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| 0349100136
| 9780349100135
| 0349100136
| 4.54
| 20,511
| 1987
| 1987
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Mar 06, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0060892994
| 9780060892999
| 0060892994
| 3.98
| 111,666
| Oct 1959
| May 09, 2006
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really liked it
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This has probably been noted by many better thinkers than I, but the way I see it is this: history takes a long time to happen. I know, I know. Mind: b This has probably been noted by many better thinkers than I, but the way I see it is this: history takes a long time to happen. I know, I know. Mind: blown. We are lucky in this day and age that we have so much information available to us about history. Go to any of your better museums and you'll see artifacts of a bygone age, books and clothes and various objects carefully displayed under glass. Through the meticulous work of historians and scholars throughout the ages, we have created an unbroken chain of knowledge through the centuries that is so thorough and so strong that we feel like the days of Shakespeare, of Charlemagne, of Pericles all happened just the other day. But what if that chain were broken? What if something so big, so terrible were to happen that we had to rebuild history from scratch, using oral tradition and whatever pathetic scraps of memorabilia we could find? Whom could we trust to keep it and put it all together, and then what should we do with it in the end? These are the questions that humanity is forced to confront after the Flame Deluge - a nuclear inferno that claimed the great nations of the world near the end of the twentieth century. All would have been lost if not for the work of Isaac Liebowitz, an engineer-turned-monk who dedicated his life and the lives of his brothers to the preservation of knowledge. Over the centuries, his part of the Albertan order would become the caretakers of a bygone age, guardians of history itself, and would play a key role in the future of humanity, for good or for ill. A Canticle for Liebowitz is a novel in three parts, spanning over a thousand years of future history. It begins in the 26th century, where the inhabitants of what was once the United States are bound into roving tribes and insular city-states. There, the young monk Francis makes a startling discovery from the life of his patron, the soon-to-be-sainted Liebowitz, a discovery which changes his life and the lives of everyone in his order. Through chance, or perhaps divine intervention, Francis finds an underground bunker, a shelter from the Fallout demons of old. He rummages around the cluttered remains of whomever had sealed themselves inside, and happens upon a strongbox, within which are handwritten pieces of paper, including a blueprint for an electrical circuit designed by Leibowitz himself. Suddenly, Francis' vocation was clear. Or at least clearer than it had been before. Then the story jumps forward to the 29th century, an age of discovery and renaissance. The learned both inside and outside the Church are beginning to rediscover science, and apply it to rebuilding some of the technology that was thought to be lost so long ago. At the same time, local leaders are vying for power, and trying to ensnare the monks of St. Liebowitz in their plots. The world is changing, progressing, and not everyone is comfortable with this change. The third part of the story propels us into the 36th century, an age undreamed-of by even those who lived before the world was cleansed by fire. Humanity is traveling between the stars and giving life to their machines, making full use of knowledge both new and old. Unfortunately, mankind may succumb to the same pride, the same flaws that nearly destroyed it a thousand years before. On the eve of self-annihilation, a desperate group of pilgrims is sent out to the stars to try and keep some spark of humanity alive in the cosmos, despite humanity's nearly unstoppable urge to destroy itself. And at the center of all of this is the Order of Leibowitz, holding on to old works and memorabilia, waiting for either the right hands or the wrong ones. The book sounds depressing in its nature, but it isn't. Yes, mankind makes the same stupid mistakes over and over again, not remembering the horror that befell them the last time. But despite that, there are still good people and there is still hope. You turn the last page knowing that the world, and humanity, will go on in one form or another. Even with our propensity for self-destruction, we are equally capable of brilliance and discovery. In a larger sense, too, this book is one long journey into philosophy, bringing up some questions that are truly fundamental to who we are as a species. For example, the book addresses the topic of euthanasia in one section, with the Abbot of the order violently opposed to the Mercy Camps that the government is building. Is it better to make the sick and injured live in their sickness, or should we give them a way out? Is suicide – assisted or otherwise – ever permissible? The characters that debate this topic each have a clear and rational reason for thinking the way they do, and yet they come to no agreement. The characters, for the short time we get to see them, are fascinating. You feel sorry for them, hopeful for them, and afraid for them, because Miller has written them as human beings. We don't have Interchangeable Scientist A and Interchangeable Scientist B arguing opposite points. We instead have scholars and religious, each desperately trying to protect his point of view. Or what about the nature of technology itself? The monks are charged with being the memory of mankind, yet when people start trying to recover the lost sciences, the abbot feels uncomfortable with the whole idea. After all, their predecessors in civilization followed the path of science, and look where it got them. Might it not be better to just let things stay as they are? Hard, yes, and certainly not a perfect world, but when you don't even have electricity, blowing up the world is hard to do. What I also found interesting was how Miller placed the Catholic Church at the center of this story. In the world after the Deluge, the Church is the only organization left, and it fills the power vacuum nicely. Through its system of priesthoods and orders, it remains the last island of civilization in a world that's turned to chaos. I'm not a big fan of the Catholic Church for many reasons, but he really made it into an establishment that I could appreciate. It represented continuity and caution, as well as taking up the guardianship of human history. For all its faults, if the Church could keep humanity from failing utterly, I would be grateful for it. It's intellectual science fiction at its best, really, exploring the kind of big ideas that science fiction is meant to do. Miller has sung a song – a canticle – not just for the fictional Liebowitz, but for humanity as a whole, and asks his readers to sing along with him. ------------------- "If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it." - Thon Taddeo, A Canticle for Liebowitz ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2012
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Jul 06, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1841155608
| 9781841155609
| 1841155608
| 4.18
| 205,020
| Sep 19, 2000
| unknown
|
really liked it
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon I have long been a reader of comic books, as you probably know by now if you've been foll The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon I have long been a reader of comic books, as you probably know by now if you've been following my reviews. Ever since I was a kid, comic books have been there, reliably giving me my costumed heroes and world-beating wonders, storylines that wrapped themselves up in a few issues or less. I could - and still can - recite the secret origins and backstories for hundreds of characters at the drop of a hat. [1] The comics universe was a place where I would gladly live, assuming the powers and physique came with it. What I didn't know anything about, during those formative years, was the actual creators of comics. It wasn't until I started to really pay attention that I noticed who the writers and artists were, and names like John Byrne, George Perez, Dick Giordiano, John Ostrander and their colleagues came to have meaning for me. I was soon able to see a little better the work that went into making comics, and the art that doing so required. What took me longer to learn, however, was the history of comic books, and how all of these wonderful worlds came to be. The history of comics, as it turned out, is a fascinating story full of brilliant characters, amazing achievements, jaw-dropping betrayals, and vast shifts in cultural and literary attitudes. Names like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster - these were not the names I grew up with, but they are the ones who made my childhood possible. Michael Chabon has managed to give us a glimpse into that history through his book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a history of comic books from a slightly different point of view. The titular characters, Joseph Kavalier and Sam Clay, are cousins from opposite ends of the world. Kavalier, a young Jew from Czechoslovakia, has escaped certain death at the hands of the Nazis and come to America to seek his fortune. Sam Clay is a young man of great ambition, but few means. Apart, they are lost and wandering, but together they become a force that changes culture as they know it. Armed only with a few ideas, bravado, and a good helping of talent, Sam and Joseph break into the newborn world of superhero comic books, creating a character that catches the imagination of readers all over the country. Soon, the Escapist - a master of the art of escapology - is popular enough to rival Superman, and has the potential to make Sam and Joe very rich men. What follows is a complex, interwoven dual biography as the team of Kavalier and Clay find fame, break up, find love, risk death, and eventually settle into something resembling happiness over the course of several decades. Along the way, the complicated and adventurous history of comic books is a constant in their lives, from the heady days of wartime superheroes to the dark era of Senate hearings and Frederic Wertham's crusade against the comics. As one might expect from Chabon, it's a narrative that covers a lot of ground. It wanders and moves about, going off into places that the reader might not expect, from an Antarctic military base to a men's retreat on a posh Long Island estate. In that sense, you would think it would be heard to pin down what this book is actually about. It's about family and friendship, it's about art and creativity and risking everything for the one big chance at success. It's about facing your fears and accepting your choices. It's about so many things, all at once. But what it's most about is freedom. With the character of the Escapist as the book's central metaphor, we watch a cast of characters search for freedom. It might be political freedom as Joe tries to get his family out of Europe, or creative freedom as Sam looks for a way to make the ideas in his head into real things. It's freedom from the restraints of a publisher, and from the responsibilities that come with being a friend and a partner. Everyone in this book is searching for freedom at one time or another, and those searches are neither easy nor short. There is a certain quality to Chabon's writing that I wish I could emulate, and the problem is that I can't say exactly what that quality is. Perhaps it is the way he selects details that so perfectly illustrate a character. Perhaps it's turns of phrase that linger in the mind, or moments of natural emotion that might have you smiling or worried or - if there's some dust in the room perhaps - wondering where you put your handkerchief. The characters are vivid and real and interesting, as is the world they live in. His use of detail, his manipulation of both time and space through the use of flashback scenes, make the book great entertainment. It's not perfect, certainly - there are places where the book slows down, and you want the focus to return to one of the other characters, to examine a new question, but those moments of clear beauty make it all worth it to me. What it all amounts to is a group of wonderful characters who are all looking to find a place where they can settle down and stop escaping from themselves. ---- "Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to." - Kornblum, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ---- [1] The Boyfriend has learned to be wary of asking me about comics. If I'm not careful and very, very succinct, he'll just walk away while I'm still talking... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 2012
