Justin's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 23 Feb 2025 18:16:09 -0800 60 Justin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Longest Journey 3101 The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.]]> 396 E.M. Forster 0141441488 Justin 3 fiction 3.46 1907 The Longest Journey
author: E.M. Forster
name: Justin
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1907
rating: 3
read at: 2011/08/01
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Statues in a Garden 1254378 160 Isabel Colegate 0380603683 Justin 2 currently-reading
I abandoned the novel because of this.]]> 3.54 1964 Statues in a Garden
author: Isabel Colegate
name: Justin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1964
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:
Not as gripping as Colegate's later novels, and especially unreadable in the recentish Bloomsbury edition, which is so badly proofread that I have a hard time believing any human so much as glanced at it before publication. Full stops are just kind of scattered at random. throughout sentences but also left out entirely you never know if a sentence has ended. or not it is like reading classical texts with. no punctuation at all except even worse because there is punctuation it is just. randomly distributed

I abandoned the novel because of this.
]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Justin 4 fiction 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Justin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: fiction
review:
Second only to P&P, and better than the other Austen novels for the simple reason that it's much harder to turn into a Victoria Sponge with strawberries and cream. There's real bile in here, and genuinely horrible people.
]]> <![CDATA[The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-2011]]> 19046057 A newly revised and updated edition of an award-winning BBC correspondent's magisterial history of the Balkan region


This unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to more than one hundred years of events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Now updated to include the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the capture of all indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav wars, and each state's quest for legitimacy in the European Union, The Balkans explores the often catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.


]]> 800 Misha Glenny 1101610999 Justin 5 history-etc 4.16 1999 The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-2011
author: Misha Glenny
name: Justin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/07
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: history-etc
review:
Extremely convincing narrative history along with a fairly convincing argument that the 'problems' in the region have mostly been caused by imperialist meddling--and entirely, perfectly convincing argument that those problems were not caused by some ineradicable insanity that afflicts everyone between the Adriatic and the Black seas.
]]> The Histories 5113993 The Histories Cornelius Tacitus, widely regarded as the greatest of all Roman historians, describes with cynical power the murderous year of the Four Emperors - AD 69 - when in just a few months the whole of the Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war. W.H. Fyfe's classic translation has been substantially revised and supplied with extensive historical and literary notes. The Introduction examines the subtleties of Tacitus's writing and gives the necessary political and social background.

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.]]> 368 Tacitus 0199540705 Justin 4 history-etc
The introduction to the World's Classics edition is well worth reading, too, which is something you can't normally say for these introductions. This one makes an interesting argument about what's happening in Tacitus' writings, without banging on about current obsessions (except to make the reasonable point that Tacitus isn't anti-semitic, even though he's no fan of the Jews in Palestine at this time). The argument is, basically, that Tacitus is most interesting in his attention to the power of rumor. He does have his own interpretations of events, and he backs them up, but he also rarely describes an event (say, general Y concedes a battle) without pointing out how other people understood that event at the time. And those understandings are often the result of ignorant speculation, but sometimes people get it right. It's a nice reminder that our actions and reactions are entirely mediated by our interpretation of actions, and that those interpretations are often undertaken with very little evidence or knowledge. Plus ca change... ]]> 4.08 The Histories
author: Tacitus
name: Justin
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/18
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: history-etc
review:
A meaningless rating, that just means "I didn't really enjoy reading this, but I'm glad I did." There's just too much movement of arms and men in the story Tacitus tells to really grab me, too many generals moving and shaking. When he focuses away from generals and onto people, I'm all in. The one-liners, of course, are fabulous.

The introduction to the World's Classics edition is well worth reading, too, which is something you can't normally say for these introductions. This one makes an interesting argument about what's happening in Tacitus' writings, without banging on about current obsessions (except to make the reasonable point that Tacitus isn't anti-semitic, even though he's no fan of the Jews in Palestine at this time). The argument is, basically, that Tacitus is most interesting in his attention to the power of rumor. He does have his own interpretations of events, and he backs them up, but he also rarely describes an event (say, general Y concedes a battle) without pointing out how other people understood that event at the time. And those understandings are often the result of ignorant speculation, but sometimes people get it right. It's a nice reminder that our actions and reactions are entirely mediated by our interpretation of actions, and that those interpretations are often undertaken with very little evidence or knowledge. Plus ca change...
]]> <![CDATA[Fire and Ice: Classic Nordic Cooking]]> 25430353 2016 James Beard Award nominee, 2016 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP)nomineefor Best International Cookbook, and2016 Art of Eating Prize longlist finalistBringing the best of Scandinavian home-cooking into your kitchen, Fire and Classic Nordic Cooking offers over 100 delicious recipes that showcase this region’s most beloved sweet and savory dishes. Scandinavia is a region of extremes—where effortlessly chic design meets rugged wilderness, and perpetual winter nights are followed by endless days of summer—and Fire and Ice proves that Scandinavian cuisine is no exception. Founding editor of Gastronomica and the West’s leading culinary authority on the cuisines of the European North, Darra Goldstein explores the rich cultural history and culinary traditions of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. From the bold aroma of smoked arctic char to the delicate flavor of saffron buns, and from the earthy taste of chanterelle soup to the fragrant aroma of raspberry-rose petal jam, this beautifully curated cookbook features over 100 inspiring and achievable recipes that introduce home cooks to the glorious and diverse flavors of Nordic cooking.]]> 296 Darra Goldstein 1607746115 Justin 0 currently-reading 4.06 2015 Fire and Ice: Classic Nordic Cooking
author: Darra Goldstein
name: Justin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Cold Comfort Farm 9742303 � Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.�
—Nancy Pearl, NPR’s Morning Edition

The deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is “very probably the funniest book ever written� (The Sunday Times, London)—a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence’s and Thomas Hardy’s earthy, melodramatic novels. When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent� organization.]]> 256 Stella Gibbons 1101488638 Justin 5 fiction To be fair, this is not a Literary Masterpiece; it's not a replacement for reading Lawrence. But it is a reminder that sometimes life is enjoyable, even if you have to go to great lengths to make other people realize as much. ]]> 3.86 1932 Cold Comfort Farm
author: Stella Gibbons
name: Justin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at: 2011/05/30
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: fiction
review:
In which Ms. Gibbons destroys most of the forms taken by literary pretension: over description? Check. Idiotic affective-fallacy prose? 'Emotional Depth'? Tricky but pointless changes of narrative focus? Noble savage worship? Irrationalism? Hatred of convention? Realism in general? Silly attempts to bypass realism? Over-precise verbs? Check times 9. Lawrence, Hardy and a number of lesser literary luminaries are put firmly in their place, along with all their metaphors and goopy, viscousy adjectives. Light and graceful prose gradually shunts the darkness to the side. That said, I can imagine a lot of people hating this, particularly anyone who's really into their own deep and tortured soul. But hopefully this book will lead them, too, to The Higher Common Sense, while acknowledging the stupidities of self-help books like The Higher Common Sense.
To be fair, this is not a Literary Masterpiece; it's not a replacement for reading Lawrence. But it is a reminder that sometimes life is enjoyable, even if you have to go to great lengths to make other people realize as much.
]]> <![CDATA[In Search of Lost Time: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Vol. 2)]]> 43726538 112 Stéphane Heuet 1631493671 Justin 5 fiction 4.02 1919 In Search of Lost Time: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (Vol. 2)
author: Stéphane Heuet
name: Justin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1919
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/09
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: fiction
review:
It's Proustiana, which means you'll either love it, or never even pick it up. If you're looking for an introduction to the best novel of the twentieth century, this is probably a solid one.
]]> <![CDATA[Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800]]> 36241087 Memoirs,spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygoneworld of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the firstrumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beachesof Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg,hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried onpikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia,and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the smallSuffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to Franceafter eight years of exile in England.

In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirsto be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer ofgreat wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaningof history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy andmemorable gloom.]]> 571 1681371308 Justin 5 essays Memoirs translated in a modern edition, but I suspect that's not really a good business proposition. ]]> 4.37 1849 Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800
author: François-René de Chateaubriand
name: Justin
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1849
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/08
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: essays
review:
Fascinating stuff; it's easy to see the influence Chateaubriand has had on later French writing; it's also just damn enjoyable to spend time in his company. I read this too quickly, but I'm very excited to re-read with pencil in hand, because the bon mots come thick and fast. His description of listening to shovelsful of dirt being dropped on a coffin might be the most affecting thing I've read this year. It would be wonderful to have the rest of the Memoirs translated in a modern edition, but I suspect that's not really a good business proposition.
]]> Ten Popes Who Shook the World 12273416
The Bishops of Rome have been Christianity's most powerful leaders for nearly two millennia, and their influence has extended far beyond the purely spiritual. The popes have played a central role in thehistory of Europe and the wider world, not only shouldering the spiritual burdens of their ancient office, but also in contending with- and sometimes precipitating- the cultural and political crises of their times. In an acclaimed series of BBC radio broadcasts Eamon Duffy explored the impact of ten popes he judged to be among 'the most influential in history'. With this book, readers may now also enjoy Duffy's portraits of ten exceptional men who shook the world. The book begins with St Peter, the Rock upon whom the Catholic Church was built, and follows with Leo the Great (fifth century), Gregory the Great (sixth century), Gregory VII (eleventh century), Innocent III (thirteenth century), Paul III (sixteenth century), and Pius IX (nineteenth century). Among twentieth-century popes, Duffy examines the lives and contributions of Pius XII, who was elected on the eve of the Second World War, the kindly John XXIII, who captured the world's imagination, and John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. Each of these ten extraordinary individuals, Duffy shows,shaped their own worlds, and in the process, helped to create ours.]]> 160 Eamon Duffy 0300176880 Justin 4 history-etc 3.76 Ten Popes Who Shook the World
author: Eamon Duffy
name: Justin
average rating: 3.76
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/23
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
Taken as what it is (more or less notes for a radio show) this is really great. It's kind of a tasting menu of Papal history- not much depth, it won't fill you with Papal knowledge, and sometimes the chapters seem a little free-floating. But then if you want all that, you can read his 'Saints and Sinners' instead. Here Duffy does a good job showing you the pros and cons of most of the popes, although there aren't many cons for John XIII, and you can see he's working really hard to find nice things to say about Pius IX. Method is radio friendly: he takes the one thing a given pope is best known for, tells that story, and moves on. Very well written; it makes me want to re-read S&S, which I probably didn't spend enough time on the first time around.
]]> <![CDATA[The Shortest History of India: From the World’s Oldest Civilization to Its Largest Democracy―A Retelling for Our Times (The Shortest History Series)]]> 123204546
India—a cradle of civilization with five millennia of history, a country of immense consequence and contradiction—often defies ready understanding. What holds its people together—across its many cultures, races, languages, and creeds—and how has India evolved into the liberal democracy it is today?

From the Harappān era to Muslim invasions, the Great Mughals, British rule, independence, and present-day hopes, John Zubrzycki distills India’s colossal history into a gripping true story filled with legendary Alexander the Great, Akbar, Robert Clive, Tipu Sultan, Lakshmi Bai, Lord Curzon, Jinnah, and Gandhi. India’s gifts to the world include Buddhism, yoga, the concept of zero, the largest global diaspora—and its influence is only growing. Already the world’s largest democracy, in 2023, India became the most populous nation.

Can India overcome its political, social, and religious tensions to be the next global superpower? As the world watches—and wonders—this Shortest History is an essential, clarifying read.]]> 288 John Zubrzycki 1615199977 Justin 4 history-etc 3.80 2022 The Shortest History of India: From the World’s Oldest Civilization to Its Largest Democracy―A Retelling for Our Times (The Shortest History Series)
author: John Zubrzycki
name: Justin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)]]> 18801 In Search of Lost Time contains both The Captive (1923) and The Fugitive (1925). In The Captive, Proust’s narrator describes living in his mother’s Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. In The Fugitive, the narrator loses Albertine forever. Rich with irony, The Captive and The Fugitive inspire meditations on desire, sexual love, music, and the art of introspection.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).]]> 957 Marcel Proust 0375753117 Justin 3 fiction
The third, and, I hope, correct reason is that they are weighting the amazing parts of these books as heavily as I am (it's here that we get hints of the way that art redeems Marcel and potentially human history; there are some great maxims here and there), and they're weighting the bad, but non-jealousy related stuff as negatively as I am (I haven't gone back to check whether it happens in the other volumes, but the way the narrator generalizes here is pretty eye-roll inducing, that is, a botched adolescent love affair isn't a good basis for a metaphysics; nor, for that matter, is undigested Bergson a good basis for anything), but other readers do value the dribble. You can make all the arguments you want about self-referential use of the Vinteuil sonata being like Swann's love for Odette and the narrator's love for Gilberte and the Vinteuil septet being like the narrator's love for Albertine- really, go ahead. The difference is that, if we believe Marcel, the septet was better than the sonata. 'Swann' and 'Jeunes Filles' are much better than either of these two books.

UPDATE: I liked it more this time around, largely because I just skimmed over the stuff I knew I wouldn't like. The wisdom of age? Laziness? Yes? ]]> 4.38 1923 The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Justin
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1923
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: fiction
review:
I'm shocked, shocked, that ŷ readers seem to prefer this to the earlier volumes. I can see only three reasons for this: first, the people who would usually give Proust three or fewer stars aren't likely to get to the fifth and sixth books in the series, so only the truly masochistic fan-boys-and-girls are left. Second, people other than me really, really, really love offensively repetitious dribblings about jealousy, which makes up a large chunk of these two novels (although, I will say, not as large a chunk as I remember from reading it the first time).

The third, and, I hope, correct reason is that they are weighting the amazing parts of these books as heavily as I am (it's here that we get hints of the way that art redeems Marcel and potentially human history; there are some great maxims here and there), and they're weighting the bad, but non-jealousy related stuff as negatively as I am (I haven't gone back to check whether it happens in the other volumes, but the way the narrator generalizes here is pretty eye-roll inducing, that is, a botched adolescent love affair isn't a good basis for a metaphysics; nor, for that matter, is undigested Bergson a good basis for anything), but other readers do value the dribble. You can make all the arguments you want about self-referential use of the Vinteuil sonata being like Swann's love for Odette and the narrator's love for Gilberte and the Vinteuil septet being like the narrator's love for Albertine- really, go ahead. The difference is that, if we believe Marcel, the septet was better than the sonata. 'Swann' and 'Jeunes Filles' are much better than either of these two books.

UPDATE: I liked it more this time around, largely because I just skimmed over the stuff I knew I wouldn't like. The wisdom of age? Laziness? Yes?
]]> <![CDATA[Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism: The Struggle for a New Consciousness]]> 3676286 304 Stanley Pierson 080140746X Justin 4 history-etc, philosophy Helpful! 3.67 1973 Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism: The Struggle for a New Consciousness
author: Stanley Pierson
name: Justin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
Helpful!
]]> Free 57001988
Then, in December 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, everything changed. The statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled. Almost overnight, people could vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished. There was no longer anything to fear from prying ears. But factories shut, jobs disappeared and thousands fled to Italy on crowded ships, only to be sent back. Predatory pyramid schemes eventually bankrupted the country, leading to violent conflict. As one generation's aspirations became another's disillusionment, and as her own family's secrets were revealed, Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant.

