What are you reading now - and then

[Torris]

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple - the story of the relentless rise of the East India Company, the ultimate predatory capitalists.

Dalrymple is a terrific writer on India

[sukumvit boy]

Dalrymple is a terrific writer on India

This looks very interesting.

[broncofan]

The book Filghy mentioned sounds like something I'd like to read if I were reading nonfiction right now.

I've been reading a bunch of James Ellroy books. He's the guy who wrote LA Confidential and Black Dahlia. I've now read his LA Quartet, which I thought was very good, though maybe White Jazz was the weakest link.

I'm now reading the first book of his underworld trilogy called American Tabloid. I have to say I'm really liking his books. Lots of vulgarity and all of his characters are racists, which I'm not sure is inaccurate in 1950s America though it's sometimes uncomfortable to read pages of slurs. His books have a lot of stuff about McCarthyism and the House of Unamerican Activities along with mob activity at the time and corrupt law enforcement. The books are very detailed but not so much that it gets boring or derails the plot. Also, the violence is pretty graphic so you have to have a strong stomach.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes I'm now reading his latest "This Storm" 2019. I have read most of his books starting with "The Black Dahlia" 1987. Excellent writer but in some ways too much with the jive language ,distracting! Of course you know about his disturbing childhood and history?

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/james-ellroy/

[Stavros]

This is a true statement: I went into the recently re-opened Waterstone's bookshop we have in town this morning, to see if they have an illustrated version of Pinocchio suitable for a 10 year old, a gift for a friend (they don't) -and saw on the new arrivals shelf John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened, which I did not realize has been publshed here. I will read it and review it, unless I die laughing while doing so.

[broncofan]

Yes I'm now reading his latest "This Storm" 2019. I have read most of his books starting with "The Black Dahlia" 1987. Excellent writer but in some ways too much with the jive language ,distracting!

That's part of what's hit or miss with his writing. He really does his homework and wants to be historically authentic and for the characters to talk like he thinks certain subcultures do. But it makes tough reading. For instance, I enjoy the Yiddish, which he has the 1950s Jewish characters use. And it's probably the 100 or so phrases that people of that generation spoke. But someone who doesn't know any Yiddish has to figure out what it means and frankly he probably overdoes it. But there's tons of slang I don't recognize generally.

But having gone through the LA Quartet he really does seem to bring back a lot of the politics of the time. Gangsters who had leverage over police departments, the Zoot suit riots and racial tensions, and everything 1950s that I don't know enough about. In American Tabloid I'm reading about Bobby Kennedy investigating the Teamsters and J Edgar Hoover not wanting to look into organized crime because it's a distraction from pursuing communists. Kind of a fun ride. Thanks for the article.

[sukumvit boy]

This is a true statement: I went into the recently re-opened Waterstone's bookshop we have in town this morning, to see if they have an illustrated version of Pinocchio suitable for a 10 year old, a gift for a friend (they don't) -and saw on the new arrivals shelf John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened, which I did not realize has been publshed here. I will read it and review it, unless I die laughing while doing so.

From what I see in reader reviews ,Stavros,by reading and reviewing Bolton you will be preforming an onerous public service for all of us ,"In desperate need of an editor " is one review that comes to mind. LOL

[sukumvit boy]

That's part of what's hit or miss with his writing. He really does his homework and wants to be historically authentic and for the characters to talk like he thinks certain subcultures do. But it makes tough reading. For instance, I enjoy the Yiddish, which he has the 1950s Jewish characters use. And it's probably the 100 or so phrases that people of that generation spoke. But someone who doesn't know any Yiddish has to figure out what it means and frankly he probably overdoes it. But there's tons of slang I don't recognize generally.

But having gone through the LA Quartet he really does seem to bring back a lot of the politics of the time. Gangsters who had leverage over police departments, the Zoot suit riots and racial tensions, and everything 1950s that I don't know enough about. In American Tabloid I'm reading about Bobby Kennedy investigating the Teamsters and J Edgar Hoover not wanting to look into organized crime because it's a distraction from pursuing communists. Kind of a fun ride. Thanks for the article.

Yes, he really does his homework and is in most respects a very fine writer which is why I keep reading his books in spite of the gradually increasing use of the jive lingo to carry the story along. It has become so much worse since "The Black Dahlia". Which is why my copy of "This Storm;A Novel" has sat on my bedside book case for about 2 months ,half read,and will probably remain there for another 2 months before I manage to get through all 590 odd pages.
With regard to the Yiddish, Ha ,(as if the hep talk was not bad enough) I am fortunate in that my mother spoke Yiddish,Russian,Polish,Lithuanian and English growing up and learned Italian when she met my father!
By the way I recently finished the 1st of the Parker novels "The Hunter" as per your recommendations and very much enjoyed it.

[Stavros]

Kim Ghattas, The Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unraveled the Middle East (2020).