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Jun 26, 2012
| |||||||||||||||
| 0679731180
| 9780679731184
| 0679731180
| 3.91
| 7,021
| Jan 28, 1995
| Apr 28, 1996
|
liked it
|
Let me get this out of the way right up front: I can't think of the title of this book without the Church Lady from the heyday of Saturday Night Live
Let me get this out of the way right up front: I can't think of the title of this book without the Church Lady from the heyday of Saturday Night Live popping into my brain. And now she's in yours, too. You're welcome. So. Who is Satan? A fallen angel? The great adversary of God? Saddam Hussein's bitch? If nothing else, Satan is the great scapegoat, the one on whom we tend to pile all our troubles. Your church is running out of money? Satan. Your kid is doing drugs and listening to that awful hip-hop music? Satan. Queers getting married? Definitely Satan. For some, Satan is an actual being, a true agent of evil whose purpose is to ruin all that God has made. For others, Satan is a symbolic representation of the evil inherent in the human condition, an abstract form made real in order to better understand it. In other words, there are as many versions of Satan as there are people who invoke him. But how did the whole Satan thing get started? Where did he come from and how did we get to the Satan that we all know and loathe today? That's what Elaine Pagels was determined to find out when she wrote this book. While most of the book focuses on the New Testament and a history of the early Christian church, it was the ancient history of Satan that I found most interesting, mainly because it concurred with a pet theory that I've had for a long time: Satan was never an enemy of God. Satan was God's quality control guy. It was his job to look for weaknesses in the system, to probe Humanity for its faults and flaws so that it could be made better. Thus the serpent in the garden (which, just as a note, was never actually revealed to be Satan), and especially the story of Job, where God allows Job's life to be ruined on a bet. My guess was that he won a nice, crisp one-dollar bill. The Satan of Olde was an agent of God, there to make sure that things went the way they were supposed to. He caused trouble, he stirred things up, yes, but that was his job. Much like the office manager that you despise because he always harps on you for checking your Facebook account during company time, even though you both know there's nothing better to do right now, but he just enjoys watching you suffer and enforcing his stupid little rules.... That guy is, at least in his own mind, working for the greater good of the company. He may be a dick, you may wish great misfortune heaped on him and his progeny, but he's doing the job he was given to do. Sounds great, but Satan's downfall from "annoying but necessary agent of God" to "vile and demonic enemy of god" was planted a long time ago, before Christianity was even on the horizon. The Jewish religion, from whence our concept of Satan arose, has always been one of Otherness. Israelites and Enemies. Us and Them. From its earliest days, God made sure the Israelites knew that they were a small force against the world, with only Him to protect them. He told Abraham straight out that He would bless him and curse his enemies. Therefore, the descendants of Abraham had to be on constant guard from enemies both from without and within. With a Satan already set in their theology as a tester and troublemaker for God, it was not a far leap to look to him as the cause of the multiple troubles that the Jews had over the years. Around the time of Christ, the Essenes were a distillation of that concept. They were a small Jewish sect - a minority within a minority - which believed that they were the only true Jews and that everyone else had gone soft. The Jewish majority was corrupt, led astray from the true path to God, probably by Satan. When the Christians showed up, a minority with an even more tenuous existence than the Essenes, they found this concept very useful. Telling their story from the point of view of an embattled minority, they found Satan to be a very useful opponent against whom their Messiah could fight. He was an excellent symbol that stood not only for the earthly conflict that was taking place between the Christians, Romans and Jews, but a greater spiritual conflict that involved all humankind in a battle between good and evil. Pagels' basic thesis is that the concept of Satan, whatever else it may be, was used to not only encourage persecution of The Other - Jews and pagans, to be precise - but to also keep the Christians themselves in line. The book is actually a history of the early Christian movement and how that history was reflected in the writing of the Gospels. In fact, just like in the Bible, Satan doesn't really appear much in this book. Rather Pagels looks at how the early Christian movement fought for its survival against enemies without and within, and then how Satan became a spiritual catch-all for those who disagreed with them. It's a fascinating analysis of the early days of the Church, and just how chaotic and tumultuous it was. There were so many churches with so many different interpretations of Jesus' life and death, so many Gospels being written and so many opinions on the very nature of God's universe that it's surprising the whole thing managed to come together to be the world's largest religion. What's more, it shed some light on something that's always annoyed me: the persecution complex that so many Christians have. The best time to catch this is in December, when pundits in the States start going off about the War on Christmas as though the last twelve Christians in the country were holed up inside the Topeka Christmas Shanty with shotguns and eggnog. Every time a judge tells a town that they can't have the Ten Commandments on the lawn of their town hall, or a Wal-Mart tells employees to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" there is always a vocal group of Christians who claim that they're being persecuted and that they're on the edge of extinction. All this despite the fact that Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, that there are more Christians in Congress than any other religion, and that every single President in US history has been Christian. Despite all that, there seems to be a knee-jerk need to feel persecuted. This book offered a very good reason why this is: because that was how the religion was founded, and it is the fundamental narrative of Jesus' story. If Jesus had been part of the Jewish majority, his story would have ended very differently, no matter how radical his ideas. The early church was born of persecution, first from the Jews and Romans, and when they were no longer a danger, from pagans and heretics. And under all that, the hand that is always set against them, is Satan. As long as Satan is there, the Christians will always have someone there to persecute them. Without that cosmic, deathless opponent, Jesus becomes just another political rabblerouser executed by Rome. Certainly no Messiah would have allowed himself to die unless it was a gambit in a much greater game against a much more powerful opponent. Without Satan and the relentless threat attributed to him (and, by extension, those who are seen to ally with him), Jesus's sacrifice becomes meaningless, and the whole religion follows with it. It's a fascinating book and a great look at the early days of the Church. If you're into that kind of thing, go pick it up.Many thanks to my mom and stepdad, who pointed my attention towards it. ----------------------------------------------------- "How, after all, could anyone claim that a man betrayed by one of his own followers, and brutally executed on charges of treason against Rome, not only was but still is God's appointed Messiah, unless his capture and death were, as the gospels insist, not a final defeat but only a preliminary skirmish in a vast cosmic conflict now enveloping the universe?" - Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan ----------------------------------------------------- ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 15, 2010
|
Nov 13, 2010
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1400066603
| 9781400066605
| 1400066603
| 3.79
| 617
| May 05, 2009
| May 05, 2009
|
it was amazing
|
I, for obvious reasons, have a great affection for the English Language. It's a rich and exciting tongue, with a history as tangled and strange as the
I, for obvious reasons, have a great affection for the English Language. It's a rich and exciting tongue, with a history as tangled and strange as they come. Over the last millennium or so, the language has gone through so many shifts and changes that people spend entire lifetimes trying to figure it out. Once they do, more often than not, they find that what once was true about their beloved mother tongue just doesn't hold up today. So there's a choice to be made by lovers of language: deal with the ever-fluctuating nature of English, adapt yourself to its changes and go on with your life, or do your damnedest to hold back the tide of error that is slowly overtaking your beloved tongue. For reasons that should be obvious, the former type of person is far less likely to write books. Their laid back, laissez faire attitude towards the world is less inclined to make them mad enough to sit down at a computer and pound out thousands of words on the state of the language today. The latter type of person - and I do occasionally count myself among them - are far more likely to sit up late at night and write scathing tracts about the utter and complete degeneration of today's language - about split infinitives and buzzwords and the ungodly Frenchification of English. If you listen to the sticklers, you might be forgiven for thinking that the very fabric of the English Language is in a state of decay, rotten and putrescent, and ready to fall apart any moment. Patricia O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman are here to give you some perspective, something in which language sticklers are usually lacking, and perhaps lessen the incandescent rage that overtakes you when you hear people use "infer" to mean "imply," or "unique" to mean "special," or say, "I could care less," even though you know it's supposed to be "I couldn't care less," because I mean my GOD, even a CHILD, even a half-trained, concussed MONKEY could see how that phrase works, what's so hard about a simple word, you MORONS, you gibbering pack of.... ****We are experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. Please stand by. We apologize for the inconvenience.