|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1501191055
| 9781501191053
| 1501191055
| 4.00
| 11,483
| Jan 17, 2023
| Jan 17, 2023
|
it was amazing
| Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of Willi Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of William and Ellen Craft, uncovering details that make the whole feel very real indeed. The world was in turmoil in 1848, you won’t be surprised to learn. But I wasn’t prepared for how the moment is mirrored in what is happening today: the sharp divides, fake news, screaming denunciations and posted threats. Ellen and William Craft, two slaves owned by different masters, decided one Christmas that the time was ripe for them to escape to the north using a plan they’d prepared in four days. She would dress as a young man and he would be her manservant slave. She’d had experience traveling with her master and so knew how things outside her plantation worked. He was tall and capable and calm under stress, but their plans were upended more ways than one. The Crafts were received with warmth by abolitionists in Philadelphia though they were cautious to the point of near-refusing the generosity of a Quaker family, the Ivins: “I have no confidence whatsoever in white people. They are only trying to get us back to slavery,” Ellen later reports. Later, Woo describes the sentiment among escaped slaves that included Frederick Douglass in Boston: “once back in the States [from England], Douglass had grown increasingly angry, disillusioned, and impatient with American abolitionists, who moved so slowly and too often betrayed their own prejudices, subtle or not. Even some in [social reformer and journalist William Lloyd] Garrison’s closest circle were know to utter racial expletives on occasion.” Once the Crafts were [safely? no…] on the lecture circuit in New England, I sought out Woo’s own explanation of how she did her research. Several of those interviews are on YouTube and in each, the questions and her answers are slightly different, but one comes away with the sense that the narrative propelled research into the time. The Crafts wrote their own personal histories, but with many pieces that Woo wanted to know missing. The Craft’s escape from slavery wasn’t that long ago, a fact that continues to horrify me. We’re talking the length of two human lives ago. Crazy. But it’s been as chaotic and tempestuous and argumentative in the United States before now, and what we have learned is that people in general do not change until they are absolutely forced to change. Witness slavery. Witness environmental protection. There will still be breakouts of resistance against change going forward, but gradually we will come to see slavery and environmental degradation as great wrongs. This story of escape is dense. There is so much Woo is telling us that we did not know that three hundred some-odd pages does not feel too long. We sense the depth of research and know there is more to mine from this story. Context is everything. Woo writes sentences that hint at interesting side trails; she names names in the places the Crafts overnighted. Even though it probably should be self-evident that by the 1848 the antislavery movement was well established, this feels new. One thing that stuck with me is that Ellen Craft was ‘owned’ by her blood sister when she escaped. In fact, Ellen was gifted to that sister Eliza upon Eliza’s marriage because the wife of Ellen’s father and mistress of the house in which she worked was angry that people kept mistaking Ellen for one of that mistress’ white daughters. She looked so much like the husband…But forever after Ellen Craft would not speak ill of Eliza, her sister by blood and her mistress at the time of her abscondment. Woo speculates that the names of Ellen and William Craft are not better known because their lives were complicated and had no period of ‘happily ever after.’ Perhaps that is true. Certainly it casts a pall over their American story to know how hard it was for them right to the end, and how one obstacle overcome only showed a higher mountain right behind. But it is also true that in America, white folks do not like to be reminded of times when they relied on the labor of slaves to build their fortunes. That could be a reason their story is not retold in schools and in theatre. This totally fascinating book well deserves the raining plaudits. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 27, 2023
|
Dec 29, 2023
|
Dec 27, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0525564462
| 9780525564461
| 0525564462
| 3.68
| 841
| Jun 2012
| Oct 16, 2018
|
liked it
|
This Vintage paperback original published just published this October is the kind of thing people slaving away in their individual silos might like to
This Vintage paperback original published just published this October is the kind of thing people slaving away in their individual silos might like to read in snatches to put major figures in history in their proper perspective. I always wanted something like this when I was learning history: ordinarily we look individually at parts of the world. This book integrates history. Each figure Montefiore chooses to introduce ordinarily gets a page or two. This is just enough to tell the major contributions of figures you may have only heard of but didn’t know why they were remembered. What was so interesting for me was that the history is chronological so we can see widely disparate events, discoveries, inventions with their contemporaneous personages elsewhere in the world, Walter Raleigh was roughly contemporaneous with Tokugawa Ieyasu and Akbar the Great. In one memorable entry, Montefiore places the Borgias together: Pope Alexander VI and his children, Cesare and his sister Lucrezia. The details of this family are so gruesome—the face slowly destroyed by syphilis and covered with a golden mask—that we wonder their foothold lasted so long and the conditions of society that produced it. Rodrigo Borgia, who eventually called himself Pope Alexander VI, was reputed to be seductively charming in person but that hardly seems enough to sustain a reign of debauchery and vice. Montefiore gives a few clues which the interested reader might pursue to a more rigorous study. Women, South Americans, and Black Africans get relatively short shrift, but then so have they through time. These are names we for the most part recognize already, giving us a few short details about the lives of each. Isaac Babel and Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov have back-to-back entries, Babel being noted for his Red Calvary stories relating the brutality of Lenin’s 1920 war on Poland. Yezhov is remembered for the frenzy of his arrests as a secret policeman under Stalin, anticipating the direction of the leader without explicit instructions. He does the job requested of him but “he doesn’t know when to stop,” is how a colleague described him. In the modern day, relatively few people are singled out, and those are mostly politicians or government leaders. JFK, Gorbachav, Elvis, Saddam Hussein, Muhammed Ali, Pol Pot, Thatcher…there are a few others, but the weighting is clear. In the end this book is grist for the mill. We can argue about what the author has chosen, but we would have to put together a series of arguments. It could be a fruitful endeavor for someone interested in how individuals shape events. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 15, 2018
|
Oct 15, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1501180371
| 9781501180378
| 1501180371
| 3.24
| 37
| unknown
| Jan 02, 2018
|
did not like it
|
Sorry to say, this book is hagiography and does not give a rounded picture of Judge Gorsuch. When one is reduced to praising a subject’s school (“it i