The core argument in this book is that there was little confict between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims in the MIddle East before 1979, and that two events that year -the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca- shaped events thereafter by creating a vicious lethal competition for power across the region. Taking Islam into areas of personal life not known before, the author attempts to address the question 'What Happened to Us?' and in doing so produces an often gripping account of how formerly marginal aspects of Islam became weaponized as Political Islam transformed the Middle East, but can only do so by showing that these trends existed in the region before 1979.

What she does show is how the competition to be a 'better Muslim' led States such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, to impose their version of Sharia law to significantly restrict the freedoms citizens had before, be it in terms of women's dress, the freedom to go to the cinema -many of which were shut down after 1979-, and crucially, how the expression of dissenting views in the media became a matter of life and death, or imprisonment and torture. The dual influences of the Wahab version of Sunni Islam and Iran's sponsorship of change, notably in Lebanon is shown to have common roots to the extent that many Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia supported the Revolution in Iran, but that in the years that followed, the Iran-Iraq War, the conflict with the USA and all forms of the liberal nationalism that had been common in the region, even in dictatorships, spiralled out of control as extremist opinion became mainstream, with the result that radicaization from this position ended up in the form it took with Daesh where petty doctrinal disputes could lead to instant death and nobody ever experienced security, when every day was shaped by fear.

The book is riddled with errors of fact, misleading statements and questionable language -why describe Mecca as 'God's throne on Earth'? She claims Israel's Ambassador to the UK was assassinated in 1982, whereas he survived the attempt and lives in retirement in Israel. Ghattas claims twice the British supported Ibn Saud whereas they backed his enemies, the Hashemites, and her claims the RAF defended ibn Saud aganst his own rebellious Ikhwan, masks the fact that they invaded British controlled TransJordan in order to kill the Hashemite Emir Abdullah and integrate Jordan into the emerging Saudi Kingdom -that the British after the seizure of Mecca in 1925 did retain some relations with Ibn Saud was shaped by the Empire's anxieties that Muslims in India not be given the cause to make politics there any worse than it was.

At one point (page 120) she remarks of Ronald Reagan's America ushering in 'a decade of social conservatism...marking the end of America's own era of leftist revoutionary fervour' -What? She argues most of the 'Arab Afghans' such as bin Laden and the Mujahideen were not state funded, then says in effect that they were, ie by Saudi Arabia, just as at one point she claims Iran had no cash to splash in Lebanon because of the Iran-Iraq war, then says they splashed the cash, and also claims the war cost a trillion dollars, not a figure I am familiar with. And while she is right to identify the PLO as a crucial provider of training camps for miliants and terrorists both Shia and Sunni, most but not all Middle Eastern and North African states were privatizing violence, much as Russia does today (via the 'Wagner' group and others), while the one area that was off-limits to all other than Hezbollah, was Israel, and even there the Iranan tactic was merely to harass Israel -not once did firebrand revolutionary Ayatolah Khomeini put words into action in an attempt to 'Liberate Jerusalem'.

Her sterling efforts to delineate the intellectual contradictions of Salafist Islam is evident throughout: she refers to Mohammed Abduh as a 'progressive Salafist' which is not how Albert Hourani sees him in his classic study Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1938, (1962) and the first and most elegant analysis of the fundamental problem: Islam and the the Modern industrial age; and she probably exaggerates the militancy and violence of extremists in Pakistan. For all its gruesome violence and intolerance, the view offered by Dominic Lieven in his chapter on 'Religions' in Pakistan: A Hard Country (2011) seems more balanced to me than the view offered by Ghattas.

Alternative views of Lebanon and the Shia can be found in Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (1987), and Vali Nasr The Shia Revival (2006) both of which trace a resurgence of Shi'a politics and religion which was developing before the revolution in Iran, but which has been boosted, in part because of that event, but also in more recent years by the catastrophe of regime change in Iraq, with Libya not mentioned at all in Ghattas's book, and the later introduction of Yemen offered without any context or understanding of Yemen's complexities.
The irony being that at the end, she sees a new generation in Iran exhausted by the Islamic intolerance they face in their daily lives, but unable by themselves to end the experiment that began in 1979, while Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, personally not committed to Wahabi extremism, uses his power to open cineams, allow women to drive -and extort billions from family members accused of corruption, or murder critics, such as Jamal Khashoggi (a supporter of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the politics of Saudi Arabi until he woke up to the folly only to be slaughtered by his former allies in the most horrible way).

Revolutions devour their children, and there are few signs that this feast has ended, or how it will end.
I recommend the book, but with reservations as noted above.

[sukumvit boy]

This looks very interesting ,however way above my pay grade with regard to the Middle East . I'm still trying to figure out the whole Shia /Sunni thing and just when I think I have ,it becomes entangled with other issues.
I did read a recent New Yorker Magazine article about the search for King Solomon and King David's lost temples and weather or not the Bible accounts are just fiction . Includes interviews with and references to Middle Eastern and Jerusalem scholars with whom you are probably familiar.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ds-lost-empire