I had four roommates (and friends) my senior year in college. The other three all took an honors course that required them to read Ellul's Propaganda I had four roommates (and friends) my senior year in college. The other three all took an honors course that required them to read Ellul's Propaganda and the Technological Society. Not wanting to be left out of our late night conversations, I bought and read the books. They felt prescient 24 years ago. Now, after FB, Twitter, TikTok, FoxNews, MSNBC, etc., it feels that Ellul really stuck the landing. If anything he may have underestimated the scale of communications (phones and social media) that would dominate our 21st century. We have been encircled by technology, technique, and propaganda. I would love to have seen his take on AI and social media....more
"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritua"He dared to think and believe what other brave men would have shrunk from contemplating. He He was an adventurer in the intellectual and the spiritual as well as the physical world and it was this combination of interests, actively followed, which made him unique, one of the rarest personalities ever seen on earth." - Byron Farwell, Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton
While not an academic, it is hard not to think of him as a professional historian. Over a 40 year period he published 14 books, mostly focused on the Victorian period of exploration and war, mostly published by Norton and Viking.
The book isn't a hagiography. Burton had many faults, many short-comings, many quirks and Farwell highlights those as well as his brilliance and bravery. I can't give it my highest ratings for biographies simply because while I adore both Burton and Farwell, this isn't up to the level of Robert A Caro, Edmund Morris, or say David W. Blight. It was really good, just not great. The narrative drive of the book is sidetracked by Burton himself who jumps from place to place, ship to ship, idea to idea.
That said, it is a fantastic start to exploring Burton's character and to gain insight into England during its Victorian period in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Points should also be given to not ignoring Burton's wife and her role in Burton's life....more
Whenever there is a disaster of epic proportions, something so grand it adjusts the way we look at the world (think Greeks and volcanos, other civilizWhenever there is a disaster of epic proportions, something so grand it adjusts the way we look at the world (think Greeks and volcanos, other civilizations with fires, floods, famines) a myth often gets created to explain it. Gods were made. Stories were told. We need to make sense of the world and grand myths give us structure.
The 20th century, with its world wars and the emergence of quantum mechanics and the atomic age, created a huge disruption. The gods that came out of the 20th century were mathematicians and physicists (at least for a while) and we developed myths about them. Certainly, they were real men, with real passions; real flesh and blood, but they were our rock stars, our saviors, a ultimately, perhaps, our destroyers.
The use of fiction mingled with nonfiction isn't new. We have seen it several times with Norman Mailer, Hilary Mantel, Truman Capote, etc. We see it all the time with movies (Based on a true story). But often, when we mix fiction and nonfiction, it causes some heartburn in those who crave certainty. The problem is we live in an age of uncertainty. We have deconstructed the atom and history. Even those histories that seem rigorous and scholarly, can also be perceived as works of fiction. Just like an electron can take an infinite number of paths between two points, so too can a historian when writing about a grand figure of history. Gaps are filled. Assumptions are made. Things are included and excluded. The record is only so available. The reader either fills in what she wants or the author, in sketching a line between points ,makes an assumption about a path.
What Labatut has done here is explicitly been creative in those gaps. He's ventured into an almost mythic and surreal darkness and come out with a story that seems born as much as written. These stories weave a fabric together with fact and fiction and the pattern is dark, but also illuminates....more
I liked it. Ravenna is like a wonderful cracked mirror to view Constantinople, Rome, and the rest of the Mediterranean. It is also a fascinating windoI liked it. Ravenna is like a wonderful cracked mirror to view Constantinople, Rome, and the rest of the Mediterranean. It is also a fascinating window to enlighten the ebbs and flows of the Catholic and "Eastern" Church's (along with Ravenna's fling with Arianism). Fascinating. I'll expand tomorrow. Night....more
"Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both." -- Samuel Johnson to James Boswell
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The Club is a frame biography. But it is c"Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both." -- Samuel Johnson to James Boswell
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The Club is a frame biography. But it is certainly more than its parts. At its core, Damrosch nails together small biographies of Johnson, Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbons, and other minor characters/members of "the Club." But this book goes beyond this. It is also a history of the age, using the members of the club as a lens into England in the mid-to-late 18th Century. And since the membership of the club involved writers, poets, historians, economists, artists, actors, etc., it allows Damrosch the ability to peruse the age from multiple perspectives with Johnson and Boswell being the gravity at the center of the book. Damrosch also does well to include the important women during this time AND to not sugar-coat the poor behavior of many of the men (especially Boswell). It is a balanced work whose narrative keeps pace with the wit of its subjects. I came here after reading Vol X last year of Durant's Story of Civilization Rousseau and Revolution. Both do a good job of surveying many of the important minds of the time.