Sorry to say, this book is hagiography and does not give a rounded picture of Judge Gorsuch. When one is reduced to praising a subject’s school (“it is the finest, most famous, best-regarded,” yada yada) rather than the subject’s own talents, perhaps those fabled skills aren’t worth talking about. But this book is odd in another way. The author apparently did not interview Gorsuch for this book. He talks generally about the work of federal law clerks, and speaks to people who knew Gorsuch growing up, at school, at work, etc. but never spoke with the man. Those interviewed liked him. I’d be surprised if anyone with connections to a SCOTUS nominee went on the record dissing that nominee. Such figures cast long shadows. And finally, Greenya ghost-wrote Gorsuch’s mother’s apologia when she was dismissed as head of the EPA under Reagan. What this book does is to gather together some of what has been written to date in other sources to present a picture of a man who is “very good at sounding reasonable, but [who takes] really right-wing positions,” said Columbia University fellow student Jordan Kushner of Minneapolis. Greenya takes some time to introduce Gorsuch’s grandfather and parents and their work. All were lawyers—can you imagine dinnertime conversation? Greenya describes how Gorsuch’s mother was chosen to run the EPA under Reagan, agreeing to defang it. She was expendable to the greater goals of the White House, and one can’t help but wonder if she was chosen for just that expendable quality. (Sexism raises its ugly head everywhere then, though she’d probably deny it.) The analysis in this book is sparse between extended quotes from other sources and pointed towards a thesis: that Gorsuch is the best doggone judge the world has seen, and full of righteousness. It is not very effective. Even if one uses Gorsuch’s own writings from cases he has adjudicated, pulling out a paragraph or two is unlikely to shed enough light into his psyche. Answering the charge from dissenters of this thesis that Gorsuch favors large corporations over individual citizens. Greenya writes anecdotes about a person who tepidly recounts Gorsuch doing something empathic and arguing against extortionate charges—not really the evidentiary defense Greenya gives for Gorsuch arguing for the rights of corporations over individual’s rights. Regarding Roe v Wade, Gorsuch wouldn’t answer when asked about this in confirmation except to say that he cares “deeply about the law and an independent judiciary and following the rules of the law.” Cold comfort, since interpretation of the law is what he is being called to do, it not being clear except that it is meant to make the life of citizens better. Gorsuch living in a house full of women should pause and consider what they would do for themselves, had they the opportunity. Look, the author says Gorsuch from a youth was straight as an arrow, and good at debating: he apparently liked hearing the sound of his own voice and argued angles and positions others hadn’t, wouldn’t. Choosing a non-mainstream position and arguing it well doesn’t mean one is brilliant. It means one is canny, distinguishing oneself by being different. Being different is exactly what we don’t want in our judges. We want judges who can do for us what we cannot do in our great numbers—speak for us with seriousness and gravitas. Gorsuch has too much ego for my taste. I would have steered clear of someone so clearly in love with himself. He appears to me to have forgotten he is a servant of the people, but also a leader. If he does neither, is he a good fit for SCOTUS? Greenya tells us Stanford law professor Deborah L. Rhode, on the occasion of Gorsuch addressing the Fund for American Studies, a conservative group, six months or so after his confirmation intimated that Gorsuch speeches raise questions of independence, and that Gorsuch may be “ethically tone-deaf.” This is something we will have to watch in years to come. Perhaps the people still have a say in this after all. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 27, 2018
|
Jun 30, 2018
|
Jun 27, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1590517865
| 9781590517864
| 1590517865
| 4.21
| 489
| Oct 30, 2013
| Oct 17, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
This book has only recently been translated into English and published in the United States by Other Press of New York. It is five years old already,
This book has only recently been translated into English and published in the United States by Other Press of New York. It is five years old already, not that it particularly matters. In fact, one could argue it has come out at precisely the right time. The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci was born in 1929 and lived her life uncompromisingly, doing what she wanted, where she wanted, when she wanted. She hated the way women were treated but she did not hate men. She loved men, and she was loved by them in turn, for her feminine nature, her intelligence, her courage. Fallaci died in 2006 in Florence. Oriana never wanted a biographer…or an opera, or a movie made of her life. All these things are what one images when we read of what she has done. This biography does exactly what a biography should: makes us thirst for the woman herself, her writing, her thinking. De Stefano helps us by picking out those things Fallaci’s audience are curious about, like sources of her outspokenness and critical thinking, her major works and the circumstances in which she wrote them, the places she went, the places she vacationed. Seeing early photographs of the diminutive Oriana navigating post-WWII Italian newspaper work—usually with a cigarette in her hand—don’t make her look hard and accomplished, but paradoxically, more vulnerable while trying to look as tough as possible. She gradually developed a style of interviewing subjects that included herself in the story. She never pretended to be objective, but would ask difficult questions of the subject, a result of her deep knowledge of them from extensive research. Fallaci originally started coming to the United States to report on Hollywood and the actors and celebrities who lived there. She learned English on the job. Gradually she found actors shallow and uninteresting, unworthy of the attention she was lavishing on them and began reporting instead on astronauts.She was so attracted to the team planning a trip to the moon because they were disciplined, brave, and willing to sacrifice. In every other way they were the opposite of her… “They live in neat little houses lined up next to the other, like cells in a convent. Each has a wife, kids, short hair, clear ideas. She meets with seven of them…to her they seem almost like clones. It takes all her talent to find a distinctive quality in each of them. But as with every subject she writes about, this is what fascinates her most: the human element.”Oriana will go on to become fast friends with the astronauts; they will carry her photo with them to the moon, and tell her they wish she could come along for the ride. They recognize her courageous spirit and her unflinching intelligence and willingness to look truth in the face. Fallaci became a worldwide phenomenon during her time reporting on the Vietnam War. She interviewed General Giáp, head of Vietcong forces, and Henry Kissinger, whose carefully modulated voice finally responded candidly to a difficult and insistent question by calling himself a cowboy: “The main point is that I’ve always acted alone,” he says. “Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else.”Fallaci isn’t afraid to paint unattractive portraits of the people she interviews, but uses her questions and instincts to uncover examples of deception and its reverse: a respect where she didn’t expect to find it, with Ayatollah Khomeini for instance. Fallaci