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1668010690
| 9781668010693
| 1668010690
| 3.48
| 242
| Nov 07, 2023
| Nov 07, 2023
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it was ok
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"TO BE ON A GUNSHIP is to be a god..." What the Taliban Told Me was a mixed bag for me. I generally enjoy books about war, warfare, and the Middle East "TO BE ON A GUNSHIP is to be a god..." What the Taliban Told Me was a mixed bag for me. I generally enjoy books about war, warfare, and the Middle East. Unfortunately, I found much of the writing here to be a bit slow for my picky tastes. Author Ian Fritz was an Airborne Cryptologic Linguist in the United States Air Force from 2008-2013. He became a physician after completing his enlistment. Now, he writes. Ian Fritz : [image] The book covers the author's time as an Airborne Cryptologic Linguist in the United States Air Force, mostly during his deployment to Afghanistan. He opens the book with the quote above, and it continues below: "...This is not to say that flying in these magnificent monstrosities provided me with some sort of spiritual moment or religious exaltation. This is to say that to be on a gunship, to carry out its mission, is to feel as powerful as any deity from the pantheons of old. But these gods, like all gods, are not interested in creation. To use the 105, a gun that is loaded with forty-five-pound bullets, a gun that, when fired, causes the 155,000-pound plane it’s mounted on to buck so far to the right that the pilot must actively correct the flight path, is to be Zeus hurling Hephaestus’s bolts. To fire a Griffin missile from an altitude so great that the men on the ground could only know of it in the same moment that it kills them is to be Mars flinging his spear." Colloquially known as "DSO's," he expands further on his role in the war: "Being a DSO in Afghanistan meant making life and death decisions (and not or). We could decide who lived, and who died. When we had flown a mission, and done our job right, it was no lie or even an exaggeration to say we had done something that very few other people were capable of doing. Unfortunately, as touched on above, I found a lot of the writing to be fairly dry. I am very particular on how engaging my books are, and this one fell a bit short for me. The author also did the narration of the audio version I have. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed with this, as well. I found that he tended to mumble his way through the book. He speaks in a very monotonous fashion, and I became frustrated numerous times... There was also quite a large chunk of writing in the latter ~half of the book that extensively detailed the author's inner dialogue surrounding the ethics of his job. I found this to be way too long, and was also becoming frustrated here. I get that his duties in the armed forces left him with some serious mental health issues, but this part read like a long-form journal entry. ****************** What the Taliban Told Me was an interesting historical record, but the delivery left a lot to be desired for me. 2 stars. ...more |
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1
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Sep 03, 2024
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Sep 05, 2024
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Aug 28, 2024
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Hardcover
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B01BAZXZQY
| 3.86
| 218
| Oct 18, 2016
| Jan 24, 2017
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liked it
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"Amazing Stories of the Space Age is about the most mysterious and intriguing episodes of the history of space exploration—its undercover projects, gr
"Amazing Stories of the Space Age is about the most mysterious and intriguing episodes of the history of space exploration—its undercover projects, grandiose dreams, odd spinoffs, and muffled dramas..." I enjoyed Amazing Stories of the Space Age; for the most part. It was a decent look into the topic. Author Rod Pyle is an American writer, journalist, public speaker, and former television producer and educator who concentrates on subjects regarding spaceflight. Rod Pyle : [image] Pyle has a good writing style that I found to be fairly engaging. He covers the material here in a straightforward, no-frills manner that I felt worked. As the book's title hints at, the writing here examines many different episodes - some classified, others not - from the space race. Both Russian and American technologies are discussed. The contents of the book proper covers: • Nazis in Space: Project Silverbird • Red Moon: Countering the Communist Threat on Earth and in Space • Das Marsprojekt: Red Planet Armada • Project Orion: We Come in Peace (With Nuclear Bombs!) • LUNEX: Earth in the Crosshairs • The Wheel: An Inflatable Space Station • Venusian Empire: NASA's Mars/Venus Flyby Adventure • Blue Gemini: Weaponizing Orbit • Flirting with Death: The Terrifying Flight of Gemini 8 • Manned Orbiting Laboratory: How to Design, Test, and Never Fly a Space Program • Apollo 11: Danger on the Moon • The First Space Shuttle: Project Dyna-Soar • Beyond the Edge of Space: The X-15B • The Sad, Strange Tale of Soyuz 1 • The Turtlenauts • Falling to Earth: The Dangerous Science of Reentry • Funeral for a Viking: The End of Viking 1 • Saving Skylab: Cowboys in Space • Near Misses: Danger Stalks the Space Shuttle • Showdown in Space: Firearms on the Moon • Buran: The Soviet Union's One-Flight Wonder • Major Matt Mason: A Man for the New Space Age ****************** While this was a very well-researched book, it was not really the gripping page-turner I hoped for... I am very picky about how readable my books are, so I have to take a few stars off. Your mileage may vary, however, so don't let my review dissuade you from reading this one. 3 stars. ...more |
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1
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Aug 23, 2024
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Aug 27, 2024
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Aug 22, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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1648210864
| 9781648210860
| B0CX9BTG1S
| 4.16
| 273
| unknown
| Jul 09, 2024
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really liked it
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"This is not a book about communist ideology. You’ve read those. This is a book about the communist reality—and how to tell when it’s coming to a soci
"This is not a book about communist ideology. You’ve read those. This is a book about the communist reality—and how to tell when it’s coming to a society near you..." Unhumans was a good book, but the formatting was a bit jumbled at times, and I felt that the overall message here could have been conveyed without so much editorializing. More below. Author Jack Posobiec is a graduate of Temple University and a former Naval Intelligence Officer. He was deployed to Guantanamo Naval Base for ten months in 2012 and is fluent in Mandarin. Joshua Lisec is a writer with over eighty books to his credit. Together, Jack and Joshua unwrap a dazzling yet dire history of Communism’s impact on humanity across the globe. From the Russian Revolution to the true story of the Spanish Civil War, they describe and explain the 1950s emergence of Cultural Marxism in the United States, and its current resurgence. Jack Posobiec: [image] As the book's frank title indicates, the writing style here is very pointed and opinionated. While the prose is definitely very engaging and readable, I felt that a lot of the commentary was redundant. The book opens with a decent foreword by Steve Bannon. The quote from the start of this review continues: "...History does not repeat, but it rhymes. For as long as there have been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been the ugly liars who hate and kill. This is the way of things in all things. There is light and there is dark. Always has been. Always will be. Civilization is the superstructure built on law and order that keeps the petty, the resentful, and the cruel away from the rest of us. Some societies have been better at this than others. Those who fail at repelling the repulsive fall to unhumanity—to a state of affairs in which human thriving is impossible and surviving improbable." The book's title is a reference to the barbaric - inhuman - nature of Socialism/Communism. Consuming roughly 100 million lives in ~100 years, this disastrous ~200-year social experiment is the worst man-made catastrophe in history. But still, somehow, you will find many useful idiots in academia, the media class, authors, commentators, and assorted pundits who advocate for it. I've always found it paradoxical that anyone in these arenas calling themselves a fascist would be run out of town by mobs of angry people, but being a socialist is considered interesting and "cool..." The authors drop this quote; speaking to the nature of the leftist threat, and its long history: "The authors argue that it is humanity itself currently under threat. They unwrap the history of Communism, a dehumanizing philosophy of oppression, of denial of human rights and nihilism. In this short bit of writing, they tell the reader what the book will cover: "While academic and reference titles explore the motives and agenda of household-name leaders during each left-wing upheaval, this book will give you on-the-ground descriptions of what it’s really like to witness (and fight) communist forces of change. We have recast the story of communism as individuals against individuals, as real people, to reveal how and why neighbors turn against neighbors. Why even yours might, against you. Along the way, we will reintroduce you to the household names of history, but in a way you’ve never seen before—we will tell their true stories. Unfortunately, and as touched on above; their tone here was not really measured. Although I, too have a great personal disdain for the ideology of communism, I feel that the book should have stuck more to just telling its story. There are many passages of commentary tossed in here, and I didn't feel like they added to the book. For example, the authors say "THIS is what they do." about 200x in the book. It got irritating. I'm sure that the average reader is able to draw patterns out of the writing here and come to that conclusion themselves... I also was not particularly fond of the formatting of the book. I felt that it jumped around way too much, losing narrative continuity and frustrating the reader (well, this reader, anyhow...) On a positive note; many of the most important socialist uprisings are briefly covered here, along with some other tangentially-related topics. Among them: • The death of George Floyd • The death of Michael Brown • The media persecution of Nicholas Sandmann • Historical case studies: France, Haiti, Russia, Spain, China • The Civil Rights movements of the 1960s • Cultural Marxism • Joseph MacCarthy; his name turned into a pejorative • Marxist propaganda infiltrating Hollywood • The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) • Marxist Chile (1970–1973) • A Long Red Night in Nicaragua (1978–1990) • The Afghan-Soviet War (1979–1989) • Rhodesia House Blues • “Kill the Boer”: New Apartheid in South Africa • Three Ways to Crush the Revolution, Revisited ****************** Unhumans was a still a decent look into the history of socialist revolutions and their tactics. It is also a sobering look into the far-left's creeping power into all aspects of Western life. I would recommend it to anyone interested. 3.5 stars. ...more |
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Jul 18, 2024
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Jul 23, 2024
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Jul 17, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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9798786512886
| B09NR9NTMJ
| 4.38
| 8
| unknown
| Dec 17, 2021
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it was amazing
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“What if the enemy should get the atomic bomb before we did! We could not run the mortal risk of being outstripped in this awful sphere.” – Winston Ch
