Aug 27, 2023DebtI was, to be frank, prepared to be bored by this - "debt" is a dry, intuitive concept which seemed little deserving of 500 pages of exegesis. The book seemed vaguely Important and not a bit hip, but not...interesting. Then he got me, in the first chapter arguing with some woman in a garden party. She said "surely, one has to pay one's debts" in response to learning about the IMF enforcing loan repayment from impoverished third world countries; he has half a dozen arguments as to why morally, economically, historically that just doesn't make sense. As a one who generally has probably trended towards the mindset of having to pay one's debts, it was a bit, revelatory? Not judt that he presented persuasive arguments, I was not far from being persuaded, but it was an incredibly clear, efficient encapsulation of a point of view, incredibly easy to digest.
Sep 18, 2023How Europe Underdeveloped AfricaThe primary thrust of this book - using dialectical materialist/Marxist analysis to demonstrate the evils of Colonialism - seems kind of wild to me, from a historiographical standpoint. The only people who I can imagine these days denying the abstract notion of colonialism being bad are precisely those who would also deny out-of-hand any conclusions wrought from dialectical materialist analysis. Of course there is colonialism and colonialism, and while the explicit forays of the past are widely derided as probably-a-bad-idea, the colonialism (explicit or more socioeconomically implicit) of the present is less acknowledged - yet here, still, those Marxists I know are the first to call it out.
Sep 29, 2023Braiding SweetgrassYour strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of the Creation.
Oct 14, 2023A Room Of Ones OwnVirginia Woolf is pretty cool, and a great writer. This is a good book
Oct 17, 2023The Wretched Of The EarthBrilliant! Thought-provoking and insightful into the forces and structures of decolonialization, and a bit challenging. The prefaces by Sartre and particularly Homi K Bhabha (sesquipedalian though it is) do an excellent job of contextualizing the rest. It is a bit fascinating that Sartre's preface, embracing (reveling in? maybe an ungenerous read of Sartre but it does feel like there is a bit of that) the necessity of violent revolution, criticized by Arendt for encouraging violence that dehumanizes, was removed at the bequest of Fanon's widow from certain editions following Sartre's support of Israel in the Six Day War.
Oct 23, 2023Pirate EnlightenmentThis book is a fascinating little history of Madagascar and the kingdoms and societies during the golden age of piracy. I (and I imagine I am not unique here) know little of this corner of the world and corner of history, and enjoyed learning about the unique cultural mixture driven by the intersection of Arabs, pirates, slavers, colonists, and Madagascar people. Graeber's writing is as always entertaining and educational, although there is not much here of his usual grand claims of historiographical reinterpretation and generalization - it is a more focused anthropology that I think likely has a less wide interest than the exciting title and Graeber's name might otherwise incur.
Nov 9, 2023China In Ten WordsI worry sometimes about my Education. I always thought it was like, pretty good, I got good grades in a wide variety of subjects, but then something like The Cultural Revolution comes to the fore and I am just astonishingly ignorant. A thing that something like a 10th of the current world population lived under, and I just have no idea what life was like, no anecdotes or stories, maybe I read a paragraph or two in high school and wrote a sentence answer on an exam some time.
Nov 11, 2023The Rise And Fall Of The DinosaursBrusatte takes you through an excellent history of both the dinosaurs themselves and the field of paleontology, from a few crazy pioneers (I could stand to learn a bit more about Baron Nopsca, scientist, swashbuckler and spy) to the high-tech science with computers and lasers it is today. What I found most amazing in this book is the particular way it seemed to anticipate precisely what I was curious about - whenever I started to wonder a bit about X, or how Y works, it would jump in with an excellent explanation, about how we know what the dinosaurs were eating or what color they were or how carbon dating works. Excellent, entertaining and informative, I just kinda wish I was a bit more of a Dinosaur Nerd growing up - which would have made this all the more mind-blowing.
Dec 4, 2023A City On MarsLife on Mars is great edutainment, clearly the work of people who are passionate about research, space, and space research. It is full of fun anecdotes and what seems like a difficult to assail argument that space colonization is not coming anytime soon - which, gotta say, is a bit sad to hear. The humor that defines the Weinersmith's brand is a bit thin, I imagine basically that it ended up being a bit less funny of a topic than they anticipated, and so perhaps it is a bit less entertaining than their Soonish and Zach's Open Borders. Nevertheless, a fascinating read for anyone who thinks space is kind of neat.
Dec 7, 2023Into The SilenceImpressive, compelling and detailed story of a bunch of crazy Britishers, gallivanting through life, clinging to the glory of a bygone era, callously causing wanton death and performing feats of greatness. It is astonishing their arrogance, what they lived through, what they accomplished.