Free is an engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.]]> 313 Lea Ypi 0241481856 Justin 5
Also, Ypi is fantastic on the Past Present Future podcast. This is what popularized philosophy should be. ]]> 4.33 2021 Free
author: Lea Ypi
name: Justin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, essays, history-etc
review:
If only this book was as fawned over as Benjamin Labutet's slightly less excellent, but still excellent 'When We Cease to Understand the World.' Ypi's book is much stranger and more original and brilliant and thrilling and fascinating hybrid (all terms used to describe Labutet). On the other hand, everyone things they can do abstract philosophy, and nobody likes to read about how even using the word 'free' is tremendously hard work, so this got a bit less fawned. Both books are good, don't get me wrong. I just object to the way people embrace the existential and avert their eyes from the morally challenging.

Also, Ypi is fantastic on the Past Present Future podcast. This is what popularized philosophy should be.
]]> <![CDATA[Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume 1: State and Bureaucracy]]> 184159 This series, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, represents an exhaustive and definitive treatment of Marx’s political theory, policy, and practice. Marx and Engels paid continuing attention to a host of problems of revolution, in addition to constructing their “grand theory.� All these political and social analyses are brought together in these volumes, as the author draws not only on the original writings of Marx and Engels but also on the sources that they used in formulating their ideas and the many commentaries on their published work.
Draper’s series is a massive and immensely valuable scholarly undertaking. The bibliography alone will stand as a rich resource for years to come. Yet despite the scholarly treatment, the writing is direct, forceful, and unpedantic throughout, and will appeal to the beginning student as much as the advanced reader.]]> 272 Hal Draper 0853454612 Justin 4 philosophy 4.53 1976 Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Volume 1: State and Bureaucracy
author: Hal Draper
name: Justin
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 44150854 Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.

Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, it established Fanon as a revolutionary thinker and remains just as relevant and powerful today.]]> 224 Frantz Fanon 0241396662 Justin 4 philosophy 4.09 1952 Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Frantz Fanon
name: Justin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Making of British Socialism]]> 11991326
The Making of British Socialism provides a new interpretation of the emergence of British socialism in the late nineteenth century, demonstrating that it was not a working-class movement demanding state action, but a creative campaign of political hope promoting social justice, personal transformation, and radical democracy. Mark Bevir shows that British socialists responded to the dilemmas of economics and faith against a background of diverse traditions, melding new economic theories opposed to capitalism with new theologies which argued that people were bound in divine fellowship.

Bevir utilizes an impressive range of sources to illuminate a number of historical Why did the British Marxists follow a Tory aristocrat who dressed in a frock coat and top hat? Did the Fabians develop a new economic theory? What was the role of Christian theology and idealist philosophy in shaping socialist ideas? He explores debates about capitalism, revolution, the simple life, sexual relations, and utopian communities. He gives detailed accounts of the Marxists, Fabians, and ethical socialists, including famous authors such as William Morris and George Bernard Shaw. And he locates these socialists among a wide cast of colorful characters, including Karl Marx, Henry Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and Oscar Wilde.

By showing how socialism combined established traditions and new ideas in order to respond to the changing world of the late nineteenth century, The Making of British Socialism turns aside long-held assumptions about the origins of a major movement.]]> 368 Mark Bevir 0691150834 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 4.14 2011 The Making of British Socialism
author: Mark Bevir
name: Justin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Solid academica here. It's a collection of essays in intellectual history, rather than a unified text, but once you're ready to swallow that, you'll enjoy yourself, and learn a lot--but again, the essays are journal articles, so don't expect much hand-holding.
]]> <![CDATA[The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism]]> 37562334 A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens

What's wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted in utilitarian terms, the critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century is primarily concerned with disparities in income and wealth. It was not always so. The Moral Economists reconstructs another critical tradition, developed across the twentieth century in Britain, in which material deprivation was less important than moral or spiritual desolation.

Tim Rogan focuses on three of the twentieth century's most influential critics of capitalism--R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, and E. P. Thompson. Making arguments about the relationships between economics and ethics in modernity, their works commanded wide readerships, shaped research agendas, and influenced public opinion. Rejecting the social philosophy of laissez-faire but fearing authoritarianism, these writers sought out forms of social solidarity closer than individualism admitted but freer than collectivism allowed. They discovered such solidarities while teaching economics, history, and literature to workers in the north of England and elsewhere. They wrote histories of capitalism to make these solidarities articulate. They used makeshift languages of "tradition" and "custom" to describe them until Thompson patented the idea of the "moral economy." Their program began as a way of theorizing everything economics left out, but in challenging utilitarian orthodoxy in economics from the outside, they anticipated the work of later innovators inside economics.

Examining the moral cornerstones of a twentieth-century critique of capitalism, The Moral Economists explains why this critique fell into disuse, and how it might be reformulated for the twenty-first century.]]> 270 Tim Rogan 1400888026 Justin 5 history-etc, philosophy 3.59 The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism
author: Tim Rogan
name: Justin
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
A model work of intellectual history--unbloated, sympathetic, relevant. Not for the uninitiated, unfortunately. It really is an academic book. But it's a worthy one.
]]> <![CDATA[Religious Socialism: Faith in Action for a Better World]]> 57414205 200 Fran Quigley 1626984352 Justin 3 history-etc 4.40 Religious Socialism: Faith in Action for a Better World
author: Fran Quigley
name: Justin
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc
review:
I came to this with the wrong expectations; as others have noted, this could strike you as an inspiring read. But I was hoping for a bit less inspiration, and a bit more information. It's very, very quick, but it does introduce you to a bunch of fun people. Straight up, I did not know that Mormon Socialism was a thing.
]]> <![CDATA[The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640�1650]]> 32864777 618 John Rees 1784783900 Justin 2 philosophy, history-etc
"Cromwell's house in Drury Lane was where such a move was planned." (183)

Is that the first line of a ballad, metrically speaking? Sure. ("... they charged the Presbyterian men and cursed them all as damned." Stress on 'Pres' and 'ter', not 'byt'). But please note that the subject of the sentence is 'a move.' (What is the move? As you might, but might not, be able to see from the previous paragraph, someone has to do something to 'halt' the Presbyterian offensive.) Who planned it? Unclear. Why is the subject at the end of the sentence? Ballad form, ya'll! This is the first sentence of a paragraph. It gets worse from there. The next sentence has no metrical qualities at all. Instead, it just restates what this sentence was trying to state ("Cromwell's residence had become a centre of radical activity.") The sentence after that is excruciating: "As the Levellers' spring petitioning campaign unfolded it had created a dynamic which drew support from initially sceptical Independents." Grammatically, that says that Cromwell's residence 'drew support...', even though a little thought will tell us that it's meant to say the campaign drew support. Here, let me edit that for you: "The Independent came to support the Levellers, thanks to the Levellers' spring petitions." Not elegant, but not rebarbative.

I know, this is a minor inconvenience, but, macro-micro, the book shows the same confusing structure, which makes it incredibly difficult to read. That's a real shame, since Rees is a passionate and *extremely* knowledgeable scholar of this stuff. ]]> 3.70 2016 The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650
author: John Rees
name: Justin
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Regrettably, this is far too tough going for almost anyone. Rees thinks the Levellers were an organized group. Fine. He also writes sentences like this one:

"Cromwell's house in Drury Lane was where such a move was planned." (183)

Is that the first line of a ballad, metrically speaking? Sure. ("... they charged the Presbyterian men and cursed them all as damned." Stress on 'Pres' and 'ter', not 'byt'). But please note that the subject of the sentence is 'a move.' (What is the move? As you might, but might not, be able to see from the previous paragraph, someone has to do something to 'halt' the Presbyterian offensive.) Who planned it? Unclear. Why is the subject at the end of the sentence? Ballad form, ya'll! This is the first sentence of a paragraph. It gets worse from there. The next sentence has no metrical qualities at all. Instead, it just restates what this sentence was trying to state ("Cromwell's residence had become a centre of radical activity.") The sentence after that is excruciating: "As the Levellers' spring petitioning campaign unfolded it had created a dynamic which drew support from initially sceptical Independents." Grammatically, that says that Cromwell's residence 'drew support...', even though a little thought will tell us that it's meant to say the campaign drew support. Here, let me edit that for you: "The Independent came to support the Levellers, thanks to the Levellers' spring petitions." Not elegant, but not rebarbative.

I know, this is a minor inconvenience, but, macro-micro, the book shows the same confusing structure, which makes it incredibly difficult to read. That's a real shame, since Rees is a passionate and *extremely* knowledgeable scholar of this stuff.
]]> <![CDATA[Maurice to Temple: a Century of the Social Movement in the Church England, (Scott Holland Memorial Lectures 1946)]]> 123706877 0 Maurice: Reckitt Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 4.00 Maurice to Temple: a Century of the Social Movement in the Church England, (Scott Holland Memorial Lectures 1946)
author: Maurice: Reckitt
name: Justin
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Probably not a huge audience out there on GR for this book, so let me pivot a little, and remind of just how good books this old smell. This one is amazing. Also, the world would be a better place if we had more Maurices and Temples, and less (waves hands at the world, generally).
]]> Utopia The History of an Idea 52052752 207 Gregory Claeys 0500295522 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 3.20 2011 Utopia The History of an Idea
author: Gregory Claeys
name: Justin
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
A breezy trot through a *lot* of ideas or events that can, in some way, be tied to the idea of 'Utopia,' but not exactly the history of the idea of Utopia--minimal begriffsgeschichte here.
]]> <![CDATA[The Frock-coated Communist: The Life and Times of the Original Champagne Socialist]]> 8666269 406 Tristram Hunt 0141021403 Justin 5 history-etc, philosophy 4.32 2009 The Frock-coated Communist: The Life and Times of the Original Champagne Socialist
author: Tristram Hunt
name: Justin
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
Very enjoyable biography of a man whom many, including myself, treat unfairly for the most part. Was Engels the sharpest knife in the draw? No. But he was fun, and often enough recognized his own flaws.
]]> <![CDATA[Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times]]> 123264421
“[A] daring new book.”—Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Moyn argues that the liberal intellectuals of the Cold War era—among them Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, and Lionel Trilling—transformed liberalism but left a disastrous legacy for our time.

In his iconoclastic style, Moyn outlines how Cold War liberals redefined the ideals of their movement and renounced the moral core of the Enlightenment for a more dangerous preserving individual liberty at all costs. In denouncing this stance, as well as the recent nostalgia for Cold War liberalism as a means to counter illiberal values, Moyn presents a timely call for a new emancipatory and egalitarian liberal philosophy—a path to undoing the damage of the Cold War and to ensuring the survival of liberalism.]]> 240 Samuel Moyn 0300266219 Justin 3 philosophy, history-etc 3.79 Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times
author: Samuel Moyn
name: Justin
average rating: 3.79
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Short treatments of a few big names, but there's not a lot to unify this, and the editor appears to have been asleep at the wheel. Ultimately, you'll enjoy it if you have no interest whatsoever in being fair to the people under discussion (and I do not!), but if you're a bit more generous (which I should be), you'll probably find the discussions a little shallow.
]]> <![CDATA[Struggle and Mutual Aid: The Age of Worker Solidarity]]> 66092010
In current debates about globalization, open and borderless elites are often set in opposition to the immobile and protectionist working classes. This view obscures a major historical fact: for around a century--from the 1860s to the 1970s--worker movements were at the cutting edge of internationalism.

The creation in London of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864 was a turning point. What would later be called the First International aspired to bring together European and American workers across languages, nationalities, and trades. It was a major undertaking in a context marked by opening borders, moving capital, and exploding inequalities.

In this urgent, engaging work, historian Nicolas Delalande explores how international worker solidarity developed, what it accomplished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and why it collapsed over the past fifty years, to the point of disappearing from our memories.]]> 432 Nicolas Delalande 1635420105 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 3.65 Struggle and Mutual Aid: The Age of Worker Solidarity
author: Nicolas Delalande
name: Justin
average rating: 3.65
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hume: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)]]> 57421940
This Very Short Introduction presents a balanced account of Hume's thought, giving equal attention to his work on human nature, morality, politics, and religion. Weaving together biography, the historical context, and a thoughtful exposition of Hume's arguments, James A. Harris offers a compelling picture of a thinker who had no disciples and formed no school, but whom no one in his own time was able to ignore, and who has since become central to modern philosophy's understanding of itself.

Very Short Introductions : Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.]]> 144 James A. Harris 0198849788 Justin 4 philosophy 3.46 Hume: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author: James A. Harris
name: Justin
average rating: 3.46
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy
review:
Solid and readable, but my search any--literally, *any*--explanation of why Hume is so beloved by pure philosopher types continues. I get why conservatives love him, and much better Hume than Burke on that count. I get why sceptics love him. But why do so many English philosophers love him? He's not good at that stuff! Come on!
]]> The Invention of China 51921419
In this compelling and highly-readable account, Hayton shows how China’s present-day geopolitical problems—the fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea—were born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. He brings alive the fevered debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to “invent� a new vision of China.

Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how a few radicals, often living in exile, adopted European beliefs about race and nation to rethink China’s past and create a new future. He weaves together political and personal stories to show how Chinese nationalismemerged from the connections between east and west. These ideas continue to motivate and direct the country’s policies into the twenty first century. By asserting a particular version of the past Chinese governments have bolstered their claims to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific toCentral Asia.]]> 320 Bill Hayton 0300234821 Justin 3 history-etc 4.02 The Invention of China
author: Bill Hayton
name: Justin
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc
review:
Great idea for the book, great general thesis (i.e., revise the various naturalizing and reifying claims made by nationalists in China), but a bit of a slog. The story might have been better told chronologically, rather than divided into themes (China, Sovereignty, the Han Race, History, Nation, Language, Territory, Maritime Claim). That division means there is a *lot* of repetition, with the same people showing up time after time... but it's kind of hard to remember from one chapter to the next, tbh, who is who. I'm hoping that I'll be able to re-read individual chapters with profit, once I've got a bit more background knowledge. Couldn't do that with a more chronological book, so I should just shut up and enjoy, I guess.
]]> <![CDATA[The Oxford History of Modern China]]> 59088502
China is the world's most populous country and newest superpower, whose place on the international stage can only be understood through the lens of its modern history.

