What are you reading now - and then

Alan Ryan, On Politics (Penguin Books, 2012)

Weighing in at over 1,000 pages this looks a daunting task, but as each chapter can be read in itself this makes it easier to manage. The book is thus an encyclopaedia, though Ryan offers unifying themes to his studies in the introduction. As it stands this is possibly the finest account of Western political philosophy I have ever read, written with a fluency and a clarity that I wish I had access to when I was an undergraduate. I actually went to one of Ryan's lectures at the RPS in London in the early 1980s but cannot recall what it was about, which doesn't sound like much of an endorsement.
The chapters on Hobbes, Locke, Hegel and Marx are riveting and offer a welcome balance of thought, given the controverises these men have generated. There is more than one chapter on the Americans, from the ideas that shaped the Revolution to the differences between John Dewey's definition of Liberalism compared to the ideas of John Stuart Mill. The book is teeming with small insights that illuminate the depth of Ryan's scholarship, such as the revelation that in the British Empire (prior to 1776) the only place where Jews and Catholics were allowed to openly worship alongside Anglicans was in Philadelphia.
You can't go wrong with this book, even if it very large and heavy -maybe a Kindle version better for those who have this technology (I don't).

I think you have found the perfect COVID-19 stay at home reading . Glowing reviews on Amazon USA and I see that a paperback edition is coming this fall for only $30.00 , hopefully by that time we will all be able to bring it to the beach in Thailand or somewhere.
https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Hist...s%2C217&sr=8-1

Anne Case and Angus Deaton ,"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism"
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despai...s%2C213&sr=1-2
Deaton and his wife ,both Princeton University professors and he the 2015 Nobel Economics Prize winner have examined an alarming American phenomenon ; the rise in American deaths in the last few decades due to suicide, alcohol and opioid drug abuse and place the blame on the antiquated American health insurance system .
Fascinating and convincing .
Also ,although I don't usually read much fiction I just finished the Stieg Larson 'Millennium trilogy' and very much enjoyed it. (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

I think you have found the perfect COVID-19 stay at home reading . Glowing reviews on Amazon USA and I see that a paperback edition is coming this fall for only $30.00 , hopefully by that time we will all be able to bring it to the beach in Thailand or somewhere.

---

$30? I bought my copy (mint condition paperback) in a charity shop for £2.50...do you have charity shops in the US?

The political economy of international relations (Gilpin)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AsianBabe_

The political economy of international relations (Gilpin)

---

Influential in its day, but I suspect overtaken by events since the 1980s, particularly 'new wave' Globalization. There is a useful summary of Gilpin in the link, and if you are not familiar with it, the study by Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: the End of Empire and the Birth of NeoLiberalism (Harvard, twenty eighteen) is worth a look.
Review of Gilpin here-
https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland...2&context=mjil

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stavros

$30? I bought my copy (mint condition paperback) in a charity shop for £2.50...do you have charity shops in the US?

---

Yes we do. Unfortunately, at the present time here in the Los Angeles area they are deemed 'nonessential' services and are closed.
I usually use them a great deal given the large amount of reading that I do ,for buying , selling and trading. There is also an excellent used book store attached to a public library in my area that I donate to regularly with a wonderful selection of 'scholarly' used books where I think I may be able to find "Politics" . Unfortunately ,it too is closed because the libraries are classified as nonessential and are closed?!
By the way ,I thoroughly enjoyed Hoskins, "The English Countryside" and Thisk,"Alternative Agriculture"

Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe.

Dude did 20 combat missions in B-24's. The real deal. He flew in Big Week. He was a squadron commander so flew every 5th mission on a rotating basis. First mission was December of 43, last was March of 45.

Good read for you history & Jimmy Stewart fans.

I offer you this on the friendship between Stewart and Henry Fonda-
https://libertyconservative.com/the-...n-be-overcome/

WIth regard to Stewart, I have occasionally wondered why this stern, conservative man made such subversive films for Hitchcock, two in partcular: Rear Window, and Vertigo. I am sure I remember a quote from somewhere -Camus?- 'every voyeur is a conservative' -relevant to both films given that Stewart's character is a voyeur in the first and a stalker/voyeur in the second. Did Stewart at some level relate to the men in those films?

Stewart, like so many who experienced the horror of combat, came back a changed man. The scene in It's a Wonderful Life where he is freaking out just before he ran out of the house was so genuine. I had wondered how he pulled that out... After reading about his combat experience, well he had lots of horror to draw on.