**** And we're back. Sorry about that. This book is about errors in English, and not only the legitimate ones. It's also about how some of those errors aren't really errors, or how they used to be, but now they aren't. O'Connor and Kellerman are looking to give us a historical sense of how the language has evolved and changed over the centuries, and let us know that the rules of language can't be set by prim and stuffy grammarians from two hundred years ago. Those Grammarians, for example, are often called The Latinists, and a great many of them come from the 18th century. In those days, Latin was held up as being some kind of "perfect tongue," and there was a certain fetish for making English play under Latin rules. The authors wryly note that this would make "about as much sense as having the Chicago Cubs play by the same rules as the Green Bay Packers." For those of you who are rusty on your linguistic history, Latin split off into what are called the Romance Languages, which includes Spanish, French and Italian. English, on the other hand, has its roots in the Germanic side of the great language tree, and so is more similar to German, Dutch and Frisian. The vast number of Latin-based words we have are, technically, imports, as English is merely a cousin to Latin, not its descendant. But no, there were Those who wanted us to be more Latin-like, and so they imposed rules on English that made no sense whatsoever. Such as the Split Infinitive Rule (i.e. not putting a word between to and a verb - to boldly go would be considered an utter abomination to these people.) In Latin (and Spanish, and French, and Italian), the infinitive form of a verb is a single word - it is literally impossible to split. English, however, has two-word infinitives, and plenty of room to joyfully put in modifiers. Another good example is using the word "none" as a plural - "None of the ninjas are dead." The old grammarians would insist that the sentence be, "None of the ninjas is dead," because "none" is a compressed form of "not one." Even the venerable Stephen Fry can be caught pushing this one, in a rather hilarious outtake video from his wonderful quiz show QI. Fact is, people have been using "none" as a plural for centuries, and it was accepted language back then. The current fracas about it rose up in 1795 when a guy named Lindley Murray suggested that while "none" can be used as either a singular or plural, it is really best used as a singular. Which English sticklers all took as, "It really must be used as a singular." A hundred years later, and it's become an ironclad "RULE," with no more foundation than one grammarian's half-hearted opinion. There's also a great section on bad etymology - these are the stories about word origins that everybody knows, but which are most certainly wrong. For example, the origin of the word "Jeep" is usually attributed to a reading-aloud of "G.P.," meaning "general purpose," an appellation allegedly applied to these indestructible vehicles. Nope, sorry - it comes from Popeye comics. Or think about the Xmas season - whoops! I mean, Christmas season. Use "Xmas" today and you'll get lambasted for taking the Christ out of Christmas. The abbreviated word is now looked upon as a Secular Humanist Plot to ruin Christmas for all the good god-fearing folks. Nope - the letter X has been representing Christ for more than a thousand years, and comes from the Greek letter X (chi), which is the first letter of Χριστός, which means, yes - Christ. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary can trace "Xmas" as far back as 1551, in fact. One part of the book that really got my attention (other than Chapter 5 - the one on swearing) was the chapter on words that have fallen out of favor due to hyper-sensitive political correctness. Remember when Some People (they know who they are) started spelling the word for a female human as "womyn," so as to remove it from the male-dominating "man"? Well, as it turns out, back in the good old Anglo-Saxon days, "man" referred to a person, regardless of their sex. Over time, distinctions began to emerge, giving us waepman for males (lit. "weapon-person") and wifman for a married female. Change happens over time, and wifman became woman. Guys lost half their word and just ended up with "man." Poor us. The authors also touch on more charged language as well. For example, they recount the tale of a white city official who used the word "niggardly," meaning "stingy" or "tight with money" in a conversation about expenses. This caused a massive media storm because the word "niggardly" sounds really close to "nigger," a word that white people have to be really, really careful about using. For good reason, of course, but the fact is that "niggardly" and "nigger" are completely unrelated. The former goes back to old Scandinavian and the word "nygge," which meant a miser. The latter is a corruption of the Latin niger, meaning "black," which is turn gave us the Spanish and Portuguese "negro." Long story short (too late), that city official used the right word in the right context, but it wasn't a word that we let people use anymore. It's a a Fallen Word, joining other words and phrases such as "Call a spade a spade," "Rule of thumb," and "shyster." All of them have innocent origins, but have been inextricably linked with some of our worse human prejudices and practices. I could go on. The point is that this book is a great pleasure to read, and will give you a fresh new perspective on the English language. It's non-academic, so you have nothing to worry about there, well-organized and just plain entertaining. More importantly, while it may not be able to prevent you grinding your teeth when you see "Ten Items or Less" at the local supermarket, you may be less inclined to try and strangle the manager. Maybe. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 07, 2010
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Jun 12, 2010
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0374254109
| 9780374254100
| 0374254109
| 3.72
| 531
| 2008
| Jan 01, 2008
|
it was ok
|
There are many ways to write human history. Most writers of history books tend to go the traditional way - following kings and queens, wars, revolutio
There are many ways to write human history. Most writers of history books tend to go the traditional way - following kings and queens, wars, revolutions and invasions. The history of the world is almost always written in military or political terms, and while that's certainly a valid way to do it, it's a little overdone. A truly creative historian might try to look at the progress of humankind through a different lens - the history of art, perhaps, or literature or science. Hitchings has decided to look at history through the rise and spread of the English language - once an agglomeration of angry noises from a few small tribes in what would eventually become Europe, now a tongue that dominates the world. The English language is used by billions, studied by millions more. It's the language of business, commerce, politics, law, entertainment and news, and has spread like no other language before it. The big question then becomes, How did this happen? How did English become what it has become? What is the history that led it to span the globe, and what qualities does it have that other languages don't? In this book, Hitchings looks at the history of English - and by extension the Western world - through the growth of its vocabulary. Where did our words come from, and what does their journey into English tell us about our own history? A modern English speaker, equipped with a time machine, could probably go back about four or five hundred years and still be confident that she would be able to converse with people. Maybe not with perfect clarity, and it would be an entertaining thing to watch, but it would certainly be possible. Before that, the conventions and lexis that we are all so familiar with will start to be more and more scarce, and by the time of Chaucer, our time traveler would have a hard time indeed. So, as far as languages go, modern English is a fairly young tongue. Over the last half-millennium or so, the sheer number of words available to English speakers has exploded, mainly due to what some would call the language's "whorish" qualities - English will take up with any other language that comes along, accepting its words and making them its own. By following the spread of English, and the changes that it has made, we can see how people and cultures intermingled in the last thousand years or so. Hitchings begins at, more or less, the beginning, with the Anglo-Saxon roots of English and its almost immediate conflicts with Norman French and the languages of the invading and pillaging Norsemen. He follows the political swings of English, as the rulers of the British Isles alternatingly embrace and shun the language, until it finally becomes the tongue that defines that tiny island on the edge of the North Atlantic. He looks into Arabic and Latin, Japanese and the languages of the Native Americans. We see the wellsprings of the language of food and music, science, military and law. He introduces us to words that came into English through long and winding roads (one of my favorites is Alcatraz - from the Spanish word for "pelican," which in turn comes from Arabic's al-qadus for "machine for drawing water," which is turn comes from Greek's kados, meaning "jar" - quite a journey for such a miserable place.) The history of the English language is a fractal history, meaning that in order to understand it you also have to understand the histories of a dozen other languages and then the languages that came before them. To try and put it all down on paper is a monumental task indeed. The study of English words is fascinating, though. I have recently become enamored of the "Way With Words" podcast, which dedicates itself to unraveling questions about English usage. The hosts are funny and engaging, and manage to give a brief history of words and phrases and all the little tics of English that make you annoyed enough to have to call a radio show about it. It's a pleasure to listen to, which is probably why I listened to that show a whole lot more than I read this book. Mr. Hitchings has done an admirable job with this book, trying to cover all the different avenues by which words came into English. The paths that they followed are fascinating, and the stories behind them are the stories of Western culture and civilization. The trouble is that Hitchings doesn't do all that good a job in making it interesting to the lay reader, i.e. me. By and large, each chapter deals with a different source of vocabulary or a different time in history, but the narrative that he sets up tends to... wander about. There's no real narrative to focus on, and while I know this isn't supposed to be one, Hitchings is trying to tell us a story. It's a long and complicated one, but it's still a story, and as such needs to flow in order to keep the reader's attention. I can't fault him for his research or his dedication, but I think he could have given more thought to the organization of the book. Instead of trying to cover as many sources as possible, perhaps he could have narrowed his focus. Instead of throwing out a dozen or so words at a time, he could have given us an in-depth narrative on just a few. Each chapter could probably have been expanded into its own book on the Arabic/Spanish/Latin/German/Greek/African origins of words, and so in reading it you get the feeling that there's so much more that he's glossing over. By trying to follow all the twisted paths of the history of English, it's very easy for the reader to get lost. All I kept thinking as I read this was that I had much more fun reading Bill Bryson's book, Mother Tongue, which covers the same topic but is much more enjoyable to read, and perhaps that was my mistake. By the time I got to the end, and was more or less just scanning pages so that I could legitimately say I'd finished it, I realized that this is not the kind of book that you settle down with and read all the way through. It's a piecemeal book - pick it up, read a chapter, put it down and leave it alone for a while. When you're in the mood for more language history, pick it up again and read another chapter. Give yourself time to mull it over and digest, and finish it when you finish it. However you decide to get through it, you will certainly have a greater appreciation for the richness and diversity of the English language, so regardless of how interesting it was narrative-wise, Hitchings has achieved his goal. English is an amazing language, and it behooves all its speakers to learn a little bit more about the amazing confluence of cultures that produced the sounds that you speak every day. ...more |
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| 4.10
| 1,810
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really liked it
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When I was a kid, my grandparents thought they would do something that every grandparent should do - share what they love with the next generation. Th