The Oxford History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising power in what promises to be the 'Chinese century'. Covering the period of dramatic shifts and surprising transformations which comprise China's modern history, the book spans from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) to the present day. It introduces readers to important but often overlooked events in China's past, such as the bloody Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), and also sheds new light on more familiar landmarks in Chinese history, such as the Opium War (1839-1842), the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the Tiananmen protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989, and China's rise to economic superpower status in the 21st century. A new chapter for this edition brings the story into the era of Xi Jinping.]]> 512 Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom 0192895206 Justin 4 history-etc 4.17 2022 The Oxford History of Modern China
author: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
name: Justin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/02
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: history-etc
review:
I usually fear edited collections, because the authors have relatively little at stake, and because they're the chosen experts, they often don't have the ability to communicate with ordinary people. This one was great! Most of the chapters are readable, the editors did a fantastic job, and the authors mostly managed to stay off their hobby horses and on the introductory, common reader's level. That's a higher level, btw, not a lower one.
]]> <![CDATA[A History of Chinese Political Thought]]> 35138218
In this beautifully written introductory text, Youngmin Kim offers a uniquely incisive survey of the major themes in Chinese political thought from customary community to empire, exploring their theoretical importance and the different historical contexts in which they arose. Challenging traditional assumptions about Chinese nationalism and Marxist history, Kim shows that "China" does not have a fixed, single identity, but rather is a constantly moving target. His probing, interdisciplinary approach traces the long and nuanced history of Chinese thought as a true tradition anchored in certain key themes, many of which began in the early dynasties and still resonate in China today. Only by appreciating this rich history, he argues, can we begin to understand the intricacies and contradictions of contemporary Chinese politics, economy, and society.]]> 288 Youngmin Kim 0745652468 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 4.21 A History of Chinese Political Thought
author: Youngmin Kim
name: Justin
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Useful, but not pleasurable. Kim does the responsible thing and puts the 'great thinkers' in their historical context. Unfortunately, that means Kim also needs to give us the historical context, and the book just isn't long enough for all of this to go down smoothly. Hopefully someone will write the political thought version of Ivanhoe's 'Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy,' and then Kim's book will be a magnificent second book to recommend to people. Until then, though... rough going.
]]> <![CDATA[Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China]]> 10455934 270 Joseph Richmond Levenson 0674530004 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 4.60 Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China
author: Joseph Richmond Levenson
name: Justin
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Interesting but also, I confess, a little too self-impressed for my taste. The best historians of ideas are often too impressed with themselves, for some reason.
]]> John Stuart Mill: A Biography 130283 458 Nicholas Capaldi 0521620244 Justin 2 philosophy
Capaldi is right that there should be a good biography of Mill. But this one is a bit too parti pris to be that good biography. ]]> 4.09 2004 John Stuart Mill: A Biography
author: Nicholas Capaldi
name: Justin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: philosophy
review:
A rather confusing book for me. I could easily be wrong, but it felt like Capaldi was trying to prove that JS Mill was a forerunner of the American Enterprise Institute or something--basically, a conservative liberal. But the fact that Mill synthesized the 'conservatism' of Coleridge and the liberalism of Bentham has been a commonplace for some time (see: Williams and, before him, Leavis). Capaldi spends a *lot* of time on Mill on Tocqueville, which is fine, but not especially compelling or interesting. Mill has insights into 'human nature' that means we all really want 'liberal culture,' meaning free market capitalism (see, e.g., 267, 283). What on earth is going on here? I want Mill, not Milton Friedman.

Capaldi is right that there should be a good biography of Mill. But this one is a bit too parti pris to be that good biography.
]]> <![CDATA[The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689]]> 61327457
“[Healy] makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly ‘revolutionary,� not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society.... Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy”� The Wall Street Journal

The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics.In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control.

But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.

The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence.]]> 492 Jonathan Healey 0593318358 Justin 4 history-etc 4.13 2023 The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689
author: Jonathan Healey
name: Justin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Solid, but if you only read one of them, read Keay's 'Restless Republic' instead. This tells the whole story, but with much less joy.
]]> <![CDATA[Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics (Phoenix Book)]]> 1865096 160 Tetsuo Najita 0226568032 Justin 4 history-etc 3.57 1980 Japan: The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Japanese Politics (Phoenix Book)
author: Tetsuo Najita
name: Justin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
A *very* short tome for such a monster topic, I'm still not sure if I got anything out of it. But at least it was quick.
]]> <![CDATA[England in the Eighteenth Century (The Pelican History of England, #7)]]> 1570040 224 J.H. Plumb Justin 4 history-etc 3.62 1950 England in the Eighteenth Century (The Pelican History of England, #7)
author: J.H. Plumb
name: Justin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1950
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World]]> 51720367 A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.

In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As the once dominant totems of civic connection and civil discourse—traditional churches—continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're making our own personal faiths - theistic or not - mixing and matching our spiritual, ritualistic, personal, and political practices in order to create our own bespoke religious selves. We're not just building new religions in 2019, we're buying them, from Gwyneth Paltrow's gospel of Goop, to the brilliantly cultish SoulCycle, to those who believe in their special destiny on Mars.

In so doing, we're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism). Our era is not the dawn of American secularism, but rather a brand-bolstered resurgence of American pluralism, revved into overdrive by commerce and personalized algorithms, all to the tune of "Hallellujah"--America's most popular and spectacularly misunderstood wedding song.]]> 301 Tara Isabella Burton 1541762533 Justin 3 essays, history-etc 3.89 2020 Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
author: Tara Isabella Burton
name: Justin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: essays, history-etc
review:
Every time I've heard Burton on a podcast, she's been fantastic. For whatever reason, that doesn't carry over into this book, which is very shallow and breathless. Clearly this is a choice; Burton saves the thinking and analysis for other venues. I just wish she'd bring more of it to this, my preferred medium of thought.
]]> Nations and Nationalism 348980 170 Ernest Gellner 0801492637 Justin 2
"Homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism."

Okay, nationalism isn't the liberation of the pre-existing nation. I can get behind that. But to make an argument *this* deterministic, without any mention of power, class, oppression, exclusion, colonization, empire, or anything similar, at all? It's just silly. How silly? This silly:

"With the diffusion of technological and economic might, the balance of power changed, and between about 1905 and 1960 the pluralistic European empire was lost or voluntarily abandoned."

I swear, *something* happened between 1905 and 1960. Remind me what it was, again? Whatever, must have been inevitable.

I mean... when did education get universal, again? Which industries required a 'flexible' and educated workforce? Why does nationalization precede universal education? Where does the unified culture come from? ]]> 3.85 1983 Nations and Nationalism
author: Ernest Gellner
name: Justin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1983
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction, history-etc, philosophy
review:
I am astonished by the praise this book has received. According to Gellner, 'the' modern economy demands a 'flexible' workforce, which therefore needs a 'universal' education so that one's 'culture' will allow one to communicate with others in industry. Only the homogeneous state can offer that education. Therefore, 'culture' nationalism and state power grow together:

"Homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism."

Okay, nationalism isn't the liberation of the pre-existing nation. I can get behind that. But to make an argument *this* deterministic, without any mention of power, class, oppression, exclusion, colonization, empire, or anything similar, at all? It's just silly. How silly? This silly:

"With the diffusion of technological and economic might, the balance of power changed, and between about 1905 and 1960 the pluralistic European empire was lost or voluntarily abandoned."

I swear, *something* happened between 1905 and 1960. Remind me what it was, again? Whatever, must have been inevitable.

I mean... when did education get universal, again? Which industries required a 'flexible' and educated workforce? Why does nationalization precede universal education? Where does the unified culture come from?
]]> <![CDATA[The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages]]> 191131 This fascinating book explores the millenarianism that flourished in western Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Covering the full range of revolutionary and anarchic sects and movements in medieval Europe, Cohn demonstrates how prophecies of a final struggle between the hosts of Christ and Antichrist melded with the rootless poor's desire to improve their own material conditions, resulting in a flourishing of millenarian fantasies. The only overall study of medieval millenarian movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium offers an excellent interpretation of how, again and again, in situations of anxiety and unrest, traditional beliefs come to serve as vehicles for social aspirations and animosities.]]> 416 Norman Cohn 0195004566 Justin 5 history-etc 4.27 1957 The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages
author: Norman Cohn
name: Justin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1957
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Luddism to the First Reform Bill: Reform in England 1810-1832 (Historical Association Studies)]]> 2763324 100 J.R. Dinwiddy 0631139524 Justin 4 history-etc 3.20 1991 From Luddism to the First Reform Bill: Reform in England 1810-1832 (Historical Association Studies)
author: J.R. Dinwiddy
name: Justin
average rating: 3.20
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Dense, as you'd expect for an 80 page book on a jam-packed period. For once, I wished a history book longer.
]]> <![CDATA[Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849]]> 62192405 An epic history of the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe and the charismatic figures who propelled them forward, with deep resonance and frightening parallels to today--from a renowned Cambridge historian.

Historically, 1848 has long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789, the Paris Commune of 1870, and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848, nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to more significant and lasting change than earlier upheavals. And they brought with them a new awareness of the concept of history; the men and women of 1848 saw and shaped what was happening around them through the lens of previous revolutions.

Celebrated Cambridge historian Christopher Clark describes this continental uprising as "the particle collision chamber at the center of the European nineteenth century," a place where political movements and ideas--from socialism and democratic radicalism to liberalism, nationalism, corporatism, and conservatism--were tested and transformed. The insurgents asked questions that sound modern to our ears: What happens when demands for political or economic liberty conflict with demands for social rights? How do we reconcile representative and direct forms of democracy? How is capitalism connected to social inequality? As a result of the events of 1848, the papacy of Pius IX and even the Catholic Church changed profoundly; Denmark, Piedmont and Prussia issued constitutions; Sicily founded its own all-Sicilian parliament; the Austrian Chancellor Metternich fled from Vienna. The revolutions were short-lived, but their impact was profound. Public life, administrative cultures and political thought were all transformed by this mid-century convulsion. Those who lived through them were marked for life by what they had seen and experienced.

Elegantly written, meticulously researched, and filled with a fascinating cast of charismatic figures, including the social theorist de Tochqueville and the troubled Priest de Lamennais, who struggled to reconcile his faith with politics, Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment. "Looking back at the revolutions from the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is impossible not to be struck by the resonances," Clark writes. "If a revolution is coming for us, it may look something like 1848."]]> 1152 Christopher Clark 0525575200 Justin 4 history-etc 4.19 2023 Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849
author: Christopher Clark
name: Justin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
I was really happy with myself for finishing this book. It's great and ambitious but... maybe could have been done more efficiently. Hot tip for Clark's editors next time: no more 80 page chapters with meaningless titles. More 20 pages chapters with descriptive titles, so you know what you're going to read about before you get a quarter of the way (i.e., 20 pages) through the chapter. Please. I want to read his stuff so much. And it's so hard to read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Proffered Crown: Saint-Simonianism and the Doctrine of Hope (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science)]]> 4488914 288 Robert Carlisle 0801835127 Justin 3 history-etc, philosophy 3.62 1987 The Proffered Crown: Saint-Simonianism and the Doctrine of Hope (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science)
author: Robert Carlisle
name: Justin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
There's still space on your bookshelf for an entertaining history of the Saint-Simonians, who were *very* interesting and entertaining. This is the kind of book that the person who writes the entertaining book reads for days on end, trying to make sense of the academic prose and 'organization' and argumentation, and ultimately boils it down to a half-dozen excellent citations. There's a space for this book in the world, as well, but I really would have preferred the first book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy]]> 154643
Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever--will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought.The Rhetoric of Reaction is a delightful handbook for all discussions of public affairs, the welfare state, and the history of social, economic, and political thought, whether conducted by ordinary citizens or academics.]]> 224 Albert O. Hirschman Justin 4 history-etc
I mean, we can be, I like being friends with people. But I need receipts on those weird views you hold. It would be perverse not to admire Hirschman. ]]> 4.03 1991 The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
author: Albert O. Hirschman
name: Justin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
If you don't admire Hirschman, we can't be friends.

I mean, we can be, I like being friends with people. But I need receipts on those weird views you hold. It would be perverse not to admire Hirschman.
]]> <![CDATA[The Economic Government of the World]]> 60847972 880 Martin Daunton 1846141710 Justin 4 history-etc 4.11 The Economic Government of the World
author: Martin Daunton
name: Justin
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
So... this may be too long and detailed for human beings. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but boy, is it long and detailed. If nothing else, it proves without a doubt that 'the economy' is made by people, not just in buying and selling, but in making rules and enforcing them--and that rule-making and enforcement creates winners and losers geopolitically.
]]> <![CDATA[The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality]]> 8906588 The Haves and the Have-Nots, Branko Milanovic, one of the world’s leading experts on wealth, poverty, and the gap that separates them, explains these and other mysteries of how wealth is unevenly spread throughout our world, now and through time.

Milanovic uses history, literature and stories straight out of today’s newspapers, to discuss one of the major divisions in our social lives: between the haves and the have-nots. He reveals just how rich Elizabeth Bennet’s suitor Mr. Darcy really was; how much Anna Karenina gained by falling in love; how wealthy ancient Romans compare to today’s super-rich; where in Kenyan income distribution was Obama’s grandfather; how we should think about Marxism in a modern world; and how location where one is born determines his wealth. He goes beyond mere entertainment to explain why inequality matters, how it damages our economics prospects, and how it can threaten the foundations of the social order that we take for granted.
Bold, engaging, and illuminating, The Haves and the Have-Nots teaches us not only how to think about inequality, but why we should.]]> 272 Branko Milanović 0465019749 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 3.74 2010 The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality
author: Branko Milanović
name: Justin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:
Very quick read that makes some obvious points clearly, and some less obvious points also clearly.
]]> Math Without Numbers 52685608 An illustrated tour of the structures and patterns we call math

The only numbers in this book are the page numbers.

Math Without Numbers is a vivid, conversational, and wholly original guide to the three main branches of abstract math--topology, analysis, and algebra--which turn out to be surprisingly easy to grasp. This book upends the conventional approach to math, inviting you to think creatively about shape and dimension, the infinite and infinitesimal, symmetries, proofs, and how these concepts all fit together. What awaits readers is a freewheeling tour of the inimitable joys and unsolved mysteries of this curiously powerful subject.

Like the classic math allegory Flatland, first published over a century ago, or Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach forty years ago, there has never been a math book quite like Math Without Numbers. So many popularizations of math have dwelt on numbers like pi or zero or infinity. This book goes well beyond to questions such as: How many shapes are there? Is anything bigger than infinity? And is math even true? Milo Beckman shows why math is mostly just pattern recognition and how it keeps on surprising us with unexpected, useful connections to the real world.

The ambitions of this book take a special kind of author. An inventive, original thinker pursuing his calling with jubilant passion. A prodigy. Milo Beckman completed the graduate-level course sequence in mathematics at age sixteen, when he was a sophomore at Harvard; while writing this book, he was studying the philosophical foundations of physics at Columbia under Brian Greene, among others.]]> 224 Milo Beckman 1524745545 Justin 4 philosophy, history-etc 4.09 2021 Math Without Numbers
author: Milo Beckman
name: Justin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: philosophy, history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution]]> 55801224 A startling new look at quantum theory, from the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time.

One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving.

Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious.

As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness.

Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.]]> 233 Carlo Rovelli 0593328884 Justin 4 history-etc, philosophy Page 150 or so: Oh, you know that.

As ever, Rovelli is at his best when he's being least philosophical, but this one is really solid either way. Curious to know how many people were really excited by the passages on Lenin and Bogdanov, in which Lenin plays the role of *common sense*. Very funny. ]]> 4.07 2020 Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: Justin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
Me, for the first 150 pages: you're just ripping on Nagarjuna!
Page 150 or so: Oh, you know that.

As ever, Rovelli is at his best when he's being least philosophical, but this one is really solid either way. Curious to know how many people were really excited by the passages on Lenin and Bogdanov, in which Lenin plays the role of *common sense*. Very funny.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lamp of Experience. Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution]]> 677789 305 Trevor Colbourn 0865971595 Justin 3 history-etc
Also, a rather amusing reminder of how different contemporary history is from that of Colbourn's generation. Despite the, ahem, interesting contradictions involved in all of the claims about how *all* Americans were free and had the rights of free-men and so on, you can guess what goes unmentioned. ]]> 3.86 1966 The Lamp of Experience. Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution
author: Trevor Colbourn
name: Justin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1966
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Pleasant enough read on the early American tendency to believe whacky things about the past that would justify what they wanted to do politically.

Also, a rather amusing reminder of how different contemporary history is from that of Colbourn's generation. Despite the, ahem, interesting contradictions involved in all of the claims about how *all* Americans were free and had the rights of free-men and so on, you can guess what goes unmentioned.
]]> <![CDATA[The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of ... II Until the War with the Thirteen Colonies]]> 2221798
“Professor Robbins� book, a monumental piece of mature scholarship . . . is a history of liberal ideas and the men who promulgated them in England from the Restoration to the American War of Independence.�
—John Charles Weston, Jr., The Review of Politics (1961)

In her Introduction to The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman , Caroline Robbins wrote that the Commonwealthmen were “a gifted and active minority of the population of the British Isles, who kept alive, during an age of extraordinary complacency and legislative inactivity, a demand for increased liberty of conscience.� Their essays, arguments, pamphlets, and histories—a continual flow from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth—were hugely popular in America. The themes presented were revolutionary: separation of powers, natural rights, rotation in office, religious freedom, a supreme court, and resistance to tyranny. They achieved very little political success, but the documents of later generations are full of ideas kept alive by the Commonwealthmen in difficult times.

