A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars An Engaging History Biased Against Dogma In A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Bertrand Russell introduces the lives and explains and critiques the philosophies of key figures from the history of western culture. The subtitle of Russell’s book says that he will cover philosophy’s “Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,” and often his book is at least as much a history of western culture as of western philosophy. Russell is good at explaining different philosophies and the cultural contexts they influenced and were influenced by. Russell demonstrates, for example, that Marx contributed to philosophy by showing how past philosophers were all shaped by their subjective biases and then points out that Marx himself was no different (believing in progress, for instance). The reader should keep in mind that the “Present Day” when Russell stops his survey was the 1940s and World War II. Sometimes he dates himself, as when he comments that dictators don’t pass on their rule to their descendants or that big corporations loathe war or that Japanese professors are fired if they cast doubt on the Mikado being descended from the sun-goddess. Russell divides his history into three sections: I. Ancient Philosophy: pre-Socratics like Pythagoras and Anaximander; the three giants Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and their successors like the Cynics, Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics. II. Catholic Philosophy: Jewish antecedents and Islamic contemporaries; saints like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Benedict; the Schoolmen like John the Scot and St. Thomas Aquinas. III. Modern Philosophy: Renaissance figures like Machiavelli, Erasmus, and More; post-Renaissance figures like Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Berkeley; Romantic figures like Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Byron; and more modern figures like Nietzsche, Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, Williams James, and Russell himself. Rather than dryly presenting a series of different philosophies and the cultural eras that shaped and were shaped by them, Russell also critiques the men (always men) and their philosophies with a dry wit and an appealing rational humanism. His book, then, is quite biased, in mostly, for this reader, a good way reminiscent of other works of history by individual, knowledgeable, and opinionated writers, like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, or E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art. I learned a lot from Russell (though I am a philosophy neophyte). Russell’s aim in critiquing different philosophies is to objectively understand them and their inconsistencies, aware that “No one has invented a philosophy that is both credible and self-consistent.” His bete noir is dogmatism, which is the enemy of philosophy, for, he says, the philosopher’s task is to openly and never-endingly inquire into the nature of the world and of the universe and of truth etc. He thus disapproves of the too long and too potent influences of Aristotle and Aquinas and prefers open-minded empirical philosophers like Locke. He is also no fan of Romanticism with its overemphasis of emotion at the expense of reason: “Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars. The typical Romantic removes the bars and enjoys the magnificent leap with which the tiger annihilates the sheep. He exhorts men to imagine themselves tigers, and when he succeeds, the results are not wholly pleasant.” Russell prefers open-minded reason and thought to blind belief and raw emotion. He holds that any philosophy that contributes to human pride is dangerous. He likes men like Boethius who achieve something outstandingly unusual for the ages in which they lived and men like St. Francis and Spinoza who genuinely cared about the suffering of others. His take down of Nietzsche is amusing, one of the high points of the book being a fanciful moment when Buddha and Nietzsche debate the relative merits of caring about all people or only the superman. The audiobook reader Johnathan Keeble effectively uses two modes: his base natural voice for Russell, which is educated, intelligent, and engaged, and his older, gruffer, authoritative voice for the quotations of historical philosophers. This immediately signals whenever Russell is quoting a philosopher, which is helpful, as sometimes his text does not introduce a quotation. And it a relief that, unlike some readers of audiobooks of history, Keeble does not artificially change his voice to suit the presumed accents when speaking English of philosophers who were Greek, French, German, Scottish, and so on. Russell writes many great lines full of wit and wisdom. Here are several: “Seneca was judged in future ages rather by his admirable precepts than by his somewhat dubious practice.” “Those who do not fear their neighbors see no necessity to tyrannize over them.” “Men who have conquered fear, have not the frantic quality of Nietzsche’s ‘artist-tyrant’ Neros, who try to enjoy music and massacre while their hearts are filled with dread of the inevitable palace revolution.” “His [Nietzsche’s] opinion of women, like every man’s, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear.” “To frame a philosophy capable coping with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our times.” Russell ends his book abruptly but potently, with an appeal to the pursuit of “scientific truthfulness. . . the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings,” for the resulting “habit of careful veracity” will decrease fanaticism and increase “sympathy and mutual understanding.” His closing words ring in my ears due to the egregious miasma of untruth belched forth every time the current occupant of the White House speaks or tweets. 