I've had the misfortune to have, through my work, and to a lesser extent, my penchant for hanging out in proximity to higher-flying circles, to have bI've had the misfortune to have, through my work, and to a lesser extent, my penchant for hanging out in proximity to higher-flying circles, to have been in close contact with too many members of the 1 percent. And guess what, most of them are just as awful as you imagine, coked up sociopaths who don't even have the rough charm of less well-off ski-slope denizens.
So Bullough attempts to disentangle how the worst people finance their awfulness.
It's fairly well-organized, if a bit dense, which seems inevitable – I'm remembering having similar issues with Tom Burgis' Kleptopia, a similar romp. However, this is better laid-out and seems less like a schizopost. It sill would probably be better with a little breathing room. That being said, he tries his best not to be a doomer despite his conclusions, and yet the doomerism is palpable. How could it not be? If the system is rigged this efficiently, what hope do we have? I think we know the answer to that. Unfortunately....more
A collection of odds and ends by a rather underrated writer, although honestly you can skip most of these. They are very, very repetitive, often addreA collection of odds and ends by a rather underrated writer, although honestly you can skip most of these. They are very, very repetitive, often addressing the same subjects in several publications (the vastness of American landscape, the urban/rural divide in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle's relationship to its hinterlands), and even the same phrasing. Although the essay about the Makah whale hunt is great.
Also... the fawning bits about the rise of Barack Obama, well, I remember my dumb teenage enthusiasm for that gentleman and my foolish belief that he would change the trajectory of American politics instead of playing the callow, center-right bottom that he wound up being. But I could never have said something as laughably ignorant as believing, as Raban apparently did, that douchebags like Lawrence Summers and Cass Sunstein could constitute a brain trust. ...more
I got anecdotes aplenty after reading The Big Break.
Aaron Schock embezzling campaign funds to go see Katy Perry (while somehow pretending to be straigI got anecdotes aplenty after reading The Big Break.
Aaron Schock embezzling campaign funds to go see Katy Perry (while somehow pretending to be straight)? Check. Matt Schlapp getting a bit Schlappy in a weirdly dudebro way with assistants? Check. The number of DC lanyard dorks absolutely zooted on drugs? Check. What can I say, let’s call it DC TMZ.
As Godspeed You Black Emperor used to say, “the car is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel.” This is the frantic, Regular Car Reviews style review of said car on fire....more
This is one of those books that made a splash in the wake of the Iraq debacle (like Imperial Life in the Emerald City), but I feel it remains relevantThis is one of those books that made a splash in the wake of the Iraq debacle (like Imperial Life in the Emerald City), but I feel it remains relevant, fro whenever you want to see both the immediate postmortem on the Wolfowitz fuckfest (“dangerously idealistic and crack-smoking stupid,” as a colleague called him) and a warning for American imperium in general. And it's effective. It's sometimes easy to forget these times. Ricks reminds us of the Frums and Friedmans who blathered about “America's historic mission” on the pages of the NYT and the WaPo, but rather ignores the drooling Christian nationalists who were the main supporters of the war in, for example, the parts of rural Iowa I come from. But that's a minor flaw (as is the weird adulation over James Mattis, understandable as it was at the time). The rest is a great piece of documentation....more
I don't know much about Reichl, after reading Garlic and Sapphires. I think I can safely assume that – especially given her ability to disguise herselI don't know much about Reichl, after reading Garlic and Sapphires. I think I can safely assume that – especially given her ability to disguise herself as various schlubs in New York restaurants – most of the dining companions are works of fiction as well, or at best creative composites and interpretations of real people (seriously, what kind of grande dame in the '90s was still terrified of sushi?). What is real is the passion, and if, as she claims, she did her part to guide the New York elites – who are treated with the mockery they deserve – to spend their largesses at immigrant businesses, and to help guide American diners more broadly to better choices (last time I was in my dowdy Iowa hometown, the steak special at the nice restaurant in town was hanger, hell yeah), then she is doing the lord's work....more
It's hard for me to read Kleptopia and not think of that meme format with Charlie from It's Always Sunny standing in front of a corkboard with an impoIt's hard for me to read Kleptopia and not think of that meme format with Charlie from It's Always Sunny standing in front of a corkboard with an impossible tangle of strings connecting Post-It notes.
