An excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that aAn excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that appeared to my unskilled eyes as deeply and originally researched, largely from primary sources. It is a cradle-to-grave biography (with a brief epilogue about how Herzl is remembered and misremembered to this day), and a substantial fraction of it takes place before Herzl comes to Zionism, but that part is interesting too as a portrait of late 19th century Jewish life in Europe among upper class intellectuals. The story really gets going as Herzl starts going through different ways of thinking about a national homeland for the Jews and rediscovers his own Judaism. The substance, process and charisma and also confusion they are bound up with are all on full display. Penslar is balanced and trying to tell the Herzl story from his time not re-reading in ways to fit it into our current debates. Overall, highly recommended--and would love to read more in the Jewish short lives series....more
This comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in WesThis comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, have shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over the last seventy years, with most of the shift concentrated in the last two decades. Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol tell a rich and nuanced story while bringing lots of new data to the fore, including systematic cataloging of changes in union newsletters/newspapers over time, tallies of bumper stickers in a Steelworkers parking lot, extensive interviews, as well as synthesizing other scholarship.
Their argument in part rests on the familiar story of deindustrialization and the effects it had on employment and communities. The novel twist, which they develop and emphasize, is that this ended up shifting unions from being at the center of a rich social network that fostered social events and ties to unions being simply about collective bargaining. For example, when everyone lived in one town the local could organize bbqs, sporting events and the like--but with sparser employment people started commuting much longer distances to their jobs and were less likely to have social ties to co-workers or through the union. This vacuum ended up being filled by other associations, like the National Rifle Association, that often connected people to the Republican Party, particularly the ascendant populist strain under Trump.
Some of their argument is bolstered by an interesting contrast between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). People in the building trades move from job to job so the union plays an important role in allocating the jobs but also is more active in fostering ties because of what would otherwise be a very lonely way to operate.
A lot of social scientists are content with just documenting and explain but Newman and Skocpol seek to provide advice to labor leaders (who still support Democrats) about how to bring their rank and file along, most notably through trying to resuscitate some of the richer social ties. They also have a plea to Democrats not to give up on this group and instead more actively court and engage it.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable and enlightening read that brought a lot of new data into the world. Ultimately, however, it documents a series of associations and sequences of events so cannot settle questions of causation. The atomization of workers is a consequence of deindustrialization but is it itself a cause of shifting party affiliations? Or is the deindustrialization also the cause of that? And the advice to union leaders is worth a try but there are, as they document, very good reasons unions no longer serve the social functions they used to and so it may be fruitless to try to bring that back....more
It is tempting to say that American Default is shockingly readable for a book written by an economist. But it is probably more fair to say that it is It is tempting to say that American Default is shockingly readable for a book written by an economist. But it is probably more fair to say that it is shockingly readable period. It is a history of the banking crisis around the onset of the Great Depression, the role that devaluing gold played in reversing deflation and reducing the value of debts, and the subsequent legal battle over the abrogation of “gold clauses” in those same debt contracts. It reads like a history but also has a substantial legal element while having insightful and always accurate economics woven throughout.
Sebastian Edwards is an excellent international macroeconomist who has spent most of his career writing about emerging markets, particularly economic disasters in Latin America. Which makes him well prepared to take on the United States’ emerging-market like crisis, the Great Depression.
The story starts with a cascading series of bank failures, the efforts of the outgoing Hoover to address them, and how Roosevelt and his incoming team reacted.
At the same time he traces the attitudes towards the gold standard and macroeconomic policy from a sleeper issue into Congress basically forcing the President’s hand to reinflate, which ultimately required revaluing gold at a higher value per dollar--a step that followed the UK. It is fascinating to read about how much Roosevelt was focused on and even targeting particular commodity prices and how quickly they all moved in proportion to the price of gold—just like the quantity theory of money would say. It is also fascinating to read about how the U.S. dollar behaved vis-a-vis the British pound (which was off the gold standard) and the French franc (which was still on it).
A big part of the economic boost caused by the devaluation was due to reducing the real value of debts, basically borrowers could repay them in cheaper money (or, equivalently, had to sell less cotton or whatever to get the dollars to pay them). But this was the rub: debt contracts had a “gold clause” that they were payable in dollars or gold, much for the same reason that emerging markets borrow in dollars—because it increases the certainty and security of lenders thus enabling borrowers to borrow for longer periods at lower interest rates.