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Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Bracing Micro and Macro Views from a Mountain Top After reading Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885), which focuses mostly on Grant’s experience and understanding of the Civil War, I decided to try a different kind of history, one that casts a wider and more objective view than the history of an individual or a war or a country or an era or a world: David Christian’s Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (2018). Christian teaches history via a series of “thresholds,” critical turning points in the “Big History of Everything,” starting with the Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago), the first stars (13.2 billion years ago), new elements (13.2 billion years ago), and our sun (4.5 billion years ago); working forwards through life on earth (3.8 billion years ago), the first large organisms (600 million years ago), the mass extinction of the dinosaurs (65 million years ago), Homo erectus (2 million years ago), Homo sapiens (200,000 years ago), the first farming (10,000 years ago), the first agrarian civilizations and cities (5,000 years ago), and the Fossil-fuels revolution (200 years ago); and concluding with a look at the future, the death of the sun (4.5 billion years from now) and the darkening of the universe (gazillions of years from now). The last part, speculating on what is likely to happen if we continue our current trend of unsustainable growth, overuse of energy resources, and global warming and the chances of our being able to adopt a more stable and cooperative approach to growth, energy, and the biosphere, etc., is necessary reading. The book as a whole is bracing in its micro and macro visions, for it reminds us of how miraculous life is (dependent on a set of “Goldilocks conditions” or rare perfect chances), how similar and related all organisms are (no matter how different they may superficially seem), and how tiny we and our earth and sun and galaxy are in the larger scheme of things. Throughout, Christian explains complicated concepts simply and engagingly. We learn about how atoms are made, how molecules bond, how prokaryotes and eukaryotes differ, how photosynthesis made an oxygen boom later reined in by respiration, the role played by the molten core of the earth in plate tectonics and the surface temperature of the world, why foraging humans turned to farming and how the biosphere and humanity changed as a result, how erosion cycles carbon back into the earth, what will happen if (when?) the ice of the poles melts, how the fossil fuel revolution came about and how it has changed human civilizations, how stars are born and live and die, how black holes are formed and behave, and more and more and more. The book relates what scientists currently know about such things and how and when they came to know it and who first came to know it, and so on. Sometimes Christian’s view “from a mountaintop instead of from the ground” can almost seem almost too detached when relating things like slavery and the exploitation of indigenous people, but overall it really makes you appreciate the miracle of living on our earth in the universe. Jamie Jackson’s reading of the audiobook is fine. View all my reviews
Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness by Helen Young
My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Necessary and Interesting Book Marred by Poor Editing Helen Young’s Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (2016) has a lot of accurate, interesting, and necessary things to say. Young addresses a relevant theme (conscious and unconscious traditions of racism in popular fantasy), explores a wide range of texts (including novels and short stories, movies and TV shows, and paper-based games and video games), and writes from the perspective of both creators and audiences. Her book is readable and academic--its seven main chapters averaging about 110 footnotes each. Here is an outline of those chapters. Chapter 1: Founding Fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard Anyone who has read The Lord of the Rings and Conan should be aware of the thesis of the chapter, that the foundational worlds of high/epic fantasy and sword and sorcery, Middle-earth and Hyborea, are dominated by Whiteness. Young also exposes the attempts by later writers and fans to explain race in Tolkien and Howard as being typical of an earlier less enlightened era. Chapter 2: Forming Habits: Derivation, Imitation, and Adaptation Explores the continuing habits of Whiteness by the successors to Tolkien and Howard in fiction like Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), Michael Moorcock (Elric), and Robert Jordan (The Eye of the Wheel), comics like Dark Horse’s Conan the Barbarian, and games like Dungeons & Dragons and Age of Conan, with “counter-voices” from Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea), Samuel R. Delany (Neveryon), and Charles Saunders (Imaro) . Chapter 3: The Real Middle Ages: Gritty Fantasy Explains how writers like George R. R. Martin (GOT) and gamemakers like Bioware (Dragon Age) have tried to make their pseudo-medieval fantasy more “realistic” and less “escapist” than cleaner Tolkienesque “high” fantasy. Young points out that such gritty popular fantasy is still marked by “habits of Whiteness” and that typical defenses of such Whiteness like “The middle ages didn’t have black people” are inaccurate historically and inapplicable to fantasy worlds with dragons, giants, and white walkers. She argues that Whiteness fantasy fans say that gritty fantasy worlds are only fictional after all (so lighten up you pc fascists!) but also believe them to “represent the Middle Ages as they ‘really were’: full of violence, rape, mud, blood, and White people.” Young also connects the Whiteness of gritty fantasy to the white nationalism of some of its fans. Chapter 4: Orcs and Otherness: Monsters on Page and Screen Examines the depiction of Orcs in post-Tolkien fantasy, demonstrating that they’re usually coded as black and or Native American, even when writers like Mary Gentle (Grunts!) and Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals) try to do something new and sympathetic with them. Young explores paper and dice games like Dungeons & Dragons, miniature games like Warhammer, and computer games like World of Warcraft and summarizes a nuanced variation by R. A. Salvatore in his novel The Orc King. Chapter 5: Popular Culture Postcolonialism This chapter looks at popular fantasy and its treatment of (post)colonialism, with detailed examples from David Heath Justice (Way of Thorn and Thunder), Naomi Novik (Temeraire), and J. K. Jemison (Inheritance), explaining why there are so few indigenous writers of fantasy compared to the many White authors who write about indigenous peoples. The chapter argues that while future-oriented sf has often dealt with (post)colonialist themes, fantasy has tended to look back at the pre-colonial