would find this extremely difficult to by if the final book didn't read so plausibly. So I still like it, with reservations.
]]> <![CDATA[The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine]]> 25255053
Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that used it as a strategic gateway between East and West -- from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. For centuries, Ukraine has been a meeting place of various cultures. The mixing of sedentary and nomadic peoples and Christianity and Islam on the steppe borderland produced the class of ferocious warriors known as the Cossacks, for example, while the encounter between the Catholic and Orthodox churches created a religious tradition that bridges Western and Eastern Christianity. Ukraine has also been a home to millions of Jews, serving as the birthplace of Hassidism -- and as one of the killing fields of the Holocaust.

Plokhy examines the history of Ukraine's search for its identity through the lives of the major figures in Ukrainian history: Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kyiv, whose daughter Anna became queen of France; the Cossack ruler Ivan Mazepa, who was immortalized in the poems of Byron and Pushkin; Nikita Khrushchev and his protege-turned-nemesis Leonid Brezhnev, who called Ukraine their home; and the heroes of the Maidan protests of 2013 and 2014, who embody the current struggle over Ukraine's future.

As Plokhy explains, today's crisis is a tragic case of history repeating itself, as Ukraine once again finds itself in the center of the battle of global proportions. An authoritative history of this vital country, The Gates of Europe provides a unique insight into the origins of the most dangerous international crisis since the end of the Cold War.]]> 395 Serhii Plokhy 0465050913 Andrew 4
A few things really struck me. First, that the lands of Ukraine have a long history of being exploited for slave labor, first by the Nogay and the Crimeans for the Ottoman markets, and then by the Germans and the Russians for labor during the second world war. Second, that political cultures can be so determined by political fissure. The last several hundred years of Ukrainian history have been marked by several partitions and re-territorializations that have exposed various portions of the country to different political systems, such as Galicia to Poland and Austria, and Left Bank Ukraine (that is, east of the Dnieper) to the Russian Empire. This had important implications for nationalism, as it impacted political cultures, language, and religion. Different portions of Ukraine managed to influence one another even when the country was divided or when governments made efforts to crush influence from across the border. Plokhy shows how the Cossacks attempted to be shrewd political operators, moving back and forth between Poland and Muscovy as they attempted to broker the best political deal, a strategy that failed then and would continue to fail the Ukrainians in the future. Third, the continued lives of myths, such as the Cossack myth, for encouraging nationalist sentiments. Chronicles and Histories that became bases of different Ukrainian myths were both born out of politics and were continuously re-arranged for political purposes. Ironically, the myth of the Kievan Rus' as the source of Russian civilization obscures its genesis in a Viking aristocracy - the term " Rus' " itself of Scandinavian roots.

My main criticisms of the book are that Plokhy's interests are primarily political and therefore I was often at a loss to how deep the idea of Ukraine, or Little Russia, or the Cossack Hetmanate penetrated the people beyond politicians, officers, religious leaders, and intellectuals. He mentions that peasants deeply supported their Cossack leaders, but I was less sure about the attitudes of the Ukrainian peasants in the 19th and early 20th centuries towards the various Ukrainian nationalist movements.
These movements mostly failed and when membership only numbered in the hundreds or thousands, I am less sure how much they impacted the Ukrainian people. Since many of them built their dreams on Cossack myths (vs. potentially pan-Slavic ideologies) I wonder how strongly these ideas affected the peasants: did peasants dream of the Hetmanate or Ukraine. Furthermore, what sorts of borders did these groups imagine for Ukraine? Plokhy treats the contemporary borders as the final resolution of a history of partition.

Finally, reading this history, I can't help but conclude that Crimea is as much Russian as it is Ukrainian, or Ottoman, or its own place. The same could be said for nearly every borderland of the country, including the eastern portions now claimed by Russian-allied splinter states. In fact, is there anything more Ukrainian than being divided, with a future of reunion on the horizon?]]> 4.18 2015 The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
author: Serhii Plokhy
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/06/15
date added: 2016/06/15
shelves:
review:
I didn't know how little I knew about Ukraine. Plokhy draws from his exhaustive knowledge of Ukrainian history to offer portrait of a region that has been divided as long as it has been on record. From the days of Rome and Scythia to Putin's annexing of Crimea, the author shows us the multiple forces that are constantly, in different configurations, re-arranging the Ukrainian map.

A few things really struck me. First, that the lands of Ukraine have a long history of being exploited for slave labor, first by the Nogay and the Crimeans for the Ottoman markets, and then by the Germans and the Russians for labor during the second world war. Second, that political cultures can be so determined by political fissure. The last several hundred years of Ukrainian history have been marked by several partitions and re-territorializations that have exposed various portions of the country to different political systems, such as Galicia to Poland and Austria, and Left Bank Ukraine (that is, east of the Dnieper) to the Russian Empire. This had important implications for nationalism, as it impacted political cultures, language, and religion. Different portions of Ukraine managed to influence one another even when the country was divided or when governments made efforts to crush influence from across the border. Plokhy shows how the Cossacks attempted to be shrewd political operators, moving back and forth between Poland and Muscovy as they attempted to broker the best political deal, a strategy that failed then and would continue to fail the Ukrainians in the future. Third, the continued lives of myths, such as the Cossack myth, for encouraging nationalist sentiments. Chronicles and Histories that became bases of different Ukrainian myths were both born out of politics and were continuously re-arranged for political purposes. Ironically, the myth of the Kievan Rus' as the source of Russian civilization obscures its genesis in a Viking aristocracy - the term " Rus' " itself of Scandinavian roots.

My main criticisms of the book are that Plokhy's interests are primarily political and therefore I was often at a loss to how deep the idea of Ukraine, or Little Russia, or the Cossack Hetmanate penetrated the people beyond politicians, officers, religious leaders, and intellectuals. He mentions that peasants deeply supported their Cossack leaders, but I was less sure about the attitudes of the Ukrainian peasants in the 19th and early 20th centuries towards the various Ukrainian nationalist movements.
These movements mostly failed and when membership only numbered in the hundreds or thousands, I am less sure how much they impacted the Ukrainian people. Since many of them built their dreams on Cossack myths (vs. potentially pan-Slavic ideologies) I wonder how strongly these ideas affected the peasants: did peasants dream of the Hetmanate or Ukraine. Furthermore, what sorts of borders did these groups imagine for Ukraine? Plokhy treats the contemporary borders as the final resolution of a history of partition.

Finally, reading this history, I can't help but conclude that Crimea is as much Russian as it is Ukrainian, or Ottoman, or its own place. The same could be said for nearly every borderland of the country, including the eastern portions now claimed by Russian-allied splinter states. In fact, is there anything more Ukrainian than being divided, with a future of reunion on the horizon?
]]> <![CDATA[Capital in the Twenty First Century]]> 18736925 Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.]]> 685 Thomas Piketty 067443000X Andrew 4
Tax the 1%!]]> 4.04 2013 Capital in the Twenty First Century
author: Thomas Piketty
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2015/02/01
date added: 2016/06/15
shelves:
review:
Hate to say it, as Piketty himself continuously explains data restrictions that make his study Euro-centric, but the book needs more China. Otherwise, you might as well call it Capital in the Twentieth Century. Kudos to Piketty for getting me to read hundreds of pages based on the discussion of statistics, which I never want to do. He makes it understandable. I will never forget what a quintile is. I thought in particular his discussion of the historical nature of inflation and currency was quite telling. We are so used to paying attention not only to exchange rates, but inflation rates and interest rates, so that we can maximize the value of our money. In the agricultural societies of yore, meaning not "traditional" societies, but what most pre-20th societies were largely rooted in: wealth from crops, the value of money was much more stable over large timescales. This made me think how desperate we all are to sustain capitalist systems and obtain the best rates on stocks and investments. The riskiness of contemporary capitalism is, in addition to being a product of contemporary post-agricultural goods and economies, a psychology that forces us to bet on the future value of all that we own and possess. This fact makes many people accomplices, too afraid to risk any alternatives.