“What if the enemy should get the atomic bomb before we did! We could not run the mortal risk of being outstripped in this awful sphere.” – Winston Churchill The Race for Nuclear Weapons during World War II was a decent look into the topic. I have read a few books from Charles River Editors, and have generally enjoyed the content they produce. The quote from the start of this review continues: "Before the Second World War, military conflicts were fought under orthodox conditions, usually termed “conventional warfare,” but several innovations had significantly changed combat, leading inextricably to the race for a nuclear weapon in the 1930s and 1940s. Conflicts had been fought by armies on horseback with guns of varying sophistication since the 16th century, but mechanized warfare and machine guns changed this calculus and set the stage for future combat by the end of World War I. Other sinister changes entered the fray during this conflict, such as chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas. The total warfare brought about by World War I and ensuing wars like the Spanish Civil War made the quest for the most powerful weapons somewhat necessary." The overall presentation of this one was well done. As the title implies, the authors cover the global efforts toward achieving a nuclear bomb. The successful American efforts, as well as the unsuccessful efforts of both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Although the writing here was well done, the narrator of the audiobook that I have mispronounced many commonplace words. Off the top of my head, he says: "W, W 2" instead of "World War 2," and unbelievably says "rap-ing," instead of "rape-ing," Has the narrator never heard of rape?? (Minor gripes, for sure, but a bit odd.) ****************** The Race for Nuclear Weapons during World War II was still a very decent short read. I would recommend it to anyone interested. 5 stars. ...more |
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1
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Jul 09, 2024
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Jul 10, 2024
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Jul 05, 2024
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Paperback
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0520253337
| 9780520253339
| 0520253337
| 3.91
| 1,252
| unknown
| Mar 25, 2008
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it was amazing
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"My first thought, I remember clearly, was: “This can’t be happening.” Once I registered that it was indeed happening, my second thought was simple: “
"My first thought, I remember clearly, was: “This can’t be happening.” Once I registered that it was indeed happening, my second thought was simple: “I’m toast.” The Reluctant Communist was a great telling of an incredible real-life saga. The author drops the quote above early on. Author Charles Robert Jenkins (18 February 1940 – 11 December 2017) was a United States Army deserter, North Korean prisoner, and voice for Japanese abductees in North Korea. Charles Robert Jenkins: [image] The book's introduction was written by Jim Frederick. Fredrick describes the process of meeting and interviewing Jenkins for the material in the book. The writing in the book proper is told in a style akin to how Jenkins speaks; says Fredrick. I felt that this formatting worked here. Fredrick says this about Jenkins: "Charles Robert Jenkins is, quite simply, a figure of lasting historical importance. He has lived a life that’s unique in twentiethcentury history. No other Westerner has survived so long in the world’s least known, least visited, and least understood country on the planet and been able to return to tell the tale. And what he has to say is vitally important: Is there any country in the world harder to get a handle on than North Korea? And while there are certainly rivals when it comes to the intensity of American diplomatic bungling, has any country been a U.S. foreign relations debacle so consistently for so many years? While native North Korean defectors and escapees from its gulags have made some horrors of that nation known to the world, Jenkins is the first Westerner able to provide a long-term, detailed view of this secretive and brutal society from the perspective of an outsider who became intimately familiar with its inner workings. I do not profess to know much about North Korea, but I’m confident Charles Robert Jenkins knows more about it than just about any foreigner on the planet." And this of the strange Hermit Kingdom: "The curtain Robert draws back on the mundane, relentless, dehumanizing operation of the North Korean state—its wastes of money and labor on domestic spying rather than economic output, its language-debasing doublespeak, its interference in the most intimate details of its residents’ lives—helps demonstrate how insidious and debilitating, bizarre and oppressive the country is. The story of Robert’s life was more difficult to tell since it did not reach either extreme of the sensationalism spectrum. He is neither a villain nor a hero, just a man trying to cope with the guilt of a horrible mistake while eking out an existence in a country unimaginably strange and hostile. But I hope that this attention to the quotidian, this focus on the struggle of everyday life, has produced a more nuanced and valuable contribution to our understanding of North Korea." I will keep any plot details out of this review, to avoid giving away any spoilers, but the story told here was pretty incredible. As the book's title tells you, he would spend 40 years imprisoned in North Korea. For anyone interested, this article sums up the events of the book well. ****************** I really enjoyed The Reluctant Communist. It was a fascinating glimpse into some of the workings of the world's most secretive country. I would recommend it to anyone interested. 5 stars. ...more |
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1
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Jun 14, 2024
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Jun 17, 2024
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Jun 12, 2024
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Hardcover
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B00CKXEAB0
| 3.82
| 282
| 1998
| Jan 12, 2012
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it was ok
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"Since 1970, when it was plunged into the Indochina War, which had begun with the Vietnamese rising against French colonial rule and lasted until the
"Since 1970, when it was plunged into the Indochina War, which had begun with the Vietnamese rising against French colonial rule and lasted until the Communist victories in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975, Cambodia has suffered the worst that this callous century has devised..." Despite Cambodia fielding some important historical material, I did not enjoy the overall presentation. More below. Author Henry Kamm was a German-born American correspondent for The New York Times. He reported for the Times from Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Henry Kamm: [image] The book opens with a preface that was a bit flat and slow. This proved to be a harbinger of the writing to follow. I am very particular about how readable my books are, and this one missed the mark for me here. The quote from the start of this review continues: "...It struggled through five years of bloody civil conflict with the destructive intervention of bellicose foreign powers, four years of a genocidal revolutionary regime, then liberation through invasion and a decade of military occupation by Vietnam, a hated and feared big neighbor, and throughout these years unceasing internecine warfare on its soil, continuing to this day." The author lays out the scope of the book in this quote: "What follows is an attempt to retrace the events of nearly three decades as seen by a reporter who was granted the privilege of being taken into the confidence of many Cambodians, men and women whom I admired and whose hopes for their country I shared, as well as others. I recall with infinite sadness those among them who paid with their lives for staying when they could have fled, before total darkness enveloped Cambodia for four years that have known no equal in history." In one of the worst genocidal regimes in modern history, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killed 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979; some ~20-25% of Cambodia's population at the time. The country and its Socialist revolution became another addition to a long list of failed Communist shit holes, and another terrifying case study of how to fuck up your society in the worst way possible. That so many of its citizens took place in the rampant and widespread persecution, arrests, and even murders of their fellow countrymen is a sobering look into the depths of the human condition... Unfortunately, and further to what I wrote above, the telling of this terrible story was just not up to snuff. I did not like much of the author's writing style here. I found large parts of the book long-winded and dry. I found my finicky attention wandering numerous times. If the book were any longer, I would have put it down. A shame, as the writing here is no doubt of important historical record... ****************** I did not particularly enjoy Cambodia. The writing was just too lackluster to hold my attention. 2 stars. ...more |
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1
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May 10, 2024
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May 13, 2024
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May 09, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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0358646502
| 9780358646501
| 0358646502
| 3.89
| 468
| unknown
| Apr 09, 2024
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liked it
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"IN THE LATE 1990S, INSIDE A FORMER NUCLEAR MISSILE silo in Kansas, Leonard Pickard set up what was probably the biggest LSD lab of all time. The choi
"IN THE LATE 1990S, INSIDE A FORMER NUCLEAR MISSILE silo in Kansas, Leonard Pickard set up what was probably the biggest LSD lab of all time. The choice of this site for such a large-scale operation seems symbolic, given that the history of the powerful substance is tightly interwoven with that of the Cold War and its arms race. On twenty-eight acres of land, behind electronically controlled gates and a hundred-ton steel door that could withstand even a nuclear attack, Pickard was alleged to have produced a kilogram of the drug per month—due to its potency, an unimaginably large amount. With it, the graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government was said to have provided 95 percent of the world’s supply of LSD..." Tripped is my second from the author, after his 2015 book: Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, which I really enjoyed. So, I admittedly went into this one with high expectations. Unfortunately, I did not find the writing here to be quite on par with the writing in Blitzed. Author Norman Ohler is a German New York Times bestselling author, novelist and screenwriter, best known for this book, which has been published in over 30 languages. Norman Ohler: [image] The writing here opens with a bang, as Ohler delivers a high-energy intro where he drops the quote above. He writes in a matter-of-fact, straight-forward manner here that shouldn't struggle to hold the finicky reader's attention. Ohler describes the aim of the book in this short quote: "...I myself became curious about the drug when my father, a retired judge, started to consider giving microdoses of LSD to my mother to treat her Alzheimer’s disease. He had asked me why, if the drug was actually supposed to help, he couldn’t just get it at the pharmacy. This launched me on my research. As the book's subtitle implies, the author takes the reader through the history of psychedelic drug use in the West, and America; more specifically. The book also covers the roots of the modern Western drug prohibition movement, and the history of the "War on Drugs." The West adopted the Nazi's temperance movement, which was ultimately blowback from the decadent and degenerate culture that emerged in Weimar Germany post WW1. The author continues, telling the reader about the discovery of early psychedelics and the synthesis of LSD. Although not mentioned here, the Americans became paranoid that the Russians had developed a mind control agent, after freed POWs from the Korean War were returning to America seemingly brainwashed. This had the Americans up in arms, and drove later efforts by CIA scientists to produce a mind-control agent of their own. This project became known as Project MKUltra. MKUltra was preceded by two drug-related experiments, Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. It began in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964 and 1967, and was halted in 1973. It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. The program engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement. Some more of what is covered in here includes: • LSD in America • The Case of Frank Olson • Mösch-Rümms • LSD JFK • "The Revolt of the Guinea Pigs" • "The Bear" • Elvis Meets Nixon • The author microdosing his mother to treat her Alzheimer's. (Some great info here) ****************** Tripped was a decent read, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the author's first book in the series. I also felt that John D. Marks book: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA & Mind Control already covered this topic in a more effective and engaging manner. The book was still a decent read if you don't know this history. 3.5 stars. ...more |
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1