middle-ages, though 21st-century fantasy has begun critiquing colonialism and racism. Chapter 6: Relocating Roots: Urban Fantasy Anatomizes race in urban fantasy, which Young calls “sub-urban fantasy” because it often concerns fantastic beings and realms existing right beneath our everyday real world. She analyzes TV shows like Grimm (typical in being European-based and White) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (atypical in featuring three African American main characters) and fiction like Aaronovitch’s River of London books, and introduces the cultural appropriation topic developed in Chapter 7, asserting that the key point is how authors write about different cultures and colors, not the culture and color of the authors. Chapter 7: Breaking Habits and Digital Communication Focuses on the online RaceFail 09 debate between fans and authors like Jay Lake, John Scalzi, and Elizabeth Bear about white authors of SFF writing stereotypical characters of color and engaging in cultural appropriation. It began with a minor backlash against race in Bear’s novel Blood and Iron, which led to a backlash against the backlash, and so on. This chapter is disappointing, because it gives almost no detail about Bear’s depiction of race so that it’s difficult to appreciate the debate. I did like Young’s analysis of an unusual set of texts--online communications in a community of readers and writers. Young’s book should be read and discussed. Although she is balanced in her tone and understands how anti-pc people think, she favors more main characters of color in fantasy more accurately depicted. She points out important things concerning race in American culture, like that at the time her book was written, no writer of color had won a Hugo award for best novel, only two had won a Nebula for best novel, and only a few had won World Fantasy Awards, and that characters of color comprise only 10% of those appearing in television shows but 40% of those in the overall population. She also explains how “Fantasy’s habits of Whiteness” are gradually changing as more writers of color get into the genre. Unfortunately, pervasive typos and grammar errors mar Young’s book, so many that I started noting them down more than Young’s good ideas. There are missing possessive apostrophes (“Saunders world”) and missing articles (“Since early 1970s”), incorrect plural nouns (“as the first three chapters of this books demonstrate”) and incorrect verb forms (“The early editions of D&D show that they are tribal but giving very few details of their way of life”). Many wrong words spelled correctly (e.g., beings not begins, form not from, planned not played, identify not identity, tape not tap). And umpteen comma splices (“Belit thus becomes an emancipator from the evils of history and commerce simultaneously, her physical and symbolic Whiteness is literally a beacon of liberation which emblematizes her superiority over her followers”). Such errors are legion. They excruciated my experience with the book (published by Routledge). People interested in race in popular anglophone fantasy should read Young’s book, and I hope she'll be able to publish a revised edition in future. View all my reviews
The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant by Ulysses S. Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “How little men control their own destiny” Finished by Grant just before he died of throat cancer, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885) is mostly his detailed account of the Civil War as he experienced it, written to earn money needed due to “the rascality of a business partner” and to answer those who thought his approach to the war cost more blood and treasure than necessary. Early on he says, “But my later experience has taught me two lessons. First, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred. Second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.” Grant also says he wants “to avoid doing injustice to anyone,” and although some figures don’t come off well, like the careful General Halleck and the controlling Secretary of War Stanton, Grant writes with an evenhanded air. He compliments southern soldiers, generals, and people, for though he disagreed with their cause (a rebellion to protect a doomed and amoral slave system) he thought they were sincere, and he doesn’t blame the south alone for the blood spilled to atone for “the wickedness of our nation.” His book is heart-felt, and though I sense him protesting too much about things like Sherman’s “perfect” march to the sea, his account is convincing. The first chapter traces Grant’s family in America back to 1638, profiles his self-educated tanner father, and depicts Grant as a hard-working boy who liked horses and who became a laughingstock for once naively explaining his bargaining strategy to a man before bargaining to buy his horse. This instance of Grant’s modest honesty yields a pithy insight: “Boys enjoy the misery of their companions. . . and in later life I have found that not all adults are free from this peculiarity.” Chapter 2 concerns West Point, which Grant didn’t want to attend, because “A military life had no charms for me,” but his father pulled some strings and off he went. Once at West Point (where he mostly read novels), he decided to graduate and become a mathematics teacher, but “Circumstances always did shape my course differently from my plans.” Then follow chapters on the Mexican-American War, which he thought was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” During the war, he learned that “Nothing so popularizes a candidate for high civil position as military victories,” and that he was no fan of bullfighting: “I could not see how human beings could enjoy the suffering of beasts.” After a few chapters on his post-war life, including a vivid account of gold rush era SF, Grant embarks on his main topic, the Civil War, “The great tragedy of 1861 to 1865,” which runs from Chapter 17 to Chapter 70 (the last one). For Grant, the quartermaster who became a general, fighting is less important than strategy, topography, weather, supply, transport, orders, communications, and morale, etc. He devotes more time to dealing with swamps, rivers, levies, lakes, malaria, food, clothes, bridges, roads, trains, telegraphs, subordinates and superiors, etc. than to battles. And although he often praises the “dash” of southern soldiers and the “endurance” of northern ones, when he does recount