Tax the 1%!
]]> Oblivion 6749
Mister squishy --
The soul is not a smithy --
Incarnations of burned children --
Another pioneer --
Good old neon --
Philosophy and the mirror of nature --
Oblivion --
The suffering channel]]> 329 David Foster Wallace 0316010766 Andrew 4 4.09 2004 Oblivion
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2016/05/03
date added: 2016/05/03
shelves:
review:
My first DFW book, some pretty powerful stories, all written in an intense stream-of-consciousness (though I hesitate to call it this, because many of the tangents hardly feel like "consciousness") style. 'Good Old Neon' is maybe the most intense thing I have ever read - it really takes you to the edge of the despair. I read that story immediately before watching "The End of the Tour," and I found it hard to measure up the character in the film to the author of that hopeless piece. DFW is often glossed as an author of boredom. One of my favorite parts of the book is the filling out of the window squares by the daydreamer in 'The Soul is not a Smithy.' It is always delicious to read an author capturing some element of life that seems to insignificant to warrant attention, but then unfold it as a center of a particular kind of human experience.
]]> <![CDATA[Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation]]> 1086651
In this journey from the deep subterranean spaces of the West Bank and Gaza to their militarized airspace, Eyal Weizman unravels Israel’s mechanisms of control and its transformation of the Occupied Territories into a theoretically constructed artifice, in which all natural and built features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the conflict is waged. Weizman traces the development of these ideas, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon’s reconceptualization of military defense during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare and airborne targeted assassinations.

In exploring Israel’s methods to transform the landscape and the built environment themselves into tools of domination and control, Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation.]]> 318 Eyal Weizman 1844671259 Andrew 5 4.51 2007 Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation
author: Eyal Weizman
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2016/05/03
date added: 2016/05/03
shelves:
review:
A relentlessly fascinating look at how the Isreali military, Isreali settlers, and other actors have used space to occupy, control, and structure Palestine over the last 50 years. I have read many geographical works that try to mobilize the concept of "verticality" but they often ring a bit shallow. The "hollow land" described in this really is a three-dimensional space transportation, communication, and warfare. It would appear that when a space becomes densely settled, urbanized, or coveted, it can't help but go vertical. I was shocked to discover that some in the Isreali military were mobilizing the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari for urban warfare.
]]> <![CDATA[Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West]]> 12510954 How a Chinese pirate defeated European colonialists and won Taiwan during the seventeenth century

During the seventeenth century, Holland created the world's most dynamic colonial empire, outcompeting the British and capturing Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Yet, in the Sino-Dutch War--Europe's first war with China--the Dutch met their match in a colorful Chinese warlord named Koxinga. Part samurai, part pirate, he led his generals to victory over the Dutch and captured one of their largest and richest colonies--Taiwan. How did he do it? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of European and Chinese military techniques during the period, Lost Colony provides a balanced new perspective on long-held assumptions about Western power, Chinese might, and the nature of war.

It has traditionally been asserted that Europeans of the era possessed more advanced science, technology, and political structures than their Eastern counterparts, but historians have recently contested this view, arguing that many parts of Asia developed on pace with Europe until 1800. While Lost Colony shows that the Dutch did indeed possess a technological edge thanks to the Renaissance fort and the broadside sailing ship, that edge was neutralized by the formidable Chinese military leadership. Thanks to a rich heritage of ancient war wisdom, Koxinga and his generals outfoxed the Dutch at every turn.

Exploring a period when the military balance between Europe and China was closer than at any other point in modern history, Lost Colony reassesses an important chapter in world history and offers valuable and surprising lessons for contemporary times.

-- "Library Journal"]]> 448 Tonio Andrade 0691144559 Andrew 4 4.07 2011 Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West
author: Tonio Andrade
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/24
date added: 2016/04/25
shelves:
review:
A fun and fast read with a compelling narrative. This book is an intervention in comparative military history. Rather than look at either the Dutch (as Europeans) or the Chinese (as East Asians) in isolation, Andrade compares how they fared in a direct confrontation in mid-17th century Taiwan. The conclusion is the Dutch nearly won because they had Renaissance-Style fort architecture, comprised of cross-firing bastions and thickly walled redoubts, as well as superior ships. They ultimately lost Zeelandia Castle in western Taiwan to the half-Chinese, half-Japanese Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) because he was an exceptional strategist who drew from multiple traditions when creating, outfitting, and training his versatile armies. In comparison, the Dutch leader Coyet was a poor strategist who missed many opportunities to break the siege of his fort. Weapons technology - cannon and muskets - were much closer across parties than I would have expected. Indeed, one of Andrade's main arguments is that we can't look at Europe as simply breaking away from and superseding Asia in regards to military technology in the late 2nd millennium. There was much more diffusion and cross-learning. That being said, the superiority of the Dutch ships and forts was acknowledged by all sides even then. One lingering question for me was: why the Chinese didn't then start adapting the architectural technology in their coastal forts? That had the ruins of many examples. Is architecture an inherently more conservative technology? Could only a cosmopolitan like Koxinga pick it up? Andrade also makes an argument about global cooling in the 17th century driving warfare and ruining crops. For me this was a bit of a distraction, reading more like an effort to dip into climate change interest than really engage with the problem and its potential consequences. That is, it stimulated many more questions for me than it answered. Also, his climate related citations are all to military historians, and not to environmental historians.
]]> <![CDATA[Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction]]> 19484390 Ěý]]> 336 Gaston R. Gordillo 0822356198 Andrew 4 4.28 2014 Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction
author: Gaston R. Gordillo
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/01
date added: 2016/04/19
shelves:
review:
A much needed intervention to re-animate scholars' examinations of meaning and place. Gordillo offers a powerful way to look at how rubble can enter our worlds as "constellations" of "bright points." I also enjoyed his reading of Casey on the void to apply towards indigenous anti-state spaces. The only negative was that at times I couldn't help but think that some of the spatial thinking was inconsistent, that is, I felt like Gordillo was trying to argue away gaps in why, at some points, locals would celebrate state space, or were unaware of the rubble that was supposedly so compelling. Still, I think the book was largely a success, and I hope it will interest more anthropologists in the rich work in geography on memory and place/landscape.
]]> <![CDATA[Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific]]> 18770412 256 Robert D. Kaplan 0812994329 Andrew 3
My big take away was that so many countries in the region are attempting to assert their national identity in the face of an insurgent China and a distant USA. The result is a scramble for arms and islands that is more about building national identity and emergent cartographic anxieties than any economic goals or historical truths. Regional investment in submarines and China's expanded Coast Guard strategy (because it is a sneaky way of naturalizing a "domestic" space) are important shifts that Kaplan well illustrates. I thought his discussion of "China's Caribbean" was somewhat half-baked and his civilizational/cultural arguments about the Champa and the Vietnamese people's unwillingness to dwell on the Vietnam War without any logical basis. Kaplan stresses historical contingencies and agentic change out of one side of this mouth, and immutable essentialisms out of the other side; I can't see any logical basis to which direction he will decide to argue in at any given point.]]> 3.92 2014 Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
author: Robert D. Kaplan
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2016/04/04
date added: 2016/04/19
shelves:
review:
Kaplan's weaknesses are actually what make him readable. His "travel writing" comes across as essentialist, but his sensationalism keeps you turning the pages. Equal parts annoyed and intrigued I kept flipping through the pages until I reached the end.