In The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman , Robbins adeptly presents a history of these men, whose writings advocated the principles of liberty in an era when change was considered perilous.

Caroline Robbins (1903�1999) was educated at the University of London, receiving her Ph.D. there before going to the United States. She taught history at Bryn Mawr College from 1929 to 1971 and was chairman of the department from 1957 to 1969. Author of numerous articles on English political and constitutional history, she wrote Absolute Liberty (1982), edited Two English Republican Tracts (1969), and was chairman of the Papers of William Penn from 1967 to 1979.

Click here for a pdf of a brochure featuring The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman]]> 480 Caroline Robbins 0865974276 Justin 3 history-etc, philosophy 3.62 1959 The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of ... II Until the War with the Thirteen Colonies
author: Caroline Robbins
name: Justin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
Exhaustive, but thoroughly exhausting academic tome; it's not especially well organized or readable, and its 377 pages feel more like 500. It is 'important', though, whether you're looking for the respectable roots of your respectable liberal-conservative views, or if you're looking for evidence that those roots of respectable liberal-conservative views are rather more revolutionary and republican (as in, not individualistic), and less liberal and respectable, than expected.
]]> <![CDATA[Conservatism in Early American History]]> 12100423 Book by Leonard Woods Labaree 182 Leonard W. Labaree 0801490081 Justin 4 history-etc 4.00 1959 Conservatism in Early American History
author: Leonard W. Labaree
name: Justin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Nicely done, short, responsible history about people who tend to get a *lot* less play in early American histories, but who were very important nonetheless.
]]> <![CDATA[The Origins of American Politics]]> 282164

"An astonishing range of reading in contemporary tracts and modern authorities is manifest, and many aspects of British and colonial affairs are illuminated. As a political analysis this very important contribution will be hard to refute...."
—Frederick B. Tolles, Political Science Quarterly

"He produces historical analysis which is as revealing to the political scientist or sociologist as to the historian, of the significance of social and cultural forces on political changes in eighteenth-century America."
—John D. Lees, Cambridge University Press

"...these well-argued essays represent the first sustained and systematic attempt to provide a comprehensive and integrated analysis of all elements of American political life during the late colonial period...the author has once again put all students concerned with colonial America heavily in his intellectual debt."
—Jack P. Greene, The New York Historical Society Quarterly

"...Mr. Bailyn brings to his effort a splendid gift for pertinent curiosity. What he has found, and what patterns he has made of his findings, light our way through his longitudes and latitudes of scholarly precision."
—Charles Poore, The New York Times

]]> 161 Bernard Bailyn 0394708652 Justin 4 history-etc 3.96 1967 The Origins of American Politics
author: Bernard Bailyn
name: Justin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism]]> 44453035 For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. But in her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: America's Religious Right has evolved into a Christian nationalist movement. It seeks to gain political power and impose its vision on society. It isn't fighting a culture war; it is waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stewart shows that the real power of the movement lies in a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations, embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances with like-minded, anti-democratic religious nationalists around the world, including Russia. She follows the money behind the movement and traces much of it to a group of super-wealthy, ultra-conservative donors and family foundations. The Christian nationalist movement is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.

The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and American democratic freedoms.]]> 352 Katherine Stewart 1635573432 Justin 4 history-etc 4.25 2020 The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
author: Katherine Stewart
name: Justin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America]]> 57340678 260 Will Sommer 0063114488 Justin 4 history-etc 4.06 2023 Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America
author: Will Sommer
name: Justin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Solid, quick, journalistic read--as a first draft of history, this is very well done.
]]> <![CDATA[John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy]]> 29452531
"John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy is a most timely, valuable, and enlightening book. It shows conclusively that Adams was one of the sharpest critics of oligarchy among the American founders and, indeed, in the history of political thought. The book will generate much-needed discussion in political thought, American political studies, and contemporary democratic theory."--John McCormick, University of Chicago

Long before "the one percent" became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply "the few"--the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. In "John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy," Luke Mayville presents the first extended exploration of Adams's preoccupation with a problem that has a renewed urgency today: the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite. By revisiting Adams's political writings, Mayville draws out the statesman's fears about the danger of oligarchy in America and his unique understanding of the political power of wealth--a surprising and largely forgotten theory that promises to illuminate today's debates about inequality and its political consequences.

Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful in modern societies not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even sympathize with the rich. He thought wealth is powerful in the same way that beauty is powerful--it distinguishes its possessor and prompts reactions of approval and veneration. Citizens vote for--and with--the rich not because, as is often said, they hope to be rich one day, but because they esteem the rich and submit to their wishes. Mayville explores Adams's theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic inequality, and also examines his ideas about how oligarchy might be countered.

A compelling work of intellectual history, "John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy" also has important lessons for today's world of increasing inequality.]]> 232 Luke Mayville 069117153X Justin 4 history-etc
Mayville's central claim is that Adams foresaw how non-monarchical government could lead to the development of economic oligarchies, rather than non-economic and non-hereditary 'aristocracies'. That is, rule would devolve onto the rich, rather than onto the good.

It's not incredibly difficult to look at American politics over the last couple of hundred years and nod and say 'Adams was so prescient!' But remember that Adams thought this was *inevitable*. It was not inevitable, it was a political choice, led by Hamilton, Adams himself, and then many other politicians and Americans over a long period of time.

So, I would say in response to Mayville's book: Jefferson and Madison were wrong to think that the good *would* rule; they weren't wrong to think that a society could be organized *so that* the good would rule. Adams was right to think that the rich *could* come to rule, but wrong to think it was inevitable. We wouldn't be in a better place if everyone had heeded Adams and assumed that the rich would inevitably rule, so we had to have a king to keep them in line. Then, we'd have a king.

We would be in a better place if Adams had put his efforts into helping build a society in which the good ruled, and the rich could not. But he assumed oligarchy was an inevitable tendency, and so did not put his efforts there. ]]> 4.06 John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy
author: Luke Mayville
name: Justin
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Beautifully written and easy to finish in a couple of sittings, which is a *real* rarity in books about early American history. On the other hand, there's still a bit of bloat here. Enjoyable as it is, it could have been a longish journal article and lost nothing of the argument--which I find pretty unconvincing.

Mayville's central claim is that Adams foresaw how non-monarchical government could lead to the development of economic oligarchies, rather than non-economic and non-hereditary 'aristocracies'. That is, rule would devolve onto the rich, rather than onto the good.

It's not incredibly difficult to look at American politics over the last couple of hundred years and nod and say 'Adams was so prescient!' But remember that Adams thought this was *inevitable*. It was not inevitable, it was a political choice, led by Hamilton, Adams himself, and then many other politicians and Americans over a long period of time.

So, I would say in response to Mayville's book: Jefferson and Madison were wrong to think that the good *would* rule; they weren't wrong to think that a society could be organized *so that* the good would rule. Adams was right to think that the rich *could* come to rule, but wrong to think it was inevitable. We wouldn't be in a better place if everyone had heeded Adams and assumed that the rich would inevitably rule, so we had to have a king to keep them in line. Then, we'd have a king.

We would be in a better place if Adams had put his efforts into helping build a society in which the good ruled, and the rich could not. But he assumed oligarchy was an inevitable tendency, and so did not put his efforts there.
]]> <![CDATA[The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology]]> 2538628 � Choice This revisionary study offers a convincing new interpretation of Jeffersonian Republican thought in the 1790s. Based on extensive research in the newspapers and political pamphlets of the decade as well as the public and private writings of party leaders, it traces the development of party ideology and examines the relationship of ideology to party growth and actions.]]> 312 Lance Banning 0801492009 Justin 4 history-etc 3.92 1978 The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology
author: Lance Banning
name: Justin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Beautifully done history of ideas, on how 18th century British ideas found a new home in 18th and 19th century US America, for better or worse.
]]> <![CDATA[The Liar (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 79273890
One of the greatest works of modern Scandinavian fiction, The Liar tells the story of Johannes Lye, a teacher and parish clerk on tiny Sand Island off the coast of Denmark, a place that in winter is entirely cut off from the world at large by ice. It is winter when the book begins, and for years now Johannes has lived alone, even as he nurses a secret passion for Annemari, a former pupil. Annemari is engaged to a local man, Olaf, who has left the island but is due to return come spring. She is also being courted by a young engineer from the mainland. Such are the chief players in a compact drama, recorded in Johannes’s ironic, self-lacerating, and anything but reliable diary.

Martin A. Hansen’s novel beautifully evokes the stark landscape of Sand Island and the immemorial circuit of the seasons as well as the mysterious passage of time in the human heart, all the while proceeding to a supremely suspenseful conclusion.]]> 226 Martin A. Hansen 1681377187 Justin 4 fiction 3.56 1950 The Liar (New York Review Books Classics)
author: Martin A. Hansen
name: Justin
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1950
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Not a huge fan of the unreliable narrator as a rule, and even less of the unrequited lover, but this one was well done, and lodged in my mind. I can see it would be a high school or university assignment, there's plenty to get your teeth into; but it can also be read with less scholarly intent, and with profit.
]]> <![CDATA[Spy Story (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 56155240
'Len Deighton's spy novels are so good they make me sad the Cold War is over' Malcolm Gladwell

After six weeks in a nuclear submarine gathering computer data on Soviet activity, the mysterious, bespectacled spy known as Patrick Armstrong is desperate to return home. But when he arrives at his London flat, it appears to be occupied by someone who looks just like him - and he finds himself propelled into the heart of a conspiracy stretching from the remote Scottish highlands to the Arctic ice. Revisiting some of the characters from The IPCRESS File , Spy Story shows military games played out for real, and the Cold War turning dangerously hot.

'Menacing, beguiling ... a vintage Len Deighton thriller' The Times Literary Supplement

A PATRICK ARMSTRONG NOVEL]]> 216 Len Deighton 0241505518 Justin 5 fiction 3.45 1974 Spy Story (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Len Deighton
name: Justin
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
My favorite Deighton so far, perhaps because the class stuff is a bit more foregrounded here, and also because it's not quite as silly as Billion Dollar Brain or as tired as Expensive Place to Die. Interesting that people keep saying the spy in question is anonymous, when his name is all through the book. Okay, maybe its an alias, but people call him Patrick Armstrong over and over. Not sure that's a good sign for the novel's memorability.
]]> <![CDATA[Maigret in Vichy (Inspector Maigret #67)]]> 140736
Inspector Maigret and his wife take a much needed holiday to Vichy, where they quickly become used to the slower pace of life. But when a woman who they regularly pass by on their daily strolls is murdered, Maigret can't help but offer his assistance to the local Inspector, a former colleague of his.]]> 182 Georges Simenon 0156551403 Justin 5 fiction 3.91 1968 Maigret in Vichy (Inspector Maigret #67)
author: Georges Simenon
name: Justin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
The world demands more of Mme. Maigret! Always nice when Simenon tries something *slightly* outside Maigret's routine, and this one is fun.
]]> The Death of the Heart 91494 The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.

In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London. There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and he fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal—and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.]]> 418 Elizabeth Bowen 0385720173 Justin 4 fiction 3.66 1938 The Death of the Heart
author: Elizabeth Bowen
name: Justin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
I put off reading this one for about 9 years, if the price sticker on the back is to be believed (purchased July 2015, from the Last Bookstore in LA. What a shop that was when we lived there). I put it off because I'd enjoyed so much of Bowen, and this is probably her most famous. Perhaps I'm just jaded and cynical, but it wasn't what I expected. I preferred 'Heat of the Day.' It's always tough to get me motivated by unpleasant men and teenagers.
]]> The Twilight Zone 53317468 An engrossing, incantatory novel about the legacy of historical crimes by the author of Space Invaders

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández’s mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man’s face on the magazine’s cover with the words “I Tortured People.� His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the “man who tortured people� to places that archives can’t reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel’s title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime.

How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.]]> 232 Nona Fernández 164445047X Justin 4 fiction 4.08 2016 The Twilight Zone
author: Nona Fernández
name: Justin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Metropole 3349113
As one claustrophobic day follows another, he wonders why no one has found him yet, whether his wife has given him up for dead, and how he'll get by in this society that looks so familiar, yet is so strange.

In a vision of hell unlike any previously imagined, Budai must learn to survive in a world where words and meaning are unconnected.

A suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic.]]> 279 Ferenc Karinthy Justin 5 fiction 3.61 1970 Metropole
author: Ferenc Karinthy
name: Justin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Not for everyone--not even for me, most of the time--but how can you not be at least intrigued by a novel about a man who winds up in a country where he doesn't speak the language, that somehow goes on for 236 pages? Incredibly, Karinthy pulls it off all the way to the end. Provided you can focus on the humor, and stuff the incredible philosophical/political/social terror that all of this raises, it's a pleasant read. Just ignore the possibility that we're all Budai.
]]> The Rainbow 61860338 The Rainbow is a searing, melancholy work from one of Japan's greatest writers.]]> 224 Yasunari Kawabata 0241542286 Justin 5 fiction 3.38 1951 The Rainbow
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Justin
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Fabulous stuff, provided you're in the mood. To be honest, part of my enjoyment was that this was published in this lovely Penguin Classics edition, with a clean, tactile cover, thick paper, and a perfect cover photo. I am that shallow; this novel is not that shallow at all.
]]> Assembly 58709534 Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?]]> 100 Natasha Brown 0241992664 Justin 4 fiction 3.85 2021 Assembly
author: Natasha Brown
name: Justin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Maigret's Failure (Maigret, #49)]]> 35074091
Conflict rather than harmony probably reigned in eight out of ten of the still magnificent houses that surrounded the park. But he had rarely had the opportunity to breath such a strained atmosphere as the one between these walls. Everything seemed fake, grating, starting with the lodge of the concierge-cum-manservant, who was neither a concierge nor a manservant, despite his striped waistcoat, but a former poacher, a murderer turned guard dog.

Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations.


'His artistry is supreme' John Banville

'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian]]> 176 Georges Simenon 0241303788 Justin 4 fiction 3.80 1956 Maigret's Failure (Maigret, #49)
author: Georges Simenon
name: Justin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> Study for Obedience 123636870
A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him.

Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs - collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog's phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies 'just beyond the garden gate.' And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother's property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing.

With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. Study for Obedience is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.]]> 192 Sarah Bernstein 1039009069 Justin 5 fiction 3.02 2023 Study for Obedience
author: Sarah Bernstein
name: Justin
average rating: 3.02
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Looking forward to re-reading this in my dotage. I've had a rough few years with fiction, since I've read so much of the low-hanging fruit ("Hey, turns out Virginia Woolf is pretty good!"), and now I have to wait longer between discoveries. This one belongs in a small group of novels that has helped me keep the faith over my life. Not sure that's a recommendation for anyone other than me, but it does mean the book will keep a special place in my heart for a long time, alongside such mismatched neighbors as 'Diary of a Country Priest,' 'Flights,' and Anthony Trollope.
]]> Dead Lions (Slough House, #2) 15823478
The disgruntled agents of Slough House, the MI5 branch where washed-up spies are sent to finish their failed careers on desk duty, are called into action to protect a visiting Russian oligarch whom MI5 hopes to recruit to British intelligence. While two agents are dispatched on that babysitting job, though, an old Cold War-era spy named Dickie Bow is found dead, ostensibly of a heart attack, on a bus outside of Oxford, far from his usual haunts.

