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Read any good books lately?
- Thread starter Mediancat
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Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
The chapter on Prussia is an excellent example of the interesting subject matter in this book, and I'm sure it would interest @Hermit, whose grandfather was part of that history. The last chapter, on the fall of the Soviet Union, is a fitting close for the book. It is all especially relevant for what is going on in Eastern Europe today. Norman Davies is known for his specialization in the history of that part of the world.
Hermit
Cantankerous grump
Thanks for the heads-up. I read some of the book a few years ago. It reads like a travelogue written by a journalist, but it is also densely packed with historical information. Norman Davies knows his shit, and he is also skilled at presenting it in an engaging manner to the general public.
Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
DHL delivered this book to me a few days ago. I've just started it and plan to read this 600+-page book at a very leisurely pace. (DHL delivered six other books at the same time.)
But I hope other Infidels read it. Perhaps someone should start a thread to discuss it. (Not me; I do a VERY bad job of starting threads, beginning with badly chosen thread titles.)
For two professors of archaeology, at first there seemed to be an inordinate desire to spin contemporary politics. But this lasts only for the first few pages. And in those pages they make the interesting claim that Rousseau and Hobbes have OPPOSITE views of prehistoric man, but both views point to similar conclusions, and both are wrong. (They also claim that Rousseau's and Hobbes' descriptions of primitive man were "thought experiments" and not intended to be realistic portrayals.)
On page 18 begins an interesting claim that has bearing on our discussions of income inequality (and thus contentment and social stability) in Politics threads.
Is it better to be an average person in a wealthy modern society? Or an average person in a primitive society, e.g. Native American?
The data are anecdotes where a child is adopted or abducted from a European culture to a Native American culture or vice versa; and then years later given a choice which culture to remain with or return to. According to the authors the choice is almost always to remain with or return to the Native culture. This is the choice regardless of whether the Native parents are the birth parents or adoptive parents.
Riffling through the book, I see that it is full of rich discussions and data. Enjoy it! I'm sure I will.
It's true that human history isn't a story of progress, but it's also true that modern civilization wasn't an intentional choice. Sometimes it seems authors don't take this logic far enough, and readers end up concluding that modernity is some kind of mistake we made, and not just a result of history unfolding.
I'd definitely welcome a thread on this topic, but I don't intend to read the book. I've read a few synopses, but am already there, for the most part.
Politesse
Lux Aeterna
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I highly recommend a full read of the book; its glory is in its details, not in a summary. I'm already regarding it as one of great books of this decade; it is not blazing a trail so much as communicating much of what has been going on in archaeology of the last fifty years, but so few people actually have any idea what's been going on in archaeology, that having it all summarized and explained in an approachable (if enormous) work is extremely important, I think.
Agreed, it does seem to be where we're at in our public discourse of history. I've seen it in an Indigo and will likely tackle it at some point (maybe if I can get it out of the library), but have already inferred the main idea for the most part. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time these days for books that aren't on the bleeding edge of my interests.
Recently read Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. I feel like I learned quite a bit.
Rob
Rob
Robert Bringhurst's A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World
The Haida were a native people on the coast of B.C. (where Bringhurst currently lives). In the early 1900s an ethnographer spent a few years there transcribing their oral mythology. Bringhurst learned Haida, re-translated the transcription, and produced this book. It's a bit of a mix of linguistics, history, philosophy, along with the Haida myths themselves.
Highly recommend.
The Haida were a native people on the coast of B.C. (where Bringhurst currently lives). In the early 1900s an ethnographer spent a few years there transcribing their oral mythology. Bringhurst learned Haida, re-translated the transcription, and produced this book. It's a bit of a mix of linguistics, history, philosophy, along with the Haida myths themselves.
Highly recommend.
Now reading a biography of Ken Caminiti, a somewhat forgotten figure of the steroid era of baseball. It's also an indictment of baseball's blind eye towards enhancement drugs until more or less forced into action.