Because it goes all the way to the top, man!
I applaud Burgis' effort, and I enjoyed meeting the cast of sociopaths along the way in this... case study, let's call it? Kazakh oligarchs and white South African moneymen who sound like bad guys from an '80s action movie? Hell yeah, all of that.
The problem is that Burgis really needs to give his readers some breathing room (or, you know, work with an editor, that position that publishers are increasingly trying to avoid requiring). The networks are so dense that it can be awfully hard for those of us who haven't spent months researching the primary sources to trace each line that Burgis draws. So this is a book that, I would say, overprovides given its title. Ignore the grandiose claims in the blurb above (and especially ignore anything the WaPo says in general). Read Kleptopia if you want a madcap romp through the money laundromat....more
If you know the man's work, this should hardly be anything surprising -- it's more ultra-eloquent writing about food and how we consume it. The title If you know the man's work, this should hardly be anything surprising -- it's more ultra-eloquent writing about food and how we consume it. The title suggests that it might be a Kurlansky-type history of the grocery store, but it's far more a series of personal essays involving a recurring cast of characters, grocers primarily. It's hardly deep reading, especially for someone who has always loved and appreciated grocery stores, but it's a fun distraction. Perfect beach material....more
There's something uniquely frustrating about someone who's like... 75 percent... right. Someone who's totally wrong, you can write off. Someone who's There's something uniquely frustrating about someone who's like... 75 percent... right. Someone who's totally wrong, you can write off. Someone who's at 50/50 might be persuadable. And if someone's 90 percent right, you can chalk up your points of disagreement to the narcissism of small differences. 75 percent though? That's a fucker.
And the Sam Quinones of The Least of Us is firmly in that camp. I should add that I liked Dreamland. He sees the ways in which we are kept addicted, sees the ways in which late-stage capitalism fosters the sort of dysfunction he describes in breathless prose.
But at the same time, that 25 percent... His enthusiasm for the dubious and oft-misused system of drug courts (but it's biiiiipaaaartisan!), his casual snipes at unions, his dismissiveness towards housing-first initiatives, and the incredibly stupid, incredibly sentimental, incredibly worst-of-America prioritization of problems of heart and soul over material conditions. All of this made me skeptical at best and enraged at worst. For a more detailed analysis from persons far more knowledgeable than myself: https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/blog/ho......more
Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma was more than fine. It was good. And some of the parts of Everything Is Broken are more thaThis was fine.
Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma was more than fine. It was good. And some of the parts of Everything Is Broken are more than fine too. I get that she didn't want to do deep analysis into why Myanmar is as fucked as it is -- that's a whole other volume -- and wanted to front-load individual stories, but to me those aren't as interesting. I would have liked more about all the various types of fecklessness at play and the many banalities that, cumulatively, we call evil....more
It's hard to evaluate, because this was something of a rush job on Krakauer's part, which is a shame because he so excels at in-depth reporting of theIt's hard to evaluate, because this was something of a rush job on Krakauer's part, which is a shame because he so excels at in-depth reporting of the sort rarely valued in the era of the Tweet. When he lays out the background, the main characters, the setting, and the events that suddenly made Missoula make headlines as the date-rape capital of America, he's vintage Krakauer. When he gets to the court reporting... well, it's just formulaic reporting, nothing new, no insight. And here it's doubly a shame, because it's such an important and interesting story....more
Like most or at the very least a lot of people, I learned about Michael Ruhlman owing to his connections to the late Monsieur Bourdain, but I've sinceLike most or at the very least a lot of people, I learned about Michael Ruhlman owing to his connections to the late Monsieur Bourdain, but I've since used his books as major reference texts in my own cooking adventures. And his story of training in the high-pressure kitchens of the CIA was gripping. Also, as someone who is constantly being told “dude, you should open a restaurant,” it's a reminder that no, no I shouldn't, because I legit don't hav what it takes to work the line, at least not at this point in my life, let alone handle the responsibilities of running one of the most assuredly losing types of business out there. At the same time, it's an absolute love letter to the struggle of cooking professionally, and a hat doffed to those poor bastards made for that line of work....more