Next up will be larger works by Boswell, Johnson, Smith, Burke, etc., and bigger biographies of the same....more
I read this, as a mostly-dry-Mormon, hoping to get a nice framework for bourbon. A lot of the info is really meant for beginners. Much of it I alreadyI read this, as a mostly-dry-Mormon, hoping to get a nice framework for bourbon. A lot of the info is really meant for beginners. Much of it I already discovered on YouTube. Obviously, the history is fantastic and the author's ability to separate history from myth. Albala also does a great job of building the basic skeleton of this most American drink. My biggest complaint is the format (Audiobook; Great Courses) keeps this from getting more meat on the bones. Just too wee a dram. A good start, however. More like a WILD TURKEY 101 than a Michter's 20 Years Old Limited Release-Single Barrel Bourbon ...more
I've put off reviewing this because I feel like I want to find the right quote, the perfect words, the right path to unpacking my thoughts about this I've put off reviewing this because I feel like I want to find the right quote, the perfect words, the right path to unpacking my thoughts about this piece. It was a lot to digest. My main information about Douglass comes from his popular Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This book expands on all of Douglass' narratives and serves as both a biography of Douglass and a BLACK history of his time, but also as an analysis of those autobiographies. There are multiple themes Blight is working on in this book and he nails almost all of them. I walked away from this biography fed, nourished, and given a better perspective of Douglass the man AND Douglass the myth. I feel like both the REAL man was expanded by the biography (I loved the last years of Douglass' biography just as much as the action-packed first years) as much as his myth and reputation. I especially loved the careful analysis of the Lincoln/Douglass relationship and the chapters that dealt with Douglass' relationship with the early suffragists. Nervous isn't the right word, but I was a bit hesitant to read the chapters about Blight and his wives/women and children. What major figure can be SO BIG and also have all their family shit together? But the frailties of his family and the way Blight paints his relationship with women seems to plant him firmly in the earth and in his time. He wasn't abstract. He was a man. But GOD, imagine living under THAT man's shadow. ...more
Better and shorter than I expected. Also really enjoyed the Afterward, which contained several of his parables and retellings of African tales and BibBetter and shorter than I expected. Also really enjoyed the Afterward, which contained several of his parables and retellings of African tales and Bible tales. Sad but lovely. Full of humanity and frailty.
Academic Hurston can sure breathe life into white pages. For so many years my view of Hurston was limited to ‘Eyes’. But her ethnographic and folklore chops here are the real thing. Glad 70+ years later someone decided to publish this small gem....more
"If Lenin had shot more criminals and hired fewer, we might have seen a very different Soviet Union." - Soviet police officer, 1991, quoted in The Vory"If Lenin had shot more criminals and hired fewer, we might have seen a very different Soviet Union." - Soviet police officer, 1991, quoted in The Vory by Mark Galeotti
"Not everyone who carries a knife is a cook." - Russian proverb
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A nice survey and history of the Vory V Zakone "thief within the code". The best part of this Yale published and well researched book is the history of how the Russian mafia developed in parallel with the Soviet Union and Russia and changed and adapted to fit the new realities. I also enjoyed the sections that dealt with the language, rituals, and tattoos of the Vory. The book loses a bit of velocity as it tries to describe the different facets of the Russian organized crime's ecosystem (Georgian, Chechen, street vor to vor-broker). But still, these sections were necessary to understand that the Russian organized crime has multiple models of control, multiple levels of partnership, etc. It is difficult to even (from both epistemological and ontological perspective) understand exactly what controlled by organized crime means in Russia. The corruption and the cooperation of the state and businesses is so extensive that getting a firm idea of how much Russia is a mafia state seems hard to bite into.
Anyway, this is a fascinating read and helpful in understanding Modern Russia and how figures like Stalin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin contributed to the current corruption in Russia. It is also useful to understanding how Putin uses organized crime to support the Russian state (and his personal power) and the current conflict with Ukraine and Russia's desire to "Make Russia Great Again." It is also, in a minor way, also helpful to a degree in understanding the relationship Trump has with Ukraine and Russia (both officially and unofficially), although not much is directly said about Trump's ties with Russian money in this book....more
“There can't be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.” ― Svetlana Alexievich, “There can't be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.” ― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face
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Amazing on several levels. Through a chorus of female voices Alexievich brings a new set of eyes to World War II. The experience of Russian women, who fought as snipers, partisans, cooks, engineers, nurses, sappers, etc., during World War II paints the war (and all war) with a humanity and an emotional palette that seldom gets used when covering war. Amazing.