for the most part did not like people in power; that is, she did not like what power did to people. She wanted to interview Pope John Paul II but he refused her request. Apparently the notes Fallaci made in preparation for that interview included questions like, “Why is the Church so obsessed with sex?” and “Why do you expect a lack of political engagement by Latin American priests but not of Polish priests?” Fallaci had grown up with her fellow Italians in the resistance to love Americans, who they were and what they stood for. But over time, even though she chooses to live out much of her life when she is settled or when she is old in New York City, the war in Vietnam breaks her love affair with America. “America has disappointed me…It’s like when you’re completely in love with a person, and you get married, and then day after day, you realize that the person isn’t as exceptional, as extraordinary or marvelous or good, or intelligent, as you thought. The U.S. has been like a bad husband. It betrays me every day.” “But you like Americans,” her colleague insists. “Yes, of course, I love children,” she answers.There is more. The read is utterly compelling, no matter that Fallaci did not want anyone representing her while she was alive. De Stefano gives us a great deal of insight into Fallaci’s character, who she loved, the miscarriages which ended up breaking her heart. She did not suffer fools but she loved life. She called it an adventure. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 20, 2018
|
Jun 21, 2018
|
Jun 20, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0997895810
| 9780997895810
| 0997895810
| 4.32
| 41,342
| Nov 10, 2016
| Dec 01, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
The subtitle of this collection is 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women, and it is beautifully done. The short passages cover every continent and every ra
The subtitle of this collection is 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women, and it is beautifully done. The short passages cover every continent and every race, religion, and sexuality…that is, the stories are about girls and women with lesbians and transgender individuals identifying as female included. It is ravishingly interesting. Each short passage is a tightly written biography suitable for 9-14 year-olds, informative, and inspiring. Many unusual job descriptions and lifelong purpose are described, expanding our horizons about the scope of what is possible. As an adult, I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did nor enjoy it as much. This book is about rebels. It challenges us to think again about what we admire and what we don't...and why. It is a fantastic teaching tool. I can imagine a mother reading an entry alongside her preteen (of either sex, by the way) and discussing it for a short while so that the implications of each success sink in: "Why would that person be considered a rebel?" "What do you think about what that person did?" "Do you know anyone who has done things like this?" The mother is going to recognize some of the names and so can add whatever backstory is not in the book. A few examples from the stories are ✦ Inventor Ann Makosinski, a fifteen year-old Canadian who won first prize in Google Science Fair for inventing a flashlight that doesn’t need batteries, wind, or sun--just body heat.Included with each biography is a full page color representation of the subject, and a quote of something they said or wrote. Next to the short bio of Misty Copeland, for instance, is a drawing of her in flight during a ballet performance with a quote that reads, “Dance found me.” The authors, Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, studied in Italy and the United States where they founded Timbuktu Labs, a children’s media innovation lab. What’s that? you may well ask. The authors define the mission of Timbuktu as committed to “redefining the boundaries of children’s media through a combination of thought-provoking content, stellar design, and cutting-edge technology.” They designed the first iPad magazine for children. The start-up has created mobile apps and creative content for users in more than 70 countries. It’s more than just new. It’s exciting. The first edition of this book was published in 2016. Since then it has gone through multiple reprintings, and in 2017 Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 was published. There are apparently also coloring books, temporary tattoos, and posters that go along with the books and can be purchased separately. It’s become an industry, with good reason. If you have a girl in the family in the target age range, check it out. Just when you thought your girls were too old for bedtime stories, this may bring it all back. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 20, 2018
|
Feb 22, 2018
|
Feb 09, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0735225028
| 9780735225022
| 0735225028
| 3.80
| 5,867
| Jul 18, 2017
| Jan 01, 2017
|
really liked it
|
Yuck. Steve Bannon has a twisted sense of the world. One wonders how he got from the Navy & Harvard to the raving, unshaven ideologue he is today, but
Yuck. Steve Bannon has a twisted sense of the world. One wonders how he got from the Navy & Harvard to the raving, unshaven ideologue he is today, but one guesses it was because he discovered good looks, money, and brains weren't enough to make him happy. But one could use these things to blow up the world. [image] Steve Bannon at Harvard Joshua Green undoubtedly deserves at least four stars for being able to write and having the material no one else did. But I'd been following pretty closely this past year and really had a hard time spending another nanosecond thinking about this creep who can go to his grave without a single person to mourn him. One thing that hadn't been entirely clear to me was the whole Fox News fight & subsequent ass-licking but I see it now through Green's careful, annotated timeline. I also hadn't been aware of the role of Bannon's Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in discrediting Hillary's candidacy. That was useful to understand. And, of course, the explicit statement by his colleagues and underlings, "Truth and veracity weren't his top priority. Narrative truth was his priority rather than factual truth." I am going to have to call on other GReaders to tell me about the title of the Afterword: Kali Yuga. I sort of see Kali Yuga defined on Google as four stages of man's development & consciousness in Hinduism...please don't tell me Bannon is applying this...like he even cares. It could be that Green himself is applying the prophecy, which states that in the longest, and darkest, stage of Kali Yuga is the expectation "A person is considered unsuccessful and unholy if he does not have money, and the society will accept hypocrisy as a virtue." But that is from a quick search and not from deep understanding. Anyone else figure this out? What a twisted man. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 10, 2017
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0804416761
| 9780804416764
| 0804416761
| 4.00
| 7
| 1936
| Jun 01, 1957
|
I hate having to give up on this. This biography won a Pulitzer when it came out in 1936, and Grant's biographer Ron Chernow says Fish was one of the
I hate having to give up on this. This biography won a Pulitzer when it came out in 1936, and Grant's biographer Ron Chernow says Fish was one of the more remarkable and accomplished Secretary of State America has ever fielded. In light of all these things, we desperately someone who can revive this history and tell it anew, highlighting those things that are important to us now: what makes a great statesman, and how can we allow them to succeed? ...more |
Notes are private!
