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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) .
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.
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
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)Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
https://www.tmc.edu/news/2021/06/uk-...-inequalities/
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
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/
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.
Hi Buttslinger, hope you’re doing well,and thanks for the ref to Richardson- was not aware Vol 4 had been published.Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography (2021).
Disappointing survey of ten countries that lays out some basic geography but then fails to explain the history as geography, or the geography as history, politics, economics, and so forth. If you know a fair amount about some or all of the countries you may be as surprised as I was at the errors or fact and questionable judgments. If you begin from a state of ignorance, this may be a useful start.
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Tim-Marshall/dp/1783965371
In case you missed it -David Mamet sounding off. He is a clever man, knows how to write a play, but for me it is the content that falls flat. He thinks Trump did a good job, growing up in Mayor Daley's Chicago convinced him elections are rigged so what is different about 2020? And this "So people are walking around impossibly confused about what is a man, what is a woman"...hmmmm....maybe stick to writing plays?
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/20...-rigging-woods
Just read 'American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal MasterMind Behind the Silk Road' by Nick Bilton.
Very good and easy read, he details how he did the research at the end, and it's an amazing amount of work to present it in a narrative format.
Worth a read.
Thanks for this, I bought it this morning -in a shop, not online- and will read it as soon as I can.Quote:
Originally Posted by GroobySteven
Read this over the last two days, and it is a fascinating read with a thrilling clmax, and not much hysteria which can sometimes ruin books like these.Quote:
Originally Posted by GroobySteven
The points of interest that stand out -the larger the site became, the more people Ulbrich needed to help him run it and keep secure, but the more vulnerable he became to blackmail, threats of violence and theft, leading him to make decisions that involved murder, though none was actually committed. It thus blows a hole in a key element of the Libertarian ideology Ulbrcht used to jusify an open market place free of Government control -because, as the Judge in his case pointed out, to manage and beneft from the Silk Road, Ubricht had to impose his own 'laws' on the site, this contradicting the concept of freedom he believed he was practising -but if the transactions are illegal -whether or not narcotics ought to be de-criminalized- that fact attracted genune buyers and scam artists and crooks, some of whom made thousands by exploiting loop holes in the code used to write the 'fabric' of the website.
The other point is crucial -wherever we go on the web, we leave a 'footprint' -Ulbricht must have assumed his earliest posts when creating an interest in the Silk Road had gone, but an intrepid agent of the IRS tracked them down and through other links, Ulbricht, who insisted on running everything himself and using coffee shops -or a publc library at the end- was identified and imprisoned for life.
If you don't read but want to know the story, this brief film tells it all -but the book has the detail and as it is well written I do also recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBTYVVUBAGs
Catherin Belton Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (2020)
Belton was for some years based in Russia where she wrote for the Financial Times. The main argument of the book is that when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985 there were factions in the Party and the KGB that welcomed reform, and those who were opposed to it, and though the former won over the latter, the men who succeeded in taking over the machinery of politics had a background in the KGB. In other words, they knew who everyone was, from the corrupt party officials to its honest men and women, and most important of all, the organized crime groups who had operated an internal market in the USSR when the Centrally Planned economy was dysfunctional and enabled corruption on a vast scale to carry over into the new Russia. Thus Putin emerged as the champion of the ex-KGB elite who benefited in terms of power, and through the 'Ollgarchs' in terms of wealth, though Belton is keen to show how Putin reigned in the Oligarchs once they had attracted the foreign direct investment which overhauled Russia's antique industrial capacity. Without the capital and expertise of Shell, Exxon and BP, for example, Russia's petroleum industry would not have been able to grow as it has done.
The thesis is persuasive, but the book is marred by irritating errors of fact, and one notes Abramovich sued Belton over claims in the book, thus
"The text will now recognise that the allegation Abramovich bought Chelsea football club at the Russian president’s behest is not a statement of fact. It will include additional denials from the oligarch’s spokesperson and the club."