the engagements with which he was involved, he never mentions individual feats of heroism or cowardice. He refers to regiments, brigades, and divisions etc. by commanding-officer synechdoche, as in, “Burnside was moved up between Warren and Smith.” He assesses generals like Sherman favorably and Rosecrans critically according to how quickly and effectively they could act to implement the overall strategy. Grant does not hide the carnage of battle: “One cannon ball passed through our ranks not far from me. It took off the head of an enlisted man and the underjaw of Captain Page of my regiment, while the splinters from the musket of the killed soldier and his brains and bones knocked down two or three others, including one officer, Lieutenant Wallon, hurting them more or less.” And he is aware of the suffering caused by war: “While a battle is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousands or the ten thousands with great composure, but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as of a friend.” Indeed, as when he debunks the fanciful popular story about Lee surrendering his sword at Appomattox and Grant returning it to him, Grant is out to de-romanticize history and to de-glorify war. From bodies and bridges to roads and towns, the destruction was pervasive--and inventive, as in prying up enemy train tracks and using pyres of ties to soften the rails to wrap them around trees. Troops on Sherman’s march shot hounds they found to prevent them from hunting escaped slaves and went out empty-handed on foot in the morning and returned on horseback laden with supplies from local farms in the evening. Grant relates two anecdotes involving joke-cracking soldiers taking away one woman’s poodle and another woman’s last chickens. Once during a prolonged and ferocious battle Grant realized that wounded men were lying in no man’s land, so he wrote Lee to arrange two hours per day for both sides to retrieve them, and Lee wrote back that they’d need flags of truce, and soon 48 hours of back and forth had passed, and all but two of the wounded had died! Grant is a fine, dry writer, as when describing officers (“He was possessed of an irascible temper and was naturally disputatious”), giving advice (“The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front”), explaining orders (“Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished”), exposing human nature (“Bad habits, if not restrained by law or public opinion, spread more rapidly and universally than good ones”), or criticizing ambition (“It is men who wait to be selected and not those who seek from whom we may always expect the most efficient service”). The Appendix mainly reiterates many of the meticulous details already given in the Memoirs, down to the same verbatim excerpts of orders and reports. Robin Field reads the audiobook capably, but somewhat attenuatedly. For an author dying of throat cancer like Grant, Field’s voice and manner may be suitable, but his reading renders the Appendix (lasting nearly 3.5 hours of the audiobook) quite difficult to finish. When Grant says, “The President of the United States is in a large degree, or ought to be, a representative of the feeling, wishes, and judgment of those over whom he presides,” I wished he had written about his two terms as President. Grant was the kind of person (and general and president and author) who could write, “How little men control their own destiny,” but also “What I have done has been done conscientiously to the best of my ability and in the best interests of the entire country.” View all my reviews
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Readable and Absorbing Templar/Crusader History In the introduction to The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors (2017), Dan Jones says that his book will tell an entertaining narrative history of the modest beginning of the Templars after the first Crusade, of their rapid rise to wealth, power, and influence in the medieval world (east and west), and of their “spectacular fall” and dissolution. The last sentences of his book describe what he achieves as well: “The legend of the Templars will live on, inspiring, entertaining, and intriguing generations to come. That perhaps is their real legacy.” Through the course of his history, Jones illuminates much about the Templars in the Holy Land, where their order started in the early 12th century, dedicated to protecting the Christian presence, which I expected, but he also explains plenty about them in European countries like England and France, where they were major land-holders, bankers, political influencers, and crusaders (helping the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal), which surprised me. “Those hundred years had seen the Templars transformed from indigent shepherds of the pilgrim roads [in the Holy Land] dependent on the charity of fellow pilgrims for their food and clothes, into a borderless, self-sustaining paramilitary group funded by large scale estate management [from Scotland to Sicily],” with their “martial prowess with spiritual prestige and global connections” enabling them to act as diplomats, bankers, and advisors to kings and popes and other powers. Jones also vividly and suspensefully depicts battles and sieges and wars and negotiations, as well as the political and religious motivations behind them. Although Jones writes most of his history from the European point of view (using words like “unfortunately” or “fortunately” when describing things that hindered or helped the Templars and their crusading Christian allies and rivals achieve their goals), he also does present the Muslim point of view and quotes a fair number of Muslim chroniclers. And he depicts famous Muslim leaders like Saladin and Baybars as complex, charismatic, and capable men. He is a clear writer capable of finely dry lines, as when he says, “The Templars were not a missionary organization,” because they were not dedicated to converting enemies but to killing them. (One of the many interesting things to glean from his book is the distinction apologists for the church militant made between homicide (the sinful killing of men) and malicide (the graceful killing of evil). Another savory line comes when Jones covers a low point in the Templars’ history, when losses to Muslim armies left them “a ragtag leaderless rump.” He excels when critically summing up some of the less savory figures in his history, probably chief among them