But the head of Slough House, the irascible Jackson Lamb, is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered.As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?]]> 348 Mick Herron 1616952253 Justin 4 fiction 4.03 2013 Dead Lions (Slough House, #2)
author: Mick Herron
name: Justin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Others have complained about the implausibility. I find the implausible quite plausible these days. And although I'm not that far into it, this is better than 'Real Tigers' so far.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity]]> 23503008
Early Christian doctrine held that the living and the dead, as equally sinful beings, needed each other in order to achieve redemption. The devotional intercessions of the living could tip the balance between heaven and hell for the deceased. In the third century, money began to play a decisive role in these practices, as wealthy Christians took ever more elaborate steps to protect their own souls and the souls of their loved ones in the afterlife. They secured privileged burial sites and made lavish donations to churches. By the seventh century, Europe was dotted with richly endowed monasteries and funerary chapels displaying in marble splendor the Christian devotion of the wealthy dead.

In response to the growing influence of money, Church doctrine concerning the afterlife evolved from speculation to firm reality, and personal wealth in the pursuit of redemption led to extraordinary feats of architecture and acts of generosity. But it also prompted stormy debates about money s proper use debates that resonated through the centuries and kept alive the fundamental question of how heaven and earth could be joined by human agency."]]> 288 Peter Brown 0674967585 Justin 4 history-etc, philosophy 4.06 2015 The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity
author: Peter Brown
name: Justin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc, philosophy
review:
Brown is good as ever, and much more concise here.
]]> <![CDATA[On Democracy (Veritas Paperbacks)]]> 52642141
“Within the liberal democratic camp there is considerable controversy about exactly how to define democracy. Probably the most influential voice among contemporary political scientists in this debate has been that of Robert Dahl.”—Marc Plattner, New York Times

“An excellent introduction for novices, as well as a trusty handbook for experts and political science mavens.”� Publishers Weekly]]> 288 Robert A. Dahl 0300254059 Justin 4 philosophy Solid. 3.54 1998 On Democracy (Veritas Paperbacks)
author: Robert A. Dahl
name: Justin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: philosophy
review:
Solid.
]]> <![CDATA[The Beloved Vision: A History of Nineteenth Century Music]]> 60320700
"An excellent work of history."� The Wall Street Journal

A rich and luminous biography of nineteenth century music.

When one thinks of “great� classical music—music with the most emotional resonance and timelessness—we harken backto the nineteenth century andthe Romantic tradition. We recall the sweet melody of a Schubert song, the heroine dying for love in an Italian opera, the swooning orchestration of a Tchaikovsky symphony.

The emotional resonance ofnineteenth century has moved generationsmusciansand resonated with countless listeners. It has inspired artists and writers. But no writer until how has adopted such a vividly insightful narrative approach as Stephen Walsh and he shows how there is more to Romantic music that meets the eye—and the ear.

With authority, insight, and passion, The Beloved Vision ,linksthe music history of this singular epoch tothe ideas that lay behind Romanticism in all its manifestations.In this complete, entertaining, and singularly readable account, we come to understand the entire phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire. We also come to understand Beethoven, Mahler,Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner anew.

The narrative begins in the eighteenth century, with C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang , seen as a reaction of the individual artist to the confident certainties of the Enlightenment. The windows are flung open, and everything to do with style, form, even technique, is exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather, the impulses and preferences of the individual composer. Risk taking—the braving of the unknown—was certainly an important part of what the composers wanted to do, as true of Chopin and Verdi as it is of Berlioz and Wagner. It's an exciting, colorful, story, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which Stephen Walsh is so widely admired.

The Beloved Visi onis a cultural tour de force, by turns bold,challenging, and immensely stimulating.]]> 422 Stephen Walsh 1639362363 Justin 2 history-etc 4.12 The Beloved Vision: A History of Nineteenth Century Music
author: Stephen Walsh
name: Justin
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
I struggled through Walsh's 'Debussy,' but thought that might have been a one-off incompatibility. Nope. What is going on here? What is with all the five star reviews? This is mostly a long list of compositions, occasionally leavened by opera plot summaries. If you already know the music, you don't need the lists and summaries. If you don't, the lists and summaries won't give you anything. I'm afraid I just want something from my music histories that Walsh isn't interested in giving me.
]]> <![CDATA[Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the Twentieth Century]]> 59423237
This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the twentieth century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be sidelined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds - and people - over others. A celebration of radical creativity rooted in ideas of protest, gender, race, ecology and resistance, Sound Within Sound is an energetic reappraisal of twentieth-century classical music that opens up the world far beyond its established centres, challenges stereotypical portrayals of the genre and shatters its traditional canon.]]> 312 Kate Molleson 0571363229 Justin 3 history-etc
Sadly, the book itself quickly became insufferable: every composer here, from the perhaps-maybe-fascists, through the Ethiopian nuns, to the ultra-contemporary piano drowners, are forced into the same mold. What's important about them isn't their music, but their Resistance to The Man. They are isolated, ignored, unheard (were they sometimes rich, often well-connected, generally tied in to the most important institutions in modern music? I mean, sure, but, Resistance!!!) They are then such astonishing Unique Geniuses that the world is forced to attend to the Incomprehensibly Perfect Sounds that the musicians are making! They will metaphysically alter your Very Being and also turn you into a good, liberal feminist, who thinks you're being inconceivably radical!

To wit: Ruth Crawford is awesome. She was not only an interesting and able composer in the modernist frame; she was also crucial to the rediscovery, preservation, and revivification of American folk music. In Molleson's tale, the latter only happened because of misogyny. It seems inconceivable that a person would want to engage in a group project of conservation, when she could instead be off Uniquely Geniusing.

That general Nietzschean attitude--that only the products of Special People are worthy of your attention, and if the Special People are doing something that is not Special, it's because the masses are dragging them down--drags the book down time and time again. There's a book in here that tells the stories of these people in their own terms, without inflating their genius, or downplaying the importance of social, institutional, and artistic support.

Of course, there's a reason for this framing. "Let me tell you how so and so went to school with famous composer x, then slowly and grindingly worked to develop something new from that background, with the help of a wide range of others." I fear that if Molleson had pitched that book, it would never have seen the light of day. Genius still sells. ]]> 4.40 2022 Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the Twentieth Century
author: Kate Molleson
name: Justin
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
How I wanted to love this book: a book about music (check), that is relatively approachable (check), that tells me about musicians I know and love (check), and also tells me about musicians I do not know and hope to come to love (check). I mean, that's a lot of boxes.

Sadly, the book itself quickly became insufferable: every composer here, from the perhaps-maybe-fascists, through the Ethiopian nuns, to the ultra-contemporary piano drowners, are forced into the same mold. What's important about them isn't their music, but their Resistance to The Man. They are isolated, ignored, unheard (were they sometimes rich, often well-connected, generally tied in to the most important institutions in modern music? I mean, sure, but, Resistance!!!) They are then such astonishing Unique Geniuses that the world is forced to attend to the Incomprehensibly Perfect Sounds that the musicians are making! They will metaphysically alter your Very Being and also turn you into a good, liberal feminist, who thinks you're being inconceivably radical!

To wit: Ruth Crawford is awesome. She was not only an interesting and able composer in the modernist frame; she was also crucial to the rediscovery, preservation, and revivification of American folk music. In Molleson's tale, the latter only happened because of misogyny. It seems inconceivable that a person would want to engage in a group project of conservation, when she could instead be off Uniquely Geniusing.

That general Nietzschean attitude--that only the products of Special People are worthy of your attention, and if the Special People are doing something that is not Special, it's because the masses are dragging them down--drags the book down time and time again. There's a book in here that tells the stories of these people in their own terms, without inflating their genius, or downplaying the importance of social, institutional, and artistic support.

Of course, there's a reason for this framing. "Let me tell you how so and so went to school with famous composer x, then slowly and grindingly worked to develop something new from that background, with the help of a wide range of others." I fear that if Molleson had pitched that book, it would never have seen the light of day. Genius still sells.
]]> A Shining 78311985 48 Jon Fosse 1804270636 Justin 3 fiction 3.47 2023 A Shining
author: Jon Fosse
name: Justin
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Destined for that worst of all possible fates: the slim, relatively insubstantial volume, which is really for completeists only... but ends up being the only thing people read from Fosse, because it's so slim. I understand people don't have time to read the bigger ones, but perhaps start with Aliss at the Fire instead.
]]> <![CDATA[When We Cease to Understand the World]]> 62069739
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.]]> 193 Benjamín Labatut Justin 4 history-etc, essays
Again, really liked this. It made me pull out all kinds of popular science books I hadn't thought about in forever. But I do hope it won't start a whole bunch of people writing books that are 'similar' in being historical fiction. I do hope it'll start a whole bunch of people writing books that are similar in that they take risks with form.

*: except for the first chapter, which is sub-Sebaldian. ]]> 4.10 2020 When We Cease to Understand the World
author: Benjamín Labatut
name: Justin
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc, essays
review:
It's not clear to me why people are all like 'Labatut has invented the wheel!' Historical fiction has existed for some time. It's cool that he wrote it about physicists instead of Napoleon, but, like, come on now. This is a great book, but chill out, everyone. What's notable about it isn't that he mixes 'fact' and 'fiction' (gasp!), but that the whole is so nicely connected* out of separate parts--there's no *main* character here, no main narrative about a human being. That's cool, and relevant to the physics that he's discussing.

Again, really liked this. It made me pull out all kinds of popular science books I hadn't thought about in forever. But I do hope it won't start a whole bunch of people writing books that are 'similar' in being historical fiction. I do hope it'll start a whole bunch of people writing books that are similar in that they take risks with form.

*: except for the first chapter, which is sub-Sebaldian.
]]> Mr Ma and Son 18688045
From their well-meaning landlady Mrs Wedderburn and her carefree daughter Mary, to the old China hands the Reverend Ely and his formidable wife, the Mas encounter all sorts in this story of unexpected love, crossed wires and antipathy.

A major contribution to the early twentieth-century conversation on Sino-British relations, Mr Ma and Son is a compelling, witty tale of cultural give-and-take from one of China's best-loved authors.]]> 344 Lao She 014320811X Justin 5 fiction 3.77 1929 Mr Ma and Son
author: Lao She
name: Justin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Outstanding--funny, smart, moving, thoughtful.
]]> <![CDATA[MACBETH (NEW PENGUIN SHAKESPEARE S.)]]> 132994750 0 William Shakespeare Justin 5 poetry-and-drama 3.64 1623 MACBETH (NEW PENGUIN SHAKESPEARE S.)
author: William Shakespeare
name: Justin
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1623
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: poetry-and-drama
review:
Read in preparation for the Ralph Fiennes 'Macbeth' in Washington DC; I prefer the Macbeth I made in my head, with the help of this edition's notes and so on. But they were both pretty good. I just didn't get with the 'tragic dinner scene as mid-century satire of married life' thing. I went to a Shakespeare play about war and power, and Edward Albee broke out.
]]> <![CDATA[Snow Country & Thousand Cranes]]> 1207293 Snow Mountain is a nuanced love story involving a discouraged urbanite (Shimamura) and a rural geisha (Komako). Shimamura is tired of the bustling city. He takes the train through the snow to the mountains of the west coast of Japan, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, Komako is tightly bound by the rules of a rural geisha, and lives a life of servitude and seclusion that is alien to Shimamura, and their love offers no freedom to either of them. Thousand Cranes is another love story. This melancholy tale uses the classical tea ceremony as a background for the story of a young man's relationships to two women, his father's former mistress and her daughter.]]> 204 Yasunari Kawabata 0140181180 Justin 4 fiction 3.98 1977 Snow Country & Thousand Cranes
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Justin
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
I didn't much enjoy 'Snow Country,' although it's probably the 'greater' novel of these two; my tolerance for men being unpleasant and earnest is quite low. 'Thousand Cranes' is both more to my general taste (i.e., 'tea ceremony > hot springs'), and to my literary taste. Also, shorter. But Kawabata is great, and I look forward to reading through his novels over the next few years.
]]> The New Animals 35239671
Tommy, Cal and Kurt are Millenials, they’ve come from nowhere, but with their monied families behind them they’re ready to remake fashion. They represent the new sincere, the anti-irony. Both generations are searching for a way out, an alternative to their messed-up reality.

Pip Adam’s new novel walks the streets of Auckland city now, examining the fashion scene, intergenerational tension and modern life with an unflinching eye. From the the wreckage and waste of the 21st century, new animals must emerge.

Cover by Kerry Ann Lee.]]> 224 Pip Adam 1776561163 Justin 3 fiction
I will ask that we stop comparing literally any ambitious woman who writes a novel to Virginia Woolf, though (as the Dorothy edition's back cover does.) Like, there are other ambitious artists, you know? And Virginia Woolf is actually pretty unusual, and not in the way that this book is unusual. I'd say this is 2/3rds Dickens, and 1/3rd Hilda Hilst. Though that's probably not quite the marketing coup that 'the new Virginia Woolf' is. ]]> 3.27 2017 The New Animals
author: Pip Adam
name: Justin
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
I'll take a book that tries something and that I don't exactly enjoy or like over a book that doesn't try anything interesting and I cruise through in a few hours. Props to Adam for *really* not playing by any rules.

I will ask that we stop comparing literally any ambitious woman who writes a novel to Virginia Woolf, though (as the Dorothy edition's back cover does.) Like, there are other ambitious artists, you know? And Virginia Woolf is actually pretty unusual, and not in the way that this book is unusual. I'd say this is 2/3rds Dickens, and 1/3rd Hilda Hilst. Though that's probably not quite the marketing coup that 'the new Virginia Woolf' is.
]]> <![CDATA[The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore]]> 23304973 A new volume of the greatest revenge tragedies of the seventeenth-century stage

These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores power, sex, and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo themes of incest and forbidden love in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 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.]]> 640 John Webster 0141392231 Justin 4 poetry-and-drama 3.79 2014 The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
author: John Webster
name: Justin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: poetry-and-drama
review:
I would not start with Malfi, which was a bit hard to get through. The others, though, were great, and Malfi was great too. Just a bit hard to get through.
]]> Complete Stories 1874�1884 84125 Library of America volume (the second of five volumes of James’s stories) show James working out, in a more concise fictional laboratory, themes that appear in such novels of the period as The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. They include some of his most famous explorations of the international theme: “Daisy Miller,� the unforgettable portrayal of an innocent, headstrong American girl at odds with European mores, “An International Episode� and “Lady Barberina,� satirically probing tales of English aristocrats and the American marriage market, and “The Siege of London,� in which an American widow strives to work her way into English society.

In “A Bundle of Letters� and “The Point of View,� James makes a fascinating experimental use of the epistolary form. “Professor Fargo� presents an unusually bleak view of the darker side of American life, while “The Author of ‘Beltraffio’� offers a disturbing portrait of a fin-de-siècle novelist. Throughout, James wittily limns the demands and hidden struggles of social life, and hones his mastery of the unexpected resolution and the brilliantly framed moral portrait.