The creditors sued and the case ended up in court litigating government bonds, private borrowing, and other aspects as well. Edwards tells an interesting legal drama of whether the Supreme Court would uphold the gold clause, which would have required debtors to repay about 67 percent more dollars—potentially causing an economic calamity. (In fact, an interesting part of the history is government officials debating whether or not to scare markets so they would go down while the Supreme Court was deliberating in an attempt to scare the Court into ruling against the gold clauses. Another interesting part, which I found personally resonant, was all the discussion of contingency planning for all of the possible outcomes of the case.)
Ultimately the Supreme Court ruled that the government had broken the law by retroactively breaking the gold clauses but that there were no damages because the inflation simply reversed the previous inflation so creditors ended up getting what they would have expected, in real terms, when they first made the loans.
Edwards is not completely convincing when he tries to defend the Roosevelt decision and court upholding it as a one-time necessity for the sake of the economy while simultaneously condemning Argentina for taking similar types of actions (in its case dollar clauses instead of gold clauses). There are more parallels than he admits. He is also not completely convincing in his attempt to make the case relevant to issues today. But ultimately this does not matter, what does is just how interesting this book is—and how much I learned about an aspect of going off the gold standard that I had never known about before....more
There are lots and lots of opinions on policy towards and governance of AI. A lot of those opinions are based on recycling the same sets of arguments There are lots and lots of opinions on policy towards and governance of AI. A lot of those opinions are based on recycling the same sets of arguments or facts. Some of those opinions are that others should not have opinions on these matters. Now enter Verity Harding, who has worked in government, industry, and at universities, with a book that is truly additive by bringing new ideas and insights to bear into what is already starting to feel like an old debate. It is also a really fun and stimulating read.
The bulk of Harding’s book is a history of the governance, mostly by government, of three postwar technologies: space exploration, IVF and human embryonic research, and the internet. Each of these are interesting in their own right, filled with lively characters, big stakes, and something that is much harder ex post—a sense of the many different, and worse, possibilities and paths that were not taken because of the choices that were made.
What emerges is a subtle interplay of contingency, individual government actions, the importance of ethics as a North Star and motivation, diplomacy (in some cases), and also the participation, and in some cases, centrality of businesses. The result was a treaty that space should be disarmed, a broad societal consensus in the UK on embryonic research, and the extraordinary rise of the internet as a global system that is not controlled by any one country or corporations (in part because of wise choices made in the United States).
Harding links each of these histories to their relevance but also limitations for thinking about AI. The individual histories are bracketed by a discussion of the rise of digital platforms in the Bay Area, Harding’s thrill and disappointment with them, and then a discussion of what lessons we should take from all of it.
Harding’s commitment is not to a specific policy but instead to a process that respects the importance of government but also the essential role of business, the need for ethics on the part of both players, and a passionate belief that “you” have a role to play as well....more
I listened to this with my teenage children hoping for a combination of enthralling narrative history and also a better understanding of a period in AI listened to this with my teenage children hoping for a combination of enthralling narrative history and also a better understanding of a period in American history that I've often skipped over. Instead I ended up with neither.
Candice Millard embeds a story of the assassination of James Garfield with background on the science of Joseph Lister who advocated sterilization, the science of Alexander Graham Bell who invented a machine that came close to detecting the bullet in Garfield and the life and madness of Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau. That plus a biography of Garfield. All of it decently interesting but it suffers from the fact that Garfield did not actually do that much as President, the book really centers on his assassination, and his death was long and gruesome--as is the recounting of it in the book.
More frustrating for me was that I felt like I did not learn anything particularly compelling about the politics of the period, beyond debates over the spoils system. It describes the different Republicans squaring off for the nomination but not their different views. It tells little about this transitional period between the end of reconstruction and the expansion of the Gilded Age. I wanted less repetitive story telling and more of broader interest....more
This biography of Alex Dumas (as Tom Reiss calls him), the father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas (author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three MThis biography of Alex Dumas (as Tom Reiss calls him), the father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas (author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, among many other novels) reads like an Alexandre Dumas novel. Except it is meticulously researched and presumably true--or at least as true as any biography can be. It also addresses an interesting set of issues of the history of thinking about race in France around the the turn of the 19th century--given that Alex Dumas was half Black, born in what is now Haiti, but rose to be a general in French army at a time when slavery was being banned.