Rob
Rob
laughing dog
Contributor
A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty is really two books. The first half of the book is a history of the movement towards equality in the Western (Europe and the USA) in terms of health, education, voting and the distribution of property and of income. Extremely readable, and full of observations (or indictments). The 2nd half of the book is about how the march toward equality has stalled since 1950 and what how to get back on track. I found the 2nd half a bit tendentious and ironic since Piketty simultaneously argues that changes should occur after a democratic debate and through a democratic process but provides concrete proposals to achieve more equality.
As a side note, the author is not arguing for complete equality of income or property ownership.
As a side note, the author is not arguing for complete equality of income or property ownership.
jab
Veteran Member
within the past month, finished or have nearly finished 4 books about wealthy American women--they remind me of the nasty Guess Who song, and the most recent of them, the author of Go Ask Alice, came to prominence during the time "American Woman" was riding the air waves:
In chronological order:
1. Jane Stanford (1828-1905): the most sympathetic of the four, and the most substantial, significant figure
Richard White, Who Killed Jane Stafford? A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a Nation
--born into money
--married corrupt California railroad money
--son, only child, died in mid-teens
--grieving parents founded Stanford University in their son's memory
--husband died
--although women did not yet have the elective franchise, a rich American widow had a lot of power, which Jane Stanford proceeded to use in trying to run the University the way she wanted--including violating professors' academic freedom, and in manipulating her family, friends and particularly employees
--died of strychnine poisoning on visit to Hawaii, after earlier attempt to poison her with strychnine in California
--family and the university overrule and try to discredit the finding of poisoning made in Hawaii because a murder, and even more a suicide, could call the will into question.
clunky writing, but solid research--White is a scholarly historian
White posits a plausible murderer, but I am inclined to think it was suicide, with the use of a painful poison as a form of self-punishment for a devout Christian woman who missed her son and husband, and appears not to have close relationships in her old age.
BONUS FOR INTERNET INFIDELS: Jane Stafford was very religious, thinking at the end of her life about moving from Protestantism to Catholicism, but she was also a Spiritualist (and the greater doctrinal individualism of American Protestantism allowed her to maintain this strain of belief whereas the more doctrinally rigid Catholicism would require her to curb it.) She (and her husband, also into spiritualism), tried to imposed their other-worldly views on Stanford U.
2. Alice De Trafford aka Alice De Janze (1899-1941)--the most trifling, insignificant of the four, and the best looking
Paul Spicer, The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll
--a poor little rich girl
--given to bouts of serious depression all her life
--example of American money and European aristos longest lasting husband was a French Count who was probably gay, last husband was younger son of British aristo family. Alice liked sex, and he was good at it but apparently not much else; her husband at the time she met the British lothario was the French count, and she liked him as a person, but wasn't happy with him
--French count takes her to colonial Kenya where, in the louche sexual atmosphere fostered by the British colonials, Alice thrives, spends most of the rest of her life there, with long visits to Europe and infrequent visits to the State. Less depression for her in swinging colonial Kenya than elsewhere
--when British lothario dumps her instead of marrying her, she attempts a murder-suicide with a pistol, seriously injuring them both, and does jail time
--then they marry
--the marriage doesn't last
--in Kenya she had met Lord Erroll, who was in an open marriage, and they begin an on-again, off-again long-running affair
--Lord Erroll gets divorced & in 1941 marries a younger, beauty British woman, taking her away from her husband, and dropping Alice, at least temporarily
--Lord Erroll is shot to death in his car, with a pistol, in the depths of a night
--His wife's ex is tried for murder, but acquitted
--wartime colonial authorities to occupied with threat of Italian encroachment in Africa, don't pursue the case.
--Alice's current lover then leaves Kenya to join the fighting in Egypt, putting himself in danger
--Alice poisons herself in 1941
Spicer posits that Alice killed Erroll, and offers a convincing argument. The best written book, but oddly uncircumstantial about any of the individual Africans and what they may have though of Alice.