Adventurous in narrative technique, yet marked by precise observation rendered in quicksilver prose, the stories of James’s middle period present a breathtaking array of memorable characters and beguiling scenarios.]]> 941 Henry James 1883011639 Justin 5 fiction 4.39 1884 Complete Stories 1874–1884
author: Henry James
name: Justin
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1884
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Okay, I'll be honest; I didn't read the whole thing. But I did read all the novellas, and James is great at novellas.
]]> <![CDATA[The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown]]> 57293228 ‘The execution of the king took place on a bleak, bitterly cold afternoon in January. As the executioner landed the single blow that severed Charles I’s head, the crowd let out a deep collective moan. Within weeks both the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. The future was in the hands of the people.�

The Restless Republic tells the story of what life was like during the unprecedented and unrepeated decade when Britain was governed without a king. Who cut radical paths? And who suffered the monumental costs?

Acclaimed historian Anna Keay follows nine figures who made names for themselves during this time. Among them Anna Trapnel, the young prophet whose visions transfixed the nation. John Bradshaw, the Cheshire lawyer who found himself trying the king. Gerrard Winstanley, the man who saw a utopia where land was shared and no one went hungry. William Petty, the precocious academic whose audacious enterprise to map Ireland led to the dispossession of tens of thousands. The redoubtable Countess of Derby who defended fiercely the last Royalist stronghold on the Isle of Man. And Marchamont Nedham, the irrepressible newspaper man and puppet-master of propaganda.

The Restless Republic ranges from the corridors of Westminster to the common fields of England. Gathering her cast of trembling visionaries and banished royalists, dextrous mandarins and bewildered bystanders, Anna Keay brings to vivid life the most extraordinary and experimental decade in Britain’s history. It is the story of what happened when a conservative people tried revolution.]]> 496 Anna Keay 0008282021 Justin 5 history-etc 4.38 2022 The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown
author: Anna Keay
name: Justin
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
Enjoyable, fairly respectable popular history, which pulls together a complicated era and makes it comprehensible to non-professionals.
]]> Ma Bole's Second Life 39090623 Ma Bole’s Second Life is a humorous-yet-stark depiction of the despair of ordinary Chinese people confronted with the sudden onslaught of war and Westernization. It follows the eponymous cowardly layabout as he escapes his unhappy family life by going on the run to avoid the coming Japanese invasion. Just a step ahead of the destruction, bumbling his way from one poorly thought out situation to the next, Ma Bole’s comic journey mirrors that of China as a whole during this chaotic period of history.

Incredibly well respected during her short, difficult lifetime, Xiao Hong’s final novel is an undiscovered masterpiece, a philosophical comedy in the vein of Bouvard and Pécuchet, finally available to English readers in Howard Goldblatt’s inventive rendering.]]> 280 Xiao Hong 1940953804 Justin 4 fiction 3.91 1940 Ma Bole's Second Life
author: Xiao Hong
name: Justin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Expensive Place to Die (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 56155163 222 Len Deighton 0241505348 Justin 4 fiction 2.92 1967 An Expensive Place to Die (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Len Deighton
name: Justin
average rating: 2.92
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Not so good as some of the earlier books, nor as good as Spy Story, which comes next, but it's all relative, and since Deighton can write sentences and jokes, and keeps his books under 225 pages, you have no right to complain. What are you going to do, read some silly contemporary 500 page thing stuffed with cringe inducing 'sex' scenes instead?
]]> <![CDATA[The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party]]> 59630374
"A thorough and scathing account of how the Republican Party fell prey to Trumpism."� The New York Times Book Review

In 1994, more than 300 Republicans under the command of obstructionist and rabble-rouser Congressman Newt Gingrich stood outside the U.S. Capitol to sign the Contract with America and put bipartisanship on notice. Twenty-five years later, on January 6, 2021, a bloodthirsty mob incited by President Trump invaded the Capitol.

Dana Milbank sees a clear line from the Contract with America to the coup attempt. In the quarter century in between, Americans have witnessed the crackup of the party of Lincoln and Reagan, to its current iteration as a haven for white supremacists, political violence, conspiracy theories and authoritarianism.

Following the questionable careers of party heavyweights Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and Rudy Giuliani, and those of many lesser known lowlights, Milbank recounts the shocking lengths the Republican Party has gone to to maintain its grip on the American people.]]> 416 Dana Milbank 0385548133 Justin 3 history-etc 4.10 The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party
author: Dana Milbank
name: Justin
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: history-etc
review:
A long list of misbehavior, which is useful to have. Not a lot of analysis or synthesis, but that's not what you came here for.
]]> <![CDATA[Slavery: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Ancients & Moderns)]]> 7756152 166 Page duBois 0195380851 Justin 1 history-etc
If you want to feel morally pure in your own rejection of slavery, this is the book for you. If you want to learn about the differences between slavery in ancient and modern contexts this is... not. Nor is it the book for you if you want to think seriously about the concepts involved.

But, go get yourself a copy right now if you want to read sentences like this:

"After the conquest of Greece by Philip II of Macedonia, and the further conquests eastward in Persia, south into Africa, and further east as far as the Indus River and beyond by his heir Alexander, the empire built by the Macedonians disintegrated after Alexander's death." (92).

After you've read that, and further sentences in the book in following chapters, the book will end after the following chapters. Thank goodness.

"Such conservative groups as the Legion of Decency threatened the studios, television had arrived as a challenge to the survival of the movie industry, producers and studios invested vast sums in these historical epic films, and the industry worked under the scrutiny of right-wing government groups and the Production Code."

Such readers as myself threatened to put the book down, video games had arrived as a challenge to learning stuff, authors and editors invested no time whatsoever in proof-reading let alone redrafting for grammatically challenged run-on sentences, and the final product worked to incite otherwise ordinary people to think to themselves, 'oh, *this* is why Republican Senators keep FOIing my university to uncover the dastardly deeds of 'Critical Race Theory' and 'Cultural Marxism.''

Slavery is bad, okay? Do you need high theory (Agamben etc) to say that? No. But this book will insist that you do. Do you need to rejig your definition of slavery to insist that manifestly not enslaved people today are enslaved? Of course not; you can criticize the present without claiming that nothing has changed since the eras of legal, institutionalized slavery. But this book will insist that the whole world is an Agambenite camp, and the camp is a slave plantation. Do you need non-literary evidence to write responsibly about ancient history? Yes, but this book will insist that you do not.

Should you differentiate slavery, chattel slavery, chattel slavery under the conditions of capitalist economies, racialized chattel slavery under the conditions of capitalist economics, literary metaphors of slavery, the use of the slave trope in love poetry, the use of the slave trope in spiritual writing, and so on? Yes. But here, if Paul says he is a slave of Jesus, his writing is analyzed in the same way as Calhoun's defense of slavery in the American south. You get the point.

Look, there are some breadth issues with this text that nobody could get around. The series is meant to show that modern concerns can be discussed in the context of the (sic) ancient world, which means Greece and Rome. So, duBois is already pushing it by including Jewish and Christian texts. Good work there. I doubt the editors would have admitted, say, the Ottoman Empire or China during the Tang dynasty.

But--and this is where you start to understand those Republic Senators--that means we end up with a story about slavery that runs from Aristotle, through Moses and Paul, to Calhoun and, for reasons opaque to me, Cecil B Demille's 'Ten Commandments,' and 'Spartacus'. There is no acknowledgement that slavery has been, until recently, a recognized and legal part of economic production in almost all places. Instead, the problem is narrowed down to 'the west', and anyone who ever wrote anything in a 'western' language is at fault. (Please note: I do not use the term 'the west' earnestly at any time, ever).

If you reject slavery as an institution, you reject it everywhere. If you only reject it in 'your' culture, I have no time for you. I'm sure the author of this book rejects it everywhere. But the series makes it impossible to raise that point.

One way to deal with this narrowness is to write the book in an analytic manner. But, this is not that book. This book is deeply engaged. And that means it is a sop to your middle of the road, (small l) liberal, good-thinking self-regard, not a tool to help you think through slavery in the distant past, in the recent past, and in the present--let alone help you think through how those things are all connected. ]]> 3.57 2009 Slavery: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Ancients & Moderns)
author: Page duBois
name: Justin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2009
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: history-etc
review:
What on earth is going on, my fellow reviewers? Five stars? I subtracted a star from my rating, just for balance.

If you want to feel morally pure in your own rejection of slavery, this is the book for you. If you want to learn about the differences between slavery in ancient and modern contexts this is... not. Nor is it the book for you if you want to think seriously about the concepts involved.

But, go get yourself a copy right now if you want to read sentences like this:

"After the conquest of Greece by Philip II of Macedonia, and the further conquests eastward in Persia, south into Africa, and further east as far as the Indus River and beyond by his heir Alexander, the empire built by the Macedonians disintegrated after Alexander's death." (92).

After you've read that, and further sentences in the book in following chapters, the book will end after the following chapters. Thank goodness.

"Such conservative groups as the Legion of Decency threatened the studios, television had arrived as a challenge to the survival of the movie industry, producers and studios invested vast sums in these historical epic films, and the industry worked under the scrutiny of right-wing government groups and the Production Code."

Such readers as myself threatened to put the book down, video games had arrived as a challenge to learning stuff, authors and editors invested no time whatsoever in proof-reading let alone redrafting for grammatically challenged run-on sentences, and the final product worked to incite otherwise ordinary people to think to themselves, 'oh, *this* is why Republican Senators keep FOIing my university to uncover the dastardly deeds of 'Critical Race Theory' and 'Cultural Marxism.''

Slavery is bad, okay? Do you need high theory (Agamben etc) to say that? No. But this book will insist that you do. Do you need to rejig your definition of slavery to insist that manifestly not enslaved people today are enslaved? Of course not; you can criticize the present without claiming that nothing has changed since the eras of legal, institutionalized slavery. But this book will insist that the whole world is an Agambenite camp, and the camp is a slave plantation. Do you need non-literary evidence to write responsibly about ancient history? Yes, but this book will insist that you do not.

Should you differentiate slavery, chattel slavery, chattel slavery under the conditions of capitalist economies, racialized chattel slavery under the conditions of capitalist economics, literary metaphors of slavery, the use of the slave trope in love poetry, the use of the slave trope in spiritual writing, and so on? Yes. But here, if Paul says he is a slave of Jesus, his writing is analyzed in the same way as Calhoun's defense of slavery in the American south. You get the point.

Look, there are some breadth issues with this text that nobody could get around. The series is meant to show that modern concerns can be discussed in the context of the (sic) ancient world, which means Greece and Rome. So, duBois is already pushing it by including Jewish and Christian texts. Good work there. I doubt the editors would have admitted, say, the Ottoman Empire or China during the Tang dynasty.

But--and this is where you start to understand those Republic Senators--that means we end up with a story about slavery that runs from Aristotle, through Moses and Paul, to Calhoun and, for reasons opaque to me, Cecil B Demille's 'Ten Commandments,' and 'Spartacus'. There is no acknowledgement that slavery has been, until recently, a recognized and legal part of economic production in almost all places. Instead, the problem is narrowed down to 'the west', and anyone who ever wrote anything in a 'western' language is at fault. (Please note: I do not use the term 'the west' earnestly at any time, ever).

If you reject slavery as an institution, you reject it everywhere. If you only reject it in 'your' culture, I have no time for you. I'm sure the author of this book rejects it everywhere. But the series makes it impossible to raise that point.

One way to deal with this narrowness is to write the book in an analytic manner. But, this is not that book. This book is deeply engaged. And that means it is a sop to your middle of the road, (small l) liberal, good-thinking self-regard, not a tool to help you think through slavery in the distant past, in the recent past, and in the present--let alone help you think through how those things are all connected.
]]> <![CDATA[Gathering Evidence / My Prizes]]> 11214235 Gathering Evidence is a powerful and compelling memoir of youth by one of the twentieth century’s most gifted writers.

Born in 1931, the illegitimate child of an abandoned mother, Thomas Bernhard was brought up by an eccentric grandmother and an adored grandfather in right-wing, Catholic Austria. He ran away from home at age fifteen. Three years later, he contracted pneumonia and was placed in a hospital ward for the old and terminally ill, where he observed first-hand—and with unflinching acuity—the cruel nature of protracted suffering and death. From the age of twenty-one, everything he wrote was shaped by the urgency of a dying man’s testament—and where this account of his life ends, his art begins.

Included in this edition is My Prizes, a collection of Bernhard’s viciously funny and revelatory essays on his later literary life. Here is a portrait of the artist as a prize-winner: laconic, sardonic, shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself.]]> 416 Thomas Bernhard 1400077621 Justin 3 essays, fiction
And, as with most of these tremendously stylish, vaguely existentialist writers, the further Bernhard gets from fiction, the more insufferable his narrators become. There's no doubt that Thomas had a rough start to life; he's more than entitled to whinge and complain about it at great length, and, frankly, I'd be interested in reading any such rants of his, just because they'll be funny, snarky and well written.

But this becomes more of a problem when the narrator makes the by now very predictable move from "My life was shitty in the following ways" to "Therefore, human life is shitty." The feeling that life is shitty is certainly one worth investigating; dedicating one's life to "gathering evidence" of that shittiness so you can throw it all back in the faces of those Catholic-Nazi Austrians who had the temerity to try to teach you something or provide for your health, on the other hand, is more than a bit boring.

So this is half a great riposte to people who think Bernhard's writing is about madness (as he very reasonably points out, he's not mad, just 'realistic'); a fairly unconvincing indictment of the medical profession (I get the distinct impression that Bernhard the narrator and Bernhard the author could have stayed healthy if he hadn't been so pig-headed); and a perfect manual for late twentieth century quasi-philosophy.

i) I, the philosopher, am completely individual and original. Pay no mind to the fact that I'm just repeating what Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and their various epigones have said. I am immune to the "diseases of the mind" to which others are prone. (123) I am "accountable to no one." (136) "I have listened to everything and conformed with nothing," (206).

ii) Truth is an impossibility, as is communication. "Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification," (160). And attempts to 'teach' people the truth are just "cramming the pupil full of putrid, useless knowledge and so turning his whole nature into the antithesis of all that is natural." (134) "What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though ti never can be the truth and never is the truth," (161). [Presumably, given (iii), we can never know if we want to tell the truth, anyway]. "Language is inadequate when it comes to communicating the truth... language can only falsify and distort whatever is authentic," 314. "words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything," (405).

iii) If something looks good or beautiful, it must be hiding shit, and it's our duty to find that shit no matter how hard we have to work to find it. Because it's always there, and the shit is the real. Everything else is, ipso facto, a facade. "The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled... we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form." (84) "Society cannot exist without one or more... victims... Morality is a lie," (138). "Human beings do not like freedom--to say otherwise is to lie," (179). "Getting a clear view of existence... is the only possible way to cope with it," (205). "we only have a right to what's not right and what's unjust," (406).

iv) Progress is not only a lie, it's impossible. "Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed," 212. "Absurdity is the only way forward," (306). "It is impossible to progress beyond nonsense," (206).

v) Philosophy is, at base, a waste of time. "Only theories can cripple us... all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights. We have seen through almost everything, and what is still to come will bring no surprises," (212). "Life [is] a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness," (403).

vi) Nature is good, because it doesn't lie: life sucks. "Life is nothing but a penal sentence I told myself... the world is a penitentiary where there is little freedom of movement... these precepts... have lost none of their validity... they embody an essential truth," 293.

vii) 'Science' proves all these ideas. "Life is only science now... we are suddenly taken up with nature... we have put reality to the test... everything will be clear, a clarity that increases and deepens unendingly, and everything will be cold, a coldness that intensifies ever more horribly," (402).