|
0
|
not set
|
not set
|
Nov 04, 2017
|
Textbook Binding
| |||||||||||||||
| 159420487X
| 9781594204876
| 159420487X
| 4.49
| 37,995
| Oct 10, 2017
| Oct 10, 2017
|
really liked it
|
This book requires a serious time commitment. Grant lived 132 years ago, not so long in the course of things. Much had been written about him at the t
This book requires a serious time commitment. Grant lived 132 years ago, not so long in the course of things. Much had been written about him at the time, and much after. He himself wrote memoirs that are highly regarded and that showed his intelligence and shrewdness. His mother-in-law Dent, Julia’s mother, noticed that although he had failings (alcohol) and could sometimes get off-track career-wise (an inability to make money as an independent entrepreneur), he had a fine political mind. That his mother-in-law, a supporter of southern slave-holdings, had such good things to say about his instincts is impressive in itself. The cover copy says Grant was unappreciated for much of his career. This should give succor to individuals who struggle through various jobs, unable to find something in which they can excel. Grant went to West Point almost by accident, disliking the jobs assigned him by his father, a tanner. He apparently hated the smell of the tannery and warm blood, and found himself unable to eat meat unless it was charred beyond recognition. His horsemanship was legendary, even from a young age, and the skill served him well throughout his military career. That career stalled after a stint in the Mexican War, and revived during the Civil War when he could showcase his particular skills in strategy and logistics. The book cannot adequately be recapitulated in short form, so I resort to impressions hammered home by Chernow in a thousand examples: that Grant decided to trust certain people whether they were knaves or not. He tended to hold onto his initial impressions even when he had reason to abandon support for individuals who’d done him wrong. It strikes me that this failing of his, a failing of accuracy in judgment, could be a reason he as so well liked as a leader. He was loyal, generous, kind, and willing to forgive as well as extraordinarily skilled himself in being able to read a battlefield, the condition of his men, and the heart of the opposition. Grant was not as skilled at the diplomacy he would later be asked to perform in his role as president, though he gave more positions to people of color than any previous government, and he was instrumental in reforming the civil service. I would like to read more about a diplomat that Chernow seems to praise above all others, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State for the entire of Grant’s presidency. More than anything, Chernow makes clear that Grant’s life, despite the lofty heights of public regard during certain periods, was a real struggle all the way through. Never has a presidency seemed like such a bum job: after having fought a terrible, bloody war on one’s own soil for so many years, Grant had to face the unrepentant vanquished again as leader of a divided nation. The racism and bitterness we see and hear now is a mere echo of what was going on during Reconstruction, when every attempt to raise the quality of life of black people was fought every step of the way. Makes one want to force those who refuse to accept their defeat to their knees now—no more talk, no more accommodation. I wish it were as simple as bringing out the big guns (the law) and ending this. But we see now how deep the sense of entitlement still is. Any portion of this book is worthwhile to read even if you can’t get to the whole thing. It's so important to recall the details of the Civil War and its aftermath now, in this time of division in our own country. If I had my druthers, this book would be shorter. My brain’s ROM has been gummed up with this work for months now and it nearly crashed my hard drive. I feel I am cheating in some way by not being able to express more moments of revelation, but there were so many. I’m sure there is something to be said for putting in every detail of a man and his country, and perhaps it is reasonable to repeat oneself occasionally. Readers may select portions, or spread out the reading over a long period. However, it is difficult to digest a book of this size. I listened to the audio of this book and looked over the hard copy. The audio was very well read by veteran actor Mark Bramhall, and it was produced by Penguin Audio. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 22, 2017
|
Nov 04, 2017
|
Sep 22, 2017
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1468313169
| 9781468313161
| 1468313169
| 3.74
| 357
| Jun 07, 2016
| Jul 12, 2016
|
really liked it
|
Angela Merkel is a terrific politician. Even those who don't agree with her policies admit to her skill in making space for her own ideas. But we coul
Angela Merkel is a terrific politician. Even those who don't agree with her policies admit to her skill in making space for her own ideas. But we could say that about Donald Trump, too. What makes Merkel an extraordinary, groundbreaking leader is what is in her personality that is opposite to Donald Trump. Merkel isn't in it for the glamour, fame, or money. Ten years ago, she claimed she had no intention of staying on as Chancellor beyond two terms. She is currently running for her fourth term at the end of this year. Why? Merkel’s desire to stay on as Chancellor of Germany has something to do with legacy and with current danger. Anyone can see the threats in the national and international environment. When one spends many years leading an electorate and shaping a worldview that strengthens one’s country vis-a-vis outside threats to stability, one wants to leave it in safe hands. Qvortrup doesn’t tell us, at the end, whether or not Merkel, unlike Hillary, has groomed a successor who can take over her role should she decamp. Merkel is still young enough to see Germany through another term but then a successor should emerge. Germany in the late 2oth and early 21st Century was as tumultuous as any other nation, resembling the child's game of Chutes & Ladders. Political parties fought for ascendency at the time of the fall of the wall, and Merkel, through luck and instinct, rose within a year to a place in national politics. People liked her. She was unthreatening to higher ups and she was willing to do anything in an organization. She used every opportunity; even handing out leaflets gave her access to voters. She honed her instinct for what was needed, learned what voters wanted and would accept, and was courageous in accepting opportunity and responsibility. Later some would question her: Merkiavelli? Merkel was, and is still, resolutely forward-looking, unlike the kind of national figures in Russia, where Putin wants a return to Tsarist times and America, where Trumps seeks a return to early 20th Century oligarchies. When former Chancellor Helmut Kohl lamented that ‘She is destroying my Europe,’ Merkel responded, “Your Europe, dear Helmut, no longer exists.’ Finally, someone who gets it. What I find most intriguing about Merkel is her political expediency. Qvortrup makes the point that in politics one doesn’t make ‘friends’ like one does in other fields, but Angela made friends easily compared with her colleagues. She was a little frumpy, but clever, kind, generous, unthreatening, and…a brilliant political statistician. During her tenure as Chancellor, she had several cabinet-level ministers, party leaders, and government heads resign in disgrace. She shuffled the deck, calculated odds, sacrificed some appointments, and very shrewdly chose replacements who could strengthen her party's ascendency. She could work with anyone, her listening demeanor polite and cordial. Qvortrup is particularly good on the details here. Merkel’s office was never implicated in any of the scandals, and she never defended those who came under attack. It is said she urged more transparency. Her careful composure under pressure will become a trademark. Merkel could not afford the distraction of making a scene over news that broke late in 2013 that the United States was monitoring her private telephone. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014. She needed American support to counter the Russian encroachment into European sphere. Qvortrup says Merkel “always considered Obama a lightweight,” which runs counter to impressions the American press has broadcast that the two got along famously. She apparently idolized Reagan, I wonder whether for his politics or for his famous charm and political skill at changing the frame of any discussion. Qvortrup also says Merkel was not enthusiastic but not overly alarmed at having to deal with Putin, who was a known quantity to her. This again is counter to previous analyses I have seen. Merkel is able to confound watchers in this way. Handling the sanctions regime against Russia at the time of the Ukraine invasion and the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 took nerves of steel. Putin was desperate and threatening, but all Europe was suffering under the sanctions, particularly France. Qvortrup goes through this and the Greek financial crisis in detail. Merkel manages, in the summer of 2015, to get Greece to agree to allow the EU to control the money earned from privatization of Greek assets, barring 12.5% for the Greeks to decide how to use. The solution required throwing her Finance Minister and his advice under the bus. Qvortrup compares the period to a Greek tragedy with an unanticipated solution, or deux ex machina. This magic trick, pulling the rabbit out of the hat as it were, will need to be unpacked in greater detail in future examinations of this period. I watched most of Merkel’s first two terms with half-an-eye, but when the Syrian war crescendoed into a full-blown refugee crisis, I turned my gaze full-on Europe. Merkel’s strength of character and leadership skills took my breath away. She'd found an issue more important than her own career and she did not back down. This woman, this frumpy pant-suited attention-sink, did more to embody Christian values than any other European leader while serving the needs of her country and leading Europe by forging an alliance among nations. “Germany under Merkel became a social liberal state based on ecumenical values.”Merkel was not an ideologue, but pragmatic. Having lived under communism, she took what was best from it and left the rest. Brexit must have been a terrible disappointment to her idea of a united Europe, and the election of a right-wing nationalist in America threatens Germany’s economic stability and security. Merkel’s expected retirement no longer seems a foregone conclusion. The current threats will require unique responses. Mütter Merkel’s calm and compromise may require a change of pattern. Do Germans think she can do it? Can anyone do it if she cannot? Qvortrup is admiring of Merkel, as has been every other journalist who has written a biography that I have seen. He is not sycophantic: he tells us when Merkel was perceived as Machiavellian and other criticisms. But to date I still do not have a good sense of why her approval ratings fell, reportedly below 50% in 2015, and what the objections are in Germany to her leadership beyond fear over the influx of refugees. A situation like the refugee crisis needs the whole nation pulling together to make it work. Germany could be a model for those of us who will need to do the same. Migrants and refugees--I doubt I'm breaking news to most of you--is going to be a constant for all of us living in temperate zones in the future. Best we think ahead. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 22, 2017
|
Jun 26, 2017
|
Jun 03, 2017
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385504713
| 9780385504713
| 0385504713
| 4.24
| 365
| Oct 2002
| Oct 15, 2002
|
did not like it
|
Steve Bannon, now a senior advisor to President-Elect Trump, has a film on his resume that excited some folks, called In the Face of Evil. The film wa
Steve Bannon, now a senior advisor to President-Elect Trump, has a film on his resume that excited some folks, called In the Face of Evil. The film was apparently based on a book by Peter Schweizer—this book in fact. It took some doing, but I managed to get my hands on a copy of the film and I was surprised. It didn’t seem particularly kind to Ronald Reagan, but painted him as a failed actor with a single obsession in his entire life: the destruction of the communist political system. Now, with echoes of Reagan resounding in Trump's tweets ("Let the arms race begin!"), I wonder if the film doesn't tell us what Bannon will be advising Trump to do. The film used set-ups for shots that one will recognize from old film classics like Metropolis (dark, brooding, shots of creepy overlords), Citizen Kane (dark, brooding shots of politicians with creepy amounts of power), and a couple others, so it seemed like a weird montage by a newbie director who wanted to remind viewers of more important films than his own. After watching the film, I then wondered about the book: was it as ambiguous about Reagan’s obsession as I felt the film was? Schweizer’s book reads like ad copy from the 1950s, not a book on political affairs published in 2002, and the book precisely illustrates my unease with supposed ‘histories:’ "Along with their children Michael and Maureen, Ron and Jane [Wyman] lived in a beautiful home with a pool on Cordell Drive. He owned a splendid ranch near Riverside, and when he and Jane weren’t at the studio lot, they could be found playing golf at the prestigious Hillcrest Country Club with Jack Benny and George Burns. At night they often dined at the trendy Beverly Club."Reagan was an executive committee member of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences, and Professions (HICCASP) which was accused in 1946 of being a communist front. Reagan instantly supported release of a statement denying support for communists which was opposed by the majority, leading to infighting and Reagan’s resignation. He was shortly elected to lead the Screen Actor’s Guild and became an FBI informant against his fellows in SAG. Wyman divorced him for “mental cruelty” when the two “engaged in continual arguments on his political views.” Reagan became enamored of Arthur Koestler’s disillusionment with communism in 1948, when he read Koestler’s book, Darkness at Noon and gradually conceived of ”the opportunity to combine his love of movies with his newfound mission to undermine communism. Why not use Hollywood films to undermine the Soviets?”Ah, the wheels grind out opportunities. From 1959 through 1963 Reagan honed and developed his anti-communist message, and by the time he gave his “rendezvous with destiny” speech [also called “A Time for Choosing”] in front of a national audience in support of Barry Goldwater at the Cocoanut [sic] Grove, Los Angeles in 1964, he’d been delivering versions of the speech for two years already. What I take away from this book and my haphazard attempts to fact-check is that it is detailed, fluently-written--even absorbing if one is interested in Reagan's intellectual prowess--narrowly-focused, one-sided, un-nuanced propaganda supporting Reagan’s monomaniacal zeal for democracy’s strength in light of the encroachment of communist ideas. Certainly watching the film of the book would take less time, and you would have to ask yourself at the end of it…what kind of men are these that praise Reagan’s strength in defying Russia before, and praise Trump’s cozying up to Russia now? Is it the clarity of a single motivating idea, and appreciation of strongman attitudes and propaganda techniques that captures Schweizer's and Bannon’s imagination and support? Perhaps communism was the real bugbear, not Russia, and now that Putin is clearly a world-class oligarch in the tradition of democracies and colonial empires the world over, Putin is no longer the threat, but the partner. There is no doubt that Reagan's arms race and inflexibility 'broke' the less-strong Russian economy. Perhaps Trump hopes to push Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea to the wall in the same way, through the threat of weaponry escalation. A bloodless kind of war, played economically. The deep cynicism needed for this tack misreads our opponents and reflects how the conservative viewpoint in America has developed under Republicans and the Koch brothers' influence. I’d love to see the insights of others about the book or on Bannon’s film, In the Face of Evil. I hesitate to recommend either one, however, not finding the central ideas sufficiently complicated enough to explain or deliver justice in today’s complex environment. I learned to think differently, growing up, and to seek less autocratic solutions. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 22, 2016
|
Dec 21, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 178453322X
| 9781784533229
| 178453322X
| 3.67
| 398
| unknown
| Jul 30, 2016
|
really liked it
|
The Chinese economy has always fascinated me, the Chinese political and judicial systems less so. The economy is so rich and hopeful and life-giving b