This is the first biography of Alex Dumas who was largely forgotten, in part because his military career was interrupted by an extended stint as a prisoner of war (which helped create some of the background for The Count of Monte Cristo). And also because he, sort of, crossed Napoleon. But mostly because the transition to Napoleon brought back slavery and a changed attitude towards what is now Haiti--and was Alex Dumas' birthplace. Reiss does extensive archival research, including organizing what is basically a break-in of a massive safe with Dumas' papers.
He starts from Alex Dumas' father, an aristocrat in France, chronicles his journey to what is now Haiti, his break with his brother, move to another town, birth of Alex, and then the story basically follows Alex from there as he gives up all connection to his aristocratic upbringing, starts as a private in the army and works his way up to general--and then prisoner.
Along the way Reiss does a great job of providing context and providing some of the deeper connections between the adventurous life and what is happening more broadly. So it is a mini history of the period as well, but all worn lightly and easily digestible amidst the novelesque story that is at the center of this biography....more
This book impressively crams thousands of years of Chinese history (and a bit of Chinese pre-history) into 252 pages. It marches through chronologicalThis book impressively crams thousands of years of Chinese history (and a bit of Chinese pre-history) into 252 pages. It marches through chronologically with chapters for each dynasty and their modern-day equivalents.
In the introduction Linda Jaivin announces, "In writing a short history, a wise person might focus on a few key themes or personalities. I'm not so wise. Faced with deciding between key individuals, economic and social developments, military history, and aesthetic and intellectual currents, I chose... everything." And it mostly works. It never feels like The Long March but it does sometimes feel like a march with what feels like every Emperor name checked in some way along with many of their wives, concubines, and children. Plus every writer, artist, thinker and more. But it also does all basically fit together and help connect a lot of dots that I already knew.
I also appreciated that the author was genuinely immersed in Chinese history and culture and not just tossing the book off on a lark. There was a precision to the descriptions of language, the debates over issues (e.g., Confucius) that worked really well.
An energetic mostly military history of the battles in the Mediterranean between the Ottoman Empire and various combinations of Christians over the coAn energetic mostly military history of the battles in the Mediterranean between the Ottoman Empire and various combinations of Christians over the course of the sixteenth century. It provides some historical context with the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople on one side (which Roger Crowley previously wrote about in the very good Constantinople : The Last Great Siege 1453) and the shift in the center of gravity from the Mediterranean to the North and Atlantic after the events documented in this book.
I read this book because I was interested in learning more about the Battle of Lepanto which was a naval battle off the coast of what is now Greece between the Ottomans and the "Holy League" in 1571. I had only heard about it because of my interest in Miguel Cervantes who who fought and was wounded in the battle. I don't think it has gone down in history in a huge way but according to this book more people were killed per hour in the battle than in any battle up until World War I. It was also the end of a certain style of naval battles where oared galleys ran right up next to each other and the beginning of the use of artillery. It was a huge a defeat for the Ottomans that, together with their defeat in Malta a few decades earlier (the subject of about one-third of this book), helped freeze the Mediterranean between Islamic East and Christian Northwest.