Roman Abramovich settles libel claim over Putin biography | Roman Abramovich | The Guardian
In addition, Americans and others will be fascinated by the detail in the chapter that details Trump's long established relationship with the Russians, most of them tied to both Putin and organized crime, with the suggestion that the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City was a money laundering operation for the Russians at a time when it was losing money for Trump. As was said with regard to crooks like Felix Sater, 'Trump doesn't do due diligence'. Ask no questions get no lies? More pertinent, had Mueller reached back into Trump's business and financial history, a deeper perspective on his Russian links, and to some extent, dependency would have, should have re-opened the question, how was a man so closely tied to the criminal underworld allowed to run for the Presidency?
So it is an interesting read, but there are errors of fact I have seen, and some may see others, but that is the peril of history being written by journalists rather than historians.
Yes, I was Just going to post a thread about Bolton's book and a few others cited in a recent New Yorker magazine article which I will post below.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-bought-london
What do you Brits think? Looks like Russia has found a home for it's oligarchs and dirty money in London!
The article you linked does point out, as I did, that Belton was sued by Abramovich over the Chelsea Football clubs claim in her book's earlier version. I don't know if Putin 'suggested' it, as I don't know if Putin follows football enough to know who or what Chelsea football club is. The claim in the article -I have seen it elsewhere- is that Abramovich is not close to Putin, thusQuote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
“At no stage is the reader told that actually Abramovich is someone who is distant from Putin and doesn’t participate in the many and various corrupt schemes that are described,” his lawyers asserted."
So who has been seen in Turkey as part of the Russian delegation to the 'peace talks' with Ukraine...? Er....Roman...
Or maybe he was persuaded to intervene by Shevchenko? The superb footballer -ex-Chelsea- from Ukraine....
London has been a key laundromat for the 'Oligarchs', and most recently, one of it's most notorious (to me) -Mikhail Fridman, has complained he can't eat out because of UK sanctions. I was amazed he was even in London, where he owns a $20 million+ home, given he has dual citizenship with Putin-friendly Israel. If the UK can't throw this shit out of London, maybe he should sell his London home and eat falafel from that guy who has a stall near Damascus Gate Jerusalem? Last time I was there, he even added some french fries! I know. To a falafel! You see how far Palestinian cuisine has fallen since the occupation!
Fridman complains-
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/r...d-b990989.html
As for Fridman's complaint he has invested in the UK...hmmm....
"Russian oligarchs from Roman Abramovich to Alisher Usmanov have brought in billions of dollars into Great Britain with most investments flowing into luxury properties or football clubs rather than industrial activities. "
https://www.reuters.com/article/brit...12B0TD20151011
And if you read the Chapter in Belton's book on Trump, you may have to admit that the US, be it Florida, or Brighton Beach, Noo Joysee, or Las Vegas, is on a par with London when it comes to money Laundering....
You are old enough, Sukumvit Boy to remember Deep Throat's immortal words...'Follow the Money'...
Up next...the FIFA World Cup in Qatar...the Russians in Dubai...sand worms....tremors....
The world of art and the characters that inhabit it is full of interesting people and stories.
If you are interested in what's happening now in the world of Modern and Contemporary art ,word on the street says this is the book to read.
"Boom" by Michael Shnayerson
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/t...9781610398411/
Cromwell David Horspool (2017)
This short biography in the series of books on English Monarchs is fluently written, covers most of the issues and is the perfect introduction to the life of this most peculiar Englishman. Cromwell even today, is revered and reviled, but in context was part of an experiment in politics that begs the question -was there a Revolution in the 17th century?
For there was a King, and then there was not, and then there was. There was a Church of England and an Archbishop of Canterbury, and then there was not, and then there was. There was a Parliament, and then there was not, and then there was. Those who were rich in 1640 were still rich in 1680, give or take losses from war and punitive taxes that came, and went. The Irish were under the English heel in 1640, and remained so following the extreme violence of Cromwell's wars, notably at Drogheda and Wexford. The Scots Presbyterians who had undermined the King, challenged the 'Independent' Cromwell, and were thrashed at Dunbar and, when they ventured south on behalf of the 'fake' King Charles II (crowned in Scone, if you please), were routed at Worcester, celebrated by John Milton (see below).
