Fascinating book about the French resistance and WWII and how hard they struggled, constantly getting caught and then rebooting the network. Marie-MadFascinating book about the French resistance and WWII and how hard they struggled, constantly getting caught and then rebooting the network. Marie-Madeleine was an impressive woman - the number of times she had to show grit to keep the network alive when it seemed dead, not seeing her kids much at all for 4 years, losing her lover to the gestapo. Sounded hard for the Germans to control a country where almost everyone is willing to be a spy.
I got a real sense for the "two Frances" - the Vichy/Petain one, and the DeGaulle/resistance one. I liked this quote:
An enthralling tale of WWII told through journals of Churchill, his inner circle, and even some of Hitler and Goebbells and some of their circle. I'llAn enthralling tale of WWII told through journals of Churchill, his inner circle, and even some of Hitler and Goebbells and some of their circle. I'll read anything Erik Larson writes - history or historical fiction, as he tells a story really well.
My main takeaway was how strong a case there was for Churchill being "the right man" to be PM during the war. Indeed, he was only PM during the war. But he was a true master of messaging and speeches, and inspiring the British public to not lose faith despite being bombed like crazy during the Blitz for a period of over a year! This was critical, and I think almost entirely due to Churchill and his radio sessions and speeches.
But that poster could easily have been rewritten "Keep calm and wait for the United States" because another impressive bit that shone through in the book is that Churchill knew that England couldn't win otherwise, but that didn't stop him from trying. A tough line to balance as he couldn't appear desperate to his people or to Roosevelt, but he also must have felt desperate at times. Very smart of him to invite Roosevelts man Harriman over and give him so much access.
Highly recommended and it reads nice and fast - my only criticism is that it really skipped through the end of the war (after the US declared) - perhaps another volume is coming?...more
Fascinating telling of the last 20 years of the journalism industry, through in depth looks at four companies: The New York Times, the Washington PostFascinating telling of the last 20 years of the journalism industry, through in depth looks at four companies: The New York Times, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice. I knew a lot of this having followed and worked on some of it (eg social media rise), but I still learned some things that made the book worth it. I also didn't agree with the way she characterized some of the things I knew about.
The story of the news industry in the last twenty years, is one of managed decline. The Posts revenue was ~30% of what it had been when Jeff Bezos purchased it, and their newsroom had shrunk by almost half. Similar trend for the Times. Print circulation provided all the revenue but it was declining, digital was growing but providing no revenue, and classified advertising, which used to account for ~40% of revenue, was taken almost entirely out by Craigslist, Monster.com and the internet. Shrinkage led to a shortage of young people working there, and a lack of a culture of innovation.
In recent years, the Times, Post, WSJ, and others have finally figured out how to embrace digital and make digital subscriptions work. Maybe people just needed a decade or two before they were willing to pay for online content, or maybe the publishers could have innovated faster, it's a very interesting question - but I tend to think innovation could have been much faster (but not overnight). But as of mid 2020, the NYT has 6 million subscribers, who provide 64% of their revenue.
One of the themes the book talks about a lot is the separation between church and state in a newspaper - the notion that advertisers should have zero influence over what journalists write or cover. Church and state have been separated for a long time for a good reason - if they aren't, the truth can be hidden by paying money. But the declining legacy print business and the loss of classified meant better online advertising needed to be figured out to save the papers. And upstarts like BuzzFeed and Vice led the charge in figuring out what it looked like - basically an in house ad agency that produced fully native advertising. These articles, which were paid for and thus positive, were mostly clearly marked but not in obvious ways. Church and state got intermixed, and the result at Vice and BuzzFeed has been that advertisers can control content. Less so at NYT/Post, but still a tension that you have to believe influences things.
But the biggest issue is that with online, we have ability to measure clicks, and clicks mean pageviews which mean ad dollars. So now we live in a world where editors value content that generates clicks, and a scoreboard can be created. Impressively, at Buzzfeed salaries were tied to how many clicks a writers pieces generated. And while the editors at the Times knew that human judgement mattered more as to what news people should know, even there clicks started to rule the day.