King Philip IV of France, the man most responsible for wiping out the Templars: “Philip was a man of little warmth and no great intellectual curiosity, but he was a calculating zealot, committed to his own self-serving form of piety, able to convince himself of the worst intentions in others and quite unafraid of destroying anyone who stood in his way.” I found many interesting things in Jones’ account, like the rationalization of some Christian thinkers and leaders to condone violence in the service of a religion whose major figure, Jesus, preached non-violence, the Templar rules forbidding members from doing things like wearing pointy shoes, hunting every animal except lions, and wearing clothes with decorative accessories, the rivalry between the Templars and the Hospittalers, and the way Philip IV and Pope Clement freely used torture and intimidation and even the University of Paris to destroy the Templars, not only in France but everywhere. He does hurry through the fourth Crusade and its sack of Constantinople, leaving me to wonder what if any role the Temple played in it. On the other hand, I sometimes felt I was reading a history of the Crusades in addition to that of the Templars. That’s inevitable, given how inextricably they were involved in the Crusades almost from the start, but still… The result is that, although I enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it, I sometimes wondered if he was stretching things to make the Templars relevant to the history of the Crusades, and I don’t now feel the need to read his book on the Crusades. The book closes with an interesting epilogue covering the history of idealizing or demonizing fictional representations of Templars, from the beginning of their order up to the present, from the early 13th century poem Parzifal up to the recent Assassin’s Creed games and including their co-option by the Freemasons in the 18th century and by Mexican drug cartels in the 21st. Jones summarily debunks the fanciful legends of their supposed continued secret existence and secreting away of great treasures and holy relics like the grail, explaining that the “evidence” from all such fancies derive from earlier fictions about the order. Although Jones reads his own book just fine, with clarity and enthusiasm without overdoing anything, for obvious reasons the Audiobook lacks his notes and maps, as well as his four appendices (Cast of Major Characters, Popes, Kings and Queens of Jerusalem, and Masters of the Order of the Templars). For readers interested in the Templars and Crusades, this book should be an enriching experience. View all my reviews
A Little History of Economics by Niall Kishtainy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Clear and Absorbing Historical Overview I got a lot of nourishment from Niall Kishtainy’s A Little History of Economics (2017). His history begins with the first philosopher-economists like Plato, moves through economist giants like Adam Smith, and finishes with contemporary figures like Thomas Piketty. Along the way it concisely references historical events like revolutions, wars, famines, bubbles, depressions, recessions, and so on. I like Kishtainy’s accounts of things like normative economics, Marxism, exploitation, free trade vs. protected trade, conspicuous consumption, game theory, creative destruction, speculators, “pegged” currencies, externalities, feminist economics, behavioral economics, rational expectations, auction theory, and so on. He explains difficult concepts clearly and uses helpful analogies (some from the economic theorists he’s referring to), like the bathtub, the parade, the football (soccer) team, the pineapple island, and the noisy trumpeter. He uses simple language to explain complex concepts. As an economics tyro, I learned a lot from his book (although I also feel that, because it’s a short book and I’m not good at retaining complex information, I will probably forget much of what I learned). Kishtainy is rather balanced and unbiased in his history, presenting the ideas of key figures like Keynes and Friedman while showing opposing points of view or theories to demonstrate how complex the field is and how many different ways there are of understanding economics. Some figures he covers are really neat, like the Indian economist-philosopher Amartya Sen, who started looking at different ways to be poor or wealthy than traditional money/food ones, focused on “capabilities” rather than on mere freedoms, and also cast a light on gender inequality. Kishtainy’s overall point is that economics is an important and interesting field, exploring in the context of scarcity “what do people need to be happy and fulfilled” and “what makes them truly thrive.” He succeeds in making us see that “Economics is a matter of life and death.” He also argues that we should use economics to solve specific problems, because it’s not so effective at solving big complex problems. And that economists should have cool heads and warm hearts. The audiobook reader Stephen Crossley is fine: clear, personable, committed, without drawing attention to himself. Sometimes while listening to the audiobook, I wished I were reading the physical book so I could dip in and out of earlier or later chapters to firm up an understanding of points where Kishtainy says something like, “As we saw in chapter 29,” or “As we’ll see in chapter 36,” so I several times listened to chapters over again after finishing them once. The book is well-written and well-read enough that re-listening to chapters was interesting rather than a chore. Readers new to economics—especially young readers—should find much of interest here, though older readers well-versed in them may not. View all my reviews