Overall this is history in the grand style, full of striking anecdotes, lots of great men leading empires or commanding battles, and the smell of gunpowder and swords strongly felt throughout. At some point some of the endless discussion of the mechanics of the Siege of Malta got a little dull and I wished for a bit more historical context. But overall a fun and interesting read--even if it did not completely convince me that any of these events were hinges of history as opposed to being part of the lengthy back-and-forth across Europe over many centuries....more
A concise, informative, insightful, and readable introduction to the Second Reich. The book begins with the fallout of the Napoleonic wars and the defA concise, informative, insightful, and readable introduction to the Second Reich. The book begins with the fallout of the Napoleonic wars and the defensive nationalism it helped to created in the German-speaking peoples who had been weak, divided, and conquered by Napoleon. It then charts the next decades, eventually zooming in on Bismarck, as continued external threats--real and trumped up--are used to unify the German states under the reluctant Prussian Kaiser. Then it gives the development of this state, its debates over a constitution and liberalism, the rise of Kaiser Wilhem II, how it handled the rising threat of socialism by adopting a generous welfare state, and its increased militarization culminating in a disastrous war (which Katja Hoyer argues was an accident waiting to happen not a deliberate German plan). The writer is a British-German historian who grew up in East Germany and has a generally nuanced perspective on the issues she covers....more
I normally avoid books like this: a non-scholarly author, a publisher I haven't heard of, and a lurid title. But I was pleasantly surprised (although I normally avoid books like this: a non-scholarly author, a publisher I haven't heard of, and a lurid title. But I was pleasantly surprised (although some of the previous showed up, like the plethora of typos). There were a number of more scholarly books on the vikings but all of them were much longer and I wanted something about 200 pages long. I appreciated that The Sea Wolves put the vikings in the context of European and Byzantine history, both how they were affected by it and how they affected it. It also never missed the opportunity to tell lurid and possibly apocryphal stories but usually labelled them as such. And it gave some of the context that most of the vikings were not actually spending all their time on raids but instead were farming, fishing, and having a culture that was more orderly and possibly even more feminist than many of the others at the time. But mostly I liked the book because I always encountered the vikings in history books as coming from outside but this presented them from the inside and put their remarkable and discrete period in history in context....more
This book is a dramatically recounted narrative history of the fall of Constantinople in 1453. I appreciated the way the book provided context includiThis book is a dramatically recounted narrative history of the fall of Constantinople in 1453. I appreciated the way the book provided context including the role of Byzantium, its withering away, the rise of the Ottomans and, at the end, consequences describing the fallout over the years and centuries of the fall of Constantinople. The bulk of the book is military history: how artillery changed siege warfare, how the navy operated at the time, and the most novel and interesting, the dueling war of sappers digging tunnels into Constantinople and counter-sappers trying to deduct those tunnels and destroy them, ideally killing the sappers in the process. It also has a certain amount of political history and context, especially on the Christian side with the role--or lack thereof--of Venice, Genoa, the Pope, and other Christian states. All of which moves along in a brisk and entertaining manner.
Like narrative histories the author often speculates--without being clear that he is doing so--about the mindset of various characters and lends drama wherever he can to an, admittedly, rather dramatic event. At times he seems happy to pass along anything that is too-good-to-check but at other times he is very careful about the sources, applying a discount based on the biases and distance from the event of some of the chroniclers.
The book is well served by the many quotes from contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous accounts that give you a fuller understanding of the perspectives of those involved, although most of this is on the Byzantine side (an author's note states that primary sources from the Ottoman perspective are few and far between).
I also appreciated the the book emphasized the multiculturalism of both sides, did not paper over the brutality, but also understood the role that propaganda has played in some accounts of it.
Overall, highly recommended if this topic interests you--and you want a slice of world history with particularly vivid details about the moment-by-moment events of a few months of military preparations and battle in that history....more
This was a sweeping world history that covers roughly from 500 BC to the present. It puts attempts to put the “center” of Asia (which he sometimes calThis was a sweeping world history that covers roughly from 500 BC to the present. It puts attempts to put the “center” of Asia (which he sometimes calls the center of the world) at the center of the story, with the plurality of this “center” being about Persia but also Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan, the former USSR stans, and a bit of China as well. I say “attempts” because most of the events it covers are the same that a standard history of the world would cover (the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity, its collapse, the “dark ages”, European discovery and conquest of the Americas, the renaissance, World War I, World War II, etc.) but it covers all of them from a slightly different angle, with the role of or impact on Central Asia being an important part of the story. But rarely does it tell much of the history of Central Asia beyond the way in which it is affected by or affects the more standard histories.
The different angle can be fascinating, from the ways in which Christianity was really defined and developed in the East not the West to a better understanding of the role that places like Crimea and Afghanistan have played in the global game from the 19th century through today.
Overall I quite liked the book and am glad I read it. But I found a number of aspects irritating, all of which are getting more space in this review than is representative of my feeling about the book.