If even the NYT falls to clicks, and BuzzFeed/Vice/HuffPo/etc are all about clicks, this leads us to content that is good at getting clicks. More specifically, content that plays on our emotions, usually fear, anger, outrage. Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now talked about this trend. And then things like this can happen, where someone good at making clicks comes along:
I think clicks are the wrong metric. And optimizing for that metric has led our media industry astray. You combine that with a publishing industry that is cutting costs and thus not innovating as well as having to cut quality checks, and it explains a bit why the media is now so polarized and not as trusted as "the newspaper of record" should be.
And it's not just clicks, social media engagement is not the right metric either:
Side note on Vice - I must have not been in the target audience for them, and while I know I have occasionally read things on their website, I was wholly ignorant of their story, or the fact that they had and have a big video arm on YouTube and HBO - I don't think I've ever seen any of their videos! I guess I was never counter-culture... but I was glad to learn their story.
Side note - the author Jill Abramson was accused of lifting some of her passages from magazine articles about Vice/Buzzfeed/etc, and not crediting the original source. It looks like this is true for a few paragraphs at least, but the overall narrative constructed is not plagiarized, so I don't think this is a big deal at all in whether or not to read or trust this book....more
Harari is one of my favorite authors of late, and his books Sapiens and Home Deus are among my favorites. This book builds on those, and is equally faHarari is one of my favorite authors of late, and his books Sapiens and Home Deus are among my favorites. This book builds on those, and is equally fascinating. He is one of those clear thinkers who is able to put together multiple macro trends combined with philosophical perspective. Sapiens is about the past, Deus about the future, and this book purports to be 21 lessons about the present. But it is also rooted in the past, and preparing us for the future.
One of Harari's key themes in Deus and this book is AI and what it will mean for humanity in the future. Many people - thanks to Hollywood - equate AI with machines that achieve consciousness - I tend to not agree with that, as I think it more likely that AI will just be exceedingly smart. But regardless, along with nuclear power and climate change it's one of the great risks to our future. And it is being advanced rapidly. This will have a lot of side affects, the top one of which is what will happen to humans. I think this quote might be one of the most key from the book, and certainly a key theme of Harari's:
He goes on to further explain that our whole economic system is causing us to head in this direction, and to - except for a small number of people who opt to prioritize differently - largely ignore how to improve ourselves.
Another consequence of AI that is fascinating is that it can enable intelligence at a scale we today can't comprehend, which can be dangerous if it is controlled by the wrong people. AI is just a function of the data you put into it, so it follows that who holds the data in the future, will hold the power. I think this is a key concept.
Harari talks about trends in globalization, nationalism, immigration, religion, terrorism, and war. A common theme across these is that many people worry a lot that trends in these areas is a cause for concern and causing decline in our world. However the truth is that in most of them, we have come a long way and made a lot of progress - however because we live in an unprecedented age of information sharing - "media" - people are a lot more aware of even small issues in these areas. Also, our governments are predicated on keeping us safe from political violence, so even small issues like terrorism (small in the sense of how many people die from it each year) can have outsized importance to people.
He talks about the danger of propoganda/fake news and fascism and how in todays technological climate there is more risk of them so its better if everyone understands them. He explained this really well in his TED talk - highly worth watching.
But in the end, the only major recommendation Harari makes is around meditation. He impressively meditates for TWO HOURS per day, and TWO MONTHS per year. That is obviously a *huge* time commitment, and yet one he finds fulfilling. If we are going to invest in ourselves, the biggest way might be to start with our minds, and to stop worrying about all of these trends - because in the end, they don't matter to our ability to have a good, happy, loving life.
Basically, we worry a lot. A LOT. We live in dark times (with a scary president), etc. Pinker points out why we worry so much: the news. The news cycle is designed to play on our fears, and thus it is largely negative, focusing on all the bad things that are happening in the world. And we are consuming more news than ever in human history! And if the news focused on all the good things, the ratings would plummet, after all. But one of my favorite lines in the book points out that we would be hard pressed to find negative news if we were covering the last 100 years, instead of the last day.
And that was the eye opening thing about the book - if you take a long term view, every metric you can find has gotten better. Life expectancy, health, extreme poverty, prosperity, peace, freedom, safety, literacy, leisure, and even happiness - he has chapters and graphs for each of them, showing them vastly improving over the past centuries and usually with most gains in the past century. An interesting point is that most graphs show third world countries only being ~20-30 years behind first world countries, but the shape of the graphs looks the same in terms of the rate of progress. I won't recap all the graphs and numbers, but here is a small example of how life has gotten better.