This book was originally published in 1985 under Glasnost. In the preface to this edition (and the preface is one of the best parts of a great book) Alexivich includes sections that she originally self-censored AND parts that were originally cut by Soviet sensors (as well as their comments). This 2017 English version was translated by Pevear & Volonkonsky, the married Russian translation powerhouse famous for their translations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
Like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, Alexivich is interested not in big dates, big events, big players. She is interested in the female experience. Her narrative style combines many voices thematically from chapter to chapter (roughly as WWII progresses) to deal with leaving to war, fighting in war, and returning home. Occasionally, she will spend an extended amount of time with a particular sniper, nurse, or tanker whose narrative is fantastically compelling and seems to capture the spirit of those women. But mostly, she is happy to thread these multiple stories together into a narrative quilt that covers not only the female experience of war, but arguably humanity's experience, but the emotional experience that often gets left out of typical "big man" or "big event" histories....more
The end of the Durant's Story of Civilization. What the hell am I going to do with my time now?The end of the Durant's Story of Civilization. What the hell am I going to do with my time now?...more
"the reciprocity required to maintain democratic balance between citizenry and government seemed to erode on the American frontier, where tyrannical m"the reciprocity required to maintain democratic balance between citizenry and government seemed to erode on the American frontier, where tyrannical majorities stamped out dissent." - Ben E Park, alluding to both Lincoln and Tocqueville, in Kingdom of Nauvoo
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Having grown up in the LDS faith tradition, my relationship to both Mormon history and Nauvoo was largely influenced by a purely religious and almost myth-based history. I knew that Mormon history in the 1830s -40s took place before the Civil War in New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois (and eventually Utah), but I largely thought of pre-Civil War, Jacksonian America and the pre-Utah history of my faith as existing in isolation of each other. That false, historical separation was unfortunate. It is impossible to truly understand either early Mormon history without understanding the context of American politics (especially frontier politics) at the time OR to understand American history during the post post-Jackson era without understanding the "Mormon Problem". Using the Mormon city of Nauvoo as a lense, Ben Park is able to weave both the story of early Mormonism together with the limits of American democracy as it pertained to minorities in the pre-Civil War, pre-14th amendment, America. The inability of the Federal government to adequately protect minority groups, before the 1868 amendment, from states (read Missouri) or mobs was a nearly fatal flaw in American democracy.
If all Ben Park did was tell a good history of Nauvoo, I would have probably given this book four stars, but Ben was able to weave a fantastic narrative that integrated Nauvoo's story into the challenges of American democracy. He did it with fantastic research* and a nuanced approach that didn't forget that women were a large part of the early Mormon history AND that adequately put into perspective Mormon persecution against the larger brutality of Slavery and America's genocide and persecution of Native tribes. He does this skillfully in a way that helps give nuance to his narrative rather than simply as an after thought.
That gift for nuance also comes in useful as Ben Park explores the genesis of Mormon polygamy in Nauvoo and the internal and external conflicts its practice created.
"Of all the audacities of science the most daring is the attempt to fling its measuring rods around the stars, to subject those scintillating beauties"Of all the audacities of science the most daring is the attempt to fling its measuring rods around the stars, to subject those scintillating beauties to nocturnal spying, to analyze their constituents across a billion miles, and to confine their motions to man-made logic and laws. Mind and the heavens are the poles of our wonder and study, and the greatest wonder is mind legislating for the firmament." - Will Durant, The Age of Voltaire
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Volume 9 of Durant's Story of Civilization focuses on the period of the Age of Enlightenment surrounding Voltaire. It primarily deals with the philosophy, religion, arts, wars, science and politics of the period between 1715 and 1756 in France, Britain, and Germany. I gave it five stars because so many interesting people, philosophy, and ideas can be found in this period. One difficulty with this volume was it lead me to buy, in reverse order:
So, I guess this is a new way for me to judge a history book. How many new books does it directly inspire me to worm into my library? I also now own some French coins of Pierre Bayle, Roger Bacon, Voltaire, and Montaigne, but that is a whole other French rabbit hole caused primarily by my last couple weeks floating in Volume 9.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book. Durant still doesn't appear tired of his subject. This is his third book related to the enlightenment and the only soft part of it (and it's probably more experimental than soft) is the last chapter's dialogue between Voltaire and Pope Benedict. It was good, but a bit too abstract for a Universal History. But I love it, so like all my loves, I will overlook its small faults because I hope for my own to disappear in time....more
A great micro-biography of Ernest Rutherford. I knew about his genius (Rutherford Model for the Atom, etc), but had no idea he was the mentor to 11 NoA great micro-biography of Ernest Rutherford. I knew about his genius (Rutherford Model for the Atom, etc), but had no idea he was the mentor to 11 Nobel Prize winning scientists. It was also nice to understand his particular kind of genius. A famous quote about him, demonstrated in the book, was "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday". Anyway, I'm enjoying the series and sometimes, just a random new idea or contextual fact makes the book worth the read. This biography had several of those. ...more
A very good survey of Einstein and his life, with great explanations for the non-physicists of the theories and impact of Einstein on physics. It is aA very good survey of Einstein and his life, with great explanations for the non-physicists of the theories and impact of Einstein on physics. It is a small book, so nothing goes very deep, but it is a great way to explore the man, the mind, and the world that surrounded Albert Einstein. Nothing radically new here, but the writing is great and like a Haiku, the beauty is found in the simplicity of how Kaku approaches the subject....more
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