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May 09, 2024
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May 10, 2024
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May 08, 2024
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Hardcover
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0593476093
| 9780593476093
| 0593476093
| 4.47
| 14,294
| Mar 28, 2024
| Mar 26, 2024
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liked it
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"A nuclear strike on the Pentagon is just the beginning of a scenario the finality of which will be the end of civilization as we know it..." Nuclea "A nuclear strike on the Pentagon is just the beginning of a scenario the finality of which will be the end of civilization as we know it..." Nuclear War was an interesting look into a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario. Mankind has come close to nuclear disaster a few times in the past, and these civilizational-ending weapons are still one of the greatest existential threats that humanity faces. The author drops quote above at the start of the book. Author Annie Jacobsen is an American investigative journalist, writer, and a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. She writes for and produces television programs, including Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan for Amazon Studios, and Clarice for CBS. She was a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine from 2009 until 2012. Annie Jacobsen: [image] Jacobsen gets the writing going here with a lively and energetic intro. She writes with a decently engaging style here, for the most part, but I felt that the book was a bit too long; overall. The version I have clocked in at ~11.5 hours. The audio version I have of this book is read by the author, which was a nice touch. The quote from the start of this review continues: "...This is the reality of the world in which we all live. The nuclear war scenario proposed in this book could happen tomorrow. Or later today. As the book's title implies, it is a long-form examination of what a real-life nuclear war would look like. The book proceeds in a blow-by-blow fashion, counting down the minutes after a hostile nation launches a nuclear-tipped missile towards the US. Unfortunately, I felt that this format style may be more suited to documentaries, and/or the film/visual medium. There is quite a lot of superfluous writing here. She includes many extensive descriptions of hypothetical settings, such as workers eating lunch outside a power plant while a pelican eats fish nearby, mentioning that seaweed covers the rocks. There are description of trees, local weather, and other assorted minutia that detracted from the overall story. I can see that some people may be a fan of this style of presentation, but I was not among them... She makes this note on the source material, and the nature of the threat: AUTHOR’S NOTE: The mass proliferation of nuclear arms following the end of the Second World War has raised alarm about the possibility of global nuclear armageddon. In this bit of writing, she talks about just how many bombs the US had built in the post-war period: "The race to build even more atomic bombs now accelerated dramatically. By 1950, the U.S. added 129 atomic weapons to its stockpile, bringing the total from 170 to 299. At the time, the Soviet Union had five. [image] Some more of what she covers here includes: • A brief history of the Atomic bomb • The creation of the hydrogen bomb; dubbed "The Super" • Nuclear bomb buildup • Nuclear submarines • South Korea and the nuclear threat from North Korea • Russia's "Dead Hand" system • Possible detonation of a high-altitude EMP weapon that would destroy the entire power grid • The landscape after 1000 nuclear bombs explode • The world immediately post-war • The world thousands of years later ******************** Nuclear War was a well-researched book. The author did a decent job of the presentation and narration, too. Unfortunately, I think that it could have benefited from a more rigorous editing if a gripping story was the desired aim of the book. 3 stars. ...more |
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Mar 27, 2024
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Apr 2024
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Mar 27, 2024
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Hardcover
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1786724286
| 9781786724281
| B07MV4NLCF
| 4.07
| 374
| 2018
| Sep 06, 2018
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liked it
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"The belief that 1914–18 had been the ‘War to End War’ melted away, of course, in September 1939, when it turned out to have been rather emphatically
"The belief that 1914–18 had been the ‘War to End War’ melted away, of course, in September 1939, when it turned out to have been rather emphatically ‘The War that Did Not End War’. Indeed, it could equally have been called ‘The War that Led Directly to Another War’. In its place, there has grown a new belief in the ‘Good War’ of 1939 to 1945... ...This war, we believe, was so good that men constantly seek to fight it again, so that they can bathe in its virtue..." The Phoney Victory was an interesting contrarian work. The Second World War has become part of Western Civilization's creation myth, and this book runs afoul of many things we've been told about it. Author Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an English conservative writer, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens: [image] Sadly, Hitchens writes with a style here that could be described as somewhat stereotypical British prose; tending to be long-winded and flat more often than not. While I did follow the plot, I found the lackluster presentation style losing my attention numerous times... As touched on above, the topic of the book is a contentious one. Hitchens argues that much of what has come to pass as common knowledge about the war deserves further scrutiny. I'll say right up front that I'm not personally qualified to pick apart the veracity of any of the claims here. So for the scope of this review, I will only comment on the book's presentation, and will not be making claims for or against the case laid out here. The quote from the start of this review continues: "...Its passion and parables, and its characters, are nowadays better known than those of the Bible. Instead of the triumphal ride into Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the betrayal at Gethsemane, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the Supper at Emmaus and the coming of the Holy Ghost in tongues of fire, we have a modern substitute: Winston the outcast prophet in the wilderness, living on cigars and champagne rather than locusts and wild honey, but slighted, exiled and prophetic all the same. We have the betrayal at Munich, the miraculous survival of virtue amid defeat at Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain, and the resurrection of freedom and democracy on D-Day." He says this of the thesis of the book: "...One day, this dangerous fable of the glorious anti-fascist war against evil may destroy us all simply because we have a government too vain and inexperienced to restrain itself. That is why it is so important to dispel it." The meat and potatoes of the book centers around the following points (among others); each of which could (and have) been examined in volumes all on their own: • He believes that Britain's entry into World War II led to its rapid decline after the war. This was because, among other things, it could not finance the war and was not prepared. As a result, it had to surrender much of its wealth and power to avoid bankruptcy. • Hitchens asserts that the Americans did not help Britain with lend-lease programs out of charitable motives. He says that Britain paid dearly for this aid, namely in the form of liquidating many of its assets and turning over ~£26 billion (adjusted to 2018) of gold bullion that would ultimately end up in Fort Knox. This had the effect of completely financially devastating the nation, and it has never recovered its Empire since. • He argues that the Allies committed war crimes against the German people, namely; their carpet bombing of German civilians. Arthur Harris is singled out for his bombing of civilians; notably in the firebombing of Dresden, although Hitchens mentions many other cities turned into literal fire tornadoes. Part of this was done to appease an ever-increasingly upset Stalin, who was waiting for the Aliies to launch a second front to the war for years: "There is little doubt that much of the bombing of Germany was done to please and appease Josef Stalin. Stalin jeered at Churchill for his failure to open a Second Front and to fight Hitler’s armies in Europe, and ceaselessly pressed him to open such a front – something Churchill was politically and militarily reluctant to do. Bombing Germany, though it did not satisfy Stalin’s demands for an invasion, at least reassured him that we were doing something, and so lessened his pressure on us to open a second front.Curtis LeMay and the firebombing of Tokyo could also be implicated. LeMay himself said: "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." "March 1945. Tokyo hit by Operation Meetinghouse, the single most destructive bombing raid of this or any war. 16 square miles of central Tokyo annihilated, over 1 million made homeless, with an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths. (To put these figures into context, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima some months later killed 70,000, and the one dropped on Nagasaki killed 35,000.)" • He also rejects the retroactive claim that Britain went to war in 1939 to save the Jewish population of Europe. On the contrary, the beginning and intensification of war made it easier for Germany to begin the policy of mass murder in secret as well as closing most escape routes. He also asserts that anti-sematism was running rampant in most of Europe and North America at the time, and that the Allied nations did little to help the Jewish refugees. In a bit of controversial writing that I have read elsewhere, he says that the Allies made no efforts to stop the Holocaust. All they had to do was destroy the train tracks. He writes: "It is true that nobody could have known at the time that the National Socialist persecution of Jews would end in the extermination camps. Even Hitler had not yet conceived of them. Yet when undoubted evidence of these camps later reached the USA and Britain, these countries took no direct action to prevent the murder, to destroy railway tracks leading to the murder camps or to rescue those who remained trapped in Europe. The Bermuda Conference of April 1943 likewise rejected any plans to relax immigration quotas, either in the USA or in Palestine, or to take special measures to allow Europe’s remaining Jews to escape Hitler. Yet by then many credible reports strongly suggesting large-scale murder had reached the outside world." • Hitchens also points the finger at the end result of this global conflict: England entered the war ostensibly to protect Poland from invasion. However, after the hostilities seized, the Allies handed over most of Eastern Europe (ironically including Poland) over to Stalin, where it would remain under an Iron Curtain for the next ~50 years: "And what can we say about World War II’s final settlement, at Yalta? Viewed coldly, this cynical action, a sort of large-scale protection racket in which Stalin played the racketeer and the Western Allies his cowed victims, was a far more disgraceful episode of appeasement than anything even contemplated at Munich in 1938. This unheroic pact meant the handing over of millions of innocent and defenceless people to a cruel foreign conqueror. Some of them – such as the Cossacks – were disgracefully sent in locked railway cars into the custody of Stalin’s NKVD execution squads. They had good reason to fear for their lives, but their frantic pleas to remain in the West were ignored. No doubt the penetration of our establishment by sympathisers of the Communist empire prevented us for many years from admitting the revolting nature of the Soviet state. But perhaps our embarrassment about having had such people as valued allies also played its part in that reticence." Stopping short of a full condemnation of British policy circa WW2, he makes this disclaimer: "I am not saying that Britain should have remained neutral throughout the European War that began in 1939. I am saying that we might have done better to follow the wise example of the USA, and wait until we and our allies were militarily and diplomatically ready before entering that conflict. I am suggesting that our diplomacy, especially after March 1939, allowed others to dictate and hasten the timing of that war in ways that did not suit us or our main ally, France. ******************** Unfortunately, my biggest criticism of the book was the overall style it was presented in. It was just too dry and tedious for my finicky tastes. To roughly paraphrase Freddie Mercury: Write whatever you want, just don't make it boring... I place a high premium on how readable my books are, and sadly, this one missed the mark here... The Phoney Victory was still a thought-provoking read. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested. 3.5 stars. ...more |