This is not to say that there aren't still large problems in all of those areas left to solve. Nor that we haven't created other problems - the book has chapters on some of those, notably climate change and nuclear war - but again there we have actually made progress. For some reason I haven't quite fully fathomed, Pinker and this book have gotten a lot of criticism. I think some of this is from people who object to him saying "the world is great" because there is so much progress left to be made - yet Pinker often admits that in the book. Or from people who think he is measuring progress along the wrong metrics, and we are all headed for an apocalypse. Certainly, there are lots of books about apocalypse, but it's much more pleasant to be an optimist, and believe that as long as we keep applying reason and science and making progress, the world will keep getting better....more
A fascinating history of ESP and psychic's in the military. I didn't know that the US Military for ~30 years had a secret ESP program, but this is a wA fascinating history of ESP and psychic's in the military. I didn't know that the US Military for ~30 years had a secret ESP program, but this is a well researched book that apparently went through a lot of declassified documents and interviewed people directly too to tell the story. I hoped that it would shed new light on paranormal activity and how real it might be/not be, and it did... but just slightly.
The book does a decent amount of history of ESP and government programs. Did you know that mushrooms (the drug kind) was discovered the CIA and tested in government labs? Hilarious to imagine. The Nazis apparently had a whole ESP program too.
But of course, the US psychic program started the same way most government programs got started: we heard the Russians were doing it, and then we had to do it too in cold war era arms race style.
One of the more interesting characters mentioned in the book was Uri Geller, who is a Israeli psychic who can do things like bend spoons and read basic thoughts from other people (like what number am I thinking of). Now, in the modern era, if a person could really bend a spoon with their mind you would think that would be pretty notable, and people would have studied that in labs, and written about it. But basic google searches on Uri don't turn up anything conclusive (that I saw) other than controversy and lack of clarity. There are videos on YouTube of him bending spoons but it could be faked. So I must conclude this is not possible. Though the author claims to have spent time with Uri and observed him bending spoons (and reading minds) first hand.
The most interesting aspect of the book was the description of the CIA's remote viewing program. Remote viewing is where psychics use ESP to view remote locations in the world. The CIA tried to use it in military operations, to for instance view the inside of a Russian submarine factory, or locate a fugitive, or locate a kidnapped US general. The fascinating thing is that it kind of worked - there were a few individuals who - occasionally - produced "8 martini results" (aka results that blew your mind so you had to go consume 8 martinis after that). This is what kept the program going for so many years. But the issue was because it wasn't consistent, the signal to noise ratio made the intel not actionable for the military, so it was eventually closed. For example, they gave an example of a fugitive they were trying to catch, and they put 4 psychics on it, and one of the four it turned out correctly found him in a small town in the middle of the US - but the other 3 were nowhere close. This, if true, is fascinating. At the end the book theorizes a little about how such a thing might work - eg there could be a "energy" throughout the world you can tap into - or it could be related to quantum mechanics - specifically quantum entanglement. In the end, it seems like there is more to learn here - but not a lot of people at least in pop culture are talking about or researching these areas - so I remain largely a skeptic, but a little intrigued by some of this. ...more
Fascinating portrait of da Vinci. I learned a ton from this, but my biggest takeaway was how insanely curious about EVERYTHING Leonardo was. He was a Fascinating portrait of da Vinci. I learned a ton from this, but my biggest takeaway was how insanely curious about EVERYTHING Leonardo was. He was a painter, but also viewed himself as a scientist and engineer. In his pursuits to understand human proportions he dissected hundreds of animals and humans, to learn about muscles and eyes and how everything works. He understood how the eye sees in the 3D hundreds of years before anyone else. But the craziest part - is he published none of it. He wasn't looking for fame or respect from peers. He put a lot of it in his notebooks, which Isaacson based this book off of - but he would literally go on year long tangents (eg to understand perpetual motion) - just because he was curious. To me, this speaks a lot about the power of curiosity.
I had no idea that there are only 15 completed paintings attributable to him. He had a ton of unfinished projects, but this is also because he was a perfectionist and also a scientist. We all the know Mona Lisa - but I didn't know that he was commissioned to paint it, and spent 20 years trying to perfect it, up until his death, never delivering it to the person who had ordered it!