My big take away was that so many countries in the region are attempting to assert their national identity in the face of an insurgent China and a distant USA. The result is a scramble for arms and islands that is more about building national identity and emergent cartographic anxieties than any economic goals or historical truths. Regional investment in submarines and China's expanded Coast Guard strategy (because it is a sneaky way of naturalizing a "domestic" space) are important shifts that Kaplan well illustrates. I thought his discussion of "China's Caribbean" was somewhat half-baked and his civilizational/cultural arguments about the Champa and the Vietnamese people's unwillingness to dwell on the Vietnam War without any logical basis. Kaplan stresses historical contingencies and agentic change out of one side of this mouth, and immutable essentialisms out of the other side; I can't see any logical basis to which direction he will decide to argue in at any given point.
]]> <![CDATA[Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950]]> 14491 490 Mark Mazower 0375727388 Andrew 4
In Mazower's conclusion he discusses how nationalist whitewashing obscured the many histories of the city over the 20th century. So many historical shifts and contingencies brought about a massive transformation of the face of the city. Key is that what may persist as a ghost in the city is subject to the effects of shifting political winds. The Jewish graveyards were erased after the Nazis exterminated their population. The Muslim past was erased first through fire and then through the razing of minarets after the population transfer of "Turks" in the first days of Turkey. Religious structures with shared pasts can be eliminated of one of their memories (Islam) while another is promoted (Orthodox). But even what survives is subject to a revised remembering. While Orthodox came to mean Greek over the 19th and 20th centuries, religious categories were more important under the Ottomans than racial, ethnic, or national categories, which gained more importance over time. When new categories arose, there were periods in which the ideas of the old orders disappeared (such as the fading away of the "Old Turks" with Ottoman ideology). New lines could form out of old antagonisms (the Excharate vs. Patriarchate which became Bulgar(ian) vs. Greek). And finally, the speed of political change and successive waves of migrants could make new pressing problems (the recent Turkic Greek immigrants in the 1920s) become yesterday's news (as when post-war Greeks entered the city).

Another interesting insight is the way that many populations groups were divided within themselves at different points in time. One can't simply talk of historical antagonism between the Jews and the Muslims. Sometimes the Jewish community was divided (wanting more Jews in Salonica w/ Ottomans vs. Zionists). The Greeks could disagree on political lines and factions could form alliances with, for instance working class Jews.]]> 4.29 2004 Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950
author: Mark Mazower
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2016/02/01
date added: 2016/04/19
shelves:
review:
A very good read on this city, though I often wished for more context. In other words, a mostly accessible book written by a real regional specialist.

In Mazower's conclusion he discusses how nationalist whitewashing obscured the many histories of the city over the 20th century. So many historical shifts and contingencies brought about a massive transformation of the face of the city. Key is that what may persist as a ghost in the city is subject to the effects of shifting political winds. The Jewish graveyards were erased after the Nazis exterminated their population. The Muslim past was erased first through fire and then through the razing of minarets after the population transfer of "Turks" in the first days of Turkey. Religious structures with shared pasts can be eliminated of one of their memories (Islam) while another is promoted (Orthodox). But even what survives is subject to a revised remembering. While Orthodox came to mean Greek over the 19th and 20th centuries, religious categories were more important under the Ottomans than racial, ethnic, or national categories, which gained more importance over time. When new categories arose, there were periods in which the ideas of the old orders disappeared (such as the fading away of the "Old Turks" with Ottoman ideology). New lines could form out of old antagonisms (the Excharate vs. Patriarchate which became Bulgar(ian) vs. Greek). And finally, the speed of political change and successive waves of migrants could make new pressing problems (the recent Turkic Greek immigrants in the 1920s) become yesterday's news (as when post-war Greeks entered the city).

Another interesting insight is the way that many populations groups were divided within themselves at different points in time. One can't simply talk of historical antagonism between the Jews and the Muslims. Sometimes the Jewish community was divided (wanting more Jews in Salonica w/ Ottomans vs. Zionists). The Greeks could disagree on political lines and factions could form alliances with, for instance working class Jews.
]]> Debt: The First 5,000 Years 6617037 Before there was money, there was debt.

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religionĚý(words like “guilt,â€� “sin,â€� and “redemptionâ€�) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.]]> 534 David Graeber 1933633867 Andrew 3 Overall I enjoyed the book, but it would have benefitted if its author was less ambitious. 5000 years is a lot to cover in one book.]]> 4.21 2011 Debt: The First 5,000 Years
author: David Graeber
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2016/02/01
date added: 2016/04/19
shelves:
review:
Graeber has many compelling ideas about debt, but he can take things too far. One interesting part was the discussion about economists' views of debt at the beginning, which shows the surprisingly rich ways people have approached the problem, including from theological perspective. Unfortunately, when Graeber himself pontificates on the debt/religion perspective, it seems very half baked. One of the reasons is that he is so clearly wedded to an economic anthropology that can't help but do a damaging disservice to the religious experience (e.g. guilt). The book is more successful when these views are extended to scenarios such as the rise of credit in the slave trade in West Africa.
Overall I enjoyed the book, but it would have benefitted if its author was less ambitious. 5000 years is a lot to cover in one book.
]]> The Silk Road: A New History 13687103 In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. For centuries, key records remained hidden-sometimes deliberately buried by bureaucrats for safe keeping. But the sands of the Taklamakan Desert have revealed fascinating material, sometimes preserved by illiterate locals who recycled official documents to make insoles for shoes or garments for the dead. Hansen explores seven oases along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where merchants, envoys, pilgrims, and travelers mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. There was no single, continuous road, but a chain of markets that traded between east and west. China and the Roman Empire had very little direct trade. China's main partners were the peoples of modern-day Iran, whose tombs in China reveal much about their Zoroastrian beliefs. Silk was not the most important good on the road; paper, invented in China before Julius Caesar was born, had a bigger impact in Europe, while metals, spices, and glass were just as important as silk. Perhaps most significant of all was the road's transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic motifs.
The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.]]> 320 Valerie Hansen 0195159314 Andrew 5 3.75 2012 The Silk Road: A New History
author: Valerie Hansen
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2016/01/19
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930]]> 1954592 248 Janice Stockard 0804720142 Andrew 4 3.74 1992 Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930
author: Janice Stockard
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2016/01/19
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World]]> 23995249
In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt’s extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism—and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.]]> 473 Andrea Wulf 038535066X Andrew 4 4.28 2015 The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
author: Andrea Wulf
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2016/01/19
shelves:
review:
An enjoyable book that really brings to life the era in which Humboldt lived and the significance and impact of Humboldt's ideas. Wulf gives us a biography of Humboldt's life, and focuses in particular on his ideas about the interconnectedness of nature. Humboldt drew explicit connections between colonial activities such as deforestation and monocropping and the negative impacts on the surrounding environment they bring about. This appears timely as interest in global climate change continues to grow. Indeed, Wulf argues that contemporary understandings of nature owe much to Humboldt. He also had a progressive political view when it came to bondage in the New World, a topic which he wrote about at length. Oddly, his criticisms didn't translate into strong political convictions in Europe, and he worked closely with the Prussian kings throughout his life. Wulf turns this political paradox into a virtue by showing how he did support political reforms (as long as they didn't rock the Prussian boat too hard), but mostly that his dedication to science was so overwhelming that he didn't have the time. Yet, on this issue and other questions, the book is so close to hagiography that I can't help but feel I am only getting half of the picture. My main criticism is mostly with the length and narrative of the book. The first two thirds of the book, which focuses on Humboldt is very readable and finds a narrative in his life trajectory. After this, however, the author starts giving chapter-length biographies of various 19th century luminaries that were inspired by Humboldt: Darwin, Thoreau, Marsh, Haeckel, and finally, Muir. While the portion on Darwin is the most appropriate in its theme and coherence, the author chapters increasingly come off as partially formed biographies that would make more sense as books in their own right. The narrative of the book then loses its way and I felt the final 50 pages a bit of a slog, though an interesting one.
]]> The Consolation of Philosophy 16601987
While in prison awaiting a brutal execution, Boethius produced arguably the most famous work of early medieval philosophy and literature, the celebrated "Consolation of Philosophy." In alternating sections of prose and poetry, Boethius describes the circumstances of his rapid fall from the upper echelons of society and power. In a conversation with lady Philosophy, Boethius discusses the perennial questions of human existence: the possibility of human happiness, the problem of evil, the vicissitudes of fortune in living well, the question of whether there is order in the universe, and the possibility of human freedom. The "Consolation of Philosophy" has survived as a brilliant work of Latin literature, and early English translations done by King Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I are still extant.]]> 144 Boethius 1411467647 Andrew 5
The work itself can be divided into three parts (here I am disregarding the five Books in the text): (1) on the sufferings that people endure when trying to attain happiness, and what these goals are, (2) on why these goals are misleading, as they don’t really lead to happiness, and (3) probably the most interesting part: on chance, fate, providence, and the faculty of the Divine mind. When I started reading the book I thought that indeed early Christianity was a sad lot. The text has the timeless quality of a self-help book for the have-nots: "don’t fret meek one, as riches, status, and power don’t really lead to happiness.� Boethius makes many good points: barbarians don’t acknowledge our titles (there is nothing natural in socially constructed status categories), and such status will be forgotten in the future, anyway. Jewels don’t make their possessors any more beautiful, the enrichment of jewelry is limited to itself. Yes, yes, I found myself saying. The reasoning appears convincing until the second part when we learn that people don’t pursue any of the vice with a willful heart, instead they are like lustful beasts, and they don’t obtain happiness. Real happiness is the attainment of the good, which can only happen through the unified pursuit of virtue, as all such things that men strive for are combined, in there more positive, unearthly aspects, in the unity of the good God. On the topic of the pleasures of vice, Boethius is often fighting Epicureans. I didn’t find this entirely convincing, because, as we all know, many people consciously pursue bad things because they bring happiness. I suppose that while the topics of virtue, happiness, and the good life are timeless, our estimations of happiness and what is good have changed so much (and continue to change) that beyond pointing out the immediate faults of vice, it is hard to argue that someone living a life of rapacious pleasure and power is having a bad time.