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1
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Mar 21, 2024
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Mar 25, 2024
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Mar 20, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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9798988635901
| B0CJHYKY2X
| 4.20
| 182
| unknown
| Nov 10, 2023
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really liked it
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"When I returned from Vietnam in 1971, I didn’t expect I’d be embraced with open arms as a public servant deserving praise. While in-country, we Marin
"When I returned from Vietnam in 1971, I didn’t expect I’d be embraced with open arms as a public servant deserving praise. While in-country, we Marines heard plenty about the less-than-hospitable treatment returning soldiers received from segments of the American public. Part of me understood. It was a turbulent and controversial time..." Di Di Mau was an interesting first hand account of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Marine who did a 13-month tour in the jungle. The Vietnamese term "Di Di Mau" is slang for “go quickly” or as adapted in the field, “get the fuck out of here.” Author Darren Walton was born and raised and still lives in Marin County, California, which he cherishes for its extraordinary coastline, sprawling open spaces, diverse terrains, and sheer beauty. He has been a long-distance runner since high school and continues to run the hills and mountains of California on a regular basis. Darren Walton: [image] Walton writes with a straight-forward , down-to-earth style that I found to be pretty decent. And while the book is not really a page-turner, it is an interesting account, and an important historical record. The quote from the start of this review continues: "...I was coming home to Marin County, California, a predominately liberal community critical of the war. And while Marin culture was tolerant, spiritual, and forward-looking in many respects, I doubted I’d get a free pass as a homegrown guy who spent a year of his young life in the jungles and bush of Vietnam, despite my in-step political leanings. The writing in the book proper is a gritty first-hand account of the authors 13 month tour. Walton was a reconnaissance Marine stationed at Camp Reasoner, southwest of Da Nang in South Vietnam. He talks about where he was stationed, their expeditions, his fellow Marines, and his dislike for Officers. Along the way, he also talks about enormous leeches, rock apes, tigers, and other assorted perils of the jungle. Near the end of the book he drops this short bit of writing, that talks about the horrible toll the war took (on all sides): "The numbers below, by themselves, tell their own story. They tell of pervasive and wanton destruction, profound human pain, and emotional isolation. They represent a repulsive legacy that will indelibly darken humanity. They need no embellishment to still the heart and shock the conscience. ******************** Di Di Mau was a decent telling of one man's experience with a war that shaped modern history. If you enjoyed other books in this genre, then you'll likely enjoy this one, too. 3.5 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 06, 2024
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May 06, 2024
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Mar 11, 2024
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Paperback
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9798888450888
| B0C7P83DL6
| 3.92
| 65
| unknown
| Feb 06, 2024
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really liked it
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"You’ve heard about Blackwater. I venture you have a negative view of us. That’s fine. It’s a view we cultivated and nurtured. It’s well deserved..." G "You’ve heard about Blackwater. I venture you have a negative view of us. That’s fine. It’s a view we cultivated and nurtured. It’s well deserved..." Guns, Girls, and Greed was a pretty gritty read. In the end, I did enjoy hearing this account - for better or worse, although I'd wager that many of the readers of this book will be left clutching their pearls after the first page or so. More below. Author Morgan Lerette was first deployed to Iraq in 2003 to provide security for the first aerial supply route in Iraq at Tallil Air Base, which was the staging point for the Jessica Lynch rescue. He joined Blackwater in 2004 and was sent to Iraq to protect diplomats. Morgan Lerette: [image] I will say right up front that the scope of this review will only comment on the content of the book, as it was presented, to be read. The scope of this review will not include any personal commentary about the broader situation -ie; the politics of the war, the ethics of using PMCs, and the ramifications of their lack of formal rules of conduct. Lerette has an extremely raw and "unpolished" (for lack of a better term) writing style. Accordingly, this book is not for the feint of heart. It is mostly a collection of raunchy and incredibly graphic stories depicting his day-to-day life as a Private Military Contractor (PMC) for the company Blackwater, circa 2004-2005; after the fall of Saddam Hussein in the American-led invasion of Iraq. The book is written in the very low-brow, knuckle-dragging style you might expect from a gun for hire in a foreign land. The dialogue unfolds like you were a troop on active combat deployment alongside him. The author makes countless crude and lewd jokes, references, and drops about enough anti-PC rhetoric to give the average purple-haired SJW a heart attack. The writing here is full of raunchy talk about sex, masturbation, shit, piss, getting drunk, and being reckless and wild. The author refers to the people in Iraq as "dirt worshippers." It would be an understatement to say that he had a high level of disdain for the people of Iraq. During the war in Iraq, the US gov't decided to use the private sector heavily to fill roles traditionally assigned to the military. All kinds of jobs that the military used to provide became outsourced. This ranged from cooking and cleaning, to administration, to convoy security for the passage of supplies, and the transport of VIP diplomats around various sites. The motivations for this can only be speculative, but PMC casualties are not usually included in stats of American war dead, and they have no formal accountability, unlike their public sector counterparts. They were typically not prosecuted for any wrong-doings, and were free to conduct themselves almost as they pleased over there. Chaos predictably ensued... Lerette writes this about the grim nature of the high-paying job he signed up for: "Tomorrow I may be blown up by a rocket. Maybe an IED punctures the armor of my Hummer and rips my kidney apart. If I’m not wearing a colostomy bag at the end of the day, it’s a win..." And says this about the lack of judicial oversight of their missions: "In a military deployment, the first thing you’re told are the Rules of Engagement (ROE). Not here. We’re told through the grapevine we don’t have any because our mission is transporting diplomats by any means necessary. Although the book was interesting, I was not really a fan of the style it was presented in. Ya, I get that a book about military life as a PMC might be a little rough around the edges. However, the writing here far surpassed anything that could be considered "a little rough around the edges" very early on. And although it wasn't that the tone and language offended me, it did become tiresome as it went on... The author goes out of his way to be as offensive and vulgar as he can here, and it started to annoy me. Just tell the fucking story, and save the juvenile pee pee poo poo jokes. I'm sure there was enough source material here without having to fill the pages with endless stories about guys jerking off. No one wants to hear that shit. Not one to try and buck the stereotype of PMCs being loud-mouthed, obnoxious blowhards, the author seems to embrace it here, and takes every opportunity to be as offensive as he can be. I get why he did this, though. He wanted to be as authentic as possible to how that period of his life was. And back then, that's who he was. Personally, I would have preferred a little less shock value, and more story-telling. God knows, he's got some great source material to work with... To his credit, he does dial it back in the afterword, and gets serious. He drops this quote: "Contractors are stuck in a precarious position. They carry scars of war, but aren’t afforded public support given to military veterans. Yet contractors became critical in the Iraq war because no one planned for a protracted conflict. He also comments on the ethics of the US using PMCs in a war zone: "Do private contractors belong in combat? I doubt anyone entertained the idea until the US handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, because we didn’t want to be seen as occupiers. The toppling of one government with replacement by a hastily-created, propped-up interim government created a gray area where no one understood where wars end and diplomacy began. To fill the leadership gap, we threw money at the problem with private security companies happy to profit. Blackwater wasn’t the only PMC—though it got much of the blame... ...My position is PMCs should never be in a place where US troops are not. If the government doesn’t have the balls to commit troops, they shouldn’t’ wage war by PMC proxy." ******************** Despite my above criticisms, Guns, Girls, and Greed was still an interesting look into the daily life of a Blackwater PMC in Iraq, circa 2004. 4 stars. ...more |
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1
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Mar 08, 2024
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Mar 12, 2024
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Mar 08, 2024
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Hardcover
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014013672X
| 9780140136722
| 014013672X
| 3.99
| 1,689
| 1961
| Sep 04, 2001
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did not like it
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"This is a story without heroes; and perhaps even without villains..." Unfortunately, The Origins of the Second World War just did not meet my expectat "This is a story without heroes; and perhaps even without villains..." Unfortunately, The Origins of the Second World War just did not meet my expectations. I found the writing to be too tedious and long-winded, and noticed my attention wandering numerous times. I eventually became frustrated and decided to put it down ~ halfway through - something I rarely do. In an effort to combat my perfectionism, and desire to finish things I have started no matter what, I have decided to put down more books that I don't like and move on to greener pastures... Author Alan John Percivale Taylor was a British historian who specialized in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well-known to millions through his television lectures. A.J.P. Taylor: [image] Taylor drops the quote at the start of this review early on in the book, and further clarifies: "I am concerned to understand what happened, not to vindicate or to condemn. I was an anti-appeaser from the day that Hitler came to power; and no doubt should be again under similar circumstances. But the point has no relevance in the writing of history. In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent. The purpose of political activity is to provide peace and prosperity; and in this every statesman failed, for whatever reason..." Unfortunately, as mentioned briefly above, I was just not a fan of the overall presentation of this one. In a way, it is somewhat sadly stereotypical British prose: dry, long-winded factual recitals that thoroughly bore the reader to tears and leave their attention wandering. Now, fault me if you will for my finicky attention, but I really don't like trudging through books written this way. I like my books lively and interesting. My reviews are always heavily weighted towards these criteria. You can compile the broadest data possible on a subject, but if you can't effectively communicate it to your readers, then it is all for naught, IMHO.... ******************** I recently decided to not waste my time finishing books I don't like anymore. And this is a very long book. The audio I have clocked in at just shy of 12 hours. I was not prepared to spend any more time on it. 1 star, and off to the return bin. ...more |
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1
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Mar 06, 2024
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Mar 07, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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Paperback