Isaacson talks at one point about how he is fascinated with the intersection of unrelated disciplines, and that's what drew him to Steve Jobs and Apple, as he famously merged technology and design. Intersections can help you think differently, and Leonardo was impressive at this.
Sapiens was one of my favorite nonfiction books I've read in the past few years - so I was excited for the sequel. Overall, its very worth it and fullSapiens was one of my favorite nonfiction books I've read in the past few years - so I was excited for the sequel. Overall, its very worth it and full of a lot of the interesting high level perspectives and frameworks. But it also lacks the clear structure of a coherent narrative, isn't presenting (to me) quite as novel information, and also does some strange things - like using the word 'liberal' in contexts that I don't think definitionally make sense.
I like the train of the thought that Harari closed Sapiens with and continues in this book, which is about human happiness and how to optimize for it - though he doesn't have rosy conclusions on where we are headed. And the notion that we are going to beat death at some point soonish (I'd guess in 20-40 years) is not a new one, but is a very interesting one. Whether or not humans will over time stay human, or be divided into superhumans and regular humans, or create a class of economically useless people - are some of the larger questions we will face in the future as AI and aging advance.
Best book of the series, and best book about American history that I think I've read. Now we are getting to the drama and corruption at an interestingBest book of the series, and best book about American history that I think I've read. Now we are getting to the drama and corruption at an interesting scale - the US Senate. And the portrait we have of Johnson is fascinating.
Lyndon Johnson was just simply power hungry. He had no principles of note, no things he was on a mission to do - except to hold as much power as he could. But he was brilliant at reading people, knowing what they wanted, and finding ways to horse-trade in his huge and growing network - and help them get it. A genius at being a politician. But lacking principles - I hope there are politicians that can do both.
But this is not just a book about LBJ and his time in the senate - it is a history of the senate, and of 1960's America. I didn't appreciate the power the Senate has in US politics - small numbers of senators can block legislation for a long time. The book hints that WWII can be blamed on the senate - because the president wanted to act against Hitler much earlier but the senate didn't let him - a crazy allegation if true. And the filibusters! I didn't appreciate what those really were and how powerful they were. It was also very impressive reading how quickly LBJ took over leadership of the Senate - most senators had to wait until they were old to have the seniority to do much - LBJ within two years of being a senator had become elected leader and then did away with the seniority rule - both unprecedented changes.
And of course, much of the book is about the fact that the southern senators collaborated to prevent any civil rights legislation for 100 years. It was well into the 20th century before African Americans got the right to vote, and we removed segregation - and this delay is all due to the senate.
LBJ is known for being the president who passed civil rights - but the story of how he was a "southern senator" (from Texas) who had the southern senators as his base, but had to pass civil rights bills through the senate in order to make the liberals believe he was on their side so he could have a presidential bid - was fascinating. He did it not caring a single bit about the actual cause - it was simply the only path to be president, as the country had hit a point where the northerners were no longer going to let segregation go on, and the southerners were only going to give it up over their dead bodies. LBJ worked both sides, found compromises, made each side believe he was really on their side, and got the first ever civil rights bill of the 1900's passed to give African Americans the right to vote. ...more
A fascinating look at the early part of LBJ’s life and career. This is the first of a four book series covering LBJ’s life. At least 3 extremely smartA fascinating look at the early part of LBJ’s life and career. This is the first of a four book series covering LBJ’s life. At least 3 extremely smart people that I respect told me that this series was one of the best books they’ve ever read. I was also interested in reading about politics and corrupt politicians to get some grounding given the current political climate, and even in volume 1, this didn’t disappoint.
Many biographies spend way too much time on details that are not very relevant, especially in the early life, and this book was no exception - although I found the writing good and story compelling that I finished it rather quickly (also thanks to whispersync with Audible). The book covers Johnsons childhood up through age 32 when he as a congressman lost the race for senate to Pappy O’Daniel. Pappy O’Daniel by the way, sounds like fun character - totally unqualified to be governor or senator but elected b/c everyone knew him from his radio show. In terms of Johnsons childhood, it was oddly interesting to learn about the “Hill Country” of Texas and why those who have lived there have had such rough lives.
I love biographies, as it’s always fascinating to see what motivates successful people - where their drive comes from. With LBJ, Caro paints his motivation as initially coming from not wanting to grow up poor and in debt like his father. But then his motivation shifts to become more “a hunger for power in its most naked form, for power not to improve the lives of others, but to manipulate and dominate them, to bend them to his will.”