At times Bernhard tempers this impoverished liturgy with his own irony; "what a good thing it is that we have always adopted an ironic view of everything, however seriously we have taken it," (208). He occasionally protests that he's writing about the view he took as a child/teenager, and not the view he holds now, but his writings on the occasion of literary awards at the end of this volume suggest that there's no clear separation between the periods of his life.

The problem with this volume is that it encourages us to read what amounts to four novels worth of Bernhard consecutively. It's just too much. Yes, fanatics will say, you can't handle so much truth consecutively, you baffled sod! You need to look away from the abyss, need to lie to yourself, you inauthentic humanist!

But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you read the above ideas over and over, you realize that they're just a way for people with massive egos to believe that they have access to the real, whereas the rest of us - who happily go on acting as if things can be, and should be, better than they are - are deluded children.

But real immaturity, as a friend recently suggested to me, is stopping your intellectual development when you've learned enough to be cynical, but not enough to be human. Bernhard may have moved beyond that stage, but the narrator of these novels did not. ]]> 4.45 1986 Gathering Evidence / My Prizes
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Justin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at: 2013/10/06
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: essays, fiction
review:
My long-postponed encounter with Bernhard got off to a great start with The Loser. Then somehow I got the idea that I'd get more out of Bernhard's novels if I knew more about his biography and, hey, where better to start than this kind of memoir? So in I dove.

And, as with most of these tremendously stylish, vaguely existentialist writers, the further Bernhard gets from fiction, the more insufferable his narrators become. There's no doubt that Thomas had a rough start to life; he's more than entitled to whinge and complain about it at great length, and, frankly, I'd be interested in reading any such rants of his, just because they'll be funny, snarky and well written.

But this becomes more of a problem when the narrator makes the by now very predictable move from "My life was shitty in the following ways" to "Therefore, human life is shitty." The feeling that life is shitty is certainly one worth investigating; dedicating one's life to "gathering evidence" of that shittiness so you can throw it all back in the faces of those Catholic-Nazi Austrians who had the temerity to try to teach you something or provide for your health, on the other hand, is more than a bit boring.

So this is half a great riposte to people who think Bernhard's writing is about madness (as he very reasonably points out, he's not mad, just 'realistic'); a fairly unconvincing indictment of the medical profession (I get the distinct impression that Bernhard the narrator and Bernhard the author could have stayed healthy if he hadn't been so pig-headed); and a perfect manual for late twentieth century quasi-philosophy.

i) I, the philosopher, am completely individual and original. Pay no mind to the fact that I'm just repeating what Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and their various epigones have said. I am immune to the "diseases of the mind" to which others are prone. (123) I am "accountable to no one." (136) "I have listened to everything and conformed with nothing," (206).

ii) Truth is an impossibility, as is communication. "Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification," (160). And attempts to 'teach' people the truth are just "cramming the pupil full of putrid, useless knowledge and so turning his whole nature into the antithesis of all that is natural." (134) "What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though ti never can be the truth and never is the truth," (161). [Presumably, given (iii), we can never know if we want to tell the truth, anyway]. "Language is inadequate when it comes to communicating the truth... language can only falsify and distort whatever is authentic," 314. "words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything," (405).

iii) If something looks good or beautiful, it must be hiding shit, and it's our duty to find that shit no matter how hard we have to work to find it. Because it's always there, and the shit is the real. Everything else is, ipso facto, a facade. "The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled... we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form." (84) "Society cannot exist without one or more... victims... Morality is a lie," (138). "Human beings do not like freedom--to say otherwise is to lie," (179). "Getting a clear view of existence... is the only possible way to cope with it," (205). "we only have a right to what's not right and what's unjust," (406).

iv) Progress is not only a lie, it's impossible. "Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed," 212. "Absurdity is the only way forward," (306). "It is impossible to progress beyond nonsense," (206).

v) Philosophy is, at base, a waste of time. "Only theories can cripple us... all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights. We have seen through almost everything, and what is still to come will bring no surprises," (212). "Life [is] a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness," (403).

vi) Nature is good, because it doesn't lie: life sucks. "Life is nothing but a penal sentence I told myself... the world is a penitentiary where there is little freedom of movement... these precepts... have lost none of their validity... they embody an essential truth," 293.

vii) 'Science' proves all these ideas. "Life is only science now... we are suddenly taken up with nature... we have put reality to the test... everything will be clear, a clarity that increases and deepens unendingly, and everything will be cold, a coldness that intensifies ever more horribly," (402).

At times Bernhard tempers this impoverished liturgy with his own irony; "what a good thing it is that we have always adopted an ironic view of everything, however seriously we have taken it," (208). He occasionally protests that he's writing about the view he took as a child/teenager, and not the view he holds now, but his writings on the occasion of literary awards at the end of this volume suggest that there's no clear separation between the periods of his life.

The problem with this volume is that it encourages us to read what amounts to four novels worth of Bernhard consecutively. It's just too much. Yes, fanatics will say, you can't handle so much truth consecutively, you baffled sod! You need to look away from the abyss, need to lie to yourself, you inauthentic humanist!

But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you read the above ideas over and over, you realize that they're just a way for people with massive egos to believe that they have access to the real, whereas the rest of us - who happily go on acting as if things can be, and should be, better than they are - are deluded children.

But real immaturity, as a friend recently suggested to me, is stopping your intellectual development when you've learned enough to be cynical, but not enough to be human. Bernhard may have moved beyond that stage, but the narrator of these novels did not.
]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 133539
He claims that people are defined by the objects that surround them and must piece together their identities bit by bit each time they wake up. The young Marcel is so nervous about sleeping alone that he looks forward to his mother's goodnight kisses, but also dreads them as a sign of an impending sleepless night. One night, when Charles Swann, a friend of his grandparents, is visiting, his mother cannot come kiss him goodnight. He stays up until Swann leaves and looks so sad and pitiful that even his disciplinarian father encourages "Mamma" to spend the night in Marcel's room.]]> 615 Marcel Proust 0375751548 Justin 4 fiction
But that variation comes at a price: there is no obvious reason for 'Swann in Love,' which is the central third of the novel (and, let's be honest, a free standing novel), to be there at all. The narrator can't possibly know much more of the story than 'Swann fell in love with a hussy, and eventually married her,' but the tale itself is narrated by an omniscient observer. It's great, and I'd much rather read it a third or fourth time than tackle the Albertine novels (Fugitive/Prisoner) again. But it makes Swann's Way very disjointed. Yes, Swann in Love raises many of the issues that A la Recherche will tackle for the next however many thousand pages (jealousy and homosexuality as types of the difficulty of knowing others from their actions, or the difficulty of properly predicting our own behavior or that of others etc etc...). But I can't help thinking it would have made more sense to publish it separately, and then mix the rest of Swann's Way (including the famous cake and tea scene) into the next volume. That said, I am not Proust, and what the hell do I know? I know that this is well worth reading, and re-read. And I can't wait to get onto 'Within a Budding Grove.' ]]> 4.28 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Justin
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2012/05/17
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves: fiction
review:
My summer of re-reading Proust got off to a great start; it turns out that I hadn't forgotten everything about Swann's Way (which I read about 10 years ago), but that I was also much better equipped to deal with it now. It's really not that hard, it's a lot funnier than I'd realized as an undergrad, and I no longer feel the need to take all the essayistic interludes as gospel truth. This translation is beautiful, whatever it demerits when it comes to literal meaning; Proust really is an extraordinary observer of mental habits, and this volume has enough variation that you won't get bored slogging through too much of the same sort of stuff.

But that variation comes at a price: there is no obvious reason for 'Swann in Love,' which is the central third of the novel (and, let's be honest, a free standing novel), to be there at all. The narrator can't possibly know much more of the story than 'Swann fell in love with a hussy, and eventually married her,' but the tale itself is narrated by an omniscient observer. It's great, and I'd much rather read it a third or fourth time than tackle the Albertine novels (Fugitive/Prisoner) again. But it makes Swann's Way very disjointed. Yes, Swann in Love raises many of the issues that A la Recherche will tackle for the next however many thousand pages (jealousy and homosexuality as types of the difficulty of knowing others from their actions, or the difficulty of properly predicting our own behavior or that of others etc etc...). But I can't help thinking it would have made more sense to publish it separately, and then mix the rest of Swann's Way (including the famous cake and tea scene) into the next volume. That said, I am not Proust, and what the hell do I know? I know that this is well worth reading, and re-read. And I can't wait to get onto 'Within a Budding Grove.'
]]> The Letters of William Gaddis 16175883 The Recognitions (1955) while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award-winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter's Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to indite A Frolic of His Own (1994), which earned him another NBA. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel Agape Agape as he lay dying.]]> 600 William Gaddis 1564788377 Justin 3 fiction, literary-criticism
Second, if you're editing someone's letters, I would caution you not to say in your introduction, things like "it can be assumed all irregularities are in the originals", bold-facing "all... originals," and to clarify why you're bold facing these words "to catch the eye of readers and reviewers and preempt complaints that this book was poorly proofread." If you absolutely *insist* on such a hubristic statement, I would recommend that you proofread your book again because, duh, this book is filled with typos, both within the letters (even if Gaddis thanks Erika Goldman for "sening" him a book, it's hardly unreasonable to correct it to 'sending,' nor is it outrageous of the reader to expect 'hot' to be corrected to 'not' when necessary etc...) and in the notes to them(Mary McCarthy is many things, but a "crirtic" is not one of them; I haven't read Elkin's 'The Magic Kingdom', but I'm certain it does not feature an "eight-year old geriatric"; and most memorably of all, Mary mother of God is not a "goddess," and naming her such suggests either than Stephen Moore is i) an idiot or ii) an adolescent who can't really give up on religion, and so feels the need to guy Christianity by making it sound more ridiculous than its best thinkers admit that it already sounds--credo quia absurdam. Moore is surely neither of these, and the silliness of letting that claim slip by does him, and Gaddis, a disservice.)

Now, to important matters. In The Recognitions, Gaddis has his character ask what people want from the man that they can't get from the work; and his letters are certainly nowhere near as interesting as his novels. At worst they are replacement level writers' letters, all complaints about money, publishers, business etc., with little of Gaddis-the-novelist's brilliance.

But they do, at best, tell you something about the composition of the books--what Gaddis was reading, what he was trying to do at various points. He describes The Recognitions as an attempt to write a new myth, which I find interesting for literary-historical reasons (compare McCarthy's 'The Road'), and also notes his own desire to truly *believe* in a myth of some kind.

The most interesting thing about this book, though, is the way the letters let us see Gaddis's intellectual development: as a callow youth, he's viscerally disgusted by a socialist professor; as time passes he becomes highly critical of the U.S. and 'free enterprise,' without feeling that the latter is inherently flawed, but does start to mock anti-communism; ultimately he concludes that, on the evidence of his own work, perhaps capitalism just is inherently flawed.

More distressingly, for me at least, is a different 'development.' At 38, Gaddis wrote that, although forgery is inescapable in a finite world, "what is vital is the faith that the absolute... *does* exist," or that the attempt to grasp God/perfection is "all we have to justify this finite condition." At 51, he has become disgusted by Catholicism, but also feels that JR is "a secular version" of The Recognitions. At 59 (1981) he is writing letters about how his work is *not* purely negative, and the struggling artist is himself a kind of triumph. At 70 (1992) he responds to Gregory Comnes, a postmodern theorist, that although he sees himself "cited in a postmodern context" he "cower[s] in the notion of a traditional novelist"--but is starting to be apologetic about the fact. In an extraordinary letter to the Iowa Review (1993), he rejects the idea of himself as an experimental novelist, due to the mass of rubbish being produced under that moniker; insists that he has always "believed... that I knew exactly what I [was] doing."

But after all of this, a lifetime of fighting the good fight against philistinism and fashionable nonsense, the postmodernists finally got to him: in 1994 he writes to Comnes about how much he loves aporia/ indeterminacy/chaos etc..., and in a letter to Updike, of all people, he approves Comnes' claim that his (Gaddis's) work is a vision of "an essentially indeterminate landscape, a postmodern world with no absolutes."

I'll take Gaddis's early interpretation of his work--as a striving after some absolute, even if that absolute is out of reach--over his later interpretation, in which it's just pomo theory in novel form. If it turns out that it is just the latter, he'll cease to be my favorite novelist.

I think I'm safe. ]]> 3.00 2013 The Letters of William Gaddis
author: William Gaddis
name: Justin
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/01/04
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: fiction, literary-criticism
review:
I have to say a couple of things before getting serious here. First, although it might not be entirely accurate, I still say Gaddis when someone asks me who my favorite author is; and I still say The Recognitions when they ask about my favorite novel. Of course I need to re-read his stuff in order to check if this is true.

Second, if you're editing someone's letters, I would caution you not to say in your introduction, things like "it can be assumed all irregularities are in the originals", bold-facing "all... originals," and to clarify why you're bold facing these words "to catch the eye of readers and reviewers and preempt complaints that this book was poorly proofread." If you absolutely *insist* on such a hubristic statement, I would recommend that you proofread your book again because, duh, this book is filled with typos, both within the letters (even if Gaddis thanks Erika Goldman for "sening" him a book, it's hardly unreasonable to correct it to 'sending,' nor is it outrageous of the reader to expect 'hot' to be corrected to 'not' when necessary etc...) and in the notes to them(Mary McCarthy is many things, but a "crirtic" is not one of them; I haven't read Elkin's 'The Magic Kingdom', but I'm certain it does not feature an "eight-year old geriatric"; and most memorably of all, Mary mother of God is not a "goddess," and naming her such suggests either than Stephen Moore is i) an idiot or ii) an adolescent who can't really give up on religion, and so feels the need to guy Christianity by making it sound more ridiculous than its best thinkers admit that it already sounds--credo quia absurdam. Moore is surely neither of these, and the silliness of letting that claim slip by does him, and Gaddis, a disservice.)

Now, to important matters. In The Recognitions, Gaddis has his character ask what people want from the man that they can't get from the work; and his letters are certainly nowhere near as interesting as his novels. At worst they are replacement level writers' letters, all complaints about money, publishers, business etc., with little of Gaddis-the-novelist's brilliance.

But they do, at best, tell you something about the composition of the books--what Gaddis was reading, what he was trying to do at various points. He describes The Recognitions as an attempt to write a new myth, which I find interesting for literary-historical reasons (compare McCarthy's 'The Road'), and also notes his own desire to truly *believe* in a myth of some kind.

The most interesting thing about this book, though, is the way the letters let us see Gaddis's intellectual development: as a callow youth, he's viscerally disgusted by a socialist professor; as time passes he becomes highly critical of the U.S. and 'free enterprise,' without feeling that the latter is inherently flawed, but does start to mock anti-communism; ultimately he concludes that, on the evidence of his own work, perhaps capitalism just is inherently flawed.

More distressingly, for me at least, is a different 'development.' At 38, Gaddis wrote that, although forgery is inescapable in a finite world, "what is vital is the faith that the absolute... *does* exist," or that the attempt to grasp God/perfection is "all we have to justify this finite condition." At 51, he has become disgusted by Catholicism, but also feels that JR is "a secular version" of The Recognitions. At 59 (1981) he is writing letters about how his work is *not* purely negative, and the struggling artist is himself a kind of triumph. At 70 (1992) he responds to Gregory Comnes, a postmodern theorist, that although he sees himself "cited in a postmodern context" he "cower[s] in the notion of a traditional novelist"--but is starting to be apologetic about the fact. In an extraordinary letter to the Iowa Review (1993), he rejects the idea of himself as an experimental novelist, due to the mass of rubbish being produced under that moniker; insists that he has always "believed... that I knew exactly what I [was] doing."