3. Ann Woodward (1915-1975)--a poor girl, and the worst of the four. Also very good looking.
Roseanne Montillo, Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, The Millionaire's Wife and the Murder of the Century
--a poor girl
--dysfunctional family
--unhappy early marriage
--leaves it behind in early 20s to go to New York and gets into show biz
--her aim at following the career path of her idol Joan Crawford (also Barbara Stanwyck and then Lucille Ball) and leveraging credits as a showgirl, member of the chorus line, into Hollywood stardom, don't pan out
--turns to golddigging in the hills and nightclubs of Manhattan
--an affair with rich old married Mr. Woodward leads to a marriage with a younger Mr. Woodward, his gay son
--marriage turns unhappy, lots of alcohol, separate bedrooms
--eventually Mr. Woodward wants a divorce
--Mr. Woodward takes a business trip to his wife's Midwestern former stomping grounds, uncovers a lot of dirt--she had been seriously misrepresenting her past ever since coming to NYC
--perhaps she never divorced her previous husband
--in the wealthy enclave in which the Woodward there have been breakins in 1955 and the culprit not caught
--one night in 1955 Ann shoots her rich husband in the hall between their bedrooms or in the door of his bedroom, and claims she thought that he was the intruder.
--Ann almost certainly gets away with murder, and the Woodward family allow this to happen, to avoid a scandal, and because Ann agrees to a financial settlement
--Ann becomes an outcast from the moneyed social circles of New York
--a couple of years later, insults Truman Capote to his face on the grounds of his being gay
--early in 1975 Truman Capote publishes in Esquire an installment of his never finished Answered Prayers, a roman a clef fictionalization of wealthy New York women, most of whom he thought of as friends; this installment focuses on a golddigger who murders her wealthy New York husband
--Ann Woodward immediately commits suicide
This book functions as a dual biography of Ann and Truman. Since I already knew quite a lot about this second-rate litterateur, I found parts of the book about him boring: Montillo is an adequate writer, but not someone one would read for the glory of her style re-embodying familiar material. The story has more cultural significance, I think, than that of Alice de Trafford.
Beatrice Sparks (1917-2012) dies naturally, The photos of her in the book are grainy, of her in her middle-aged, aged prime and she looks like a Stepford wife. The second most consequential life of the four
Rick Emerson, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
--poor girl
--somewhat dysfunctional family
--feels early vocation to be a writer
--husband strikes it rich in 1940's Texas oil
--attempts at being a writer don't work out until she forges a diary of a drug addicted runaway girl--publishes as non-fiction 1971; Go Ask Alice
--lies about her education, professional background in psychology (non-existent) and of course the status of what is actually a work of fiction written by a socially conservative middle-aged woman
--money rolls in for the rest of her life, despite exposes
--she continues writing publishing, giving talks.
--after her (fake) identity as sympathetic person, a psychologist to the diarist, and editor of the diary is made public, a grieving small-town Mormon family whose intelligent, drug-dabbling teenaged son had committed suicide send Mrs. Sparks his diary asking her to edit it and publish it
--Jay's Journal published 1979, without consulting bereaved family, uses some passages from diary but not the complete diary, and heavily interlards it with made-up passages involving Satanic rituals and demonic possession
--living people's lives wrecked, as the town matches up suicidal diarist, family and friends and girlfriend in this work, where names are changed but identities, and geographic locations, and relationships are not sufficiently modified, so that real-life people become targets of gossip and reprobation for the fictional evil activities in which "editor" Sparks portrays them partaking.
--Jay's Journal helps fuel the Satanic panic of the next 15 years (revitalized in Q Anon depraved fantasies of recent years.
--the family of the real teen decides not to pursue legal action.
--Sparks continues for decades writing and publishing "diaries" and "interviews" involving troubled teens who mostly all sound remarkably the same.
Emerson's book has a jerky feel to it, and I am having trouble finishing the last few pages; it also has lots of dreary long quotations from Sparks' works, passages that make your eyes roll and your eyelids simultaneously drowsily droop. The best writing is from the real-life suicidal teen's actual diary.
BONUS FOR INTERNET INFIDELS: Beatrice Sparks was a professing Mormon--she perhaps also believed in the Gospel of Wealth, which Emerson claims is not incompatible with Mormonism. Emerson asserts that the demonic elements that she added to the real diary derive from Mormon beliefs
clunky writing