Naturally, I read the last part of the book last so I will dive in there. The conclusion is all about the rise of Central Asia with the assertion, “We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting—back to where it lay for millennia.” He then treats us to a whirlwind tour of the huge monuments, museums, airport, luxury hotels and mines of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and more. (He includes a dig at economists who he believes have focused insufficiently on these countries and instead been distracted by overstating the importance of emerging markets like Brazil, China, and India.)
This conclusion bizarrely asserts that China’s belt and road is the equivalent of the British Empire (“As late as the middle of the twentieth century, it was possible to sail from Southampton, London or Liverpool to the other side of the world without leaving British territory, putting in at Gibraltar and then Malta before Port Said; from there to Aden, Bombay and Colombo, pausing in the Malay peninsula and finally reaching Hong Kong. Today, it is the Chinese who can do something similar.”). Also that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is the equivalent of the European Union (“Originally set up to facilitate political, economic and military collaboration between Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and China, the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO) is becoming increasingly influential and gradually turning into a viable alternative to the European Union.”)
But what was particularly jarring, and I think emblematic of one of the issues with the book, was that after the concluding chapter which stated “New intellectual centres of excellence are also emerging in a region that at one time produced the world’s most outstanding scholars. Campuses have been springing up across the Persian Gulf that have been endowed by local rulers and magnates” the acknowledgments begin with "There is no finer place in the world for a historian to work than Oxford” and go on to also thank the British government archives, Cambridge University and the U.S. National Security Archives—with the only reference to anything global being “travels across Britain, Europe, Asia and Africa have helped refine good ideas, and sometimes prompted bad ones to be discarded.”
This was emblematic of three of the issues I had with the book:
1. It is dripping with contempt for the West (e.g., “Rome had long cast a greedy eye over Egypt”). The loaded, pejorative terms for anything the Romans do, describing its ruthless expropriation with language that is not repeated even in describing the vast conquests of the rise of Islam—which are treated as a benign force for standardizing rules, Ghenghis Khan or any other empire or conquerers that came from Central Asia.
2. Although the book ostensibly is trying to center the history around Central Asia, it often feels as if the author is denying their agency, at least in the last 500 years or so. The Romans, the Europeans, the United States all have agency—they make decisions and execute on them. The Central Asians just react, and anything bad they do is because they were reacting to whatever the West did (e.g., bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center was not his agency but just his reacting to the way the United States treated him). In that way it really does seem more like the view from Oxford than the view from Baku.
3. The allocation of attention in the history is very unbalanced. The rise of the empires in Central Asia to Alexander in 336 BC gets 3 pages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars get 19 pages. Not only is that overly chronocentric and US centric, it was also a little disappointing because it meant more pages on something I already knew a lot about it.
Overall I’m glad I read the book. Most of the issues I had with it were about the last quarter of so of the book, although those issues showed through—both as I read and in retrospect—in the earlier parts as well. I would recommend you read it, just not uncriticially....more
Chip War is an outstanding history of the microchips from their invention up until just about the current moment (hopefully the eventual paperback ediChip War is an outstanding history of the microchips from their invention up until just about the current moment (hopefully the eventual paperback edition will add some context on the significant recent U.S. policy shift on chips). It is written in a relatively easy and entertaining style that makes it easy to digest what is clearly a work of substantial depth of reporting and history. The book covers the global nature of microchips—the rise and fall of the fortunes of different companies and countries, the evolving division of labor in chip production, the ways in which government policy have been integral to developments at various stages but have also failed. Overall it serves an excellent primer on the different types of chips, their different uses and the ways in which their global supply chains operate. It also accomplishes much more with a diagnosis of the current moment and recommendations for the future.
Some of the parts were completely new to me—like the Soviet and then Russian efforts to develop their own microchip industries. Other parts added substantial depth to aspects of the microchip ecosystem we have today, like the origins of the ASML as the only supplier of high-tech and the ways in which TSMC became the only fab for the most high tech chips. One part that was not new to me, but I appreciated because so many people get it wrong, is that he emphasizes that the chip shortage in 2021 and 2022 was largely the result of dramatically increased demand for chips for consumer electronics rather than some worsening of supply—in fact he depicts the efforts China took to keep chip factories running even when everything else shut down due to the pandemic.