But after all of this, a lifetime of fighting the good fight against philistinism and fashionable nonsense, the postmodernists finally got to him: in 1994 he writes to Comnes about how much he loves aporia/ indeterminacy/chaos etc..., and in a letter to Updike, of all people, he approves Comnes' claim that his (Gaddis's) work is a vision of "an essentially indeterminate landscape, a postmodern world with no absolutes."

I'll take Gaddis's early interpretation of his work--as a striving after some absolute, even if that absolute is out of reach--over his later interpretation, in which it's just pomo theory in novel form. If it turns out that it is just the latter, he'll cease to be my favorite novelist.

I think I'm safe.
]]> Reading Genesis 127282468
For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents, by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.

Both of these approaches preclude an appreciation of its greatness as literature, its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture. Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis , which includes the original text, is a powerful consideration of the profound meanings and promise of God’s enduring covenant with humanity. This magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God’s abiding faith in Creation.]]> 344 Marilynne Robinson 0374299404 Justin 0 to-read 4.03 2024 Reading Genesis
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Justin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Passenger (The Passenger #1)]]> 60581087
Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.]]> 385 Cormac McCarthy 0593535227 Justin 0 to-read 3.58 2022 The Passenger (The Passenger #1)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Justin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Birds 25739169
The Birds tells the story of Mattis, a deeply sensitive, intellectually disabled young man living in a small house in the Norwegian countryside with his sister Hege. Eking out a modest living knitting sweaters, Hege encourages her brother to find work to ease their financial burdens, but his attempts come to nothing.

When he finally sets himself up as a ferryman, the only passenger he manages to bring across the lake is a lumberjack, Jørgen. But when Jørgen and Hege become lovers, Mattis finds the safety of his familial life threatened and his jealousy quickly spirals.

In The Birds , Norway’s most celebrated writer of the twentieth century allows us to rediscover the world. By turns frightening, beautiful, confounding, and full of mystery, it is a world we come to see more vividly through Mattis’s eyes.]]> 301 Tarjei Vesaas 0914671200 Justin 5 fiction 4.31 1957 The Birds
author: Tarjei Vesaas
name: Justin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1957
rating: 5
read at: 2019/05/03
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: fiction
review:
Considering that I don't much like narrated-from-the-perspective-of-a-person-of-limited-intelligence books (whether the person in question is a child, or, as here, an adult), I was surprised to find myself getting so much from this book. Other than the slightly pat ending, it was thought provoking, and moving, and avoided the overwhelming Romantic imperative to say that the only good people in the world are the people who completely and utterly fail to understand normal life, but are because of that in touch with real reality. That is not true. Rationality is good. Only a rational person could have written this book.
]]> Genesis 379191

In Robert Alter's brilliant translation, these stories cohere in a powerful narrative of the tortuous relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, eldest and younger brothers, God and his chosen people, the people of Israel and their neighbors. Alter's translation honors the meanings and literary strategies of the ancient Hebrew and conveys them in fluent English prose. It recovers a Genesis with the continuity of theme and motif of a wholly conceived and fully realized book. His insightful, fully informed commentary illuminates the book in all its dimensions.]]> 324 Robert Alter 039331670X Justin 4 4.16 -800 Genesis
author: Robert Alter
name: Justin
average rating: 4.16
book published: -800
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2024/02/02
shelves: literary-criticism, philosophy
review:
Lovely translation, which balances the gravitas of the old ones with the readability of the new ones. The extensive notes focus mainly on linguistic matters (of the 'this Hebrew word is the same word used to describe Abraham's mustache' variety) and literary form. There's some discussion of source texts and the various strands that went to make up Genesis, but that's kept to a minimum, since Alter wants to foreground the work that someone put into arranging all that stuff into a reasonably coherent narrative. There's also a couple of notes about historical context, but fewer than I, personally, would have liked. In general, though, I was impressed that he managed to make the notes both copious and not too boring. Anyway, this is the one to get for a good translation. If you want detailed historical or theological commentary, you'll need something in addition, but I can't imagine anyone bettering the translation any time soon. Can't wait to get to Alter's Exodus.
]]> <![CDATA[Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s]]> 59802040
Ronald Reaganhaslongbeenlionized forbuilding aconservativecoalitionsustained byanoptimistic vision ofAmerican exceptionalism, small government,andfree markets.Butas historian Nicole Hemmer reveals,the Reagan coalition wasshort-lived; it fell apart as soon as its charismatic leader left office.Inthe 1990s—a decade that has yet to be recognized as the breeding ground for today’s polarizing politics—changing demographicsand theemergence of a newpolitical-entertainment media fueled the rise of combative far-right politicians and pundits.Thesepartisans,from Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich toRush Limbaugh andLaura Ingraham,forgeda new American rightthatemphasizedanti-globalism, appeals to white resentment, and skepticism about democracyitself.

Partisans is essential reading foranyoneseekingto understand the crisis of American politics today.]]> 368 Nicole Hemmer 1541646886 Justin 3 history-etc
More troublingly, this is perversely gentle on George W. Bush and the neo-cons, as if their politics and actions didn't set the stage for the present both negatively (i.e., the stupidity of the Iraq war) and positively, with their embrace of culture wars and pomo relativism. ]]> 4.15 Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s
author: Nicole Hemmer
name: Justin
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
A breezy, journalistic look at some of the Great Men (also women, but women who reject the idea that you should include 'women' in your grammar or language, so, sic) of 90s right wing politics and media trolling, but with surprisingly little in the way of analysis or argument. Hemmer does a good job of highlighting just how much of Trump's politics is a re-hash of stuff from earlier eras of the Republican party--especially Buchanan, but really, most everyone. But *why* that should all succeed for a presidential candidate in 2016 goes unmentioned, as does why is succeeded at the congressional level in the 1990s. On the upside: you can read it in three hours and get pleasure from the reading.

More troublingly, this is perversely gentle on George W. Bush and the neo-cons, as if their politics and actions didn't set the stage for the present both negatively (i.e., the stupidity of the Iraq war) and positively, with their embrace of culture wars and pomo relativism.
]]> <![CDATA[Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities]]> 29452543
In the summer of 2015, shortly after Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender, the NAACP official and political activist Rachel Dolezal was "outed" by her parents as white, touching off a heated debate in the media about the fluidity of gender and race. If Jenner could legitimately identify as a woman, could Dolezal legitimately identify as black?

Taking the controversial pairing of “transgender� and “transracial� as his starting point, Rogers Brubaker shows how gender and race, long understood as stable, inborn, and unambiguous, have in the past few decades opened up―in different ways and to different degrees―to the forces of change and choice. Transgender identities have moved from the margins to the mainstream with dizzying speed, and ethnoracial boundaries have blurred. Paradoxically, while sex has a much deeper biological basis than race, choosing or changing one's sex or gender is more widely accepted than choosing or changing one’s race. Yet while few accepted Dolezal’s claim to be black, racial identities are becoming more fluid as ancestry―increasingly understood as mixed―loses its authority over identity, and as race and ethnicity, like gender, come to be understood as something we do , not just something we have . By rethinking race and ethnicity through the multifaceted lens of the transgender experience―encompassing not just a movement from one category to another but positions between and beyond existing categories―Brubaker underscores the malleability, contingency, and arbitrariness of racial categories.

At a critical time when gender and race are being reimagined and reconstructed, Trans explores fruitful new paths for thinking about identity.]]> 256 Rogers Brubaker 0691172358 Justin 4 philosophy 3.45 Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities
author: Rogers Brubaker
name: Justin
average rating: 3.45
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: philosophy
review:
Why is 'trans' acceptable for gender, but not for race? That's a reasonable question, and Brubaker's answer is an interesting. The book is hardly perfect, but good on him for trying to say something intelligent and genuine about contemporary discourse and debate and concepts. I'm too scared to even start thinking about this, let alone talking about it with people I know and love. If you want to know why I'm scared, try reading some of the reviews of this perfectly anodyne, well-intentioned book.
]]> <![CDATA[Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism]]> 62919402
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.� He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.� But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.]]> 426 Jeffrey Toobin 1668013576 Justin 4 history-etc 4.12 2023 Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
author: Jeffrey Toobin
name: Justin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
Six stars for the first half of the book, which leads us from McVeigh's childhood to the bomb; one star for the second half, which focused on the trial--you might care about this kind of thing, but I, sadly, do not--and negative three stars for the misleading editorial. It should have been subtitled '... McVeigh and the Trial of the Century' or something. Toobin writes well, and his research is impeccable.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution]]> 22477 416 Bernard Bailyn 0674443020 Justin 4 history-etc 4.03 1967 The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
author: Bernard Bailyn
name: Justin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
A model intellectual history, and also a model of how to set and edit a book. Such a luxuriously large font! The pages fly by, you feel very productive, and you actually learn a lot by the end. No doubt this is out of date, but as I'm not an expert, that's less important for me than the knowledge and pleasure I gained in the reading of it.
]]> <![CDATA[Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End]]> 61271799 A “humane, thoughtful, and intelligent� (The New York Times Book Review) bestselling Biblical scholar reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters.

You’ll find nearly everything the Bible says about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But no matter what you think Revelation reveals—whether you read it as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture—you’re almost certainly wrong.

In Armageddon, acclaimed New Testament authority Bart D. Ehrman delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly most dangerous—book of the Bible, on a “vigilantly persuasive� (The Washington Post) tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end. With wit and verve, he explores the alarming social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse, considers whether the message of Revelation may be at odds with the teachings of Jesus, and offers inspiring insight into how to live in the face of an uncertain future.

By turns hilarious, moving, troubling, and provocative, Armageddon is nothing short of revelatory in its account of what the Bible really says about the end.]]> 8 Bart D. Ehrman 1797151797 Justin 4 history-etc 4.16 2023 Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End
author: Bart D. Ehrman
name: Justin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
Fun and approachable look at Revelations and the way it has been interpreted by some of the... fringier varieties of American Christianity. And by fringier, I do not mean less popular.
]]> <![CDATA[Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE]]> 61813212 A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world history

This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era.

Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies--from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting--highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa.

A monumental achievement by one of today's eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.]]> 224 Christopher Ehret 069124409X Justin 3 history-etc 3.49 2023 Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE
author: Christopher Ehret
name: Justin
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
A worthy project, but perhaps the product of a zealous editorial department rather than an author? It's not clear to me why 'who first domesticated the donkey?' is a topic in a book like this, nor 'ancient Egypt was African, not...' I don't know what else it would have been. That African peoples have made crucial contributions to human existence is good to repeat, but I can't imagine many people picking up this book and disagreeing with its 'arguments' (if you disagree with the idea that African peoples have made crucial contributions, you're unlikely to read an academic book outlining those contributions), so the arguments just get in the way. Otherwise, I suspect this will be far too technical for most people, and they'd be better served with other recent books on the topic. Once you've read all of those, this might be a useful addition. Basically, I was hoping for one step up from the Golden Rhinoceros, and what I got was a collection of academic papers strung together on a thin, but worthy, line.
]]> Winter in Sokcho 52873922 As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman - a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author

It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.

The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic� Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows � the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.]]> 154 Elisa Shua Dusapin 1911547542 Justin 5 fiction 3.55 2016 Winter in Sokcho
author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
name: Justin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/04
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: fiction
review:
I resisted this for a long time, because there were just too many fragment sentences in the first pages; I'm glad I stopped being such a tool. Also, the front flap description might be the worst I've ever come across. It completely distorts what is a wonderful novel about varieties of (low-level) suffering, forcing it into the most acceptable best-seller category of anthro-identity-literature (learn about Korea! But also, mixed race identity! But also, centrist feel good politics!). It's far, far better and more interesting than that.
]]> Cold Enough for Snow 58730649 Cold Enough for Snow questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another's inner world.

Selected from more than 1,500 entries, Cold Enough for Snow won the Novel Prize, a new, biennial award offered by Fitzcarraldo Editions, New Directions (US) and Giramondo (Australia), for any novel written in English that explores and expands the possibilities of the form.]]> 99 Jessica Au 1913097765 Justin 4 fiction 3.79 2022 Cold Enough for Snow
author: Jessica Au
name: Justin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: fiction
review:
I'm not usually a fan of the subtle, unreliable narrator thing, but this is very well done. It suffered in that I read it after 'Winter in Sokcho,' which was amazing.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Revelation: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books)]]> 39204049 The life and times of the New Testament's most mystifying and incendiary book

Few biblical books have been as revered and reviled as Revelation. Many hail it as the pinnacle of prophetic vision, the cornerstone of the biblical canon, and, for those with eyes to see, the key to understanding the past, present, and future. Others denounce it as the work of a disturbed individual whose horrific dreams of inhumane violence should never have been allowed into the Bible. Timothy Beal provides a concise cultural history of Revelation and the apocalyptic imaginations it has fueled.

Taking readers from the book's composition amid the Christian persecutions of first-century Rome to its enduring influence today in popular culture, media, and visual art, Beal explores the often wildly contradictory lives of this sometimes horrifying, sometimes inspiring biblical vision. He shows how such figures as Augustine and Hildegard of Bingen made Revelation central to their own mystical worldviews, and how, thanks to the vivid works of art it inspired, the book remained popular even as it was denounced by later church leaders such as Martin Luther. Attributed to a mysterious prophet identified only as John, Revelation speaks with a voice unlike any other in the Bible. Beal demonstrates how the book is a multimedia constellation of stories and images that mutate and evolve as they take hold in new contexts, and how Revelation is reinvented in the hearts and minds of each new generation.

This succinct book traces how Revelation continues to inspire new diagrams of history, new fantasies of rapture, and new nightmares of being left behind.]]> 288 Timothy Beal 0691145830 Justin 4 history-etc 3.53 The Book of Revelation: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books)
author: Timothy Beal
name: Justin
average rating: 3.53
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:

]]> The Balkans: A Short History 278216 240 Mark Mazower 081296621X Justin 3 history-etc 3.72 2000 The Balkans: A Short History
author: Mark Mazower
name: Justin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
I like Mazower in general, but this might have been too short.
]]> <![CDATA[From the Maccabees to the Mishnah]]> 158053 264 Shaye J.D. Cohen 0664227430 Justin 3 3.94 1987 From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
author: Shaye J.D. Cohen
name: Justin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers]]> 62810027
“Deeply informative, delightfully entertaining, and addictively readable.”—Diana B. Henriques, bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenueto Broadway. Known as Billionaires� Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.

In Billionaires� Row, Katherine Clarke reveals the captivating story of how, in just a few years, the ruthless real-estate impresarios behind these “supertalls� lining 57thStreet turned what was once a run-down strip of Midtown into the most exclusive street on Earth, as legendary Trump-era veterans went toe-to-toe with hungry upstart developers in an ego-fueled “race to the sky.� Based on far-reaching access to real estate’s power players, Clarke’s account brings readers inside one of the world’s most cutthroat industries, showing how a combination of ferocious ambition and relentless salesmanship has created a new market of $100 million apartments for the world’s one-percenters—units to live in or, sometimes, just places to stash their cash.

Filled with eye-popping stories that bring the new era of extreme wealth inequality into vivid relief, Billionaires� Row is a juicy, gimlet-eyed account of the genius, greed, and financial one-upmanship behind the most expensive real estate in the world—a stranger-than-fiction saga of broken partnerships, broken marriages, lawsuits, and, for a few, fleeting triumph.]]> 416 Katherine Clarke 0593240065 Justin 3 history-etc 3.96 Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
author: Katherine Clarke
name: Justin
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: history-etc
review:
Solid enough, and very readable, but could have been a bit more critical--of both the architecture, and the personalities.
]]>