And yet, out of this maelstrom came the secular politics of liberty that was encapsulated during the 'Putney Debates' (but delivered in a speech in church) by Thomas Rainesborough, as 'One man, One vote' -Horspool does not discuss the theory that Rainesborugh was murdered on Cromwell's orders. Religious tolerance to a degree was thus something Cromwell sought, the irony being that England's dismissal of the Church of Rome, and his (re-)admission of the Jews, meant that by 1658 Jews in England had more rights than Roman Catholics, rights that would not be properly restored until 1822.
Cromwell failed to establish a new political system, which is why after his death the experiment with Republican government did not survive, while the Puritan excesses that abolished Christmas and much 'jollity' may have led to the hedonistic excesses of the Restoration, as the 18th century indulged in Gin Palaces, Molly Houses, and the King named the streets of London after his boyfriends. Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey, then dug up, his body or what was left of it abused and dismembered, his head put on a stick and all that Christian sort of thing. A statue of him outside the House of Commons was placed there in the late 19th century when the agitations over Home Rule in Ireland were expanding into what would become a revolution of more substance in Ireland than England. It was then a provocation, and today remains an eyesore to Roman Catholics and those who think Regicide was a big mistake. So the debates go on, with Cromwell at the core, a deeply religious man, capable to murdering people convinced that God's Providence allowed him, indeed compelled him to do so.
Milton's tribute is here-
Sonnet 16: Cromwell, our chief of men, who… | Poetry Foundation
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The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Attwood, 1985.
I first encountered Attwood when The Edible Woman was published, but I was not impressed, so have tended to avoid her books. I read this on holiday, and although it it reasonably well written, albeit in Attwood's matter of fact, one dimensional prose, I never cared for the narrator.
The book may be seen as a story of the future to compare to 1984 or Brave New World, and claims to be the record on tape of a woman who lives at a time in the future when, in the aftermath of a nuclear war and the demolition of the US Government, a patriarchal, theocratic society has emerged in the US where women who are fertile are 'Handmaids' to Commanders and have no personal freedom. Although some have tried to link this phenomenal denial of women's freedom to Theocracies such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, in fact Attwood took most of her concepts from Puritan New England, where she claims one of her ancestors was tried as a Witch but survived a hanging.
Too many questions are left unanswered -most of all, is this what men want? Yes, there are flaws in the Theocracy, not just among the lower orders, as even Commanders break their own rules. The historical background that takes a young woman from marriage and a family in her late teens/early 20s, in her thirties into captivity is not properly explained, but the book does give some idea of what a militant Christian Theocracy might look like, and given the Republicans in the US who want the US to be a Christian Theocracy, The Handmaid's Tale may not just be fiction, it could be a warning. Attwood does explore some of the nuances of life in a dictatorship, but if one doesn't empathise with the main character, Offred (= Of Fred, a woman named after her Commander), then a major impulse in the book fails to excite.
Mike Davis has died in Southern California. I first read City of Quartz not long after it was published and think it is a great read. Ironically for a man who actually loved the State he lived in, his book helped me explain why I don't like LA and never have. I suppose in common parlance I just don't 'get it' -after all there are plenty other places in the US with sunshine and beaches.
This is a fair obituary from the LA Times -
Mike Davis, author of 'City of Quartz,' dies - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
Lullaby for witches Hester Fix. A Mystery/ Love story with a pinch of Witch in there :) as an Occultist I spend a lot of time reading Occult/Spiritual/Religious/Magick based texts I also enjoy novels along those lines as well as Classics, I just started the Moonstone, Finished the Pearl, and Dracula the Undead by stokers Great nephew based off of Brams notes
Jeremy Bowen, The Making of the Modern Middle East, a Personal History (2022).