Chris Miller does not spend much time discussing the underlying science and engineering except insofar as it is necessary to understand the economics. The description of the cost and scientific/engineering breakthroughs needed for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography needed to make even smaller transistors was especially vivid.
Much of the book is about the interplay of civilian and military considerations in the development of chips. Initially the military was the primary consumer of them, buying something like 90 percent (I believe, did not recheck the number). A big breakthrough was putting them in Minutemen II missiles which increased their accuracy enough to mean they could more effectively take out Russian missiles. Over time, however, consumer uses grew while military fell—not to something like 2 percent of total chip production. Moreover it is way too expensive for the military to do its own fabrication and in many cases even its own design, investments that are not just costly but would be obsolescent in a few years time. The increased reliance on consumer demand was a strength of Western and Asian allied innovation, consumer electronics in Japan played a role that the Soviet Union with its largely military industry could never match.
The main purpose of all of this history and analysis is to understand the current moment, particularly the vulnerability of the global economy to anything that happened to TSMC (a massive earthquake or a Chinese invasion/blockade), the United States impressive position as a global chokepoint for many of the most important technologies but lack of anything resembling self reliance, and China’s struggle to overcome its huge deficit in technology and relatively unimportant role in both the global supply chain and producing for its own needs. While I mostly agree with the author’s diagnosis and policy advocacy at times he was a bit overly simplistic and editorial in his judgments of the Obama administration, the battles within the Trump administration and where policy is now. Some of that read less like history and more like an oped written in the heat of the moment.
Overall, Chip War is a fabulous guide to the global economy, appreciating one of the major security challenges facing the United States, and formulating a better understanding for handling it going forward. As an up-to-the-moment guide it leaves the reader excited to read the sequel—does Moore’s Law still hold? What happens to Intel? Does China start making higher-tech chips? Does Taiwan stay peaceful? I look forward to watching all of this play out in real time—and it might play out slightly better if policymakers and the public are better informed by reading this book....more
A fantastic one volume history of Ancient Greece, exactly what I was looking for. It covers the Mycenean period through the height of Periclean AthensA fantastic one volume history of Ancient Greece, exactly what I was looking for. It covers the Mycenean period through the height of Periclean Athens and then Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic period, the relationship of the Greeks to the Romans and the relationship of the Greeks to the Christians. Edith Hall passionately argues for the uniqueness and importance of Ancient Greek civilization in helping to create what we have today, rebutting claims that this is somehow arbitrarily Eurocentric or an excuse for white supremacy. At the same time, she pays particular attention to women, slavery, Greek atrocities, and so does not herself use Ancient Greece in the way some conservative scholars do. The book itself traverses political history, cultural history, intellectual history, and more, with particularly sensitive and nuanced discussions of the development of ideas. At the center of all of this is her argument that a combination ten characteristics made the Greeks unique including seafaring, skepticism of authority, openness to ideas, love of pleasure, and more. These traits, she argues, lasted more than a thousand years and each of her chapters illustrates one of them in the context of a particular time and place.
Note, I did a combination of listening to the Audible recording and reading the book....more
I took my first flight in over a year on the first federal holiday of Juneteenth. This book was the perfect short read. The title is arguably clever mI took my first flight in over a year on the first federal holiday of Juneteenth. This book was the perfect short read. The title is arguably clever marketing (it worked on me!) since the book itself only uses a discussion of Juneteenth itself as a relatively brief bookend to the meat of the book which is a set of essays and meditations the blend history, memoir and little bit of current events to tell the story of Texas, and especially the story of Black people in Texas. The essays each work individually but they also fit together nicely as a collective whole.
The essays explore the identity of Texas (often thought of as the land of cowboys and oilmen, but Annette Gordon-Reed points out it was also the land of plantation slavery), its history (including the lynchings and extrajudicial murders in her town and looking at familiar events like the Alamo from unfamiliar angles like the problematic backgrounds of the protagonists and the enslaved people there), her own experiences there (in white schools, her mother's teaching, going to the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park), and--yes--Juneteenth itself.