When I was a kid, my grandparents thought they would do something that every grandparent should do - share what they love with the next generation. They bought me a subscription to the Time-Life series on The Civil War. Now for those of you too young to remember, Time-Life used to publish these monthly book series on various topics. The idea was that you would receive the books once a month, each book on a different topic in the series. My father had the Science Series, which I absolutely adored, and my grandparents thought that I would fall similarly in love with the Civil War series. After all, they both were interested in this most unfortunate periods in U.S. history. It spanned five years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and permanently altered the face of our nation. What's not to love? Predictably, I found them kind of boring. The pictures were all in black and white, static in composition and full of dead guys with beards. There were lots of dates that I couldn't comprehend, talking about places I'd never been and full of names I'd never heard of. I got them, flipped through them and was just not interested. Looking back, I know that I was a bad grandson and I feel bad that I can't tell my grandparents that. Now that I'm older, and I know some things about my country and its history, I can really appreciate the enormous change that the Civil War brought upon the United States. As horrible as it was - and it was horrible - without that war our nation would be a pale shadow of what it is today. If it were a nation at all.... We all know the facts: in 1860, following the election of Abraham Lincoln and years of arguing about slavery and its place in a modern nation, eleven states seceded from the United States and formed their own Confederate States of America. In response, Lincoln raised an army from the remaining states in the Union and launched it out the Rebels. After five years of relentless fighting, the war was won in favor of the Union. The rebel states were accepted back into the Union, and the nation has been putting itself back together ever since then. That's the big picture, and that's basically what this book does. In less than 300 pages, Catton gives an interesting and dynamic overview of the War, from its origins in such decisions as Dred Scott and the Missouri Compromise up through the assassination of Lincoln and the failures of the Reconstruction. It follows the major battles of the war, listing the strikes and feints of each army and introducing all the major players. Between these, he talks about the political and social effects of the war - how the economies of the two states fared, how the international community viewed the conflict, and what the ultimate fate of the slaves was. The pace of the book is very good, even if the blow-by-blow descriptions of the battles get a little soft in the middle. Catton acts as a narrator for the war, telling it as one might tell a story. He works up to climactic moments, then leaves us there to consider for a while before moving on to the next event. What's more, he's fair. It's very easy for people to be unfair to the South - they were rebels, after all. Traitors, some might say. But Catton wants us to understand that the South was doing what it thought was in its best interests, as with the North. What's more, he wants us to know that the South fought harder than any army has since, sacrificing countless men and an entire culture to a war that they really could not win. He does not demonize the South, nor does he praise the North. He is simply a storyteller, who knows from the beginning the tragic tale that he has in store for us. So yes, I think this book is an excellent read, especially if you're just getting into the Civil War. My one real complaint about it is that the book lacks adequate maps which would otherwise help a reader visualize what kind of maneuvers the armies of the North and the South are making. There are maps at the back of the book, but I wouldn't call them "adequate." They're black and white where they really should be color - having both the Union and the Confederate advances marked with black arrows isn't really helpful. Given the intricate interactions between armies, some kind of clear visual aid might have been useful. If you have access to the internet, of course, you can get a slightly clearer view of what happened, where and when. Mind you, even the better maps that you can find on line still take some interpretation. Still, it would have been nice to have the book more accessible to those of us who don't carry the maps in our heads. The reason why this is important is that even though this book is kind of an index tour of the Civil War, it still gets into a lot of detail - which general moved which army across which river is vital to understanding how the war progressed. The reason the book can go into such detail is that this is one of the most extensively studied conflicts in our history. Every battle, the movement of every army has been studied and documented over the last century and a half, and there's no sign of it slowing down. The Civil War is fundamental to how our nation became what it is, and as such it is an obsession for the United States. That's what this book really tries to understand - why, of all the wars that we have fought, are we so obsessed with this one? You never see people doing World War 2 re-enactments or dressing up to fight mock battles of our cute little war with Spain. I'm pretty sure there won't be any kind of Afghan War Re-enactment Society a hundred and fifty years from now. It was a horrible war. It took more lives in a single battle than we've seen in our current Middle East conflict so far. It was fought by untrained, inexperienced men who had no idea what they were in for when they signed up. It was a war fought not only for territory but for ideals - for the South's ability to maintain its agrarian slave culture and for the North's ability to keep the Union whole. It was a war that could have gone a thousand different ways, each more horrible than the last, and the fact that it ended as well as it did is completely due to the strength of character possessed by all the men involved in sealing that bloody peace. It was a war that was, perhaps, inevitable. That was something I took away from this book. The Civil War had to happen. In order for our country to progress, it had to do away with the things that was holding it back, slavery being one of those things. It was a test to see if the union could balance its ideals of liberty and order, and to see if it was worthy of forging ahead. It was a war that settled who we are as a nation, at least for a little while, and put paid to the question of whether we were a bunch of congenial states or a true nation, ready to take its place in the world. The Civil War is one of those topics that people spend their lives studying, and rightly so. Its effects can be felt even today, and the echoes from the shots fired at Fort Sumpter and Gettysburg and Shiloh won't fade as long as this nation survives. For Americans, to know the Civil War is to know how grateful we should be that we have the country we do. It is often said that soldiers die to keep us free, but I would say than no army of the United States since then has done so more literally than the army of this conflict. For those of you who aren't American, this might give you a little insight into our character. Most nations wouldn't survive such a conflict, with such immense losses of life and the utter destruction of an economy. But we did, somehow. The wounds from that war aren't entirely healed - there are still scars. But we have stayed together since then, and I reckon that nothing is going to tear us apart again. So Grandmom, Grandpop, I'm sorry. I really should have appreciated what you tried to teach me. But now I do, and I can pass it on to others.... ...more |
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| 3.97
| 115
| Jan 01, 2007
| Mar 15, 2007
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really liked it
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Just over a hundred years ago, a scrappy band of Englishmen sailed across the Atlantic under a charter from the Virgina Company of London. They found
Just over a hundred years ago, a scrappy band of Englishmen sailed across the Atlantic under a charter from the Virgina Company of London. They found a river, which they promptly named for their king, James I - the James River. They went up the river a ways and founded Jamestown, the first English settlement in North America, with a very simple mission - find gold and silver, and find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. They accomplished none of that. What they did manage was to give European colonization a lasting foothold on this continent, and set the tone for the country that would one day become the United States of America, for good and for bad. Honestly, it's a miracle that things worked out the way it did. Jamestown was a corporate enterprise, one that failed abysmally - there was no gold, nor was there silver or a passage to the Pacific, which is what the Virginia Company wanted. Instead of working on, you know, growing food and building a stable community, the settlers were charged with looking for resources that just weren't there. By the time tobacco was grown as a cash crop, the Virginia Company was as good as dead and the whole thing had to be taken over by the King. Still, a few people got rich, and the governing body of the Virginia colony - the House of Burgesses - was pretty much a rich mens' club, where the wealthy landowners did they best to stay wealthy. And then there were the Indians. What a cock-up that was. For all that the "romantic" story of Pocahontas captured peoples' hearts and minds, the promise of an Indian-English union was never to be. They tried, for a given value of "try," but they were doomed to failure. For his part, John Smith approached the natives, whose ancestors had been occupying the land for tens of thousands of years, like they were simple savages. The colonists came to land that wasn't theirs and refused to deal with the Indians as equals, deciding instead to start from the position that they were superior and that Powhatan and his people had to be bent to their will. For his part, Powhatan was perhaps too trusting. He wanted to believe that his people and the English could coexist, and gave them more chances than they probably deserved. Neither side wanted to compromise or to truly understand the other, and so there was only one outcome - death, destruction and despair. Which brings us to the slaves. The first enslaved Africans came on a Dutch ship that grounded on Point Comfort, near the mouth of the James. With a little bit of doublethink and a healthy heaping of racism and paternalism, the colonists realized that slaves could be really helpful, especially with all that tobacco to harvest. And so the infamous slave trade began, transporting millions of slaves across the Atlantic to the colonies. I don't think I need to really say "Slavery is bad." Here in the 21st century we pretty much take that as a given. What was interesting was the mental gymnastics that had to be done to keep slavery going. For example, Deans notes that there was a debate about how converting the Africans to Christianity would affect their bondage - it would be un-Christian, after all, to enslave other Christians. Solution? Easy - the legislature decreed that Christianity was no bar to slavery for the Africans working in the fields. The settlers, I think, knew what they were doing was wrong, but the slaves were just too useful and the colonists' prejudices were too deeply ingrained. Eventually slave owners would be given the liberty to hunt slaves like animals, even to their deaths. It set a flaw in American history that is still visible today. There was an interesting passage, regarding the War for Independence. The British were offering freedom to any slave who left his owners to fight on the side of the Redcoats. At the same time, the leaders of the rebellious colonies were offering a slave to people who enlisted in the Colonial army. To quote:Four years after Jefferson laid the cornerstone of American independence on the foundation that "all men are created equal," a militiaman fighting for that very principle could march into battle with the words "Liberty or Death" emblazoned across his chest and expect Jefferson's own government to give him in return cash, land, and the lifetime service of another human being, who could be beaten, worked to death, or sold like a dog. A colony impregnated at its birth with slavery, Virginia had reduced itself to offering slaves as an incentive for white Americans battling for freedom, even as their British foes dangled the promise of liberty in front of blacks willing to fight on behalf of the crown that had chartered the company that had enslaved them for profit. Both sides called it democracy...." (p. 211)So, what happened along the banks of the James, from 1607 to 1865, shaped the America of the 21st century. Deans ends the book with a look at where we are today, and draws the readers' attention to the current conflict in Iraq, where he leads us to an interesting point. Four hundred years ago, our forefathers came into a land that was not theirs, promised peace with the natives of that land, but not on their terms. Refusing to understand the culture, the history or the values of the people they were dealing with, the Jamestown colonists, confident in their own superiority, insisted that the Indians become more like them. It failed. Horribly. The mistreatment of the Native Americans is one of the great stains on American history, and one would think that it could have been easy to prevent, hindsight being what it is. Will we do the same thing in the Middle East? It looks like we are, which depresses me immensely. We may not be able to go back in time to seventeenth-century Jamestown, to tell John Smith that he needs to deal with Powhatan as an equal, not a savage, but we can use that lesson now. We can remember what a colossal failure that turned out to be, and not do it again. Ever. If you're interested in early American history, it's a good read. Check it out. ...more |