Bowen was the BBC's Middle East Correspondent from 1995-2000, Middle East editor from 2005-2022, and is currently International Editor. As if often but not always the case with journalists, the books they write are not as good as the reports they have filed. In this book the only real interest is the eyewitness accounts of events across the region, largely because Bowen's attempt to write the history is too basic although, if readers know little or nothing about it, they might be informed. He cannot present the history in all its complexity and the book suffers from his attempts to put the events he sees in their historical context. The book has notes and a bibliography, but no Index. I was given the book as a gift, for had I browsed it in the bookshop I would not have bought it. For what it's worth, I much preferred the BBC reports of the late Gerald Butt, and Jim Muir.
Journalists who have done better at this sort of thing, as far as it goes, are the late Robert Fisk, and the American journalist John Cooley whose 1991 book, Payback:America's Long War in the Middle East, is at times angry and bitter but a compelling read. To some these are biased accounts, and Bowen has also been accused of bias, mostly by Israel (the IDF shot and killed Bowen's driver in Lebanon, when he was not far away and believes it was deliberate etc), and indeed the BBC commissioned a report, known as the Balen Report into biased reporting. As far as I know the Balen Report has never been published.
Owen Matthews, Overreach (2022)
Matthews, descended from a prominent Ukrainian family on his mother's side, has lived and worked in Ukraine and Russia for the best part of 30 years, building contacts and acquiring the depth and breadth of knowledge that makes this one of the most compelling books on Putin's war.
He does a good job of unravelling the complex origins of Ukraine, shaped largely by the Scandinavian Kings and Vikings who emerged after the end of the Roman Empire, and thus establishes how different Ukraine can be from Russia -I was not aware that Ukrainian is to Russian as English is to Dutch.
The book goes a long way to demolishing the conspiracy theory that much of the present crisis was 'Made in America', a sub-plot invented by Putin himself, and lobbed like a lollipop into the gaping mouths of idiots like Oliver Stone and Noam Chomsky. This war has been years in the making, and like a murder, it is best seen in terms of Motive, Means and Opportunity. Putin has never accepted that the demise of the USSR was a good thing. He witnessed the collapse of the East German Govt when he was in the KGB in Dresden in 1989, and though critical of Communism, his devotion to a strong, centralized State remained and remains fundamental to his concept of politics.
The Motive is the Glory of Russia, Ukraine being part of that fabulous Empire. The Means is War. The Opportunity was provided by Brexit, Merkel's retirement, and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Matthews, notably in Chapter 4 (Tomorrow Belongs to Me) profiles the friends, thinkers and supporters who have provided an ignorant thug from the slums of Leningrad, with a world view based on the argument that Russia is the last hope of Christian civilization, as 'Western Liberalism' has all but destroyed the troika of values he believes in: God, Family and Country. And if this sounds familiar, there is a correspondance between the militant view of Russia's Christian Nationalism and that found in Hungary, France and the USA. That this is also an anti-Semitic, violent form of Christinaity is no surprise, as these are themes in Russian history, the nightmare from which they cannot seem to escape -hence the idea that Russians can suffer like no other, as if the suffering and death that are the consequences of Putin are worth it. One wonders if this generation of Russians wants to suffer as their grandparents did. The multitudes of young people who have fled to Georgia, Armenia and the Central Asian Republics suggests otherwise.
The war has been catastrophic -the primary aim was to blitz Kyiv, eliminate the Govt, and establish a Russian Govt that would seek unification with Russia with the support of the Ukrainian people.
The plan failed because a) Ukrainians they expected to welcome the Russians had by 2022 sought alliances with the West so even ethnic Russians opposed 'Russification' -just as 75% of Ukraine's Jews left the country after 2014, so a substantial number of Ethnic Russians and Ukrainians -up to 45% of the population- abandoned Luhansk and Donetsk leaving behind only the most militant pro-Russian supporters.
Second, having failed to decapitate the govt in Kyiv, Russian forces met with a more decentralized but better equipped and motivated Ukraine military, one that had been trained and provided with materiel from NATO for the best part of 10 years. So, having failed in its political objectives, the Russians now began failing militarily, having sent into battle men without proper equipment, tanks and armoured vehicles that got stuck in the mud, staffed by demoralized troops whose only aim appears to be to get as much out of the war through looting as they can.
