What are you reading now - and then

[sukumvit boy]

Reading John Richardson's ,"Sacred Monsters ,Sacred Masters" reminds me of "The House of Getty" by Russell Miller which I read in 2019 .

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...house-of-getty
Excellent history of the making of the Getty collection and museum.
Amazing how art , collectors , dealers and museums attract the most fascinating and bizarre collection of saints and sinners (but mostly sinners) .

[Stavros]

I am currently dipping into two books by the UK journalist Steve Richards: The Prime Ministers (2019), and The Prime Ministers We Never Had (2020). The latter is in text form a slightly amended version of the straight-to-camera, half-hour lectures Richards gave, in the tradition of AJP Taylor, and can be seen on YouTube -the chapter on Denis Healey is not as good as the YouTube lecture because he digresses to far into Michael Foot's story. I doubt these books will be of interest to anyone outside the UK unless they have a particular interest in British political history.

As tends to happen with these sorts of books, they are a mixed bag. There is some attempt to offer a context for leadership and failed leadership -party support, timing, luck and the ability to present a convincing 'story' to the public. The warning is that the factors that created success in the early years can be the cause of a leader's end -notably in the cases of Thatcher and Blair. I am not sure Richards always gets his facts right, some of his interpretations are open to question but that may be my personal bias having lived through the times covered in the book -the Prime Ministers begins with Wilson and ends with Johnson. He is probably to kind to Thatcher and Blair, but one feels sorry in the end for Theresa May, who runs the risk of becoming the greatest failure of any Prime Minister since Suez, not as the architect of Brexit, but as someone tasked with making happen something she did not believe in. And, while seen in the chaotic days after the Referendum as a 'safe pair of hands', she lacked the basic skills of communication and empathy to hold her party together thereafter, though one notes how cruel it was for her to be attacked constantly by people with no responsibility for power.

There is a savage and often daft review on Amazon.co.uk, and others note the lack of an entry on John Smith and Tony Benn.

I looked but it doesn't seem there is a book The Presidents We Never Had, though there are plenty of online articles.

Two fascinating if flawed books, but fluently written and so easy to read.

[filghy2]

I recently finished reading Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by British historian Niall Ferguson. As with all of Ferguson's books it is written in an engaging style, with lots of fascinating historical detail on the impacts of past wars, famines, epidemics and other natural and man-made disasters.

However, the chapter on Covid-19 is less satisfactory. This is partly because the book was finalised in August 2020, but also because his assessment seems to be influenced by his conservative political leanings. He accepts that Covid is a real crisis, and criticises the responses of populist leaders like Trump and the push to reopen prematurely, but lays more of the blame on mistakes by public health bureaucracies. The obvious point that is ignored is the way that politicisation has persuaded a large section of the population to not take the virus seriously. He also concludes that lockdowns were a mistake, but this seems to be based on impressions rather than any deep analysis.

The other main failing of the book is in the drawing of lessons about how to better deal with disasters. Ferguson makes the reasonable point we are not good at planning for disasters even though we should know that they are likely to occur periodically (grey rhinos rather than black swans) but seems to attribute this to inherent problems of bureaucratic systems. There is no real discussion of what the alternative might be and whether there is any evidence that decentralised systems (like markets) do any better.

[Stavros]

I haven't read the Ferguson book, he is an annoying person but that's a matter of taste I suppose. That said, he may have a point with regard to bureaucracy, but it begs a lot of questions, because bureaucracies are there to do what the politicians in command tell them to do. As I think I mentioned in various Covid-19 threads and posts, the lack of co-ordination not just between States but also within them has been remarkable -historically, health crises were one area where Governments co-operated and did so successfully, in the 19th and 20th centuries with regard to outbreaks of Cholera, Typhoid and Influenza. What we have seen is a failure within the State to co-ordinate -no such co-ordination has existed between England, Scotand, Wales and Northern Ireland- nor among the member states of the EU, and definitely not in the US where the DIY attitude of the Presidency is surely in part resonsible for the deaths of nearly a million people and the infection of millions more.

But in the case of the US, what did it do to improve its position of influence in the WHO when Trump was President? One word answer: Nothing. He then and now attacks China and the WHO but under his watch the US not only did nothing, but by doing nothing enabled China then and now to evade its responsibility to be transparent about a virus that has affected the whole world ad which we need to understand in all its complexities to deal with it next time.