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| 0413618706
| 9780413618702
| 0413618706
| 4.17
| 135
| 1919
| Jan 01, 1989
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really liked it
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War sucks. If there's a central message to this book, that's it: war sucks. There is no glory in war. War may be inevitable, it may even be necessary, War sucks. If there's a central message to this book, that's it: war sucks. There is no glory in war. War may be inevitable, it may even be necessary, but it is not good and it is not glorious. And no one who goes into war ever comes out unscathed. This book was first published in 1919, soon after the war it depicts, World War One. While it is a fictional story, the tale of a young British officer named Harry Penrose, it is based on the experiences of the author and other men who served in the British army during that war. And those experiences are, in a word, hellish. From the dusty death-traps of Gallipoli to the battlefields in France, there is nothing good about being involved in this war. Penrose is painted as a kind of ideal soldier - someone who volunteered for the war, who still has some romantic ideals about service, and honestly tries to be the best officer he can. He cares for his men, he loves his country and he does his duty. And what does he get as a reward? Crippling dysentery, the loss of nearly all his friends, and an eventual court-martial and execution. The war eats Harry Penrose alive, and doesn't give a damn what kind of person he is. The life of a soldier in wartime destroys good men and, if the narrator is to be trusted, often leaves the bad ones to be promoted in the ranks. This book must have been a shocker when it was published, because it tries to paint the life or a soldier as truthfully and bluntly as possible. The discomfort, the boredom, the tiny, petty antagonisms that drive men mad in the trenches, all of these are the reality of war. Even getting to the point where men put themselves in harm's way, not because they are brave and noble, but because death is the only release they're even going to get from their service in this war. It's also a criticism of certain army practices, especially the death penalty for deserters. The end of the book details Harry's court-martial for desertion and execution by his own men, and why it never should have happened. The author points out, through his characters, that there comes a certain point where a man just breaks. No matter how strong his nerve or how deep his devotion, there are limits to the amount of punishment one person's spirit can endure, but soldiers are expected to have limitless reserves. A soldier who balks, or disobeys orders he knows are dangerous to himself and his men are considered cowards by people who have no idea what he is going through, and the consequences can be tragic. Even if a man should come through the war with all his limbs and a few friends left, he will never be rid of it. The memories, the dreams, even the compulsion to return to the battlefield are all there. Laced throughout the book is the idea of a soldier's duty to the war, and the incredibly, almost irrationally strong hold it can have. Penrose has, at several times during the book, an opportunity to take himself out of harm's way, and deservedly so. No one would have faulted him for taking a job away from the front line or being hospitalized for nearly terminal dysentery. But his sense of "duty" overrides logic, and the throws away his health, his marriage and his life for, essentially, nothing. If there's one thing I cannot stand about the military - and there are several, but this is the big one - it's the complete disregard for the well-being of the soldiers who risk their lives based on some elevated sense of "duty." These men and women are drilled with romantic views of "a soldier's duty" and the idea that, without them, we'd be the Islamic Republic of America by now. They are told that they are special, they are warriors.... If they manage to survive their service, having done their duty, what is their reward? If they're lucky, they come out of it with bad dreams and memories. Humans have been fighting each other for thousands of years, and most of the time the soldiers who are actually killing and dying are not the ones who wanted the war. They are proxies for rich and powerful men who are angry at other rich and powerful men who are too afraid or can't be bothered to do their own fighting. And in those thousands of years, we have never figured out how to properly deal with those soldiers who survive their wars. They're given a pat on the back, maybe a medal and a little money, and told, "Go have a normal life. Thanks a bunch." But if you're a soldier, "a normal life" just isn't going to happen. It was true in World War One, and it's just as true now. Good people go to war for noble reasons, and what they get out of it is a lifetime of nightmares, pain and a big "Fuck you" from the government that told them how noble and important they were. ...more |
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| 0670914932
| 9780670914937
| 3.79
| 7,036
| Oct 04, 2005
| Oct 06, 2005
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really liked it
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This year is the hundredth anniversary of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and so there are many who are marking it. TV shows, magazine articl
This year is the hundredth anniversary of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and so there are many who are marking it. TV shows, magazine articles and, of course, books. One of them is this one, A Crack in the Edge of the World. Winchester, an accomplished writer of non-fiction, is more than willing to take a look at how this great national tragedy happened. It all started 4.6 billion years ago.... In order to explain the San Francisco earthquake, there's a lot the reader needs to know. About plate tectonics, of course, and the history of how the continents of the world were formed and moved about. About geography and history, politics and gold rushes and fads. In other words, in order to understand how the quake happened, as well as why it's so important in American history, you need a whole lot of background. Winchester does a very smooth job guiding you through billions of years of history and multiple academic fields with grace and gentility. The events of April 1906 were important - the near-destruction of a major American city should always be. They were also very, very relevant. With all the descriptions of the 1906 event, the shadow of Katrina can be seen. A hundred years apart, both disasters were eerily similar. They were two cities that were built in areas with a high risk for natural disaster. When the disaster hit, the nation poured in its support, but at the same time, people tried to shift blame and responsibility as quickly as they could. Most importantly, people tried to redirect the truth of the disaster. The leaders of San Francisco in 1906 said that the true disaster was not the earthquake, but the ensuing fire - forgetting that the fire wouldn't have been as disastrous if they had heeded the warnings of builders and scientists years before. The leaders of New Orleans in 2005 said that the true disaster was not the hurricane, but the ensuing floods - forgetting that the floods would not have caused nearly as much destruction if they had heeded the warnings of builders and scientists years before. In both cases, Nature is exonerated and, most importantly, the wisdom of building a city in a disaster-prone area is not called into question. It is assumed that, with planning and preparation, Man can overcome Nature. This is, as we have seen time and time again, impossible. The Earthquake of 1906 is still relevant, and its lessons are still important. And while Winchester doesn't go out of his way to make these connections, they are easy for the reader to make.... ...more |
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| 9780864423702
| 0864423705
| 3.80
| 3,527
| 1993
| 2002
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really liked it
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Alex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signa
Alex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signal the end of the Japan Honeymoon for any long-time resident. To explain - for a lot of people who come here, Kerr included, there's a kind of romantic idea of Japan that keeps people here. It's the Zen and the temples, the red torii gates, the yukata and the festivals. It's the Japanese Mind and the Far East attitude, so different from our own, that entrances us and keeps us here. Then along comes the moment you realize that, as with so many things in this world, the romantic ideal doesn't match the reality. That's where Kerr comes in. He's lived here for many years, and spent all of that time getting to know Japan and its culture, and like so many people who study Japan's culture, he mourns its demise. He longs for the simplicity of hidden valleys, of wabi tea bowls and the days when you could buy really good calligraphy cheaply at auctions. He has en entire chapter entitled, "Kyoto Hates Kyoto," about how the city, so desperate to be a Modern City, is tearing down everything that made it the cultural center of Japan. He sees Japan in a state of flux, and he's really worried that it'll go the wrong way. This book is a series of essays about his life in Japan, the things he's seen that he doesn't see so often anymore. It's pessimistic, to say the least, though not quite so pessimistic as Dogs and Demons is. This kind of harsh eye has led to Kerr being labeled as a Japan-basher, which is a very odd thing to say about someone who's spent most of his life studying and living in Japan. As he notes, though, there are certain fundamental forces in Japan that resist change, and not the least of those forces are the Romantics who refuse to admit that Japan, the land of philosophy, tea ceremony and Zen, is royally screwing itself up. He is hopeful, though. He believes that this is another age of transition for Japan, and knows - or at least I think he knows - that no age, however glorious, can last forever. Many of the things he loves about this country will indeed be lost, in the fullness of time. All we can really hope for is that amazing things will arise to take their place. ...more |
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| 9780451460783
| B001PIHWPC
| 3.95
| 1,281
| Nov 01, 2005
| Aug 01, 2006
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liked it
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One of the most powerful questions available to any writer is "What if?" What if there were a monster living under a small New England town? What if y
One of the most powerful questions available to any writer is "What if?" What if there were a monster living under a small New England town? What if you could time travel back to the Middle Ages? What if you could build a new universe in the lab? Most of the time, these "What if" questions become fantasy or science fiction, but in the hands of someone like Harry Turtledove, they become history. In this case, the question was, "What if the Japanese had occupied Hawaii after attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941?" As I discovered when I turned the last page of the book, this is actually a sequel to the book Days of Infamy, which describes the actual attack and occupation. Knowing this helped explain a few things that bugged me about this book, namely the over-rapid shift from character to character. We whip from pilot-in-training Joe Crosetti to Japanese Lieutenant Saburo Shindo to American POW Jim Peterson with lightning speed, sketchy backgrounds and an assumption that you already know who they are. Which, if you had read the preceding book (which I will, if I can find it), you would have. The first half of the book is kind of jumpy and tough to follow, mainly because I was coming into the story halfway. But the second half, when the Americans come to retake the island, was brilliant. Turtledove has spend most of his career writing about war and combat and can make what could be a chaotic mess of airplane dueling and ship combat into an exciting page-turner. Even better, he knows his history cold, and is able to extrapolate from what really happened into what might have happened. Well worth the read. ...more |