Gordon-Reed's love for history comes through most clearly, her understanding that the past is the past and should be understood on its own terms--but that it also reverberates through to the present. She makes few quick moral judgments (even where they are more than amply warranted) and does a good job illuminating the complexity of the past. Ultimately he own story is part of that complexity--a Black woman who grew up in Texas, understands its horrors but loves it for all her childhood memories, now a University Professor at Harvard and living in New York City.
The relatively slim book felt like an appetizer that left me hungry for much more while not adequately resolving anything. In other ways, it was an argument that it could not be adequately resolved but instead we should see history through different people's eyes, including the canonical events but also how different people saw and were engaged in those events (e.g., her extensive work on Sally Hemings, her family and Jefferson)....more
My children and I listened to this fast-paced audiobook that started with a mini-biography of John F Kennedy, his rise to power, and his Presidency wiMy children and I listened to this fast-paced audiobook that started with a mini-biography of John F Kennedy, his rise to power, and his Presidency with capsule summaries/context for all of the major events and then went into a reliable, not overhyped, minute-by-minute and eventually second-by-second version of the split screen as Lee Harvey Oswald plans for the assassination and John F Kennedy walks right into it. Swanson does the days following the assassination, the LBJ oath of office, the killing of Oswald, the funeral, and then ends by reflecting on the mystery of Oswald's motives. Overall Swanson is 100% on the lone gunman theory, treats it as a series of chance events that led to it, and mostly views it as someone wanting attention but never renders a definitive judgment.
Overall, Swanson hews closely to history, I personally learned very little but was still never bored in the relatively short narrative, and my children learned a huge amount not just about the assassination but also the global and domestic context.
And family content warning: the description of the assassination itself is *very* gory and many children may be disturbed by it. In fact, many adults. In fact I would be worried about anyone that was not disturbed....more
Samir Puri starts out with the observation that we are now 30 years into a world without empires for the first time in millennia (a point that dependsSamir Puri starts out with the observation that we are now 30 years into a world without empires for the first time in millennia (a point that depends to some degree on how one counts countries like the United States, China and Russia). But he argues that the dissolved empires of the past still cast a shadow over the present and shape the way nations see themselves, each other, and are a source of both problems and strength. He offers an unflinching criticism of the overseas, non-contiguous imperialism practiced by Europe but also puts in context with the contiguous empires like the ones in the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and China and the problems and benefits associated with them.
After stating his argument, the bulk of the book is a single chapter for each empire (the United States, UK, the EU, Russia, China, India, Middle East, and Africa) from its beginnings to the present with a certain amount about how the imperial legacies shape the present. This leads to a certain amount of rushing through vast swaths of history, a combination of history, political science, journalism, with a bit of personal narrative thrown in. All of it seemed perfectly reliable but at times the organizing principle is worn a bit thin and instead one has a world history.
Overall much of the book does not seem particularly original (and the parts that were new to me were about areas I don't know a lot about so I suspect they weren't wildly original either), but it still is successful in weaving together a lot of the past with its implications for the present and presenting an often subtle and non-judgmental account which makes the judgements it makes all the more powerful.
As to specifics, here are a few from each region.
--The United States. Puri argues about the divided legacy of a country whose identity centers around having freed itself from an empire but then becoming an empire, describing how its ambivalence gave way to enthusiasm for a set of wars that for more than 150 years have been fought overseas, often on the other side of the world, with far flung allies and bases all over the world. The tension and ambivalence shows up in US politics with the isolationism, in the good and bad sense, that also runs through our politics (most recently in the form of Donald Trump).
--The United Kingdom. Among the least original chapters because the UK's empire is so straightforward, I still learned about the Indian aspect of it, how it went from commercial to political, and the disconnect between the British view that they had made the country and India's own strong identities that it already had.
--The EU. He interprets it as a post-imperial empire, made in a voluntary way.
--China. He describes how China's was always expanding contiguously but rejected traveling further for discovery or conquest. Then it was conquered itself and today it defines itself as the dignity that comes from throwing that conquest off. Beyond some of the areas it controls/incorporates like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong it is now making inroads around the world in through the Belt and Road Initiative and other efforts. But it still considers itself anti-imperialist and makes that one of its arguments as it expands.