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0593655184
| 9780593655184
| 0593655184
| 4.44
| 586
| Jan 09, 2024
| Jan 09, 2024
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it was amazing
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"On the sunny afternoon of February 23, 2022, Kyiv was still a city at peace... " Our Enemies Will Vanish was an excellent albeit sobering look into th "On the sunny afternoon of February 23, 2022, Kyiv was still a city at peace... " Our Enemies Will Vanish was an excellent albeit sobering look into the horrors of the modern-day war in Ukraine. The book gets its namesake - Our Enemies Will Vanish - from the lyrics of the Ukrainian National Anthem, which continues: "...Like dew at sunrise, And we, oh brothers, will become the masters once again, Of our own land..." To avoid the absolute shitstorm around the politics of this war, and for the scope of this review, I will avoid any personal commentary about the war, and foreign involvement or funding of it; in general. Author Yaroslav Trofimov is a Ukrainian-born Italian writer and journalist who serves as chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. Yaroslav Trofimov: [image] Trofimov writes the book from a first-hand perspective, as he was in Ukraine when the war broke out. He has an excellent writing style, and the book is very readable. He mentions that leading up to the war, most Ukrainians went about their daily lives; seemingly oblivious to the impending storm. The author also manages to introduce the reader to all the relevant players in a very effective fashion. He did a great overall job of telling the big picture here. Along the way, he intersplices ground-level stories from his time spent in the war zone. The end of the book includes a dozen or so photos from the author, which really helped bring some context to the story told here. I'm including a few of them here, for anyone else interested. The book gets off on a good foot, with a lively intro that provided a lot of historical context. I also felt that it had great formatting. The narrative proceeds in a chronological from the start of hostilities. The writing is also broken up into well-defined chapters, and the book has an excellent flow. I am admittedly super-picky about how engaging the book I read are, and this one really nailed it here. Bonus points added for this super-effective communication. The book opens with the quote at the start of this review, which continues below: "...As I walked up the steep hill into the Pechersk government quarter, municipal workers put up billboards advertising upcoming concerts. Cherry-liquor bars, a favorite of young Kyivites, were already full, with folk-rock music blasting. Parents took photos of their children enjoying pony rides around the park. In the domed parliament building, Ukrainian lawmakers gathered to debate emergency wartime legislation. Although the book was a real page-turner, make no mistake; the subject matter is absolutely brutal and terrible. War is hell. Many of the stories told in these pages lie well beyond the imagination of the average pampered Western reader, most of whom have likely never even missed a meal in their lives. Accordingly, I would bet that many (even most?) people who read this book will be downright horrified at some of the first-hand stories recounted here. Some of them were completely gut-wrenching, TBH. [image] Tensions between Ukraine and Russia have deep roots. Stalin famously starved the country in 1932-33 in one of the worst man-made famines in history, resulting in some ~5 million deaths. The history between these two nations is incredibly complex. At the heart of the war is Putin's view of Ukraine as part of Russia. Trofimov writes: "...The same month, Putin published a lengthy treatise called “On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians,” in which he argued that Ukraine is an artificial country that could only be sovereign in partnership with Russia. He had the article read out to every member of the Russian Armed Forces. Weeks later, Putin started complaining about the imaginary “genocide” of Russian-speakers in Donbas and ordered troops to start deploying along Ukraine’s borders. [image] Trofimov mentions that Putin originally thought this war would be over in a matter of days, with the Ukrainians capitulating to his demands: "Putin’s war plan to capture Kyiv in a speedy blitzkrieg was premised on an obsessive idea, fueled by reading the wrong history books during months of self-isolation during the COVID pandemic. He believed that Ukraine was an artificial state, and that its people—and soldiers—wouldn’t fight when faced with the overwhelming strength of the Russian military. Documents later found on dead and captured Russian officers showed that Moscow expected the whole war to wrap up in ten days, with a new collaborations regime installed in Kyiv and most of the country pacified under Russian control." [image] The war has now been going on for a little over 2 years as I write this review; with no end in sight. If anything, it is escalating. The Ukrainians are losing ground, while the Russians are becoming more savvy to their opponent's tactics and advancing. It has become a hellish war of attrition. As it drags on, the meat grinder eats more and more. How much longer it will go on, how many more lives it will consume, and how many more billions of dollars of foreign aid will be sent to continue it remains to be seen, and only time will tell... [image] ******************** Our Enemies Will Vanish is a very comprehensive look at the 2022- ongoing (circa Feb 2024) invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The author did a great job putting this one together. I'm not aware of any other books that cover the war in such detail. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested. 5 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 27, 2024
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Feb 28, 2024
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Feb 20, 2024
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Hardcover
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1787389995
| 9781787389991
| B0BLZ9F96M
| 4.21
| 137
| unknown
| Mar 30, 2023
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liked it
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"Misunderstandings abound about what war is, and what it isn’t. This is true not only for civilians and the public, but also for generals and politica
"Misunderstandings abound about what war is, and what it isn’t. This is true not only for civilians and the public, but also for generals and political leaders—those whose responsibility it is to think about wars, and particularly how to win them. A brief glance at the record of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows that far more wars are lost, or stumble towards an inconclusive draw, than are won. What is going wrong?" How to Fight a War was a decent short presentation. I wasn't sure what to expect from the book, given its title. Although I thought the title could imply some ambiguity, the book is quite literally a guide on how to prosecute a war as the leader of a country. Author Mike Martin is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the department of War Studies at King's College London where he speaks and writes on conflict. Mike Martin: [image] Martin writes with a fairly decent style here that's matter-of-fact and no frills. He gets the writing off on a good foot, with a very well-written intro. He drops the quote at the start of the review there, and it continues below: "...Why do so many leaders make catastrophic mistakes and lead their militaries and countries to defeat? As touched on above, the book is a guide on making warfare. The author expands: "How to Fight a War was written as a reference guide for the Commander in Chief of a nation’s military. In an age of inevitable and more frequent wars, our leaders must have the strategic, operational, and tactical skills to prosecute wars successfully. The ability to do so means that we may arrive at durable strategic answers to the pressing geopolitical questions of the day quicker and more efficiently than might otherwise be the case. This makes me sound like a warmonger, which I most certainly am not, having experienced war first-hand." Mentioning the famous quote by Carl von Clausewitz, Martin says: "The first key lesson is that war is political. In a famous encapsulation, war is simply politics by other means. Very often you will see war on the one hand, and politics and diplomacy on the other, discussed as if they were discrete spheres of activity, with only the narrowest of connections between them. The formatting of the book was also decently done. It is broken into 3 parts, and those parts; into 9 chapters. They are: Part 1 INTANGIBLE FUNDAMENTALS 1. Strategy and Intelligence 2. Logistics 3. Morale 4. Training Part 2 TANGIBLE CAPABILITIES 5. Land 6. Sea, Air and Space 7. Information and Cyber 8. Nuclear, Chemical Biological Weapons Part 3 HOW TO FIGHT A WAR 9. The Art of Using Lethal Violence Conclusion: How to End a War Epilogue: The Future of War ******************** How to Fight a War was an interesting look into the topic, although I don't imagine many readers of this book will be in a position to wage their own personal wars at any time in the future, so I'm a bit puzzled that a book like this was release to the public... 2.5 stars. ...more |
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1
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Jan 30, 2024
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Jan 31, 2024
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Jan 30, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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1668006529
| 9781668006528
| 1668006529
| 4.12
| 1,911
| Jan 23, 2024
| Jan 23, 2024
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it was amazing
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"If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same?" It's not often (for me anyhow) that I re "If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same?" It's not often (for me anyhow) that I read a book that really captures my attention, and has me thinking about it for a while after putting it down. Without wanting to sound braggadocious, I do read a fair bit, and sometimes the tedium and lackluster nature of certain books gets under my skin. This leaves me with book burnout from time to time, where I just don't feel like reading at all. Rarely do I have the pleasure of reading a book that can really get my gears turning, and present me with concepts that I haven't extensively explored on my own, or read about elsewhere. Fluke is that book. It was an incredibly fascinating read. I wasn't sure what to expect from the book going in, as I had not heard of the author before. I enjoy reading about science and social psychology, so I picked this one up when I saw it. I am happy to report that the book far exceeded any expectations I had of it going in. There's some super-interesting writing here. More below. Author Brian Paul Klaas is an American political scientist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is an associate professor in global politics at University College London. Brian Klaas: [image] The author writes with a lively and engaging style that shouldn't have trouble holding even the finicky reader's attention. The audiobook version I have is also read by the author, which is a nice touch I always appreciate. The book's formatting was also well done, and it has great flow. There are many, many passages of interesting and quotable writing in these pages. I am including some of the more choice quotes here, both for my own future reference, and for anyone else interested. Klass gets the writing off on a good foot, with a very well-written intro. He talks about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The city of Kyoto was previously chosen, but Secretary of War H.L Stimson liked Kyoto, having visited there years earlier. That random vacation saved the people of Kyoto, while dooming the ones living in Hiroshima. He writes: "...Clouds spared one city, while one couple’s vacation decades earlier saved another. The story of Kyoto and Kokura poses an immediate challenge to our convenient, simplified assumptions of cause and effect following a rational, ordered progression. We like to imagine that we can understand, predict, and control the world. We want a rational explanation to make sense of the chaos of life. The world isn’t supposed to be a place where hundreds of thousands of people live or die from decades-old nostalgia for one couple’s pleasant vacation, or because clouds flitted across the sky at just the right moment." The meat and potatoes of the book is ultimately about how chaos theory applies to all of our lives. Don't worry, the author never gets too technical or esoteric. Anyone with even a small degree of scientific literacy should be able to follow the plot here. Points added, because all too often, science books fail miserably at doing just that... I think we have all pondered at some