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| 0060528370
| 9780060528379
| 0060528370
| 4.08
| 247,889
| 1980
| Apr 01, 2003
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really liked it
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History is, in its way, a fiction. While it is made up of facts, things that are verifiable or at least reliably accepted as being what really happened History is, in its way, a fiction. While it is made up of facts, things that are verifiable or at least reliably accepted as being what really happened, our understanding of history rests on a certain assumption that doesn't always hold up - that what we are reading or hearing is The Truth. It's how we learn about history when we're kids - that this happened and that happened, and that's all we really need to know. The problem, however, is that what we got in our history books wasn't the entire story. Oh, it was true, for a given value of "true," but the historian who wrote the book did so with a specific narrative in mind, one that fit his or her perception of the past and which - more importantly - would sell textbooks to hundreds of schools across the country. The history that we get from those books is designed to appeal to the sensibilities of a populace that is already inclined to think well of its nation, and rarely deviates from the theme. While they do try to note the excesses, injustices and impropriety of the past, they tend to bury it in the glorious achievements of governments and industry. Unfortunately, doing so means that there's a lot of history that gets left on the cutting room floor. Incidents, people, whole populations get brushed aside because either there's not enough room for them or because telling their story in detail ruins the mood that the historian is trying to set - usually one of bright optimism for a good and just nation. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, either. An historian cannot practically include all of the historical viewpoints, good and bad, into a book meant to be used for only 180 days out of the year. So out of expedience, if not a conscious desire to tell an uplifting tale, they write books that look upon our past as favorably as possible, while including just enough criticism of our failures to fend off any serious accusations of bias. As Zinn tells us, though, there's no such thing as an historian without bias. Every historian has a story to tell, and Zinn has decided that he doesn't want to tell the one we're all used to hearing. He starts in much the same place as most American history books - with the coming of Christopher Columbus to the New World. Immediately he reminds us that Columbus' mission was not one of exploration but of commerce, and that the first question he asked the natives of what he would label Hispanola was, "Where is your gold?" It all went downhill from there. Reading this book, it would be very easy to get depressed. I can see how those who were brought up with a healthy dose of American Exceptionalism (the idea that the United States obeys different rules from the rest of the world and, more importantly, cannot do wrong) would really dislike this book. It is page after page of lies, misdeeds, cruelty, greed and deception. It is the story a nation built not on the principle that all men are created equal, but that all men must be leashed to the yoke of the capitalist overclass. It's a tale of genocide and oppression, of revolts both peaceful and violent, and it never lets up for a moment. To his credit, Zinn tells us right up front that he's going to take the side of the oppressed, the dispossessed and the put-down, and there's no way you can tell that story without it being really depressing. It's pretty clear pretty quickly, though, where his sympathies lie: My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners. His portrayal of the underclass, rebellious or not, is one of suffering nobility, and the System as a deliberately malevolent entity. Any good that it does is simply whatever was necessary to maintain its power, and the above quote speaks to that. The parallel structure that he uses effectively groups all of the upper class into the "persecutor" role, and the lower class into the "victims." And while there is some truth to that - human history, after all, is a long story of rich and powerful elites governing poor and powerless people - it is painting with too broad a brush, in my opinion. He seems to work from the premise that all those with power are bad, and so those without must therefore be good. As much as I wish that admitting bias was an excuse for it, it isn't. It does a disservice to all involved to flatten your view of the American class system into a two-dimensional shadow play. Not all of the populist agitators were good and noble people, nor were all politicians cunning manipulators. Just keep that in mind as you read. It's a sobering read, though, to say the least. The best simile I could come up with is that it's like watching your parents have sex. It's something that you always suspected went on, but you could have gone your whole life without being presented with the reality of it. So it is no surprise that, after reading this book, some people become absolutely insufferable, cynical and disillusioned. If you've already gone through that stage of your political thinking, however, you find something else in this book - hope. It's something you have to dig for, but it is there, buried in the larger narrative that Zinn is telling us. Given the amount of detail he goes into, it's very easy to lose sight of the larger picture at work. Zinn details slave rebellions, gives stories of workers pushed to the extremes of human existence, soldiers thrown away for nothing, and entire segments of the population ignored or actively persecuted. But alongside these horror stories come tales of resistance. Whether it's the quiet contemplation by a poor white farmer over whether he might have more in common with his black neighbors than his white landlords, riots of prisoners and guards against a corrupt prison system, or the militant, city-wide shutdowns organized by the Wobblies, the people can only be pushed so far. And while the Powers That Be are very good at figuring out how to distract, scare or defy the people, they eventually do make changes for the better, and everyone benefits a little bit. Inasmuch as this book is a chronicle of America's misdeeds over the last few centuries, it is also a tale of Americans' triumphs. It is a tribute to the will of the people who, no matter how difficult it may have been, decided to stand up and demand respect from the men who held the reins of power. It is a testament to the women who wanted equality, the socialists who wanted a better world, the workers who wanted safe jobs at living wages, the blacks who wanted to be full citizens, and the Indians who wanted the wrongs of the past redressed. Not everybody has gotten what they wanted - America is still very much a work in progress, and there is bound to be some backsliding as we go. What Zinn shows in this book is that no matter how bad the American government can be how greedy American business might become, the American people want what's best for themselves and, when the time comes, will stand up and shout for it. Given enough time, and enough courage, The United States will continue to be a better and better nation, and perhaps someday - someday - it will finally fulfill our expectations for it. ...more |
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Feb 12, 2010
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0743243803
| 9780743243803
| 0743243803
| 3.87
| 28,664
| Aug 27, 2002
| Oct 01, 2003
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really liked it
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Sarah Vowell is awesome. At first glance, you might not think so - she's a short, squeaky-voiced New Yorker who has a driving phobia, gets motion sick
Sarah Vowell is awesome. At first glance, you might not think so - she's a short, squeaky-voiced New Yorker who has a driving phobia, gets motion sickness and is allergic to damn near everything. She fits into the category of "nerd" with remarkable appropriateness. So if you're the kind of person who dismisses the Nerd as someone without consequence or someone you should just disregard, then, well, you're missing out. Vowell used to write rock music reviews, loves Abe Lincoln, and thinks that it's the height of fun to go to Places of Historical Interest on her vacations. She's an unapologetic nerd, deeply cynical and not afraid to assume that other people are as interested in esoteric matters of history as she is. She's a self-confessed history nerd, and she makes you want to become one with her. I read another of her works a while ago, Assassination Vacation, about her journey to learn more about our assassinated Presidents and the men who'd done them in. It was a fascinating trip through three out of the four major assassinations that happened in this country, and far more interesting than one would think. Especially with regards to the lesser-cared about presidents Garfield and McKinley. This book is a little different - it's a collection of essays on a wide variety of topics. It starts, of course, with Lincoln, but goes off in all kinds of directions from there. For example, she talks about her time working for one of the world's foremost antique map collectors, Graham Arader, and the persistent myth, up until about the middle of the 18th century, that California was an island. As part of this job, she was able to look at how the way we saw the world changed over time, and how maps become a part of the historical record of a civilization. In the essay, "Pop-A-Shot," she talks about her uncanny ability to shoot baskets in the Pop-A-Shot arcade game. While most of us would scoff at someone taking pride in a game where all you have to do is shoot balls into a hoop for forty seconds, Vowell shows us why this peculiar talent means something important to her, ties her to a sense of greater meaning and accomplishment and, more importantly, gives her something to lord over her male friends. She talks about why she thinks she's secretly a Canadian, given how generally polite and non-confrontational she is. And then there's how much she and her sister have in common with Johnny and Luther Htoo, the twins who were the child leaders of God's Army in Thailand. She talks about the incredibly painful feeling in her gut while she attended the inauguration of George W. Bush and the irritation she feels whenever someone compares someone else to Rosa Parks. And then there's the advice to Bill Clinton on how to handle his Presidential library. It's a rather covert style of writing. She is funny enough and light enough that you don't really think you're in it for any useful information or heavy thought. But before you know it, you're wondering to yourself, "Yeah, what is the media's responsibility to the truth, and why do we let them charactature our leaders?" Not something you would normally think about, but the longer essay "The Nerd Voice" takes a look at the way Gore was misquoted and misrepresented during the 2000 campaign because the media had decided that he was the arrogant nerd and Bush was the homespun dummy. What's more, she suggests that Gore might have had more success had he embraced his inner nerd and, like Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, made the jokes about himself before anyone else could. Vowell is a thinker, and most definitely a nerd, and she lets her thoughts go off into strange and interesting places. She has a kind of temporal persistence of vision, where she looks at how the past and the present intersect. "I can't even use a cotton ball," she says, "without spacing out about slavery's favorite cash crop." And, above all, she's funny, which is a rarity in those who write about history. Check her out. ...more |