Like all collections of essays, or short stories, or interviews, or whatever, After the Tall Timber is a thoroughly uneven compilation, spanning a preLike all collections of essays, or short stories, or interviews, or whatever, After the Tall Timber is a thoroughly uneven compilation, spanning a pretty damn long period of time, from the glittering golden years of New York letters to the dark depths of the Bush era. At times she was brilliant -- and I especially enjoyed her butting heads with fellow grande dame Pauline Kael, a near TMZ-level piece of virtuoso bitchiness, as well as her piece on the incredible stupidity of the National Guard as an entity -- and at times she was doing some pretty shitty bloviating, with an annoying lack of explicit stance (especially in the later essays where the subjects of her writing were recent enough to cross paths with my own stances). Also, she really really really hates the journalistic establishment by the end (which to a certain extent is fair, the way that current Democratic Party apparatchiks lionize the fourth estate is fucking dumb), and the tone in places reminds me of an angry letter to the editor in a small-town paper. She might not match the heights she does in her fiction, but on the whole, I was satisfied....more
Few people can mine the inner workings of artists -- so often so difficult to translate to a literary, verbal format -- like Lawrence Weschler, and J.Few people can mine the inner workings of artists -- so often so difficult to translate to a literary, verbal format -- like Lawrence Weschler, and J.S.G. Boggs is a type example of a Weschler subject. He is something of an outcast, a provocateur who sometimes doesn't seem to know exactly what he's provoking, but who knows he's doing a good job of it, and who had a bit of an artful-dodger personality (I looked him up, he was arrested late in life as an actual Florida Man [TM] on meth and concealed-weapons charges, plus failing to appear in court). And his story is fascinating from beginning to end, complete with Weschler's long diversions in to the history of money....more
Vintage boozy, bitchy Capote, featuring Marilyn Monroe, Bobby Beausoleil, and a New York housekeeper making the day go by a bit faster with a wee tokeVintage boozy, bitchy Capote, featuring Marilyn Monroe, Bobby Beausoleil, and a New York housekeeper making the day go by a bit faster with a wee toke (no clue how many of these are fiction and how many aren't). Honestly, I hadn't read Capote since my fourth-estater parents bade me to read In Cold Blood back when I was in high school, and I didn't know how he'd hold up (I have since watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, and, well, that shit is cringe af). But really, you got a portrait of the world he was part of, that dazzling collection of witty cultural commentators that marked mid-century New York, that wrote for long-forgotten magazines, that got in Tanqueray-induced spats over who was snubbed at the Algonquin Roundtable decades before, that all either got in Dorothy Parker's pants or were hissed at by Dorothy Parker for being too homosexual let her get in their pants, you get the idea. It's as compelling a lost world as I can imagine.
As I write this, I'm drinking an equally forgotten cocktail called a "Charlie Chaplin" (that's equal parts apricot brandy, sloe gin, and lime juice, so basically two out of three are near-forgotten ingredients anyway), so I need no convincing. But I'd like to convince you....more
At the beginning of Hearts of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola at the Cannes Film Festival says "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. IAt the beginning of Hearts of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola at the Cannes Film Festival says "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam."
Tom O'Neill's Chaos is not a true-crime thriller. His book is not about Chaos. It is Chaos.
And as I loved Apocalypse Now, I loved Chaos. It is the story of every rabbit hole you've ever fallen down, every time you think you can see the truth but can't find the missing piece to prove it, every hunch you've followed, every time you've been spooked by a strange glance, thought you were being followed, and if you're me, every hour you spent scrutinizing the death of Jeffrey Epstein.