point, about certain random, chance happenstances that have changed our lives (and the lives of those close to us) forever afterward. The author provides many super interesting examples of this throughout. A foiled revolutionary coup from failing to grasp a pant leg. The gift of a tie saving someone from dying on 9/11. The assassination of an Archduke starting a World War. Why did everything turn out the way it did? It's a question that has forever intrigued, well; just about everyone; from religious scholars, to scientists, to philosophers, to you and I. Upon close examination or reflection, many of the world's pivotal turning points occurred due to the presence of some tiny essential element that has drastically weighed down the scale of causality. The book covers many examples from history, and Klass provides a shocking example from his own family history. The scope of the writing here is quite broad, and I found the subject matter he presents here to be incredibly fascinating. The author drops this excellent quote, which delves a bit more into the thesis of the book: "...Whenever we revisit the dog-eared pages within our personal histories, we’ve all experienced Kokura’s luck (though, hopefully, on a less consequential scale). Klass breaks down the traditional line of thinking around causality into two distinct camps: "Convergence is the “everything happens for a reason” school of evolutionary biology. Contingency is the “stuff happens” theory." He says that the common theory of causality, that is; the convergence theory, is not correct: "I am a (disillusioned) social scientist. Disillusioned because I’ve long had a nagging feeling that the world doesn’t work the way that we pretend it does. The more I grappled with the complexity of reality, the more I suspected that we have all been living a comforting lie, from the stories we tell about ourselves to the myths we use to explain history and social change. I began to wonder whether the history of humanity is just an endless, but futile, struggle to impose order, certainty, and rationality onto a world defined by disorder, chance, and chaos. Klass outlines the aim of the book here: We will tackle six big questions: He drops this quote, asking who the most influential person of the 21st century was: "Who has been the most influential person of the twenty-firstbcentury so far? Some might say Xi Jinping, or Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump. I disagree. My nomination would be an unnamed person. The COVID- 19 pandemic likely started with a single person, in a single event, in Wuhan, China.VIII The lives of literally billions of people were drastically changed, for years, by one virus infecting one individual. Never in human history have the daily lives of so many people been so drastically affected, for so long, by one small, contingent event. Welcome to the swarm..." In this quote, he talks about misconceptions around the super-successful and wealthy: (view spoiler)[ "...Consider the widespread—but mistaken—belief that the global superrich must have earned their wealth due to their genius. But look a little closer, and that myth soon crumbles. Most human traits, including intelligence, skills, and hard work, are normally distributed, following a Gaussian, or bell-shaped, curve, a bit like an inverted U. Wealth, by contrast, isn’t normally distributed. It follows a power law or a Pareto distribution, with a tiny group of people controlling huge swaths of global wealth. While you’ll never find an adult who is five times shorter or five times taller than you, today’s richest person is more than a million times richer than the average American. So, someone who is marginally smarter than you could become a million times richer, rather than marginally richer. This is the world of what is sometimes called fat tails, which Nassim Nicholas Taleb brings to life in The Black Swan. But what if such extreme wealth is due not to talent, but to random factors that we’d usually call luck? In one recent study, physicists teamed up with an economist and used computer modeling to develop a fake society with a realistic distribution of talent among competing individuals. In their fake world, talent mattered, but so did luck. Then, when they ran the simulation over and over, they found that the richest person was never the most talented. Instead, it was almost always someone close to average. Why was that? In a world of 8 billion people, most lie in the middle level of talent, the largest area of the Bell curve. Now, think of luck like a lightning bolt: it strikes haphazardly. Due to their sheer numbers, luck is overwhelmingly likely to strike someone from the vast billions of middle-level talent, not the tiny sliver of übertalented geniuses. As the researchers sum it up, “Our results highlight the risks of the paradigm that we call ‘naive meritocracy’… because it underestimates the role of randomness among the determinants of success.” Some billionaires may be talented. All have been lucky. And luck is, by definition, the product of chance. Taleb, Duncan Watts, and Robert Frank have each shown how we tend to infer reasons backward when success is produced, with what they call the “narrative fallacy” or, more commonly, “hindsight bias.” The notion that billionaires must be talented is one such fallacy. Yet, if luck plays such an important role in success, that should affect how we think about fortune and misfortune. If you believe you live in a meritocratic world, in which success is doled out to the most talented individuals rather than partly by accident or chance, then it makes sense to claim full credit for each success and blame yourself for every defeat. But if you accept that apparent randomness and accidents drive significant swaths of change in our lives—and they do—then that will change your outlook on life. When you lose at roulette, you don’t kick yourself for being a useless failure. Instead, you accept the arbitrary outcome and move on. Recognizing that often meaningless, accidental outcomes emerge from an intertwined, complex world is empowering and liberating. We should all take a bit less credit for our triumphs and a bit less blame for our failures." (hide spoiler)] Some more of what is covered here includes: • Laplace’s demon • Evolution; adaptive and maladaptive change • Schemas; heuristics • Swarms; locusts • Complicated vs. Complex systems • Emergence • Cascades • The brain as a prediction machine; probability theory • Quantum theory; entanglement • Mankind's inborn narrative shaping of information; narrative bias. • Path dependency • The Great Man theory • Darwin; evolution. • How timing, down to the split second, produces world-changing impacts • "The Garden of Forking Paths" • Why rocket science is easier than understanding human society • Are our lives scripted from the start, or do we have the freedom to choose our futures? • Free Will. "You can decide to drink water, but do you choose to want to drink water in the first place? Do you sit down, reflect, and then say, “I choose to feel thirsty!”? Your body decides for you. When you then decide to drink water, you’re responding to your body, and the complex interactions within it. But what’s true of thirst is true of everything else." • The upside of uncertainty in our chaotic, intertwined world ******************** Fluke was a super thought-provoking read. I read a decent number of books, and I have not read one that covers all the material that the author presents here. He did a great job with this book. I liked it so much, and it was so interesting, that I will revisit it soon for a reread. I would highly recommend it. 5 stars, and a spot on my favorites shelf. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1459612574
| 9781459612570
| 1459612574
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it was amazing
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"There are Americans alive at this moment who may experience the national equivalent of “a perfect storm,” either domestically or internationally, or
"There are Americans alive at this moment who may experience the national equivalent of “a perfect storm,” either domestically or internationally, or both. To have what is called “a perfect storm,” many dangerous forces must come together at the same time. Those dangerous forces have been building in the United States of America for at least half a century..." Dismantling America was another excellent book from Thomas Sowell. IMHO, he is one of -if not the sharpest contrarian thinker in the public sphere. He drops the above quote in the book's intro, setting the pace for the writing to follow. Author Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he served as the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Sowell writes from a libertarian–conservative perspective. Sowell has written more than thirty books, and his work has been widely anthologized. He is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics and political science. Thomas Sowell: [image] Dismantling America is my 7th book from Sowell. He is one of my favorite authors/pundits/social commentators. Sowell's writing here was exceptional, as usual. His analysis is super-nuanced and insightful, in line with other titles of his that I've read. Sowell writes with a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact style here, as he does in his other books. As the title implies, this book is a compilation of short essays on the current state of American politics and economics. The quote from the start of this review continues below: "...By 2010, increasing numbers of Americans were beginning to express fears that they were losing the country they grew up in, and that they had hoped—or perhaps too complacently assumed—that they would be passing on to their children and grandchildren. Sowell lays out the aim of the book in this quote: "When we look back at the decades-long erosions and distortions of our educational system, our legal system and our political system, we must acknowledge the chilling fact that the kinds of dangers we face now were always inherent in these degenerating trends. The essays that follow deal with these trends individually, but it may help to keep in mind that they were all going on at the same time, and that these are the dangers whose coming together can create a perfect storm." I'll include one of the better short essays here, both for my own future reference, as well as for anyone else interested. I'll cover it with a spoiler, for the sake of the brevity of this review: (view spoiler)["Taking America for Granted: When my research assistant and her husband took my wife and me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I was impressed when I heard her for the first time speak Chinese as she ordered food. My assistant was born and raised in China, so I should have been impressed that she spoke English. But I took that for granted because she always spoke English to me. We all have a tendency to take for granted what we are used to, and to regard it as somehow natural or automatic—and to be unduly impressed by what is unusual. Too many Americans take the United States for granted and are too easily impressed by what people in other countries say and do. That is especially true of the intelligentsia, and dangerously true of those Supreme Court justices who cite foreign laws when making decisions about American law. There is nothing automatic about the way of life achieved in this country. It is very unusual among the nations of the world today and rarer than fourleaf clovers in the long view of history. It didn’t just happen. People made it happen—and they and those who came after them paid a price in blood and treasure to create and preserve this nation that we now take for granted. More important, this country’s survival is not automatic. What we do will determine that. Too many Americans today are not only unconcerned about what it will take to preserve this country but are busy dismantling the things that make it America. Our national motto, “E Pluribus Unum”—from many, one—has been turned upside down as educators, activists and politicians strive to fragment the American population into separate racial, social, linguistic and ideological blocs. Some are gung ho for generic “change”—without the slightest concern that the change might be for the worse, even in a world where most nations that are different are also worse off. Most are worse off economically and many are much worse off in terms of despotism, corruption, and bloodshed. History is full of nations and even whole civilizations that have fallen from the heights to destitution and disintegration. The Roman Empire is a classic example, but the great ancient Chinese dynasties, the Ottoman Empire and many others have met the same fate. These were not just political “changes.” They were historic catastrophes from which whole peoples did not recover for centuries. It has been estimated that it was a thousand years before Europeans again achieved as high a standard of living as they had in Roman times. The Dark Ages were called dark for a reason. Today, whole classes of people get their jollies and puff themselves up by denigrating and denouncing American society. Such people are a major influence in our media, in our educational system and among all sorts of vocal activists. Nothing illustrates their power to distort reality like the way they seize upon slavery to denounce American society. Slavery was cancerous but does anybody regard cancer in the United States as an evil peculiar to American society? It is a worldwide affliction and so was slavery. Both the enslavers and the enslaved have included people on every inhabited continent—people of every race, color, and creed. More Europeans were enslaved and taken to North Africa by Barbary Coast pirates alone than there were African slaves taken to the United States and to the colonies from which it was formed. Yet throughout our educational system, our media, and in politics, slavery is incessantly presented as if it were something peculiar to black and white Americans. What was peculiar about the United States was that it was the first country in which slavery was under attack from the moment the country was created. What was peculiar about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to destroy slavery, not only within its own countries but in other countries around the world as well. Reality has been stood on its head so that a relative handful of people can feel puffed up or gain notoriety and power. Whatever they gain, the rest of us have everything to lose." (hide spoiler)] ******************** Dismantling America was another great read from a super-sharp mind. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone reading this review. 5 stars, and a spot on my favorites shelf. ...more |