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Wit and Wisdom and Daily Life Who wouldn’t want to read a selection of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most interesting blog entries? That’s what No Time to Spare (2017) is. After a fine introduction by Karen Jay Fowler that explains how Le Guin got into blogging late in her life, the book presents the entries, which range thematically rather than chronologically from 2010 to 2016, in the following sections: Going Over 80 (on aging), The Lit Biz (on fan letters, awards, the great American novel, utopia/dystopia, Homer, etc.), Trying to Make Sense of It (on gender, politics, economics, uniforms, exorcism, childhood, anger, belief, etc.), and Rewards (on opera, theater, her recently deceased fan-letter-answering-assistant and friend, soft-boiled eggs, her Christmas tree, the Portland foodbank, a rattlesnake, a lynx, and the Oregon high desert), and—in three different interludes—The Annals of Pard (on the antics of her last cat). Le Guin’s wise and witty mind and pleasurable and precise use of language are on display in her blog entries. She likes to take some perceived conventional wisdom and then skewer it or correct it, as she does with sayings like, “You’re only as old as you think you are,” or “the Great American Novel,” or “fantasy is escape.” Even when she’s talking about something like aging, she is liable at any moment to insert a tart opinion or keen perspective on things like the American Dream, gender, or writing. And in her blog entries she prefers asking questions to answering them, as with her suggestion that we find a better metaphor for economics than constant unrestrained growth (which sounds to her like cancer) or as with her wondering whether it’s possible to find a constructive use for anger or to join a male institution like the military as a woman without being coopted by it. Anyone who has read and loved Le Guin’s great work like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or the Earthsea series would get a great, warm, provocative kick out of her blog entries (though I suppose you could also just go to her official website and read them there!). The audiobook reader Barbara Caruso is pretty much just right, a seasoned woman with the intellect and emotion to enhance Le Guin’s experiences and opinions and insights, though her voice gets a bit high when she’s emphasizing key words, a quality that at times rubbed me the wrong way (it may be a matter of taste). This collection is some of the last writing that Le Guin did near the end of her long career, and it reveals some details of her daily life and many examples of her independent mind and heart. It ends on a sublime note, as with fine poetic and vivid nature writing Le Guin describes the high Oregon desert and its flora and fauna, like when she describes some vultures in flight, “quiet lords of the warm towers of the air,” and then a flock of black birds, “flowing down and away . . . and into the reeds and across the air in a single flickering particulate wave. What is entity?” View all my reviews
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Fascinating, Funny, and Moving Account of Egypt Based on his roughly five years living in Cairo with his wife and little twin girls from early in the Arab Spring revolution to well after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi imposed his martial police state dictatorial rule on the country, Peter Hessler’s book The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution (2019) fascinatingly depicts such changes in the context of the cultures of ancient and modern Egypt. We learn, for example, that the disproportionate number of young Egyptians (50% younger than 25) being dominated by male elders was not so different in the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten; that contemporary Egyptians as well as ancient ones favored strongman rulers; that ancient Egyptian rulers as well as contemporary ones embarked on “grandiose and misguided desert projects”; and so on. In his book Hessler makes many interesting insights into contemporary Egypt, about things like the following: --the complex nature of Egyptian culture (sarcastic, fatalistic, practical, local, paternal, superstitious); --the lack of governmentally organized systems for things like trash collection (the history of Cairo trash collection from the 20th century through Arab Spring is rich); the laws relating to divorce (if the wife initiates the proceedings she forfeits her right to alimony); --the inequality between genders (which Hessler sees as the biggest problem in Egyptian culture, as, for instance, married women rarely work outside the home); --the evil eye (never directly compliment someone on, say, their beautiful children, but instead use opposites like “your twins are beastly” or preface or conclude compliments with “This is what God has willed [masha’allah]” to avoid inadvertently cursing someone); --superstition (how Egyptians explain people with psychological problems as being possessed by afrits or djin); --the differences between and uses of classical “al fusha” (the eloquent) Arabic which is mostly written vs. demotic “ammiyya” (common) Egyptian Arabic which is mostly spoken; --education (why more than 25% of Egyptians are illiterate and how children’s textbooks are biased with, for instance Israel not appearing on maps and debacles like the last war against Israel described as victories); --drug abuse (opioid pain killer abuse is rampant in Cairo, not unlike in the USA); --the Cairene slum (such neighborhoods differ greatly from typical American slums, being vibrant, unplanned, improvised, centrally located, and strangely well-functioning places in which live 2/3 or 11 million of Greater Cairo’s denizens) --the niche filled by Chinese lingerie businesses (scattered up and down the Nile river towns and cities selling g strings and nightgowns to Egyptian women while speaking what Hessler calls the Lingerie Dialect of Egyptian Arabic, which uses exclusively female forms and calls every woman “bride” and cheaters “Ali Baba”). The two most interesting and sympathetic figures in the book are Hessler’s gay interpreter Manu and his garbage man Sayyid. Manu lives a dangerous life in a society that frowns on homosexuality (there is no neutral term for being gay in Arabic, the police are given to arresting gay men and subjecting them to anal exams, and Manu’s lovers often robbed or beat him after sex because of their guilt). Sayyid (the scene stealer of the book) is a down-to-earth, illiterate, street-smart, hard-working guy living in the Cairene equivalent of a slum with his formidable and beautiful wife Wahiba and their kids. Sayyid knows everything about everyone who lives in Hessler’s upper-middle class neighborhood on an island in the Nile in Cairo, learning about them through their trash and his own connections, and he gets to know Hessler and his family quite well, even taking the author along with him on his garbage rounds and eating meals with him and so on. Sayyid seems more concerned with his epic marital troubles than with what happens in the Arab Spring and subsequent coup. Hessler is a vivid, observant, and