So no Glory for Putin. But just as important as it is that Putin is convinced of his own victory, is the intriguing argument Matthews offers, that because he has never lost an argument or been challenged, Putin doesn't know how to negotiate. His position is 'This is what Russia wants, give it to us'. He launched the war when he perceived Europe weakened by Brexit and the retirement of Angela Merkel, and the US weakened by its withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Russia has failed at more than war, as this telling passage illuminates one of the sources of what drives Putin -his colossal resentment that the West exploited Russia and saw it as a 'little' state to be pushed around and treated badly. Consider -
"Even after three decades, Russia still had not learned to manufacture anything the rest of the world wanted to buy (other than arms...). Everything that made Russia work, from mobile-phone routers to web servers and the engines of its Siemens built high speed trains and its fleet of Boeing and Airbus-produced planes-was invented and largely manufactured by the West and its Asian allies. Even after 2014 a national push to wean Russia off its import dependence had failed to produce a wholly Russian made mobile phone, laptop or even computer processing chip, much less a passenger plane" (page 173).
Where did all those trillions of dollars go from 1991-2022? Not invested in Russia, but real estate in London, New York and Paris. Into offshore bank accounts, yachts, football clubs. No wonder Putin is seething with resentment, but one wonders what he has achieved with his war of revenge.
Putin, Trump, Mohammed bin Salman -vastly rich men who want to change their world, convinced, absolutely, that they are right about everything, whose achievements in reality are measured in colossal debt, millions dead -from Covid or War- and a political agenda that only offers more of the same. For all its flaws, 'Western Liberalism with its policies on Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage, and Open Democracy, is not the end of civilization, but its continuation. And given the choice, I believe most people prefer to take their life chances in a Liberal Democracy than have them made for them by a pompous fool in Moscow, Riyadh or Mar-a-Lago.
Strongly recommended as a good read.
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992).
I heard about this novel at the time and since but only decided to read it when I was in Vienna recently and without a book. In two parts at just over 600 pages the novel is fluently written and easy to read, but around 200 pages too long, and the writing towards the end becomes repetitious and boring. Tartt tries, and fails to integrate her story into the Greek studies the student circle in this novel are supposedly committed to and good at, though as the story unfolds we not only unravel their secret history but discover they are mostly obnoxious posers. A turning point in Part One is not convincing but determines the fates in Part Two where melodrama takes over. The only serious proposition I could find is this: Murder is a Selfish Act, discuss.
4/10 for effort, but I had no interest or sympathy with the characters. whom you can find in The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and even Crime and Punishment.
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, (1927, English translation by David Horrocks, 2012)
I thought I read this in the 1970s when it was a trendy book, but I now realize I did not finish it at the time. The book concerns a man who has had a bourgeois life who in his middle years rejects it to become a 'lone wolf' in society, disdainful of all its promises and most of its pleasures, other than sex, drinking and eventually some narcotics. It appealed to those from the 1960s who did not follow the family aspiration to go from school to university to career marriage etc, but also takes a prompt from Nietzsche (not mentioned in the book) and the rejection of inherited morals in an effort to define one's self individually without the baggage of religion and philosophy, though the book read like a personal philosophical tract and tends to bore, and has references to Eastern Religions which focus on the Self, and often how to empty the mind to obtain an inner peace. In addition, there is the contrast extant from Ancient Greece, between Apollo -Reason and Order- and Dionysus -Emotion and Chaos- which later in the book leads Steppenwolf to have out-of-body experiences, and though it includes a murder, the person killed is not real but symbolic. The women in the book are obliging in a sexual way, being the physical/sensual/Dionysian alternative to the ascetic/intellectual/Apollonian Wolf.
I can't say I like the book, but have had a problem with Hesse's other books too, I just find them too preachy. The Glass Bead Game has a high reputation, but it is very long and I am not sure if I am motivated to read it.
The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier (1974).