As for the ostensible subject? I know more about Manson, and therefore know less about Manson. I enjoyed the path to that void....more
A lot of this was a rehash of stuff I knew on a more theoretical and statistical level – rapacious corporations, local compradors, rent-seeking, the wA lot of this was a rehash of stuff I knew on a more theoretical and statistical level – rapacious corporations, local compradors, rent-seeking, the wealth gap in Luanda, coltan deposits – but I was absolutely floored by the actual research that Burgis did. His ability to follow the money trail was impressive as all fuck, along with his ability to skein together all the linkages between shadowy cabals of African strongmen, Chinese financiers, Swiss and Israeli precious stone dealers (hey there, evil version of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems), and first-world consumers. Just an all around tour de force, I cannot recommend this highly enough....more
There's a whole cottage industry of “North Korea WTF?!” media out there, most of it absolute garbage akin to 1970s Sovietology, and when it succeeds iThere's a whole cottage industry of “North Korea WTF?!” media out there, most of it absolute garbage akin to 1970s Sovietology, and when it succeeds it's usually by having fun with the concept, such as with the Vice Guide to North Korea (hate on Vice all you want, it's often merited, but occasionally they hit a homer). And while this probably isn't merited or rational, a heartstring-pulling depiction of the day-to-day struggles of people in a tinpot dictatorship that pokes and prods at America leaves an ill feeling in the stomach after the Iraq War... if only we could free them, you imagine the Pentagon official saying with a faraway and Daenerys-esque look in his eye...
But it's hard not to be impressed by Barbara Demick's recounting of refugees' tales. You could argue that she misses the forest a bit – the complex dynamics that resulted in North Korea's spiral into chaos in the '90s are largely ignored – but that's not her goal. Her goal is to tell human stories, which she does a pretty damn good job of. ...more
This is a book, I suppose, I should have read when it came out, not years afterwards, but something tells me the fundamentals haven't changed. GrantedThis is a book, I suppose, I should have read when it came out, not years afterwards, but something tells me the fundamentals haven't changed. Granted, it's hard to say because this is journalism, not academic research, filled with stories that call into question China's claim as to quite how many people were brought out of poverty over the past few decades (I really, really need to do some more research into the hard data). The take-home message for me, though, was that this is a global problem – given the brutality of imperial capitalism, hundreds of millions of ordinary lives will be consigned to crushing misery, and while it might be better than feudalism, that's not the point. We shouldn't measure ourselves against where we were, but where we could be given the potentials of labor-saving technology. And any solution is, and has to be, transparency and sane governance (where possible) paired with the power of the strike, which even in a society as oppressive and closed-off as China, can work. And even if it doesn't work, it's a hell of a lot better than waiting for deliverance....more
A lot of people are going to gravitate towards Liao Yiwu because of his Chinese dissident status, and at at time when some sort of official SinophobiaA lot of people are going to gravitate towards Liao Yiwu because of his Chinese dissident status, and at at time when some sort of official Sinophobia is more or less de rigueur to some degree across the American political spectrum, I'm terrified that too many readers are going to come to this with some sort of Cold War mindset.
But when you actually read The Corpse Walker, you're treated to China not as a monolith, but as this great conflicting chaos of voices (you know, the kind that exists in any country). When a society has had some kind of baked-in authoritarianism for millennia, individual expression comes out in highly idiosyncratic ways, whether that's in religious cults, some truly insane village superstitions, psychopathic and remorseless human traffickers, the proud bruisers carrying out the Cultural Revolution, or villagers who happily flout the one-child policy and tell anyone trying to enforce the law that they're not going to pay the fine, so fuck off. This is Studs Terkel for China. Read it....more
The title of Putin Country is far, far more provocative than the content. I was kind of dreading a Russian version of one of those dreadful Atlantic aThe title of Putin Country is far, far more provocative than the content. I was kind of dreading a Russian version of one of those dreadful Atlantic articles in which pencil-necked NYC journos go to West Virginia to find out what Trump supporters think. What I got was an empathetic portrait of people in post-industrial Chelyabinsk -- a city I have some familiarity with as the home of delightfully trash-talking Youtuber, hip-hop head, and accidental dissident NFKRZ -- trying to make it in the 21st Century. You hear from a whole chorus of people, none of whom can be easily pigeonholed.
At a time when brainless Russophobic hysteria is at a multi-decade high in my home country (sure Trump's getting that Kremlin money, but Biden's pharma money ain't any cleaner), and sensible and well-meaning liberals have embraced the myopic and xenophobic that the right has been proffering for years, books like these are a welcome antidote. Books that show that no group is a monolith....more
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