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not set
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Sep 02, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0743260031
| 9780743260039
| 0743260031
| 3.93
| 46,816
| Mar 01, 2005
| Mar 29, 2005
|
really liked it
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I first saw Sarah Vowell on The Daily Show and I was intrigued by her. This slight, dry, kind of sleepy-looking woman was not who you might expect whe
I first saw Sarah Vowell on The Daily Show and I was intrigued by her. This slight, dry, kind of sleepy-looking woman was not who you might expect when you run the words "presidential historian" through your mind (in my mind, "presidential historian" is usually an older man of leisure who's managed to be lucky enough to turn a passion into a job), but there she was. The fact that she was also really funny impressed me even further. And so, since I have a long-running fascination with presidential history myself, I set out to Mooch this book. And it was well worth it. Being interested in Presidents means a lot of things. For some, it's the semi-regular top/bottom ten Presidents lists, or comparing one to another in terms of their accomplishments and scandals. Some people develop a fascination with the more obscure Presidents, hoping to rescue their names and deeds from the dustbin of history. Others look to see what kind of social or cultural changes they made in their times. In short, if you want to learn about the Presidents, there are a lot of ways you can go about it. Ms. Vowell here explores the more morbid side of Presidential history, especially the inevitable morbidness of being in history-love with Abraham Lincoln. In the special features section of The Incredibles DVD (she played Violet), you can see that she compares Lincoln to a superhero, and has multiple instances of Lincoln idolatry around her home. She admires Lincoln's steadfastness and resolve, his determination to hold the Union together, and the humanity that connected him to the rest of the common people. Lincoln, in life, has a great deal to appreciate. Study Lincoln long enough, however, and you eventually get to the sad part - his assassination by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Sitting in Ford's Theatre in Washington DC, she was struck by the same thought many people have when they go there - "Wow. This was the place." She sat in the Chinese restaurant that was built on the site of the boarding house where Booth and his co-conspirators made their plans and thought the same thing. And before she knew it, she was on a pilgrimage, a holy quest to visit all the places involved in the death of Abraham Lincoln. And there are a lot of places to visit, in New York, Illinois, and even off the Florida Keys, to say nothing of the area immediately around DC. Lincoln's assassination echoed from that box seat in Ford's Theatre and shook the nation. Of the four Presidents that have been assassinated, most people only really know about two: Lincoln and Kennedy. But there were two others brought down by the assassin's gun - Garfield and McKinley. So Vowell expanded her pilgrimage to include them as well, giving them the same treatment and respect that she gives to her hero, Mr. Lincoln. Why she decided not to do Kennedy is not explained. Perhaps because it hasn't been long enough since the event, or because there's so much controversy surrounding it already.... The book is a nice tour through the lives of one President we all know, and two that we don't. And it's all fun to read, which is usually hard to do with history, much less the history of James Garfield. She reveals that each assassination came about by a complex series of events, and was triggered by many things - frustration, anger, despair, madness - and that each one was a tragedy, even if we don't appreciate them all that much. Along the way, we get a refresher on American history, and a little contemporary comparison as well. For example, the Spanish-American war, over which McKinley presided, bears a shocking resemblance to the current war in Iraq. Both were wars of choice, fought for material gain, and initiated by dubious claims of aggression, just for starters. "Then, as now," she says, "optional wars are fought because there are people in the government who really, really want to fight them." One of Vowell's great talents in this field is being able to link things together, so that the decision made by, say, John Wilkes Booth has effects that can be traced to Emma Goldman, and then to Leon Czolgosz. Or how the utopian free love community of Oneida, New York accidentally spawned the bizarre madman Charles Guiteau, and then went on to make rather nice teapots. This is a technique that history teachers need to learn if they're going to give the world more people like Sarah Vowell - an understanding that history is not a series of isolated events, where you can look at a name, a place and a date and say, "Well, that's that." History is an ongoing process, with cause and effect coming one after another, often in strange and unexpected ways. Perhaps if people could see how a single event in the past directly influences the way they live in the present, they'd take more interest. It's a fun read. If you weren't interested in history before you read this book, you'll at least be a little warmer to it afterwards. Also, she won my heart right in the beginning by saying that part of the impetus to write this book was watching Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins, which I know nearly by heart even now, so many years after it was put on stage back at Siena. Every now and then she'd sprinkle a bit from the musical into the book - Charles Guiteau was a hoot - and I'd smile knowingly. Must listen to that again.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 18, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0140285555
| 9780140285550
| 0140285555
| 3.99
| 50,716
| Feb 17, 1966
| Jul 01, 1999
|
really liked it
|
So, what else to follow classic fantasy with but gritty 20th century gonzo journalism? It all hangs together so perfectly.... Much has been made about So, what else to follow classic fantasy with but gritty 20th century gonzo journalism? It all hangs together so perfectly.... Much has been made about Hunter S. Thompson's effect on American culture and journalism. After his death, there were countless portraits painted of him, some calling him a brilliant innovator of the written word, others calling him an egotistical madman who cared more about himself than the story. All I have to say is that anyone who actively pursues the company of men such as the Hell's Angels is either brilliant or mad, and I tend towards the former. This book is intriguing for many reasons. For one, is poses more questions than it answers. Some of the easy ones are covered very well, such as Where did the Angels come from? There are sociological theories, psychological theories, economic theories, but Hunter doesn't really bother to try and figure out which one might be the best. Another question that lingers over the whole book is What do we do about them? The answer, near as I can tell, is to keep a loaded gun around the house and hope they go away without breaking too much stuff. There is no question that the Angels have earned their hell-raising reputation, but Thompson writes it as a reputation that got away from itself - we created the Angels as they are today from the seeds that they gave us. From his observation, there is no real agenda to the Hell's Angels - they don't want to overthrow the Squares, they don't want to destroy the world that done them wrong. They really just want to drink, take drugs and have fun, and if they were the only people in the world, then they could do that without anyone having to get stomped. Unfortunately, there are other people in the world, and it's very difficult for everyone to coexist. "Normal" society cannot deal with the bizarre ethos of the Hell's Angels, and the Angels cannot compromise their ethos for society's peace of mind. Thompson follows a group of Angels around for a few months, watching them play, party and fight, and the impression that I got from what he wrote is that for all their savagery and menace, they are an inevitable product of modern America. There is no one factor that can explain them, but a confluence of events and influences that merged to give the Angels a chance to exist. All we, the Squares, can do is get out of the way and hope that America changes so that it no longer needs the Hell's Angels. If history teaches us anything, though, that day is a very, very long way off.... ...more |
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1
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not set
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Mar 15, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1595580034
| 9781595580030
| 1595580034
| 3.98
| 162
| Sep 06, 2005
| Sep 06, 2005
|
liked it
|
You don't know music like Studs knows music. Oh, you may think you know, but you don't. Studs Terkel has spent most of his adult life talking to people You don't know music like Studs knows music. Oh, you may think you know, but you don't. Studs Terkel has spent most of his adult life talking to people, and most of those people have been musicians. In his long and storied career, he has interviewed some of the greatest names in music. This is a collection of a few of them. In this book, he talks to opera stars, blues singers, concert pianists, jazz trumpeters, scat musicians and folk song bards. They tell Studs about their relationship with music - what got them into it, and what they get out of it - and what struck me is that most of them come from the point of view that they make music because they can't imagine doing anything else. For some it's a craft, for others it's freedom, but for all of them it's a look into what makes them sing. If you have a musician on your Christmas list, this'll be a good buy.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 11, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 1568363567
| 9781568363561
| 1568363567
| 3.78
| 451
| 1967
| Aug 20, 2004
|
liked it
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When this book was originally released, it was published as "historical fiction," since it followed a much more narrative style than most history book
When this book was originally released, it was published as "historical fiction," since it followed a much more narrative style than most history books usually do. There's narrative, quotes, and reactions which the writer, having not been in the room, could not have known about it. Still, he believed that it would be the best way to take this person, this last of the Tokugawas, and humanize him. Because one of the things that's always been a problem with Japan is that the higher one is in the power hierarchy, the less human they are encouraged to be. So while the Shogun wasn't quite up to the level of inhumanity that, say, the Emperor was, he was always seen as someone who is drastically more important than the average man, and certainly due a bit of deference. Unfortunately for the Shogun, good historians must not show deference. Their job is to illuminate their subject under the harsh light of truth and see them for who and what they really were. Shiba does a fairly good job with that, although I do have to say that he does seem to have a fondness for his subject. I've read other books about the events of the Meiji Restoration, and Yoshinobu doesn't quite come off the tragic hero that Shiba wants him to be. Still, he is not without his flaws. He's impulsive, has no patience for nonsense and empty ritual, and tried very hard to be his own man. He was inquisitive, quick-witted and had a mind like a steep trap. Honestly, he probably would have been much happier as a scientist or an explorer than as a politician. Unfortunately, that decision was out of his hands nearly from the moment he was born. He was guided, pushed, prodded and cajoled every step of the way, by his family and other members of the political elite in the late Edo period. Normally this would be a bad thing, but the young Yoshinobu - called Keiki at the time - proved to be worthy of each push. Every step higher simply meant that he had to try harder. And he did, all the way to the top. And then he had to do the hardest thing any leader in history has done: Give up all his power. There was a struggle in the 1860s