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1641773200
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| B0B3TV7WQF
| 4.66
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| Apr 11, 2023
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it was amazing
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"Multiethnic societies have a range of possible outcomes, with extreme violence being a tragically frequent one...." Out of the Melting Pot, Into the F "Multiethnic societies have a range of possible outcomes, with extreme violence being a tragically frequent one...." Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire was an eye-opening look into social psychology, and the disastrous outcomes that man's inborn tribalism can yield; if left unchecked. I came across the book after I saw the author's recent appearance on Michael Shermer's SKEPTIC podcast, which I also enjoyed. The author drops the quote above in the book's intro. The book should also serve as a warning to modern WEIRD countries, that have supplanted meritocracy with tribal identity politics and racial grievancing writ large. The author discusses many contemporary and historical examples of how this type of societal organization can have absolutely horrific outcomes. More below. Author Jens Kurt Heycke was educated in Economics and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics, and Princeton University. He worked as an early employee or executive in several successful technology startups. Since retiring from tech, he has worked as a writer and researcher, conducting field research in more than forty countries, from Bosnia to Botswana. Jens Kurt Heycke: [image] Heycke writes with a decently engaging style, for the most part, and the formatting of this one was also well done. It is broken into well-defined chapters, and each chapter has a short summary blurb at the end. I like books formatted in this fashion, as I feel it helps the reader effectively retain the information presented. The quote from the start of this review continues below, outlining the gravity of the matter: "...My Bosniak driver believed the ethnic conflict in his country was horrific and exceptional, but he was only partly right: it was horrific—but utterly unexceptional. Collectively, ethnic conflicts around the world, from Bosnia to Sri Lanka, have killed more than ten million people since World War II. The book begins by providing definitions of, and delineating the concepts of multiculturalism as a doctrine vs "the melting pot." In essence, multiculturalism is defined as "the doctrine that public policies and institutions should recognize and maintain the ethnic boundaries and distinct cultural practices of multiple ethnic groups within a country; it supports group preferences to achieve diversity or to address past injustices or current disparities." The melting pot is "a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture." As touched on briefly above, the meat and potatoes of the book is mostly historical examinations of countries that have attempted multicultural policies; with disastrous outcomes. What can sound like a good idea at the time can quickly turn into civil warfare and genocide. In attempts to right historical wrongs, or redress past grievances, identity politicking has elevated one group over another, and/or has penalized and stigmatized other groups. Individualism becomes non-existent, and instead, people become identified by their tribal markers alone. Being that people are inherently deeply tribal and fractional by their very nature already, societies that go down this path are risking calamitous outcomes with their promoting of division over unity. To make this case, the author examines many countries in history that have done just this. Tragically, many of us who live in the West think that this type of social unrest, conflict, and possible warfare is a "them" problem, and that these kinds of things could never happen over here. Heycke writes: "...Thus, as the United States has veered from melting pot to multiculturalism, there has been little serious discussion about how similar course changes have worked out in other countries. The reality is that both the melting pot and multiculturalist models have been tried many times in history. In some cases, societies have shifted from one to the other. It’s worth examining how it has worked out for them; perhaps we can distill some useful lessons from their experiences. That is what this book endeavors to accomplish." There has been a full-court press recently in Western countries to do away with judging an individual based on their qualities and merits. Instead, society is regressing back to primitive tribal markers and collectivism, and collective punishment. The dreams of early Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr have been hijacked by radical racial grifters, grievance collectors, neo-Marxists, Critical Theorists, and other assorted malcontents. Indeed (and sadly), judging someone by their group identity is the lens through which these types view the world... In extreme cases, genocide has resulted from this tribalism. In the 20th century alone, there have been dozens of organized tribal killings/genocides. Killings of the Greeks in Turkey, Armenians by the Turks, the Hutus killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in Rwanda, and the Sri Lankans killing thousands of Tamils, are just a few examples (out of many more) of how bad things can get. Some of the historical case studies and concepts covered here are: • Multiculturalism vs "the melting pot" • Factionalism Is an Innate Human Tendency • Rome's melting pot • The fall of the Aztecs • Early Islam • The Balkans • Rwanda: Hutus and Tutsis • Sri Lanka • The positive example of Botswana • Ethnic fractionalization (EF) and per capita GDP, education, corruption, [image] The book is heavily researched; with many citations and footnotes in the book's appendix. The author closes the writing in the book proper with this pressing quote, which I'm including here because it is apropos to the discussion, and this review: "After considering the terrible consequences of ethnic divisions in countries like Bosnia and Sri Lanka, it is disheartening to see Americans advance the same types of policies and rhetoric that promoted and toxified those divisions. America has a regrettable past of racial and ethnic discrimination, but if the examples in this book teach anything, it is that the solution to past segregation is not even more segregation. The answer to past racial discrimination is not even more racial discrimination. Two African countries demonstrate this best. ******************** Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire is a timely and extremely important book. Unfortunately, I doubt that it will gather the traction it needs to make a cultural impact. It should be read by everyone before they decide to form a political opinion on how to arrange society. 5 stars. ...more |
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1789294622
| 9781789294620
| B0BS48X597
| 3.64
| 794
| unknown
| Feb 16, 2023
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it was ok
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"If you’re anything like me, then when you were growing up, your parents taught you not to lie. This is a fairly universal lesson – lying is bad... " D "If you’re anything like me, then when you were growing up, your parents taught you not to lie. This is a fairly universal lesson – lying is bad... " Despite being excited to start A Short History of the World in 50 Lies, the finished product managed to thoroughly bore me to tears... Author Natasha Tidd is a historian specializing in 'untold history', mental health and gender. Creator of the pop-history website F Yeah History, Natasha is passionate about highlighting history's under-sung stories and making history accessible to everyone. She works as a history writer, researcher and consultant. Natasha Tidd: [image] The book opens with a decent intro, and I had high hopes for what was to come. I am admittedly very particular about how engaging and lively the books I read are. Fault me if you will, but there's almost nothing worse in a book than an author who can't hold the reader's attention. Write what you will, but - for the love of God, please don't bore me... The author drops the quote above in the book's intro, and it continues below: "...That’s not to say we don’t lie; indeed, multiple studies have found that lying is an inherent part of human nature, and who hasn’t told a white lie to protect feelings or get out of a spot of trouble? Still, we continue to tell our children not to lie, and for good reason. Even when we put aside morals and ethics and just focus on the practicality of the thing, lying is more often than not a damaging practice that tends to spiral out of control, creating chasms and domino effects that are impossible to reverse. If this is the effect that lying can have on our individual lives, then you can imagine the immense impact it’s had on history." She also lays out the scope of the book in this bit of writing: "Over the next fifty chapters, we’ll traverse some of the darkest events in human history. At times it can feel inescapably bleak, but in that mire of lies there is always light. Because, when we peel back the lies of history, we can gain a better understanding of not only history itself but the legacies of the past we’re left with today. This isn’t so much a book about uncovering the truth, as it is one of untangling the web of deceit that hid it and looking at why that web was there in the first place." In my experience (broadly speaking); books on history break into two distinct camps. Some are well-written, telling the reader an interesting story while placing a premium on continuity, cohesion, and flow. Unfortunately, these books tend to be few and far between. More often than not, the author rattles off places, dates, and names in a monotonous fashion, managing to bore tf out of the reader as they go. They rattle off an endless torrent of tedium and minutia; effectively losing the forest for the trees.... Unfortunately, this book was a good example of the latter, and not the former. The writing started OK in the intro, and then dove into the weeds right after, where it remained for the duration. ******************** I didn't like this one. My reviews are always very heavily rated on how engaging I found the book. Sadly, this one really missed the mark towards that end for me. If it were any longer, I would have put it down... I would not recommend it. 1.5 stars. ...more |
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Dec 28, 2023
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B0C23HDD3S
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| 2,377
| Apr 06, 2023
| Apr 10, 2023
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it was ok