In the third part Boethius discourses on a very dated but incredibly interesting set of topics: that of free will itself. By way of a discussion of the creation and motion of the universe (and Timaeus), we arrive at the central finding that we do indeed have free will, and can be rewarded and punished, and that God, with His higher faculty that confounds mere mortal minds, is all-knowing. He simply knows, from an eternal present, all of necessity and in-necessity. The passages on how exactly this works were lost on me and contained discussions of the functioning of the universe and fate in there relation to providence. It reminded me of the Leibniz-Clark correspondence of a millennium later, no wonder Boethius is credited as a touchstone between the pre-Christian Greek tradition and later European Christian philosophical thinking.]]> 4.00 524 The Consolation of Philosophy
author: Boethius
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.00
book published: 524
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/11
date added: 2015/11/24
shelves:
review:
This translation is rather difficult, yet I am glad I stuck with this text. Reading the copyright expired texts from the Amazon Kindle library has been an unexpected challenge, and reward. This text has been in a very formal, King James Bible style English. The formal you (thou, thine, thy, etc.) is used a lot, as is “methinks,� and many things “comes to pass.� Such a writing style becomes difficult when already torturous reasoning comes loaded with outmoded terms and conjunctions. The poetry is also difficult to read, and in some cases, I wouldn’t invest much in trying to make it clear.

The work itself can be divided into three parts (here I am disregarding the five Books in the text): (1) on the sufferings that people endure when trying to attain happiness, and what these goals are, (2) on why these goals are misleading, as they don’t really lead to happiness, and (3) probably the most interesting part: on chance, fate, providence, and the faculty of the Divine mind. When I started reading the book I thought that indeed early Christianity was a sad lot. The text has the timeless quality of a self-help book for the have-nots: "don’t fret meek one, as riches, status, and power don’t really lead to happiness.� Boethius makes many good points: barbarians don’t acknowledge our titles (there is nothing natural in socially constructed status categories), and such status will be forgotten in the future, anyway. Jewels don’t make their possessors any more beautiful, the enrichment of jewelry is limited to itself. Yes, yes, I found myself saying. The reasoning appears convincing until the second part when we learn that people don’t pursue any of the vice with a willful heart, instead they are like lustful beasts, and they don’t obtain happiness. Real happiness is the attainment of the good, which can only happen through the unified pursuit of virtue, as all such things that men strive for are combined, in there more positive, unearthly aspects, in the unity of the good God. On the topic of the pleasures of vice, Boethius is often fighting Epicureans. I didn’t find this entirely convincing, because, as we all know, many people consciously pursue bad things because they bring happiness. I suppose that while the topics of virtue, happiness, and the good life are timeless, our estimations of happiness and what is good have changed so much (and continue to change) that beyond pointing out the immediate faults of vice, it is hard to argue that someone living a life of rapacious pleasure and power is having a bad time.


In the third part Boethius discourses on a very dated but incredibly interesting set of topics: that of free will itself. By way of a discussion of the creation and motion of the universe (and Timaeus), we arrive at the central finding that we do indeed have free will, and can be rewarded and punished, and that God, with His higher faculty that confounds mere mortal minds, is all-knowing. He simply knows, from an eternal present, all of necessity and in-necessity. The passages on how exactly this works were lost on me and contained discussions of the functioning of the universe and fate in there relation to providence. It reminded me of the Leibniz-Clark correspondence of a millennium later, no wonder Boethius is credited as a touchstone between the pre-Christian Greek tradition and later European Christian philosophical thinking.
]]> <![CDATA[The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past]]> 444796 552 Richard Hartshorne 0837193281 Andrew 3 2.33 1978 The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past
author: Richard Hartshorne
name: Andrew
average rating: 2.33
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:

]]> Shadow of the Silk Road 701596 384 Colin Thubron 006123172X Andrew 5 3.77 2007 Shadow of the Silk Road
author: Colin Thubron
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2015/06/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:
At first I found the writing a bit hard to get behind. Another old white guy writing a throwback travel book. But Thubron is a great narrator and writer, and easy to sympathize with, unlike, say, Paul Theroux. I learned a lot from this book and recommend it to anyone interested in the elusive places that constituted the silk road. At times, Thubron even make me want to leave my camera behind on my next trip. He also encouraged me to seek out the "Nestorian" pagoda south of Xi'An. You can find it, but I think Thubron has unwittingly (or wittingly?) perpetuated a myth. The Buddhist monk there criticized the Christian story and argued that there were no images in the higher structure. Furthermore the structure look completely conventional for the region. Seems like a story perpetuated by fantasically-minded Christians. The local, probably county-level, tourism board likes the Nestorian idea, and has reconstructed the Tang Nestorian stele next to the pagoda, and has even built an Orthodox style tourist trap church at the bottom of the hill, which I did not visit. Image dreams without commodification - read this book.
]]> The Urban Revolution 332305 224 Henri Lefebvre 0816641609 Andrew 3 4.08 1970 The Urban Revolution
author: Henri Lefebvre
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at: 2014/02/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:
A good intro to Lefebvre. Some of the writing is obscure. I still don't know what a "blind field" is, seems unnecessary to put that chapter (2) so early in the work. But I am sure someone has built their career on unpacking that concept, accurately or not. I recommend Chapters 1, 3 and 4.
]]> The Country and the City 184043 335 Raymond Williams 0195198107 Andrew 3 4.16 1973 The Country and the City
author: Raymond Williams
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2015/07/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:
The most interesting thing Williams presents is the durability of the rosy past, a thesis that he hammers home in the first few chapters that look at early modern England. The rest of the book shows the smaller changes that occur in English literature through the subsequent centuries, ending at about H.G. Wells. I admit that after on hundred and fifty pages the work grew tedious for me. This was largely because the structure of the book eluded me. Where was it going, besides forward in time? One major flaw is that the underlying theory was not well explained. I had to consult his 1977 Marxism and Literature in order properly understand "structure of feeling." In this book Williams continuously alludes to a "shift in the structure of feeling." There seem to be so many shifts that I have a hard time believing that there was ever anything that could properly be called a structure. Another important concept for Williams, also not explained in this book, is "practical consciousness," which is the actual progressive yet durable understandings and feelings of the farm laborers, the writers, and people in general. Williams praises most the writers of the country who have their own experience with farm labor, because such authors refuse to either romanticize or fully condemn the labor - they see it, nay they understand it, in all of its agonies and occasional joys. Reading this book also inspired me to watch some of the film adaptations of the works covered in this book. Lots of sheep.
]]> <![CDATA[The Mongols at China's Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives)]]> 2341969
The author interrogates received wisdom about Chinese and minority nationalism by unraveling the Chinese discourse and practice of "national unity." He shows how the discourse was constructed over time through political rituals and sexuality in relation to Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples that hark back to Chinese-Xiongnu confrontations two millennia ago and Manchu conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries. Titular rulers of an autonomous region in which they constitute a minority, Mongols face enormous barriers in building and maintaining a socialist Mongolian nationality and a Mongolian language and culture. Acknowledging these difficulties, Bulag discusses a range of sensitive issues including the imbrication of nation, class, and ethnicity in the context of Mongol-Chinese relations, tensions inherent in writing a postrevolutionary history for a socialist nationality, and the moral dilemma of building a socialist model with Mongol characteristics. Charting the interface between a state-centered multinational Chinese polity and a primordial nationalist multiculturalism that aims to manage minority nationalities as "cultures," he explores Mongol ethnopolitical strategies to preserve their heritage.]]> 320 Uradyn E. Bulag 074251143X Andrew 4 4.40 2002 The Mongols at China's Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives)
author: Uradyn E. Bulag
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2015/07/01
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:
Interesting book. Bulag uses so many disparate sources and approaches to illuminate the complicated subject of the political and social anthropology of "China's Mongolia." Bulag looks at propaganda children's tales, poetry about the heqin marriage policy, and the story of Ulanhu, the red hero (or folk traitor?) who was bandied, and then almost abandoned in his burial, by the Chinese Communist Party. Bulag was born in Inner Mongolia, so he brings a unique perspective and a mastery of languages to his study of the subject. What I most enjoy is that Bulag understands so well the way these stories have been presented in China, and how they are officially controlled and explained, so he is able to reveal the small closures and elisions that suture the Chinese narratives together. The biggest shortcoming for me was that Bulag's citation style seems at times to get in the way of his arguments; some of the placement in the wider literature isn't always convincing, which can be distracting. This aside, I recommend the book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism]]> 90631 The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book-a #1 bestseller in Germany-Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Praise for The Corrosion of Character: "A benchmark for our time."—Daniel Bell "[A]n incredibly insightful book."—William Julius Wilson "[A] remarkable synthesis of acute empirical observation and serious moral reflection."—Richard Rorty "[Sennett] offers abundant fresh insights . . . illuminated by his concern with people's struggle to give meaning to their lives."—[Memphis] Commercial Appeal]]> 176 Richard Sennett 0393319873 Andrew 3 3.93 1996 The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
author: Richard Sennett
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/11
date added: 2015/09/16
shelves:
review:
Some compelling ideas about how neoliberal capitalism is leading to complications in how people see themselves and narrate their own lives. Narration of life seems to be the key sociological focus point of the book, but Sennett never really explains why narration is so important, and why a more fractured narration is such a bad, unmanageable thing. The book was published in 1998, so it looks make to the pre-Reagan 20th century as the past that is corroding. Macro economics, the working life, and family life were all seen as undergoing a drastic shift in the 80s and 90s. From 17 years later, some of Sennett's premises seem quaint, I have not seen the single-career, one working place life pattern in either my or my parents generation. Flexibility is our way of life. So in a way this book explains what is now taken for granted. Yet it also fails to show how in many parts of the world, and for many classes, concrete employment was never a reality. Sennett's theoretical engagement if very wide ranging and at times only confuses his interviews/anecdotes. But as the author writes, this is an essay. It is a quick and enjoyable read, but I am not sure if it has dated well.
]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Andrew 5 Well, I finally did, and it is worth it. Part II: Apropos of the Wet Snow is where the book takes off. The from the underground is such a perfect picture of self-centeredness, jealously, and loneliness that I found myself often empathizing with him - though crying out NO! You've gone to far!
The book is in perfect-pitch from meeting with Simonov at his apartment to his treachery with the prostitute Liza. Is he simply a sociopath or simply someone so isolated and jaded that he has become incapable of finding any truth in his own emotions? Ah!!! Read it!]]> 4.21 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 5
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2015/04/05
shelves:
review:
I've toyed around with reading this book for years, but always found it too dense to break into.
Well, I finally did, and it is worth it. Part II: Apropos of the Wet Snow is where the book takes off. The from the underground is such a perfect picture of self-centeredness, jealously, and loneliness that I found myself often empathizing with him - though crying out NO! You've gone to far!
The book is in perfect-pitch from meeting with Simonov at his apartment to his treachery with the prostitute Liza. Is he simply a sociopath or simply someone so isolated and jaded that he has become incapable of finding any truth in his own emotions? Ah!!! Read it!
]]> <![CDATA[The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914]]> 18669169
In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.]]> 706 Christopher Clark Andrew 5 4.21 2012 The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
author: Christopher Clark
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2014/10/26
date added: 2014/10/28
shelves:
review:
An undeniably compelling account of the build-up to WWI. Great for helping me understand the contemporary geopolitical situation and the how European governments worked at the time. Also great takeaways for understanding our increasingly multi-polar world.
]]> Mao: The Unknown Story 9746 Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before -- and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned, and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao's rule -- in peacetime.]]> 801 Jung Chang 0679746323 Andrew 4 3.80 2002 Mao: The Unknown Story
author: Jung Chang
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/28
date added: 2014/10/28
shelves:
review:
Book really makes Mao out to be a monster. The authors base their portrait on years of interviews and data collection from primary and secondary sources. At times I questioned the authors findings, as they reduce every act of Mao to a calculated attempt to gain or preserve power. The Mao that emerges seems an impossible monster. Yet perhaps their account isn't too far from the truth and the nastiness and cruetly at the core of Mao is just too difficult to grasp. Hopefully a more well-rounded autobiography will be written in th e future, perhaps with more mainland sources. Until then this book provides a compelling account of Mao and the people and events that swirled about him.
]]> <![CDATA[The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet (Buddhism and Modernity)]]> 13593263
Ěý