Johnson’s raw hunger for power, his desire to be someone, led him to work extremely hard. And not only himself, but also the people who worked for him. It was impressive how hard he worked himself and his small team when he was working as a congressional aide. And all driven by a lust for power. Interestingly to me, he picked exclusively people who were “loyal” to him - meaning he could work them to the bone - over people who were intelligent or experienced in what needed to be done. He was able to pull this off as in the post great depression era, a lot of people had no other way to get a job, or get ahead, and so LBJ had leverage. But LBJ did have a gift in picking and reading men, which was I think key to understanding his success.
And he was not only a reader of men - he could also remember everything about the people he met - he could impressively remember details about a persons son 10 years after meeting them. Great skill for a politician to have! He also had an uncanny ability to make older men look at him like a son - a skill he used with Speaker of the house Sam Rayburn, which greatly helped his career.
Johnson also had no qualms cheating to steal elections - with both his election to school president in college, and the little congress, he cheated.
A fascinating piece of LBJ was that he worked very hard to not commit to a public position on almost anything. He basically told people what he thought they wanted to hear - perhaps a hallmark of a corrupt politician. This gave him a lot of freedom to play both sides. Liberals literally thought he was liberal and conversatives thought he was conservative. Not the most moral of stances, but in that pre-internet age, more possible to pull off and even smart tactically.
“Once, a congressional aide, who had just heard him “talking conservative” with Martin Dies, came across him, “not an hour later,” “talking liberal” with Patman— espousing a point of view diametrically opposite to the one he had been espousing sixty minutes before.”
A hallmark of the New Deal was helping people who needed it, and Johnson did help the poor farmers of Texas. I thought this quote was a powerful representation of the impact he had and why he kept getting elected:
A fascinating book about community and belonging, and how modern society has moved us away from our roots in potentially signifiant ways. The book opeA fascinating book about community and belonging, and how modern society has moved us away from our roots in potentially signifiant ways. The book opens with a thought provoking fact: in early America, there were numerous instances of white people joining primitive, native Indian societies - but zero instances of the opposite, because "the intensely communal nature of an Indian tribe held an appeal that the material benefits of Western civilization couldn’t necessarily compete with."
The book also argues that the wealth we enjoy in modern society is isolating, against the grain of millions of years of our evolution, and can lead to depression, because our happiness is in large part rooted in a need to feel connected to others. While this feels right and intuitive, it doesn't seem to be the way we are optimizing our lives.
"A wealthy person who has never had to rely on help and resources from his community is leading a privileged life that falls way outside more than a million years of human experience. Financial independence can lead to isolation, and isolation can put people at a greatly increased risk of depression and suicide. This might be a fair trade for a generally wealthier society— but a trade it is."
Another loss the book points out is the loss of the transparency and social justice that being in a small community used to bring. When your neighbors and community members all know each other and what is going on with each other, group peer pressure tends to reward good actions and punish bad ones. The book points out that people wouldn't for instance cheat unemployment if their neighbors were paying for it and everyone knew what was happening. In anonymity we have lost a sense of responsibility to each other.
I haven't read a ton of "history of the world" books, but this was fascinating. Highly recommended. I think the author is incredibly good at explaininI haven't read a ton of "history of the world" books, but this was fascinating. Highly recommended. I think the author is incredibly good at explaining and simplifying big concepts. He take on complex things like religion & capitalism and explains them in very simple terms that you likely hadn't thought about before.
There was a fascinating bit on the scientific mindset, and how it was key to Europe taking power. After the scientific revolution, they believed in science and its ability to let man discover new things, make more money, etc. This made them into explorers, whereas many other cultures remained very static. Great example of China having had gunpowder for hundreds of years but not using it for anything other than fireworks, and didn't invent the gun. Reminded me a bit of the Mindset.
The chapter on capitalism was fascinating. There line about before its invention that the economy didn't grow, and was "frozen" as nobody poured money into new things, so there was no growth. Then the notion of credit was discovered, and as growth started, the combination snowballed. In 1500 the annual per capita production was $550 and today its $8,800 - this is an astounding increase, and all because of the virtuous growth cycle of capitalism: money is invested -> businesses grow -> people make money -> they invest their money. I never thought about the fact that reinvesting profits is a core piece of capitalism, but from this lens it really is.