--India. This was one of the more interesting and complex chapter about questions about whether it counts as conquest if it is neighbors like the Mughals vs. the English and what it means when the conquerers adopt the local customs and get incorporated, the multiple identities and backgrounds in India, the current debate over the historical legacy of Gandhi's non-violence and inclusiveness vs. Bose's violence, and the way there is no undisputed common history so the BJP and Shiv Sena are creating their own version of a Hindu-only history.
--Middle East. Another excellent chapter, too much to summarize, but two interesting points: (1) the Ottoman Empire was a relatively tolerant multicultural place and when it dissolved many of the problems it had suppressed exploded out, especially when groups didn't get their own homes (e.g. the Kurds) and (2) Turkey has defined itself by not having a history, it created a nationalism based on a new spelling that means people can't read anything from more than one hundred years ago, a new national identity, and that this has (he argues) helped pave the way for the dictatorship and cult of personality.
--Africa. He describes the scramble for Africa and how its consequences resonate through to today with misdrawn borders, tribalism that was alternately created and ignored by the Europeans, and African leaders who blame foreigners to deflect from their local problems....more
I had never read this before but no one was waiting for me to say that it is, indeed, excellent. In many ways the story is familiar (not least becauseI had never read this before but no one was waiting for me to say that it is, indeed, excellent. In many ways the story is familiar (not least because I read the magisterial biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom) and it also follows many of the familiar contours of slave narratives and escapes. But it is so well told, so insightful and sympathetic, when it is unsympathetic it is even more powerful, and with William Lloyd Garrison's excellent introduction and the conclusion which in some respects is still in the middle of the story, that heightens its power.
I listened to the audio version narrated by Raymond Hearn and would highly recommend that recording....more
A relatively traditional history of Imperial Spain, J.H. Elliott's book takes us from the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella thrA relatively traditional history of Imperial Spain, J.H. Elliott's book takes us from the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella through the almost accidental joining of Spain into the Hapsburg empire, its becoming the seat of the Hapsburg empire controlling the Netherlands, Portugal, much of Italy, parts of Austria, and then its shrinking again as it loses wars with England and elsewhere, goes through financial and economic crises. The book was originally written in 1960 and reads that way--a focus on leaders, politics, wars, and the like, but also a decent amount about the economy, society, and church. The conquest of America is discussed only briefly and largely in heroic terms one would not read today and the expulsion/conversion of the Jews and Muslims is treated as lamentable but not dwelled on either. Culture gets relatively short shrift as well, with only passing mentions of Cervantes and Velázquez. I say this more for context than as criticism, in many ways reading a traditional, linear history of the rise and fall from greatness was refreshing and a story that filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge....more
An inspired triad, Imraan Coovadia presents a hybrid of history, biography and literary analysis of Tolstoy, Gandhi and Mandela (plus a bit of Coetze An inspired triad, Imraan Coovadia presents a hybrid of history, biography and literary analysis of Tolstoy, Gandhi and Mandela (plus a bit of Coetze in the epilogue), the ways they learned from each other, built on each other, and brought about moral and practical change with a combination of radical philosophies and each of their unique life paths involving some combination of violence and peaceful non-resistance. Throughout the book Coovadia brilliantly draws on many strands of thoughts, combining and recombining them in novel ways, all of which help support a passionate argument about the present and future particularly of South Africa but also of the world more generally.
Tolstoy lurks a bit more in the background than the foreground of this book, existing more as an influence on Gandhi than a fully fledged character in his own right. Moreover, it is not just the late Tolstoy one might have expected in thinking about non-violence and moral influences, but War and Peace in particular that shows up again and again, particular the model of Field Marshal Kutuzov as a model for a combination of violence but also minimizing violence and doing it all while achieving victory.
Gandhi gets the most attention, particularly his time in South Africa, his interactions with Tolstoy, the formation of his philosophy, and how it worked in practice. Coovadia makes something of Gandhi’s role in organizing military units for the British, likening it to Tolstoy’s start in the military and Mandela’s role in the armed wing of the ANC. It seemed like a bit of a stretch but I could be wrong about that.
Mandela gets the most creative and sympathetic treatment of the trio, a robust defense of his vision and legacy against what Coovadia sees as the alternative presented by Winnie Mandela, a corrupt/criminal approach that justifies itself in language that rejects the nonviolence and accommodation of Mandela.
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