Harris begins with the British public’s first encounter with Tibetan culture in 1854. She then examines the role of imperial collectors and photographers in representations of the region and visits competing museums of Tibet in India and Lhasa. Drawing on fieldwork in Tibetan communities, she also documents the activities of contemporary Tibetan artists as they try to displace the utopian visions of their country prevalent in the West, as well as the negative assessments of their heritage common in China. Illustrated with many previously unpublished images, this book addresses the pressing question of who has the right to represent Tibet in museums and beyond.]]> 314 Clare E. Harris 0226317471 Andrew 4 4.00 2012 The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet (Buddhism and Modernity)
author: Clare E. Harris
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/25
date added: 2014/09/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature]]> 563127 To the author, Oxford historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a society's relationship to climate, geography, and ecology are paramount in determining its degree of success. "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations," he writes, "it is arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period or society by society." Thus, for example, tundra civilizations of Ice Age Europe are linked with those of the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest, the Mississippi Mound Builders with the deforesters of eleventh-century Europe.
Civilizations brilliantly connects the world of ecologist, geologist, and geographer with the panorama of cultural history.]]> 560 Felipe Fernández-Armesto 074320249X Andrew 3
The book is ordered by environmental settings: ice, desert, swamp, highland, coast, etc. About two hundred pages in I grew very weary of the book. There was nothing to tie any of these sections together or the societies offered as examples. The selection seems so arbitrary that I could be reading about any place. I kept on thinking that this would make a great PBS documentary entitled "Unconsidered Civilizations" or something such. While I thought all of these societies were interesting the intervention of the book, at this point, seemed less constructive than illustrative: there are many civilizations to talk about besides the ones you always read about: here are a bunch of them. OK, I get this, but then the author seems to undercut his own writing by suggesting that some adaptions to nature perhaps don't quite qualify as civilization. This comes across in the authors tones and descriptions, and his continued comparison of one civilization to another and implications that civilizations can improve or decline. A term he claims to abhor in the discussion of civilizations. On the Arctic: "In certain environments, it seems, civilization is an irrational strategy and it is better to defer to nature than to try and warp her to men's ways." (pg. 55). Though this quote appears directed at European colonists aborted or energy-intensive settlements in the Arctic, it implies that the first examples of civilization in this book: the indigenous people perhaps don't really qualify as civilization. If the defining mark of a civilization is simply working with or against nature, in some presumably peculiar way, to hammer out a toehold for humanity, how can a civilization dim? "Tibet emerged as a vassal state of the Chinese empire�.The dynamic days of Tibetan civilization were over." (pg. 270) "When it was cut off from access to the Red Sea, � Ethiopian civilization dimmed." (pg. 260). There seems to be more at foot in the author's civilization then he implies in the opening and closing arguments.
At other times the author seems unclear as to his own arguments. He argues against the concept of "Indo-European" language only in order to continue to use it to categorize civilizations. He implies that Ethiopia was isolated by its religion, but then goes on to emphasize shifting trade networks. Although these two factors could be reasonably related, the history of Mediterranean and Eurasian trade is defined by religions cooperating, often while or between periods of feuding, in order to sustain the profits generated by trade.
Some civilizations, such as Great Zimbabwe, seem included mostly because of their monumental building, which partway through the the book it becomes clear is one of the author's secret criteria, along with written language. While at times this links to environmental management, such as in large irrigation works, at other times in seems Fernández-Armesto is simply privy to the same big building, big territory, big art criteria that often defines the models he so detests. Or take this quote on Papuans: "They had no access to metals they could use for tools, so their civilization was stuck in the Stone Age." (pg. 248). On the one hand, the author is simply stating a fact: a society is only out of the Stone Age when they have Bronze, Iron, or some other qualifying metal to use as tools. On the other hand, after lambasting the stiff chronologies of progression that are part and parcel of conventional civilization writing, Fernández-Armesto does not hesitate to state that a civilization is "stuck" in the Stone Age. If stones are enough to make a civilization, why lament when a culture only has stone tools?

Yet it is hard to avoid such traps when writing such a world history. Perhaps, then, the author should stick to what he knows best rather than attempt such a grand narrative. My favorite part of the book were undoubtedly chapters fifteen and sixteen. The author's knowledge of sea travel in the era concerned was strong, convincing, and avoided the muddiness that consumes the author's other historical explanations. Winds and ocean daring had a very strong causation in affecting how and when the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans were crossed. The comparison between highland civilizations in the Americas was also strong. Based on his other books, both the sea travel and Americas aspects are greater concerns of Fernández-Armesto, so I am not surprised that they were the best elements of this history.

In sum, the book is an interesting survey of civilizations (or societies?) and how they adapted to their environments and whether they influenced or were influenced by others. But I was left with little better way to identify a civilization. If the term is worthless, which it very well may be, this book didn't do much to set it to sleep. If we want the term to be broader, perhaps it would hurt to be a little more constructive in model building, but I don't think this author has much of a desire to attempt anything more positivistic.]]> 3.93 2000 Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature
author: Felipe Fernández-Armesto
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/08
date added: 2014/08/09
shelves:
review:
The introductory chapter of the book blew my mind. The author eloquently relates the history of 20th century "civilization thinking" and then, theory by theory, cuts them all down. All prior ideas have glaring shortcomings, they are: self-aggrandizing, teleological, short-cited, and rely on dubious definitions of what exactly a civilization makes. This author proposes that what really drives civilizations is an impulse to separate from the environment. So far, so good, but then the book begins.

The book is ordered by environmental settings: ice, desert, swamp, highland, coast, etc. About two hundred pages in I grew very weary of the book. There was nothing to tie any of these sections together or the societies offered as examples. The selection seems so arbitrary that I could be reading about any place. I kept on thinking that this would make a great PBS documentary entitled "Unconsidered Civilizations" or something such. While I thought all of these societies were interesting the intervention of the book, at this point, seemed less constructive than illustrative: there are many civilizations to talk about besides the ones you always read about: here are a bunch of them. OK, I get this, but then the author seems to undercut his own writing by suggesting that some adaptions to nature perhaps don't quite qualify as civilization. This comes across in the authors tones and descriptions, and his continued comparison of one civilization to another and implications that civilizations can improve or decline. A term he claims to abhor in the discussion of civilizations. On the Arctic: "In certain environments, it seems, civilization is an irrational strategy and it is better to defer to nature than to try and warp her to men's ways." (pg. 55). Though this quote appears directed at European colonists aborted or energy-intensive settlements in the Arctic, it implies that the first examples of civilization in this book: the indigenous people perhaps don't really qualify as civilization. If the defining mark of a civilization is simply working with or against nature, in some presumably peculiar way, to hammer out a toehold for humanity, how can a civilization dim? "Tibet emerged as a vassal state of the Chinese empire�.The dynamic days of Tibetan civilization were over." (pg. 270) "When it was cut off from access to the Red Sea, � Ethiopian civilization dimmed." (pg. 260). There seems to be more at foot in the author's civilization then he implies in the opening and closing arguments.
At other times the author seems unclear as to his own arguments. He argues against the concept of "Indo-European" language only in order to continue to use it to categorize civilizations. He implies that Ethiopia was isolated by its religion, but then goes on to emphasize shifting trade networks. Although these two factors could be reasonably related, the history of Mediterranean and Eurasian trade is defined by religions cooperating, often while or between periods of feuding, in order to sustain the profits generated by trade.
Some civilizations, such as Great Zimbabwe, seem included mostly because of their monumental building, which partway through the the book it becomes clear is one of the author's secret criteria, along with written language. While at times this links to environmental management, such as in large irrigation works, at other times in seems Fernández-Armesto is simply privy to the same big building, big territory, big art criteria that often defines the models he so detests. Or take this quote on Papuans: "They had no access to metals they could use for tools, so their civilization was stuck in the Stone Age." (pg. 248). On the one hand, the author is simply stating a fact: a society is only out of the Stone Age when they have Bronze, Iron, or some other qualifying metal to use as tools. On the other hand, after lambasting the stiff chronologies of progression that are part and parcel of conventional civilization writing, Fernández-Armesto does not hesitate to state that a civilization is "stuck" in the Stone Age. If stones are enough to make a civilization, why lament when a culture only has stone tools?