witty writer when describing people, places, moods, and events, as with empty shipping containers looking in the distance “like stacks of Legos melting in the sun.” His accounts of crawling through a long narrow debris-filled tunnel in a Middle Kingdom pharaoh’s tomb, of participating in a scary demonstration in Cairo, of accompanying Sayyid on a visit to a sexist and cynical divorce lawyer, of seeing Nefertiti’s uncanny bust in Berlin, of driving through a desert of mirages, and so on, are all prime. Perhaps he gets a bit too narratively clever at times when shifting between historical and modern times in mid-chapter, as when late in the book he moves back and forth between an account of his interpreter Manu trying to settle into life in Germany as an asylum seeking refugee and the story of the Jewish family who had his (Hessler’s) apartment building built in Cairo early in the 20th century, because I’d have liked to have had one or the other account completed without jumping back and forth so much. It seemed to be a kind of narrative trick unnecessary for an already absorbing non-fictional work. Hessler is a capable reader of the audiobook, pausing and emphasizing just right. Perhaps a more dramatic professional reader might have made his book even more compelling that it already is with his own reading, but I like to hear the author reading his/her own book whenever possible. Hessler also interweaves into his book his descriptions and perceptions of Ancient Egyptian archeological sites like the Buried of the title (an ancient necropolis in Abydos) and of modern and contemporary Egyptologists so as to illuminate them as well as to suggest parallels between ancient and modern Egypt and its people. Thus, his funny, thought-provoking, moving, and illuminating book should be rewarding for anyone interested in Egypt, whether ancient or modern. View all my reviews
The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Readable, but Sometimes too Sympathetic and Detailed Biography Alison Weir’s The Life of Elizabeth I (1998) is a detailed and readable biography of Elizabeth I. The introduction of Weir’s history explicates the social, religious, international, political, and cultural context surrounding Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne after the death of her half-sister Mary. The book then goes on to depict the coronation of Elizabeth, her early challenges as the 25-year-old unmarried ruler of England, like the religious divide between Catholics and Protestants, the pressure put on her to marry, the pressure put on her to name an heir, and then the roughly 45 years of her reign, including the difficulty of balancing Spain and France against each other. Weir focuses on Elizabeth’s ability to remain the virginal unmarried queen mother of England while stringing along various international princely suitors and playing off their countries against each other and indulging in probably unconsummated romances with her favorite courtiers, like Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and later his step-son Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. There were many interesting things I learned and/or enjoyed reading about in the book: --How second-rate and divided a power England was compared to France and Spain, with the country being split between Catholic and Protestant and economically challenged; --How closely the European powers and England were to each other in terms of ambassadors, spies, royal marriages, and so on; --How complicated Elizabeth was: her dissimulating, dissembling, prevaricating, procrastinating, and circumventing personality, her soft spot for handsome and manly men, her intelligence and education and many interests and abilities (languages, education, translation, hunting, dancing, etc.), her knack for (usually) choosing the most capable and loyal men as her advisors and administrators, her rage at people who married without her permission, her reluctance (compared to other rulers then) to execute people, and her lack of concern for the suffering of animals (e.g., much bear baiting going on then); --How tenuous and contingent Elizabeth’s hold on power seemed to her (and probably was) throughout her reign (partly because she was Protestant in a world of Catholic powers and partly because she was thought by many to have been Henry’s bastard); --How envious and rivalrous were her favorites and advisors; --How fraught was her relationship with Mary Queen of Scots; --How lonely and miserable was Elizabeth’s death. I did get impatient during the first dozen chapters, which seemed at times an endless reiteration of Elizabeth’s courtship games. In Chapter 9, Weir even refers to “her old game” of stringing suitors and their supporters along. Apart from a partially successful treaty with Scotland and France and a debacle for the army she sent to France to retake Calais, there is little matter concerning how she ruled in the first dozen chapters, when I often wondered how Elizabeth was actually ruling during her first years—what she was doing (or even what were her small council and parliament doing) vis-à-vis taxes, the poor, and so on. It takes till Chapter 13 for Weir to focus on Elizabeth’s qualities and practices as a ruler. Things do pick up when Elizabeth’s relationships between Mary Queen of Scotts, Leicester, and especially Essex develop. I also sensed that Weir at times reveals her sympathies for Elizabeth and England a bit too strongly. At one point we read, “Fortunately, news had come from Ireland that . . . Mountjoy was making headway against the rebels, which disposed the Queen to clemency,” so Elizabeth didn’t strip the men knighted by Essex (against her direct command) of their titles, so their wives could still be called Lady Something instead of returning to Mistress Something. For whom and in what way was this “Fortunately”? At another point we read, “Neither the log book nor the Golden Hind survive today. The ship was rotting by 1599. By then, Drake was himself dead and already a legend, occupying an enduring place in the affections and the imagination of Elizabeth’s subjects and successive generations for many centuries.” Weir could write a bit more about how Drake from the Spanish point of view was a nefarious pirate. I also felt that sometimes Weir presents a few more details than necessary. The book has tedious moments, concerning the fashions of the 16th century, including different types of jewelry and collar