between the Imperial Court and the Shogunate as to who really ruled Japan. The heads of the provinces played dangerous games with each other, shifting alliances back and forth so fast you could get whiplash. On top of that, there was the ever-growing number of shishi - sometimes called "Men of High Purpose," but probably better labeled as Angry Young Samurai who wanted the Shogunate overthrown and were willing to sacrifice any number of lives to make it happen. On top of that, the country had been cracked open by the United States, and there was international disagreement over who to approach as the ruler of Japan. Some countries naturally thought the Emperor was the go-to guy, others went to the Shogun, causing no end of trouble. Even better, when the Shogunate had to delay action to foreign powers, they tried to play the kind of subtle, oh-so-Japanese game of misdirection that would have been perfectly understood by a Japanese feudal lord ("Open the port? Well, we'd love to, but we need to get the Emperor's approval first. We'll get right on that.") but which backfired horribly against the more direct-minded Western powers ("Shit! They said they wanted to come to Kyoto and talk to the Emperor about opening the ports! Dammit, dammit, dammit!") Maybe not in those words. But you get my meaning. Basically, the country was headed towards a replay of the Warring States Period, when Japan was at war with itself. The first time that happened, a Tokugawa grasped the reins of power to unite the country. This time, a Tokugawa let go of power, and achieved the same end. Yoshinobu gave the Emperor absolute political control of the country, and basically said, "It's all yours now, good luck." He had to then sneak out of Kyoto (if you can call leading a column of several thousand men out of Nijo Castle "sneaking") and then sneak out of Osaka Castle, where his men were determined to retake Kyoto whether he wanted them to or not. The ex-Shogun lived out his life doing what he enjoyed - learning about the world, while staying at home. He refused to meet with most of his former contacts in the Shogunate, and only went to Tokyo once after his abdication. He lived a long life, mentally acute until the end, and died in 1913. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 24, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0306815133
| 9780306815133
| 0306815133
| 3.57
| 289
| Mar 06, 2006
| Oct 31, 2006
|
really liked it
|
I got this as a present from my friend Chris, who thought it looked cool and that I might be interested in it. Bless his heart, he was right... *grin*
I got this as a present from my friend Chris, who thought it looked cool and that I might be interested in it. Bless his heart, he was right... *grin* Yukio Mishima is considered one of Japan's greatest modern writers. A repeated contender for the Nobel Prize, and one of those strangest of people, a writer-celebrity. He was an avid bodybuilder, a student of history, and one of the very few people in the modern age able to write a new Noh or Kabuki drama. He was a militarist, a hedonist and a homosexual with a wife and children. All in all, a very complex man. On November 25th, 1970 Mishima led his private militia, The Shield Society, onto the grounds of the Ichagaya headquarters of the Self Defense Force. He attempted to incite a coup which, since the soldiers on the base weren't particularly eager for one, was unsuccessful. I doubt he was surprised, because he and his second in command Masakatsu Morita were prepared to commit seppuku, the death by ritual disembowelment so preferred by the samurai of old. Seppuku is not a pleasant way to die. First you plunge a dagger into your belly, just below the navel. You then move from right to left across your abdomen. Then a cut upwards so your intestines unspool onto the floor. All of this, mind you, without an unseemly display of agony. At the last moment, your second will cut your head off from behind, ideally leaving a small bit of skin intact at the throat so your head doesn't roll around ungracefully. Mishima did a bang-up job on himself, but his second was clumsy. The first cut went into Mishima's shoulder, the second into his jaw. Another man took over, and the third cut took off the writer's head. As you might expect, this shocked people in Japan, and those worldwide. Seppuku had been outlawed for many years, and was considered an unpleasant remnant of an unnecessary past. Mishima got everybody's attention in a big way, and made people think again about what Japanese culture had become. For good or ill, most people put Mishima in the "brilliant maniac" category, and wrote him off. Christopher Ross, a longtime student of martial arts and a resident of Japan for five years, wondered where the sword went. And so he came back to Japan, looking for Mishima's sword. On the way, he ended up learning more about Japanese history, manners, culture, craftsmanship, suicide, gay bathhouses and, of course, Mishima, than he had ever expected. The book is written like a diary, which has some good points and some not so good. It's very readable, and done in an interesting style. The most readable moments are when he's talking about his actual quest to find Mishima's sword. When he starts getting into history, however, he starts to sound more like a history book. When he tries to get into Mishima's mind, he starts to sound kind of the way that Mishima does in his books. This makes reading the book an inconsistent effort, which rather parallels both his subject, Mishima, and his goal. The drawback to the diary style is that he includes several events that are only tangentially related to the search for Mishima's sword - an unexplained, chronic stomach pain and nosebleeds, a very polite visit from the local Yakuza and so on - which do not get resolved. I know they're not important to the story, really, and I know that human existence doesn't follow narrative causality, but why was he bleeding from the nose so heavily that he needed to be hospitalized? Why were the yakuza looking for the man who had lent Ross his bar/home while he was away? I know Ross didn't have to answer these questions, but I kind of wish he had. Someone, I forget who, once remarked that being a storyteller is kind of like being the guy who packs a hiker's backpack. You want to put in only the things that the hiker (reader) will absolutely need, and you have to make sure the hiker will use them in the course of going up the hill. If the hiker gets to the top with, say, a '72 Volkswagen in his pack that he didn't need to lug up the hill, he's gonna be pissed.... All that aside, though, it's an excellent tour through a variety of subjects, all of which shed more light - but never enough, of course - on a very interesting, complex, sad, talented man. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Dec 23, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0143036254
| 9780143036258
| 0143036254
| 4.00
| 36,937
| 1776
| Sep 06, 2005
|
really liked it
|
I bought this one at Olsen's Books in Washington DC, and it's part of Penguin's "Great Ideas" series. Oddly enough, being very interested in American
I bought this one at Olsen's Books in Washington DC, and it's part of Penguin's "Great Ideas" series. Oddly enough, being very interested in American history and politics, indeed having majored in Political Science in college, I had never read this book. Not sure how that happened. Common Sense was originally distributed as an anonymous leaflet encouraging the independence of the Colonies from Britain. I guess when the coast was clear, Paine fessed up to being the writer. It's a stirring document, and I can understand how pivotal a document it was. First of all, he was risking his life to write it. While he goes out of his way to avoid personal attacks on the King or any of the loyalists, he flat out denies the legitimacy of royalty in general, as well as the rule of Britain over the American colonies. And the way he puts it makes it sound like, well, common sense. I can imagine him wanting to throw down his pen and say, "Come on, people! It's obvious!" It's writing that I wish we could see these days. Not a call for independence per se, but rather clear, level-headed writing that treats its readers with respect. I've read a lot of political books in the last few years, and none of them were as straightforward and to the point as this book was. ...more |
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Jan 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.54
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not set
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Mar 06, 2024
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| 3.98
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really liked it
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Jul 2012
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Jul 06, 2012
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| 4.18
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really liked it
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May 2012
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Jun 26, 2012
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| 3.91
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liked it
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Oct 15, 2010
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Nov 13, 2010
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| 3.79
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it was amazing
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Jun 07, 2010
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Jun 12, 2010
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| 3.72
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it was ok
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Jun 05, 2010
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Jun 05, 2010
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| 4.10
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really liked it
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Mar 04, 2009
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Mar 05, 2009
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| 3.97
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really liked it
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not set
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Aug 01, 2008
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| 4.17
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really liked it
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Jun 11, 2008
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Jun 10, 2008
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| 3.79
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really liked it
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May 10, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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| 3.80
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really liked it
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Jul 27, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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| 3.95
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liked it
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Nov 28, 2006
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Feb 02, 2008
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| 4.08
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really liked it
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Feb 12, 2010
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.87
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really liked it
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Sep 02, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.93
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really liked it
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Dec 18, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.99
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really liked it
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Mar 15, 2006
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
liked it
|
Dec 11, 2007
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 3.78
|
liked it
|
Jan 24, 2007
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 3.57
|
really liked it
|
Dec 23, 2006
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
really liked it
|
Jan 2006
|
Jan 31, 2008
|
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