Yet it is hard to avoid such traps when writing such a world history. Perhaps, then, the author should stick to what he knows best rather than attempt such a grand narrative. My favorite part of the book were undoubtedly chapters fifteen and sixteen. The author's knowledge of sea travel in the era concerned was strong, convincing, and avoided the muddiness that consumes the author's other historical explanations. Winds and ocean daring had a very strong causation in affecting how and when the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans were crossed. The comparison between highland civilizations in the Americas was also strong. Based on his other books, both the sea travel and Americas aspects are greater concerns of Fernández-Armesto, so I am not surprised that they were the best elements of this history.

In sum, the book is an interesting survey of civilizations (or societies?) and how they adapted to their environments and whether they influenced or were influenced by others. But I was left with little better way to identify a civilization. If the term is worthless, which it very well may be, this book didn't do much to set it to sleep. If we want the term to be broader, perhaps it would hurt to be a little more constructive in model building, but I don't think this author has much of a desire to attempt anything more positivistic.
]]> <![CDATA[A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful]]> 30529 208 Edmund Burke 0192835807 Andrew 4 The text finishes with a discussion of poetry which ends far too soon. He suggests that most words we use never create an image in our heads. So great poetry, rather than employ imitative description, aims for the effect of what is being described. Thus the power invoked by invocations of God and the Devil when attached to otherwise unrepresentable ideas. One wonders if the godless technical language of contemporary English therefore loses much of its ability to invoke the great and beautiful. Orators like Obama have to channel the religious convictions of earlier speakers, and unrepresentable notions of hope, in order to sway his modern, cynical audience.
It is interesting how the wolf, elephant, and tiger, animals that we would probably call beautiful today, or at least cute in a stuffed animal form (the cute goes undiscussed here), Burke dismisses matter-of-factly as remote from beauty. In the 21st century these are no longer animals to be dismissed as beastly or great, they have been tamed and put in zoos. Rather than harry us in the wild, their very existence depends on our charity. Sympathy and affection can therefore reduce the great to something pathetically beautiful.]]> 3.75 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
author: Edmund Burke
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1757
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/09
date added: 2014/08/09
shelves:
review:
Fun book. Author makes distinctions between the sublime (or the great) and beauty. The level of detail is fascinating, and at some points quite humorous. Jagged, repetitious, infinite-like, dark, and huge things are likely to be sublime - if they cause us some terror. When we are brought to the threshold of great pain, and then relieved - a sense of "delight" - we are perhaps experiencing the sublime. On the other hand, positive pleasure is not equal to this sense of delight, and beauty not equal to the sublime. In an interesting and laudable section, Burke fights off the notion that beauty is found in some golden proportions. He appeals to all of the shapes of birds that we find beautiful (they come in many proportions) and recalls how deviations from the mediocre can be both beautiful and "remote from beauty" (for instance, the deformed). He suggests that so-called correct proportions are really just a matter of convention, and we are only struck by what varies from this. Then he goes on to outline what is beautiful: the smooth, the slowly varying line (no abrupt changes, please, that would be terrible), no right angles, no over-saturation of any hue, sweet tastes, middle frequencies of sound, smallness, etc. Such things we can love. In a curious and dated passage, Burke explains how sugar, when viewed through a microscope, is revealed to be of a spherical consistency. The "nervous papillae" of the tongue enjoys such a beautiful shape, and wherefore, we taste sweetness.
The text finishes with a discussion of poetry which ends far too soon. He suggests that most words we use never create an image in our heads. So great poetry, rather than employ imitative description, aims for the effect of what is being described. Thus the power invoked by invocations of God and the Devil when attached to otherwise unrepresentable ideas. One wonders if the godless technical language of contemporary English therefore loses much of its ability to invoke the great and beautiful. Orators like Obama have to channel the religious convictions of earlier speakers, and unrepresentable notions of hope, in order to sway his modern, cynical audience.
It is interesting how the wolf, elephant, and tiger, animals that we would probably call beautiful today, or at least cute in a stuffed animal form (the cute goes undiscussed here), Burke dismisses matter-of-factly as remote from beauty. In the 21st century these are no longer animals to be dismissed as beastly or great, they have been tamed and put in zoos. Rather than harry us in the wild, their very existence depends on our charity. Sympathy and affection can therefore reduce the great to something pathetically beautiful.
]]> Cloud Atlas 49628
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Andrew 2 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2012/10/07
date added: 2014/08/07
shelves:
review:
This might be my final adventure with Mr. Mitchell. The parallelism between the stories was at times too obvious, as in the case of the comet tattoo, and at other times too understated. Usually the connections between the stories were only of one degree, and they often felt forced. Because of all the hype, I was expected some profound and powerful connections, but it felt more like was reading several well-written novellas glued between each other. I was not moved enough to want to re-read any of the earlier portions as I approached the end, so I resign to letting the film make the supposedly amazing linkages that I missed.
]]> <![CDATA[For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World's Favourite Drink]]> 3081255 288 Sarah Rose 0091797063 Andrew 4 None of the characters in the book are never very well defined, outside of perhaps Fortune, whose own narratives are used to reconstruct the human affairs of the book. The emphasis on things and technologies leaves out some of the human intrigue, which is explained through pride and/or Chinese face saving behaviors. This is disappointing. Finally: how were Chinese officials unaware of the seemingly conspicuous nature of Fortune's travels and collections, or even the planting of tea saplings in British Shanghai. I was curious about this for the majority of the book: didn't the Chinese work hard to keep the tea a secret? Maybe there isn't much of a story there, but I have a feeling that another book could be written.]]> 3.73 2009 For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World's Favourite Drink
author: Sarah Rose
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/11
date added: 2014/08/07
shelves:
review:
Fun, breezy read. The technology that allowed the best teas to leave China. The author is always provoking curiosity by adding important innovations that set the tone for the time: Ward cases, rifles, clipper ships, etc.
None of the characters in the book are never very well defined, outside of perhaps Fortune, whose own narratives are used to reconstruct the human affairs of the book. The emphasis on things and technologies leaves out some of the human intrigue, which is explained through pride and/or Chinese face saving behaviors. This is disappointing. Finally: how were Chinese officials unaware of the seemingly conspicuous nature of Fortune's travels and collections, or even the planting of tea saplings in British Shanghai. I was curious about this for the majority of the book: didn't the Chinese work hard to keep the tea a secret? Maybe there isn't much of a story there, but I have a feeling that another book could be written.
]]> The Empire of Tea 261339 308 Alan Macfarlane 1585674931 Andrew 2 The authors refuse to get as close to the Assamese as they claim they want to. In one chapter they cite an anthropologist that spent time with the pickers, but then express that that book is too harsh. They then interview retired Indian plantation owners, clearly in another class from the workers, who reiterate the fairness of the prior colonial and post-colonial British planters.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book only when it was specific about Assam and using colonial records and primary accounts. The writings on China and Japan were halfhearted and out of place, and the descriptions of the health benefits of tea were not always in proper context: that is, older accounts can be used to illuminate the prevailing ideas about tea's benefits in a certain period, but should not be used as scientific claims about the quality of tea.
Like many books in the "micro history" genre the authors overstate the role of tea in history. It did not cause the industrial revolution or even boost it as much as they claim. As Sidney Mintz has shown in a much better book, the sweetened tea the British drank did bring cheap calories, but this was of course from the sugar not the tea. Also hot boiled water without an added infusion is not "unpleasant" as the authors claim, this is clearly a cultural prejudice of the authors. I recommend reading smaller and more limited, but better focused accounts of the history of tea, such as Sarah Rose's "For All of the Tea in China." The history of tea is simply to vast and complex in all of its cultural, social, economic, and political aspects to be told in one book: it is better illustrated in compelling vignettes.]]> 3.16 2004 The Empire of Tea
author: Alan Macfarlane
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2014/07/22
date added: 2014/07/22
shelves:
review:
A confused book with a confused narrative. The division of labor is between a mother and her daughter. The authors both say that they wanted to write this book for different reasons. Although they each present their own introduction chapter, the purpose of the book remains unclear. They both want to reflect on the crop that made their earlier life experiences on Assamese plantations possible: tea. While the authors say they want to get closer to the lives of the Assamese tea pickers and plantation workers, the book is preoccupied with several other stories: the geopolitics of Assam, tea's health benefits, the cultural history of tea around the world, and the functioning and life of British colonialists in India. Chapters jump around all of these themes and rarely in any logical order. The final two chapters read like rehashes or left-overs of earlier chapters.
The authors refuse to get as close to the Assamese as they claim they want to. In one chapter they cite an anthropologist that spent time with the pickers, but then express that that book is too harsh. They then interview retired Indian plantation owners, clearly in another class from the workers, who reiterate the fairness of the prior colonial and post-colonial British planters.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the book only when it was specific about Assam and using colonial records and primary accounts. The writings on China and Japan were halfhearted and out of place, and the descriptions of the health benefits of tea were not always in proper context: that is, older accounts can be used to illuminate the prevailing ideas about tea's benefits in a certain period, but should not be used as scientific claims about the quality of tea.
Like many books in the "micro history" genre the authors overstate the role of tea in history. It did not cause the industrial revolution or even boost it as much as they claim. As Sidney Mintz has shown in a much better book, the sweetened tea the British drank did bring cheap calories, but this was of course from the sugar not the tea. Also hot boiled water without an added infusion is not "unpleasant" as the authors claim, this is clearly a cultural prejudice of the authors. I recommend reading smaller and more limited, but better focused accounts of the history of tea, such as Sarah Rose's "For All of the Tea in China." The history of tea is simply to vast and complex in all of its cultural, social, economic, and political aspects to be told in one book: it is better illustrated in compelling vignettes.
]]> China: Inventing the Nation 324432
The book describes the attitudes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese towards identity and ethnicity and how these factors affected the structure of the state. The Chinese efforts to build a modern nation state that could resist the Western imperial powers are also documented as are the efforts in the twentieth century to spread nationalism from the cities into rural China.