Disaster management is standard in most advanced countries, but so too is the aversion to spending money o something that might not happen - unless the right people insist on it. Thus we spend billions on nuclear weapons that sit in their silos or tubes in submarines, useless kit that is never going to be used, because the MoD and the Defence lobby are among the most powerful and persuasive in the poltical realm. That the UK has failed to secure its share of global supply chains so that 20% of the normal stock in supermarkets ain't there, and there is a shortage of lorry drivers, and so on, is not just bad planning, but bad management, but the Civil Service on its own cannot command -that is the job of elected politicians.

We get who we vote for. That is the strength and the weakness of liberal democracy.

[broncofan]

There is no real discussion of what the alternative might be and whether there is any evidence that decentralised systems (like markets) do any better.

I can't imagine how a market system would do well in preparing for very rare events. People put capital to use to take advantage of trends and occasionally a big idea will revolutionize how we do things. But it doesn't seem there is profit in setting aside large amounts of capital for things that may not come to pass and if they do may not require the solutions one came up with in advance.

There is a role for markets in coming up with solutions once a disaster strikes, but even then small startups might need or want government subsidies (big pharma looks for subsidies too) if they can't raise money otherwise.

I have also found Ferguson to be an engaging writer but I can't see how there can be disaster preparation unless the profit motive is at least sometimes curtailed. This occasionally requires collective action and cooperation. Innovation is great on the tail end but as we've seen with vaccine technology it can be squandered if there isn't social cohesion.

Anyhow, thanks for the review. Sounds interesting. I'm reading a novel by Walter Mosley called Black Betty. I've just started it so we'll see how it goes.

[filghy2]

I can't imagine how a market system would do well in preparing for very rare events.

A good example is the insurance market. Insurance is profitable only when the incidence of claims is reasonably predictable and limited. Actuarial calculations depend on past experience being a good guide to the future. That doesn't work so well for novel events where the risks are correlated, like a major pandemic. For instance, it is impossible at present to buy travel insurance (at least in Australia) that covers cancellation due to Covid restrictions. Climate change is likely to present an even bigger problem because private insurance won't be able to cope with many more extreme weather events.

[sukumvit boy]

I recently finished reading Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by British historian Niall Ferguson. As with all of Ferguson's books it is written in an engaging style, with lots of fascinating historical detail on the impacts of past wars, famines, epidemics and other natural and man-made disasters.

However, the chapter on Covid-19 is less satisfactory. This is partly because the book was finalised in August 2020, but also because his assessment seems to be influenced by his conservative political leanings. He accepts that Covid is a real crisis, and criticises the responses of populist leaders like Trump and the push to reopen prematurely, but lays more of the blame on mistakes by public health bureaucracies. The obvious point that is ignored is the way that politicisation has persuaded a large section of the population to not take the virus seriously. He also concludes that lockdowns were a mistake, but this seems to be based on impressions rather than any deep analysis.

The other main failing of the book is in the drawing of lessons about how to better deal with disasters. Ferguson makes the reasonable point we are not good at planning for disasters even though we should know that they are likely to occur periodically (grey rhinos rather than black swans) but seems to attribute this to inherent problems of bureaucratic systems. There is no real discussion of what the alternative might be and whether there is any evidence that decentralised systems (like markets) do any better.

The US and UK have recently established a new partnership to deal with future pandemics and much more . (Trump shut down the previous US agency)
https://www.tmc.edu/news/2021/06/uk-...-inequalities/

[sukumvit boy]

Reading Larry MvMurtry's "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at 60 and Beyond"
Novelist, screenwriter and antiquarian book dealer tells what the Old West was really like and about how his grandmother and grandfather came to West Texas and built the ranch/farm that he grew up on , his love of books and life as a novelist and screenwriter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_McMurtry
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/walter...dition=2278003

[sukumvit boy]

Graham Green "The Orient Express " also known as "Stanboul Train" The Deluxe Penguin edition with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/b...graham-greene/
Also "The Portable Graham Green" also the Penguin edition . Includes "The Third Man" and "The heart of the Matter" along with essays ,criticism and excerpts from many of his other books.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/b...graham-greene/

[buttslinger]

Today I'm going to order A Life of Picasso VOL IV by John Richardson.
He died while writing it, and it was supposed to come out a couple years ago, I think.
The last good book I read was The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes,
It starts with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein walking down a street talking.