Has anyone read this? I have not,
It is one of the most consistently banned books in the USA, because they were banning books long before DeSantis started doing it.
The Chocolate War - Wikipedia
James O'Brien How they Broke Britain (2023, paperback edition 2024)
"Once you are able to speak the unspeakable, people will begin to think the unthinkable and that is how you beat the establishment" (Nigel Farage, p187 paperback edition).
O'Brien quotes Farage in this angry, sometimes bitter analysis of the relationship between the media, politics and 'influencers', mostly from so-called 'Think Tanks'.
If you list names such as David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrew Neil, Paul Dacre, Rupert Murdoch and Matthew Elliot, you find they are part of a network that includes The Spectator magazine, and 'think tanks' such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Adam Smith Institute, the Taxpayer's Alliance and others, most of which are well funded, but we don't always know by whom. Crucially, and in spite of Farage's quote, the men concerned here have risen to the top of British politics and the media, yet blame everyone but themselves when their policies go wrong, or don't work, or cost ten times what they were billed to cost.
The Libertarian ideas this group of people believe in, include these-- "anything funded by the state is wrong"; public sector workers are "the enemies of progress", "the NHS doesn't need reform, it just needs to be sold off" (p171-72 in the 2024 paperback edition).
What this has meant for journalism is that the Libertarians are permanently on the attack, and crucially, they have abandoned the facts to transform every statement into a defence of their ideology, demonizing the ideas and the people that they are opposed to. It means that the age when journalists were committed to telling the truth, even if it meant disparaging their own politics, if they had any, have gone, and we live in an either/or world where 'they' are always wrong and 'we' are always right. This is the foundation laid by people in the US like Newton Gingrich, and in the UK by Murdoch, Neil and Dacre, even though the hard evidence is that their policies have done more harm than good, but that in the process, they and the people who back them have become extremely rich while the rest of us have been impoverished, our social services broken, but one hopes not beyond repair.
Jeremy Black, A Brief History of America (Robinson, 2024).
History books these days are either 900 page monsters, or bite-sized. Lots of ‘History of x in 100’ something.
i find this an interesting but unsatisfactory book, trying to cram in too much into a readable minus 300 pages. Black is more concerned than most with the grim fate of America’s First Nations, whom he calls Indians- well ok, and at least better than Thomas Jefferson, who thought them ‘savages’ and treated them as such.
It is interesting that whereas in Central and Southern America before Columbus there were organised, centralised imperial systems - Maya, Inca, Aztec are obvious examples- nothing comparable emerged in North America, Europeans arrived but did not remain, for as is pointed out, the success of later colonisation was based on numbers of people with the military means to defend/attack in a populated land they did not own, with the creation of trading networks within the new territories but, crucially, linked to the old, in Europe.
This is a conflict driven account, so at times I wanted a more positive image of American achievements which do appear, but in the rushed style of lists. This as I say, makes for unsatisfactory reading, or it could just be too much for one book.
William Pao, Breakthrough: the Quest for Life-Changing Medicines (Oneworld, 2024)
If you are not sure if RF Kennedy is an idiot who should be nowhere near health policy, this book will explain why. Pao does use the terminology of the science of immunology but does also explain it in simple language so it should not be beyond the scope of most readers. The chapters concern Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a chapter each on two cancers -non-smoking related lung cancer, and breast cancer. Other chapters concerns HIV, Sickle-Cell Disease and Beta Thalassaemia, and Covid. What Pao describes is how science understands these illnesses, and how it develops strategies to either eliminate them, or reduce them to manageable conditions.
On the way, an army of laboratory technicians, innovative scientists, experimentalists, and politicians enable the breakthrough's that have saved, and improved people's lives. There are no conspiracies here, no diabolical accounts of 'Big Pharma' turning humans into laboratory animals for commercial gain, rather an objective account of 'how we fixed it'.
It is one of those accounts which, though not shaped exclusively by Americans, nevertheless should make Americans proud of what the country has achieved in medical science, something that a certain person would do well to acknowledge, if he had the skill and desire to do so.