The book argues that China has not been an exception to the process of the invention of nations. Instead, its differences arise from the complexities of the relationship between nationalism and imperialism. Moreover, the role of imperialism was not limited to Western empires: the Manchu Qing empire played quite as significant a role in the construction of the modern Chinese nation state as did imported European ideologies.]]> 304 Henrietta Harrison 0340741341 Andrew 4
A strength of the book is its display of both continuities and ruptures, rather than privileging one over another. We see the continuation of culturalist thinking, even as nationalist modernizers attempt to dispose of it forever. Subsequent governments would attempt to leverage the very aspects of Chinese culture they had disparaged at later dates when they thought it would help them shore up power. See the near deification of Sun Yatsen during the Nationalist period and of Mao in his day, and, it a reduced but curious way, Deng Xiaoping in the current period. The discussions of schools, hair, foot binding, and bodily disposition, and the inter-generational conflicts their reform set off were perhaps the most memorable parts of the book.

The book starts to lag when the Communist period begins, and the social-historical dimension takes on more strongly the frame of "cultural diffusion" rather than the substance. All along the author uses the commonly found explanation of the elite or middle class as an exemplar of some trend. This class becomes a model for whomever is below it and, with the rise of transportation and communications technology, a way of thought - in this case nationalism - is spread. This argument works stronger earlier in the book when the modernizing communities are restricted to port regions and relatively small in size to the rest of the population. The author provides great examples of the frustrations of elites and the aspiring educated class as they grapple with the new ideas and institutions of the countries threatening them.
However, the argument is less convincing in the Communist period because now the who country is to be brought into ideas of national identity. At this point the "cultural diffusion" model that often appears convincing in such histories of modernization seems problematic. In my view, the author downplays the roles of political ideology and simple political oppression in creating a new identity.]]> 3.95 2001 China: Inventing the Nation
author: Henrietta Harrison
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/11
date added: 2014/07/16
shelves:
review:
I picked up this book in a university discount rack for $2.50. I hadn't heard of the author or the press so I didn't expect much. However, I was really impressed by the study and enjoyed it. The author tackles a very convoluted subject that many others have already spilt much ink on, yet ties it together in a way that makes the book both readable in its breadth and strong in its arguments. The book focuses on nationalism as a relationship between the elite, common people, and greater political events. We are shown how escalating political crises punctuate escalating senses of group consciousness and work to create even greater networks of national self-identification. During the 19th century, each battle with European powers and Japan created a new urgency to either modernize or expel foreign influence, two desires that were increasingly informed by thinking of China as a cohesive unit along contemporary nation-state forms. The eventual revolutionaries of 1911 were educated in western style schools and had been heavily influenced by the example of Japan. Spencerian thinking informed their anti-Manchuism and German constitutionalism informed early attempts at setting up a new republic.

A strength of the book is its display of both continuities and ruptures, rather than privileging one over another. We see the continuation of culturalist thinking, even as nationalist modernizers attempt to dispose of it forever. Subsequent governments would attempt to leverage the very aspects of Chinese culture they had disparaged at later dates when they thought it would help them shore up power. See the near deification of Sun Yatsen during the Nationalist period and of Mao in his day, and, it a reduced but curious way, Deng Xiaoping in the current period. The discussions of schools, hair, foot binding, and bodily disposition, and the inter-generational conflicts their reform set off were perhaps the most memorable parts of the book.

The book starts to lag when the Communist period begins, and the social-historical dimension takes on more strongly the frame of "cultural diffusion" rather than the substance. All along the author uses the commonly found explanation of the elite or middle class as an exemplar of some trend. This class becomes a model for whomever is below it and, with the rise of transportation and communications technology, a way of thought - in this case nationalism - is spread. This argument works stronger earlier in the book when the modernizing communities are restricted to port regions and relatively small in size to the rest of the population. The author provides great examples of the frustrations of elites and the aspiring educated class as they grapple with the new ideas and institutions of the countries threatening them.
However, the argument is less convincing in the Communist period because now the who country is to be brought into ideas of national identity. At this point the "cultural diffusion" model that often appears convincing in such histories of modernization seems problematic. In my view, the author downplays the roles of political ideology and simple political oppression in creating a new identity.
]]> <![CDATA[Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 42)]]> 2277224 332 Ruth Ben-Ghiat 0520242165 Andrew 4 3.68 2000 Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 42)
author: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/04
date added: 2014/07/16
shelves:
review:
Wide ranging discussion. When theory is engaged it is delivered lightly and adroitly. I wish the author had been more clear about the empirical data from the beginning, the original analytical contribution of the book wasn't clear until about halfway through. Three main data sources are used: films, novels, and youth periodicals.
]]> <![CDATA[Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University)]]> 19184817 The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans� apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life.

The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han’s “little brothers.� Arguing that development is in this context a form of “indebtedness engineering,� Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to—and negotiations with—development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China’s modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

]]> 343 Emily T. Yeh 0801469775 Andrew 5 4.12 2013 Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asia Institute, Columbia University)
author: Emily T. Yeh
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/07/16
date added: 2014/07/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus]]> 19944117 In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
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Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.




From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 864 Charles C. Mann Andrew 5 4.26 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves:
review:

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