The Chinese economy has always fascinated me, the Chinese political and judicial systems less so. The economy is so rich and hopeful and life-giving because it is run by an irrepressibly entrepreneurial populace who can find their way, like water, around any obstacle. Marginal gains, in the past, were enough. People weren’t so much out to make a killing (“the nail that sticks up is beaten down”) as to feast well occasionally. Food was important. Not many of those simple goals remain; severe imbalances have appeared since market reforms were introduced in 1978. Xi Jinping took over in 2012 and is currently General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. This look at Xi Jinping could be a college course with plenty of room for more side research on aspects of Xi’s background, political comrades, and challenges. This work culminates finally in a truly interesting and too-short discussion of democracy, the judicial system, taxation, corruption, cyberspace, population movements, and the leadership of the Party. Reference to these issues are quickly sketched, addressing complexities it has not space to detail. It is understandable for an interested beginner, and may raise important questions that experienced China-watchers would like to pursue. The first part of the book details the background of Xi Jinping, not adding terribly more than the information found in Evan Osnos’ 2015 article “Born Red” in The New Yorker. Biographical information about Xi is available because the government allows it to be found. Outside of his personal life, however, there are plenty of things about his governance that can be discovered and discussed, including how he has structured leadership of the government, the Party, the judiciary, the military, and how closely he follows (or not) exhortations of Mao, Deng, and other revolutionaries. There are parallels one could make between the way Xi interacts with “the masses” of China and America’s new President Trump. This book was written and published before Trump was elected, but makes observations about Xi using the internet for direct access to people without interference from the propaganda department, which sometimes could be difficult to control precisely. ”For Xi, having this ability to go through social media to speak directly to as wide a public as possible is also a golden opportunity. This weakens the meddlesome interference of propaganda intermediaries who can often get things badly wrong,…Xi is probably the first leader of the country who has had to have a clear, serious digital strategy…The Party must keep close to the people, Xi has said many times.”Xi does not try to diminish Mao’s legacy but uses Mao’s appeal to emotion, to loyalty, to ideology. “Ideology…underpins and underlines the fundamental claims of the Party.” The Party is central to how everything is organized in China. “Xi…has had one great intuitive insight that has given him the edge over his peers…Moral, symbolic, and idealistic appeals really control allegiance. This is the main territory that he has sought to secure. So while he is not Maoist in his ideology, he is very Maoist in his understanding of the need to locate durable power and gain traction on it.” Chinese leaders studied the reasons for the failure of the USSR and believe that Western political interference was key. The dysfunction of the western democratic model, the fractiousness, the corruptibility of the system by massive cash infusions, the time it takes, the possibility of choosing bad candidates—all these are reasons why the Chinese government is not anxious to go in that direction. But because the loosening of controls over economic growth has created relatively massive gains in the wealth held by individuals, it may be necessary to rebalance by means of taxation. Taxation without representation is anathema in China as anywhere, thus pushing on the door of democratic change. The pressure for such changes grows annually. Another discussion I have not seen elsewhere references China’s relations with North Korea: “‘The country Kim Jong-Il hates most is China,’” North Korean defector Jan Jin-sung wrote in his memoirs. The most important barrier, Jan wrote, was the 'ideological demarcation line' between China and the DPRK, not the 38th parallel between South and North Korea. China’s leaders have long treated North Korea as unstable, parasitical, even contemptible. Xi visited South Korea while showing no interest in going further north for a visit. That Kim Jong-Un’s half brother was murdered while under the protection of the Chinese gives an observer the sense the feelings are reciprocal. Brown’s scholarship is clear and comprehensive, one long argument surmising Xi Jinping's role, decisions, and direction. At the very end is a section looking to the future. The whole is interesting and useful, definitely worth a look. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 04, 2017
|
Apr 08, 2017
|
Dec 15, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1603094024
| 9781603094023
| 1603094024
| 4.65
| 20,913
| Aug 02, 2016
| Aug 02, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
So this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together ge
So this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together gets under one’s skin. It has very little black/white discussion about it, which is exactly as it should be. The marches in Alabama and Mississippi were not so much about race as about human rights. First off, kudos to John Lewis for lasting so long in the midst of such outrageous attacks on both his person and on his humanity. His personality must have just the right amount of tamped-down rage to light a spark but not start a fist-fight. How the authors (including the informative and evocative drawings by Nate Powell, and the dialog boxes by Andrew Aydin) decided what to focus on, what to emphasize, in this telling is what I admired so much. There was division amongst the groups raising consciousness among black people in the south, and we see that. There were egos involved in who was leading by what method, e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, Jim Forman, Fannie Lou Hammer, James Bevel. There was real ugliness in the behaviors of resistant white folks, even mothers with children, against peaceful black marchers demanding their lawful rights. There were murders and beatings and unlawful detentions by police and state law enforcement officials—the people we pay to protect us—with no state or federal oversight for years, despite direct pleas from demonstrators. Lewis had a front-row seat to all that was going on in the south and in Washington. He was head of Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee and as the youngest of the “Big Six,” representatives of the most impactful civil rights organizations, he met with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Lewis has a story to tell, and in this collaboration with two younger men, shows us how momentous his contribution. One thing that struck me is how much learning readers experience about how movements of resistance operate. Should we ever need to use nonviolent protest to preserve our rights as citizens (against a government or corporation acting unlawfully) there is much here to glean. How to prepare for pushback and what to expect, how to notify and organize the populace who may be supportive, and how to preserve unity among groups or ideas in the face of divisiveness. How to keep the economic, political, and social pressure on those we resist against, never giving them a peaceful nights' sleep. Get this one if you have kids. This is worthy. Reviews of Books 1 & 2. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1603094008
| 9781603094009
| 1603094008
| 4.49
| 28,351
| Jan 20, 2015
| Jan 20, 2015
|
it was amazing
|
Book 2 in the
March
series about the life and work of civil rights activist John Lewis is absolutely propulsive in telling the story of racial pre
Book 2 in the
March
series about the life and work of civil rights activist John Lewis is absolutely propulsive in telling the story of racial prejudice in the southern United States in the early 1960s. As with Book 1, the early frames describe a cold day in January 2009 when all of Washington, D.C. and many more gathered in front of the Capitol Building for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The joyous scenes in 2009 are interleaved with the contrasting history some 50-odd years earlier when black people were protesting the right to sit at the same lunch counter with whites. John Lewis was involved in these nonviolent “actions” at that time which entailed silent continued resistance to refusals to serve, waiting until nightfall or arrest, whichever came first, only to be replaced by others once the first protesters were taken to jail. It was nonviolent on the protester side, but not on the side of those who disliked the protests. Not just the eating locations, but movie theaters, swimming pools, buses were all segregated and targeted for protests. The actual start of the Freedom Rider action, testing the Boynton v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling which outlawed segregation and discrimination on buses and in bus terminals, is a fascinating one which the authors tell in great detail. The continued pressure of constant resistance across the southern states provoked violent push-back, but the peaceful protests were surprisingly effective. As the movement grew bigger, it had to accommodate many more points of view and opinions, and in some cases was encouraged to lose its pacifist methods. This section of the civil rights movement led by John Lewis at least held to its position through the early 1960s, though more radical voices were warming up in the wings. Part 2 of the three-part series draws to a close with the hugely-successful March on Washington in August 1963, but the book's final frames show an explosion at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in September that same year, less than one month later. Violence now came unprovoked and the pressure to resist in kind was building. All the time protesters asked for national guidance and support, without definitive response or intervention by national leadership. These books are terrific material for teens on up, reminding us of the difficulties faced in the struggle for racial equality not so very long ago. The authors have won all kinds of prizes, awards, and praise for this series, deservedly. Highly recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1603093001