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"Consensual reunification does not mean that life in East Germany deserves to be forgotten or filed away as irrelevant history..." Beyond the Wall was "Consensual reunification does not mean that life in East Germany deserves to be forgotten or filed away as irrelevant history..." Beyond the Wall was a fairly well-put-together book, but not without a pretty sizeable and glaring flaw. More below. As the title implies, it covers the Communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) from the end of WW2, up until its demise in 1990. I have read a few other books on post-WW2 East Germany, and this one dovetailed into that material. Author Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and writer. Katja Hoyer: [image] Hoyer writes with a decent style that shouldn't have trouble holding the finicky reader's attention. Historical books are always hit or miss in terms of how readable they are, and my reviews are always heavily weighted towards how engaging the author's prose is. This was a very long book, however; the PDF I have is 699 pages. The audio: 16 hr, 20 mins. I found the writing to be decently engaging at the start of the book, but then gradually losing energy as the book progressed. The formatting of the book was also fairly well done. The book covers many individual case studies from history while tying them into the broader historical context. I like books formatted in this fashion and felt that it worked here, too. As anyone who's read a bit about WW2 knows, April 25, 1945, is the day Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe Rive, as the Allies pushed eastwards, and Stalin's Red Army pushed to the West. Germany would eventually become separated under two very different political and economic systems. It remained this way until the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I've always found it fascinating that people who were avowed Fascist Nazis could effectively turn a full 180 on a dime, and become Communists virtually overnight. That people who fought and risked their lives fighting the existential threat to them that Communism was could change course and embrace this ideology is an interesting case study in social psychology. Ideology is a hell of a drug... The preface talks about Angela Merkl's East German upbringing and life. She drops the quote at the start of this review in the books' preface, and it continues below: "...The ups and downs of the GDR as a political, social and economic experiment have left a mark on its former citizens, who have brought these experiences with them – and not as mere ‘ballast’. Millions of Germans alive today neither can nor want to deny that they once lived in the GDR. While the world that had shaped them fell with the Berlin Wall in 1989, their lives, experiences and memories were not razed with it. Yet the way much of the Western world saw it, the GDR had well and truly lost the Cold War on German soil, morally invalidating everything in it. When the German Democratic Republic vanished literally overnight on 3 October 1990, it lost the right to write its own history. Instead it had become history. And history is written by victors – East Germany’s is no exception." She lays out the aim of the book in this bit of writing: "This book traces the roots of the German Democratic Republic beyond its foundation to provide context for the circumstances out of which the country was born in 1949. I outline the developments that followed through all four decades rather than treating them as a static whole. In the 1950s, the infant republic was almost entirely preoccupied with stabilizing its foundations politically and economically. It did so both with and over the heads of its citizens, resulting in a decade that was marked by a can-do spirit as well as violent outbreaks of discontent." As the book gets going, she writes of the tragic fate of thousands of Russian WW2 POWs that the Germans sent back to Russia after the war: "...In a bitter twist of fate, those who had been incarcerated by the Nazis in early concentration camps in 1933 made it to the top of the list of suspicious individuals. In the eyes of Stalin and his henchmen, anyone who had escaped Hitler’s clutches must have given the Nazis something in return. Perhaps a promise to infiltrate the Soviet Union, get a job in a munitions factory and begin to organize systematic sabotage to prepare a German invasion." In the previous books I have read about the GDR, life sounded unbearably miserable. We've all heard of the Stasi, The Wall, and the thousands of people who tried to defect. She drops this bit of writing, speaking to this: "Now, it is time to dare to take a new look at the GDR. Those who do so with open eyes will find a world full of colour, not one of black and white. There was oppression and brutality, yes, and there was opportunity and belonging. Most East German communities experienced all of this. There were tears and anger, and there was laughter and pride. The citizens of the GDR lived, loved, worked and grew old. They went on holidays, made jokes about their politicians and raised their children. Their story deserves a place in the German narrative. It’s time to take a serious look at the other Germany, beyond the Wall..." ...Which brings me around to my biggest criticism of this book: That a 700-page book about life in East Germany somehow managed to not cover the absolutely dystopian totalitarian juggernaut that The Ministry for State Security (aka The Stasi) became. An all-encompassing agency that placed a jackboot on the collective throats of all East Germans, the Stasi were legendary for the depth that their espionage, surveillance, and social control repressed their citizenship with. Why was this not written about here?? Over 1,300 people were killed by them. Some 250,000 people were held and interrogated on political grounds. Everyone in East German society lived under complete state surveillance, in the largest information-gathering machine assembled up until that time. I would highly recommend Anna Funder's 2003 book Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, for a further look into the wholesale horror that unfolded under the Communist regime. For a summary, check out my review here, which contains many statistical quotes from the book. Although the Stasi are briefly mentioned here and there throughout the book, the full story of how oppressive they became was not covered here. This would be like writing a 700-page book about the Third Reich, and not covering the Holocaust. A very questionable and glaring omission... There is lots of other information presented here, and the writing is quite in-depth, minus a much-needed chapter on the Stasi. Some more of the material covered includes: • German communists exiled to Russia. • Mass rape by the advancing Red Army in WW2. • The Berlin Wall; attempts to cross to West Berlin. • Toy production and car ownership in GDR. • Berlin's TV tower, The Fernsehturm Berlin. • The GDR's Olympic athletes; AAS usage. • Levis jeans in GDR. • Politics in the GDR. • Food shortages; coffee shortages. • GDR's relationships with other Communist regimes: Cuba, Algeria, Mozambique, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, and North Korea. • The heavily fortified East/West border. • Purchasing foreign goods with Western German money. • The fall of the Berlin Wall. • Reunification. ******************** Beyond the Wall had its moments, but I am left questioning why a discussion of the Stasi was omitted from this book. A book on East Germany cannot be complete without detailing the all-encompassing horrors they inflicted upon their own citizens. Perhaps the author is a tankie, or has sympathies for the far-left? I'm not sure, although there were a few passages in here that seemed to hint as much. She's got a blurb in here that paints American Marxist revolutionary Angela Davis in a flattering light. The book was fairly well done, for the most part, but, I'm taking off a few stars for this very suspicious omission. 2 stars. ...more |
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0593678257
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| 0593678257
| 4.19
| 131,640
| Apr 18, 2023
| Apr 18, 2023
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really liked it
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"In September 1740, during an imperial conflict with Spain, the Wager, carrying some 250 officers and crew, had embarked from Portsmouth in a squadron
"In September 1740, during an imperial conflict with Spain, the Wager, carrying some 250 officers and crew, had embarked from Portsmouth in a squadron on a secret mission: to capture a treasure-filled Spanish galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans.” Near Cape Horn, at the tip of South America, the squadron had been engulfed by a hurricane, and the Wager was believed to have sunk with all its souls. But 283 days after the ship had last been reported seen, these men miraculously emerged in Brazil..." The Wager was a really good telling of a historical story. The author did a great job of putting the source material into a coherent and exciting presentation. I am a big fan of books about real-life sagas, especially historic ones of exploration, piracy, and other extreme conditions. So, I'll read just about any book I can find in this genre. Author David Elliot Grann is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and author. His first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was published by Doubleday in February 2009. David Elliot Grann: [image] Grann has an effective and engaging writing style, and the book is very readable. I am admittedly extremely picky about how engaging my books are. Thankfully, this one passed muster here. All too often, historical accounts can be long-winded, dry, and totally boring. The narrator of the audio version I have was also done very well, which added to the effect. The formatting of the book is done well too; the narrative proceeds coherently and chronologically, with the author providing any relevant details along the way. The quote at the start of the review is dropped early on, and continues below: "...They had been shipwrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. Most of the officers and crew had perished, but eighty-one survivors had set out in a makeshift boat lashed together partly from the wreckage of the Wager. Packed so tightly onboard that they could barely move, they traveled through menacing gales and tidal waves, through ice storms and earthquakes. More than fifty men died during the arduous journey, and by the time the few remnants reached Brazil three and a half months later, they had traversed nearly three thousand miles—one of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded. They were hailed for their ingenuity and bravery. As the leader of the party noted, it was hard to believe that “human nature could possibly support the miseries that we have endured.” There's lots of interesting writing here covering the miserable existence that was 18th-century life as a sailor. Starvation, scurvy, theft, shipwrecks, squalid conditions, and harsh seas were some of the highlights of this occupation. The author drops a really good chunk of writing about the horrors of being captured and put on a ship against your will by a press gang. I covered it for the sake of this review's brevity, and also to not spoil it for the future reader of the book: (view spoiler)[ "After peaceful efforts to man the fleets failed, the Navy resorted to what a secretary of the Admiralty called a “more violent” strategy. Armed gangs were dispatched to press seafaring men into service—in effect, kidnapping them. The gangs roamed cities and towns, grabbing anyone who betrayed the telltale signs of a mariner: the familiar checkered shirt and wide-kneed trousers and round hat; the fingers smeared with tar, which was used to make virtually everything on a ship more water-resistant and durable. (Seamen were known as tars.) Local authorities were ordered to “seize all straggling seamen, watermen, bargemen, fishermen and lightermen.”(hide spoiler)] ******************** The Wager was a great read. I'd easily recommend it. 4 stars. ...more |
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3.48
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it was ok
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Sep 05, 2024
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Aug 28, 2024
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3.86
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4.16
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really liked it
|
Jul 23, 2024
|
Jul 17, 2024
|
||||||
4.38
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 10, 2024
|
Jul 05, 2024
|
||||||
3.91
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 17, 2024
|
Jun 12, 2024
|
||||||
3.82
|
it was ok
|
May 13, 2024
|
May 09, 2024
|
||||||
3.89
|
liked it
|
May 10, 2024
|
May 08, 2024
|
||||||
4.47
|
liked it
|
Apr 2024
|
Mar 27, 2024
|
||||||
4.07
|
liked it
|
Mar 25, 2024
|
Mar 20, 2024
|
||||||
4.20
|
really liked it
|
May 06, 2024
|
Mar 11, 2024
|
||||||
3.92
|
really liked it
|
Mar 12, 2024
|
Mar 08, 2024
|
||||||
3.99
|
did not like it
|
Mar 07, 2024
|
Mar 06, 2024
|
||||||
4.44
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 28, 2024
|
Feb 20, 2024
|
||||||
4.21
|
liked it
|
Jan 31, 2024
|
Jan 30, 2024
|
||||||
4.12
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 30, 2024
|
Jan 29, 2024
|
||||||
4.33
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 12, 2024
|
Jan 04, 2024
|
||||||
4.66
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 10, 2024
|
Jan 03, 2024
|
||||||
3.64
|
it was ok
|
Dec 31, 2023
|
Dec 21, 2023
|
||||||
4.23
|
it was ok
|
Jan 19, 2024
|
Dec 13, 2023
|
||||||
4.19
|
really liked it
|
Dec 23, 2023
|
Dec 08, 2023
|