What I didn't see coming is how the end of the book was dedicated to human happiness. Fascinating questions to ask if we are happier today than 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. By metrics of death rate, average age of death and general health, we ought to be. But clearly peasants after the agricultural revolution were on average less happy than they were before as hunter-gatherers. And now we live in an always-on internet age, with pressure to continue growing our economy. So are we happier? It is the right question, in my opinion. The book then gave the basics of the happiness framework that I've also read in other places and believe in: that people are happy when they have 3 things: (1) Friends and family that love them (2) Are part of a community that makes them feel like they below (3) have a purpose to their life and feel like they are doing something meaningful. However, the book then adds onto this in another way that I have been learning about but hadn't put together with this: meditation.
Fascinating tale of Shackleton's incredible voyage and how he lead his crew out of it. Learned about the antarctic and ice floes, but mostly learned aFascinating tale of Shackleton's incredible voyage and how he lead his crew out of it. Learned about the antarctic and ice floes, but mostly learned about the grit these men displayed in surviving.
The first thing that struck me was that despite their situation being arguably hopeless, and the fact that they were wearing wet clothes and sleeping in wet sleeping bags half the time, their spirits seemed up. This was impressive, and is the kind of thing that can only come from the top.
Shackleton may have been a bit of a fool to sail into the ice floes to start with, but his legacy is known as being a strong leader.
"For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton." - Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer and Geologist.
And I think his leadership in action as described in the book was evident in (A) setting a strong plan at any given point - they always knew where they were trying to go even if it sounded impossible (B) Removing emotion from his decision making, which led him to be right a lot about what to do in tough situations, and (C) knowing his men and paying close attention to morale. I think the middle point (B) was the most impressive thing - he knew when to turn around and when to press forward - and that's a super hard call to make to turn around.
I loved this book. Although it was a beast of a book, and could probably have been a lot shorter. I had not read a Lincoln biography before, so was fiI loved this book. Although it was a beast of a book, and could probably have been a lot shorter. I had not read a Lincoln biography before, so was firstly blown away by how he rose up from nothing, self-taught himself a college degree, and then somehow rode the middle line and got himself elected President. Nobody seemed to have expected that, nor expected much from him, and he continued to surprise them all.
Lincoln's tactic to make his enemies his cabinet was also interesting and ultimately brilliant. Especially because he was so unknown, but also because they were the strongest options, and would be hard for him to manage. The confidence he had was impressive. Lincoln constantly showed this higher level of trust in people that many wouldn't have given because it didn't make themselves look good. Hiring people who are smarter than you, and giving them credit when things go right, is very hard to do.
But Lincoln could afford to trust his people and even hire people like Chase, who was on his staff yet coveted his job, because he was a masterful tactician. He seemed to have a knack for how to position things to the public at the right times to achieve the right outcomes. The main example of this is of course holding back the proclamation of emancipation so the border states didn't slip into the war on the side of south - but there were many more examples.
One thing that surprised me was how lax access to the white house and president were back then. You could literally just walk into the White House and get in line to see the President. And he seemed to only have one security guard - who happened to be "off-duty" the night he was killed.
I think Lincolns main strength was his empathy. He spent a lot of time trying to understand the people of different states, and putting himself in their shoes and imagining how they felt given what they knew about the situation. A tough, tough thing to do as his whole presidency was during a civil war during which over 600,000 soldiers died. I can't imagine having that on your conscience and trying to internalize that. But a very valuable skill to have as a leader.
This is a fascinating glimpse into American history, of which I was largely ignorant - well worth a read. I had no idea prohibition lasted 14 years! MThis is a fascinating glimpse into American history, of which I was largely ignorant - well worth a read. I had no idea prohibition lasted 14 years! My only criticism is the author spent way too much time on the politics of prohibition - that could have been cut by half.
The bottom line of prohibition is that is was a massive failure. It singlehandedly created organized crime, cost the government lots of money in lost taxes and enforcement, and failed to stop pretty much anyone from drinking.
It did have some upside though. Americans had a drinking problem and definitely drank less overall during prohibition, and even afterwards. But more importantly prohibition helped transform American culture. Prohibition coincided with massive immigration and population growth, which all happened in the cities. It was really a battle between urban culture and rural culture. It particularly didn't make sense in urban culture, and people rebelled, giving us "the roaring 20's". Prohibition helped us go from a stay at home culture to one where it was acceptable to go out and consume liquor.