frills etc. Or concerning a house that Amy Dudley stayed in that still stands (though it looks different than it did when she was there), and Mr. Foster is buried there. Or concerning Blunt, whose tomb may still be found at Kitminster Church. Or concerning a new kitchen Elizabeth had made at Hampton Court, one that survives today as a tearoom within the palace. Twice we learn that Elizabeth preferred silk stockings after once trying them. Twice we learn about her face-whitening make-up. About the audiobook reader Davina Porter, I was glad that she doesn’t try French/Spanish/German/Dutch/Italian accents when reading the many quotes from the letters or diaries etc. of various ambassadors etc., but she does read with a Scottish accent for Scottish figures and with a broad country accent for Sir Walter Raleigh, which seems out of place given her avoidance of continental accents. She also assumes gruff or condescending or irritated etc. voices to gussy up Weir’s prose more than is necessary in an already lively book of history and biography, and often tries to make, for instance, passages dealing with executions extra moving. Generally I found her trying a bit too hard to dramatize the history (though that may be a matter of taste). Finally, people interested in detailed, readable, popular histories and the reign and age of Elizabeth I should like this book. View all my reviews
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Fascinating, Appalling, Comical, Triumphant Book Dan Flores’ Coyote America: A Natural and a Supernatural History (2016) is a mostly fascinating and often devastating or funny account of the most impressive all-American canine predator the coyote. The fascinating parts concern the unique survivability, intelligence, problem solving ability, and individuality of the coyote. The devastating parts depict the excessive ongoing 100+ year “ideological” attempts by ranchers and the US government to eradicate the animal by any means necessary (including trapping, shooting, dynamiting, poisoning, and chemical and biological warfare). The funny parts happen when Flores recounts contemporary real life coyote stories or retells Native American Old Man Coyote stories. The core of Flores’ book is that the adaptable and intelligent critters resemble us (“coyote history mirrors human history enough that” they become our alter egos) and that they are uniquely American animals that symbolize America as its avatars. His book begins by introducing the coyote and its interesting nature and history. It then provides chapters covering the Native American view of and history with the coyote (including creating the oldest deity in North America, Old Man Coyote), the changing impressions of the Europeans and explorers and naturalists of the new USA of coyotes from neutral and or positive to negative, the origins and development of the “war on wild things” undertaken by the USA from the 19th century till now, the rise of the bio-centric ecological movement in the 1960s, the colonization of cities across America by coyotes, and the ways in which coyotes are natural agents of healthy hybridization. The book ends with a neat epilogue covering “coyote consciousness” or “coyote-ism” (based on using intelligence and wits to survive, on exulting in sheer aliveness, on recognizing our shortcomings with rueful chagrin, on seeing ourselves with truth) in American popular culture (including the Warner Brothers’ Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons) and highbrow literature (including the work of poets like Gary Snyder). Before reading this book, I hadn’t known any of the following: that a coyote female can bear anywhere from two to nineteen pups in a litter, depending on the overall population of coyotes in her area, which is one reason why despite (or because of?) killing hundreds of thousands of coyotes per year, the government and ranching interests have never succeeded in reducing their overall population; that coyotes have colonized every US state (including major metropolises) apart from Hawaii; that they’ve long been living in human cities (at least as far back as the Aztecs); that today every American lives within one mile of at least one coyote; that they can live alone or in groups; that whether you say the name of the animal with three syllables or two denotes whether you like them or hate them; that Mark Twain helped start the negative image of coyotes (sickly, sneaking, ravenous, cowardly, contemptible) while Walt Disney helped popularize the positive image of them (intelligent, interesting, persecuted); that Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote became a parody of the American over-reliance on quick technological fixes; and more. Elijah Alexander is a capable, professional, clear reader. I liked his reading of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure. And he’s fine here, but slightly succumbs to what some listening readers (like me) might find a distracting and unnecessary attempt to imbue French, Spanish, German, or British, historical figures quoted by Flores with various accents. At one point he even assumes a stage voice for President Nixon that sounds nothing like the guy. If I have a criticism of the book it is that although Flores does plenty with the Native American view of coyotes and of Old Man Coyote and plenty with the development of the persecution of the animal and with the coyote's growing support in recent decades, I’d have liked even more real life coyote stories, more accounts of their biology and ways of life and antics and families and pup rearing and solo and group hunting and so on. Flores wholly succeeds in convincing this reader (admittedly already a lover of wolves and wild things) that the government and ranching interests should stop waging an amoral and useless war against the coyote, that instead the coyote should be celebrated as a uniquely successful wild predator who doubles as an avatar of America and of humanity. I love the last sentence of his book about the true national anthem of America: yipping coyote song that’s been heard on the continent for half a million years. Anyone who likes wild animals and nature and has an open mind should enjoy and learn from this book; anyone who thinks coyotes (pronounced with two syllables) are pests worthy only of total extermination should probably avoid it. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
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