Prohibition gave us income tax. The Anti-Saloon League (ASL), which was the organization that pushed prohibition through, pushed income tax through first because the government couldn't approve prohibition without finding an alternate source of revenue for the massive amount of tax money (30% of federal revenue) it made on liquor.
Many businesses got their starts in prohibition. Walgreens went from 20 to 525 stores during prohibition, because of the legal loophole that medicinal liquor was allowed, so drugstores were a major source of liquor sales. Coca Cola saw sales triple. The entire ecosystem of Nassau and the Bahamas was created. Sam Bronfman, the largest bootlegger in Canada, turned his operation into a legitimate business afterwards, owning many major liquor brands under the Seagrams brand.
The major failing of prohibition, and the reason it was eventually repealed, was the organized crime. Al Capone was the poster boy, but all the major mafia families got their start bootlegging, then got organized, then went on to bigger and better criminal activities. Yes it gave us Las Vegas, but it wasn't a good thing. If anything, this is the argument for the legalization of Marijuana (though there are other factors there).
In the end I think that prohibition was a bad idea because it was the government trying to tell Americans how to live. Individuals have to take responsibility for themselves. ...more
Wow. Amazing story, and well told - kept me up late at night! Louie Zamperini truly went through hell and came back - and it's inspiring to read a stoWow. Amazing story, and well told - kept me up late at night! Louie Zamperini truly went through hell and came back - and it's inspiring to read a story of such willpower and determination. It was also interesting to me to learn more about Japan and their role in the war.
One big takeaway was just how cheap human life is in war. I think there was some stat about how 5/6 of the US airmen that died did so from accidents - that is simply staggering.
I love WWII stories, but most of the ones I've seen and read have focused on Germany, so I really didn't know much about how Japan had treated their POW's. It was pretty eye opening to read the stats about how they pretty much massacred hundreds of thousands of POW's. And of couse, as the story details, they also did not follow Geneva Conventions and pretty much treated POW's as slaves.
One of my favorite points the author made is best illustrated by this quote about Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. This is a fundamental truth of humanity that the author really drew out well - if you take a persons dignity away you take everything away. I loved all the stories of POW's being defiant; stealing food, supplies, playing jokes, etc. The little bits of defiance were enough to let them take back their dignity, and I think thats what makes them so compelling; because while we haven't all been POW's, we can relate to that basic need.
Great story of the US Ambassador to Germany and his experience during the build-up of ww2 from 1933 - 1937. Nothing new or exciting really revealed, aGreat story of the US Ambassador to Germany and his experience during the build-up of ww2 from 1933 - 1937. Nothing new or exciting really revealed, and I'm sure there are many other accounts of the buildup to ww2 out there, but this one told it from the perspective of mostly the Ambassador, Dodd, and his daughter, Martha. The story was engaging and well-written, and thus interesting. I think the ending fell pretty flat - I was hoping for more.
Reading about the Nazis one is of course always appalled at how they got to be in power and commit such atrocities, and this book did provide some clues. Hitler seemed primarily willing to tell people what they needed and wanted to hear, even if it wasn't the truth - and he was a great storyteller. He also used fear as a primary weapon, as there were many in Germany not behind him - but they were too afraid to make a stand or speak up.
I suppose the climax of the book was the Night of the Long Knives, where Hitler arrested and executed all of his major opponents, clearing the way for his absolute grip on the nation. He ruthlessly murdered an estimated 77 to several hundred people (the count was never really known) and played it off as putting down a rebellion, which much of the world bought for many years.
I think one of the more interesting pieces of the book was watching Dodd (and Martha) go from thinking the Nazis were good for Germany, to realizing how terrible they were and hoping for them to be overthrown. It was a slow gradual process, and one that I'm sure was not immediately obvious to anyone. In the end, I think the book is aptly named....more
I started this on audio book but after 14 CD's realized we were missing the last 2, so I just finished it with the hard-copy. The writing cracked me uI started this on audio book but after 14 CD's realized we were missing the last 2, so I just finished it with the hard-copy. The writing cracked me up with how graphic the descriptions of the battles and sex scenes were, but overall I really enjoyed this book. It's a very interesting account of the Seige of Malta, of which I knew very little....more
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