| 9781603093002
| 1603093001
| 4.35
| 55,571
| Aug 13, 2013
| Aug 13, 2013
|
it was amazing
|
The third book in the graphic novel series
March
won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016, prompting me to have a look at
The third book in the graphic novel series
March
won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016, prompting me to have a look at the series. Book 1 depicts John Lewis’ childhood in rural Alabama, where he grew up on a farm. His personality was revealed early, and his relatives took to calling him “preacher.” He cared more about words and concepts than the back-breaking reality of labor in the fields. He liked to wear a tie and read books any day and escaped to school even when he was needed in the fields at home. The "boy preacher" gave his his first sermon five days before his sixteenth birthday, inspired by Rosa Parks' protest in Montgomery, Alabama, fifty miles away. First frames for this series open in Washington, D.C. in January 2009 and Lewis’ history is told in flashbacks. Black and white drawings of Representative Lewis’ office in Cannon House Office Building are interspersed with visions of his childhood. It is more than fifty years between the two periods and yet they are connected in some way we know will be made clear. Our perception of those fifty years changes like a hologram as we read, sometimes thinking fifty years sounds like a long time, and then realizing it’s only fifty years, and yet how radically different living conditions were then, outside of cities. Blacks were still being blatantly discriminated against in every way, and the first civil rights legislation was just being proposed, passed, and enacted. This book follows Lewis from his early schooldays, through high school and his first discovery of the “social gospel” being taught by Martin Luther King, Jr. Lewis knew after hearing King one day on the radio that the gospel King was spreading was something he believed in whole-heartedly. And he gravitated to places where that message was being taught, ending up in Nashville, Tennessee with a group of like-minded activists. The first book ends with a series of sit-ins in Nashville cafes and restaurants, forcing them eventually to serve black customers along with whites. The authors simplify the twists and turns in Lewis’ life, but hover carefully over turning points, and moments of decision. This biography is aimed at young adults, not children. But even young adults may need someone to explain how and why there was so much opposition to integration, unless they have already seen and felt those sentiments in their lives. I expect black youth will know exactly what Lewis is telling them, and white youth will be aghast, even disbelieving, unless they, too, live in the south. But these books are absolutely necessary at this time, to refresh our collective memories. It is not so long ago that all of us can’t get first hand corroboration of Lewis’ history, and remind ourselves those attitudes were not appropriate then, and they aren’t appropriate now. The encapsulation of a real life in a series of picture frames and dialog boxes is a difficult thing to pull off, but Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell do it beautifully, never talking down to the reader, nor reaching so high that the concepts can’t be grasped immediately, viscerally even. This is life and death stuff, and they leave a little of the horror in for us to contemplate, but the steady focus and preparation necessary to challenge political power comes across as well. As does the bravery of those who dared to resist. Highly recommended for a basic understanding of what the fight for civil rights looked like from an individual's perspective in the south of the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s. Conditions experienced by blacks, attitudes of whites, the time period, the first resistance groups, and key figures are introduced. More material and discussion will be needed to answer the questions students and readers will surely have when confronted with this information for the first time. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
not set
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1612196322
| 9781612196329
| 1612196322
| 3.91
| 3,252
| Aug 02, 2016
| Aug 02, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
The best part of this book comes near the end, in Trump’s Atlantic City casino. “Akio Kashiwagi was one of the world’s five biggest gamblers, literallThe best part of this book comes near the end, in Trump’s Atlantic City casino. “Akio Kashiwagi was one of the world’s five biggest gamblers, literally a one-in-a billion customer, who…in May 1990 was sitting at a green-felt table at Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino calmly wagering $14 million an hour. He had been there for nearly a week.” Johnston prepares us for nearly two hundred pages with Donald’s history of self-promotion, alignments with shady racketeers, tax dodges, questionable accounting practices, and the real sleaze of a man who’d reached his intellectual limit selling real estate. The reader literally becomes queasy imagining the damage this man could do when handed the keys to the country. The story at the casino is told in minute detail, how $18.8 million in $5K chips are stacked on the table and floor beside Kashiwagi at the baccarat table as he reached the pinnacle of his win in the double-or-nothing wager he had with the house. He was still in the black by the middle of the next week, and Trump could not sleep. It is in the middle of this story when I realize that this is one of Trump’s biggest moments…a game…for money. I can’t tell you how it turns out—the book is worth seeking out, Johnson tells the story so well—but it does have something to do with reputation and the real wealth of both men, not the heralded fake wealth bragged about. It is a fight to the death, considering mob-boss friends hold the velvet stage curtains behind which both men hide. In the final pages Johnston's skill as an investigative journalist and writer come across clearly. He focuses the last part of the book on Trump’s little known mob connections, and criminal associates. Knowing bad folks, as Johnston points out, proves nothing. But Johnston goes on to show how Trump profited by his relationships with folks who commonly transgressed the law. Trump cared about money, and measured his worth by it. He measures other people's worth by their beauty or wealth...or power. The ups and downs in the legal battle over Trump University alone should have given the American voting populace pause because it showed Trump’s desperation and his rhinestones-for-diamonds charlatanism. Johnston gives a good overview of the bribery, threats, lawsuits, misdirection, and outright lies involved with this case. Right after this section is one on supposed donations to charity that got all tied up in donations to and from his own foundation. I wasn’t going to read anything about Trump right away because I was in a deep funk after the election, but a discussion with another Goodreader led me first to TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald by Timothy O’Brien, and before I finished that, to Johnston’s book. TrumpNation first came out in 2005, and was reissued in early June 2016 with a new introduction. O'Brien has a fascinating in-depth section on the Koch-Trump rivalry (Koch was mayor of NYC in the 1980's) and a hilarious description of Trump's purchase of New York's fabled Plaza Hotel. O’Brien was an editor at the NYT before moving to become executive editor of Bloomberg View. He actually edited some of Johnston’s work when both worked at the NYT. Johnston is a specialist in tax law and reporting, earned a Pulitzer in 2001 for his reporting on taxation, and was able to see some of his suggestions adopted by Congress into tax law shortly afterward. The material in Johnston's book and O'Brien's overlaps: both are sobering assessments of the man they watch, and detailed in what they focus on specifically. Johnston’s book came out in English and German in Aug 2016, but he’d been researching Donald Trump for almost thirty years. Johnston met Trump back in the 1980’s, when he was investigating money flows, taxes, and tax avoidance, and casinos. There were so many folks involved in Trump’s success that investigations into his financial reporting went nowhere. He was both too big and too inconsequential. Trump's net worth was nothing like he claimed, but there was so much money going in and out of his accounts. It was going somewhere. Johnston makes an excellent observation early in the book, in his bio of Fred Trump, Donald’s father. ”When Fred Trump was under intense criticism for plans to destroy a popular Coney Island attraction…where he wanted to build the first apartment project bearing the family name, Fred Trump shifted the focus of news coverage by hiring a bevy of beauties in hard hats and polka-dot bikinis to hand out bricks to locals and city dignitaries…Decades later, of course, Donald Trump would surround himself with models to attract television cameras and would have his third wife pose nearly nude aboard his Boeing 757 jet for a men’s magazine while he looked on during a photo shoot.”Hard to believe near-nakedness distracts anyone from hanging onto their pocketbooks anymore--isn't that the oldest con of all? But so it goes. Donald continues to point to sexy beauty and away from his own indiscretions. Johnston starts Trump’s family history with the observation that the family name was once Drumpf, changed in 1648, too early to implicate Donald, but not too early to influence his sense of himself. Johnston points out various meanings of the word: ”Donald no doubt enjoys the bridge player’s definition of trump: a winning play by a card that outranks all others. But other definitions include ‘a thing of small value, a trifle’ and ‘to deceive or cheat’ as well as ‘to blow or sound a trumpet.’ As a verb, trump means to ‘devise in an unscrupulous way’ and ‘to forge, fabricate or invent,’ as in ‘trumped-up’ charges.” Johnston has just the right amount of amused skepticism and new information to hold us in thrall rather than have us toss the book across the room in a rage. O’Brien’s book is liable to make us too angry to read more about the man. Johnston keeps us reading and thinking. It is absolutely unbelievable that Trump was victorious in November. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 30, 2016
|
Dec 2016
|
Dec 01, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385689225
| 4.49
| 709,876
| Nov 15, 2016
| Nov 15, 2016
|
really liked it
|
Trevor Noah’s memoir about growing up mixed in South Africa ends with a bang. In some ways, he is the manifestation of his mother’s dream of escape. A
Trevor Noah’s memoir about growing up mixed in South Africa ends with a bang. In some ways, he is the manifestation of his mother’s dream of escape. A dream of equality might be a step too far, but escape…escape from Soweto, a township “designed to be bombed” with a population of one million and only two roads in or out. ”The story of Soweto is the story of driveways. It is a hopeful place.”Trevor’s mother’s family lived in Soweto, and though she had courageously—even foolishly, white people in this country might say—gone to live where black people were prohibited in Johannesburg, she somehow managed to make it all work: finding work, renting an apartment, becoming a single mom. She actually charted, as best she could, a future for her family that looked very different from what was expected. That level of desperation is not well known among white people in America. [image] Although this is a memoir of a thirty-two-year-old comedian, and perhaps because it is the memoir of a thirty-two-year-old comedian, Trevor's mother’s story is the one that resonates most keenly. But let’s give credit where credit is due: Trevor has an amazing delivery. All the while we are listening to the most difficult material, the scariest or most tragic stuff we've never had to face growing up, all the while we are ready to laugh, or to crack a smile. He keeps it light, but he definitely shows how he moved from being “born a crime” into actual crime without making it seem criminal. "Listen, you shouldn’t get upset. Black people don’t have any money, so trying to get more stuff for less money is just what we do. But let me help. I’ll be your middleman…"Noah spent most of his youth on the outside of every society he was in, a good position to see each group for what it was. In school he learned to mediate between competing groups and sell them things…pirated CDs, games, food. One day he is caught on film stealing candy from a mall shop that was closed. His interrogators, despite seeing his features and face, thought the boy on film was white, and therefore, despite lengthily interrogating Noah and showing him the film numerous times, Noah himself wasn’t suspected. That level of colorblindness may be more rare in America. It's hard to say that Noah's personality didn't confuse things. Noah’s facility with languages was his entree into gaining acceptance with diverse populations. He could sound like anyone, speak their language, and earn a spot in their group. "I could be a part of any group that was laughing…I’d catch a bit of their conversation, learn more about their group, and then leave. I never overstayed my welcome. I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t an outcast…"After school he moved into an apartment with help from his mother and a push from his stepfather. He hustled on the streets for years, earning enough to eat and not much more. What came in went out. "Hustling is to work what surfing the internet is to reading…maximal effort put into minimal gain."This period of his life is recounted in such an honest way it is sure to be familiar to many who grew up poor in a city with lousy opportunities. What was going to be a short-term hustle to earn enough to get into college became an end in itself. Noah’s “Go Hit-ler” chapter should go down in South African history books as a funny but cautionary tale, a consequence of the separation of the races. It shows us how a teen already out of school and thought to be educated could be so completely ignorant of history. A spectacular end to the street hustle made Noah rethink his prospects. There are so many quotes and revealing moments in this book, I am tempted to pick them all out for you, but you simply must read it for yourselves. This is the story of a man we can see every night on television, showing us how to laugh at our queer customs and queerer politicians. It is an education how racism plays out in one of the most racially-divided states on earth. The South African government before the end of apartheid made very discrete categories of race to keep the groups separate. But people “want to mix,” Noah tells us, “humans being humans and sex being sex.” Besides that, we are just curious, interested. Why do we, even we Americans, insist on keeping segregation going? What on earth can be worse than what we had in the past or what we have now? This is an absorbing and deeply informative look at growing up mixed in South Africa. I read Netgalley’s ebook advance from Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, and regret that photographs were not included with the advance copy. Hopefully with the hardcover you will see Noah and his mother, both remarkable people, at various stages of their lives. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 17, 2016
|
Nov 20, 2016
|
Nov 17, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0446578541
| 9780446578547
| 0446578541
| 3.64
| 516
| Oct 01, 2005
| Oct 26, 2005
|
really liked it
|
Tim O'Brien restored my sense of humor. O'Brien was sued by the Donald over the reporting in this book, twice, but if anything, O'Brien makes the Dona
Tim O'Brien restored my sense of humor. O'Brien was sued by the Donald over the reporting in this book, twice, but if anything, O'Brien makes the Donald look bombastic rather than purposely evil. At first I was disconcerted by the breezy style, but by the middle I understood that the style matched the subject matter. I was laughing by the time O’Brien tells us about the fight headlined daily in the New York papers between developer Trump and Mayor Koch in the 1980s. I got to the point where I was thinking, like Trump’s wives, “That’s just Donald. He does it to everybody.” He is a braggart and a smooth-talking operator. Everyone knows he is lying, but because no one takes him seriously, what he says doesn’t matter. But that’s all over now. Now people must take him seriously, and it is difficult to change early impressions. The only thing we do know is that among the powerful, nearly everyone is waiting for him to trip up and hang himself. No one, except perhaps Giuliani, has any loyalty to this guy. After all, Trump has insulted them, lorded over them, sued them even. He won the election, yes, but if he blows it, they will dump him faster than Brutus stabbed Caesar. Now, to this book. It was initially published in October of 2005, long before politicos around the nation were speaking of Trump in the same breath as Bush, Romney, and Obama. Their worlds did not overlap. A second edition of the book was published June 2016 with a new Introduction (described here in the Washington Post) which should give you some idea of O’Brien’s writing style and attitudes towards the Don. The thing that I began to warm to in O’Brien’s telling is that this could be perceived as funny. Donald is a gad-dang charlatan, for cripes’ sake. Everyone knows that, especially the dour-faced Republicans who opposed him during the campaign. And they are all lawyers. Donald has so much objectionable, actionable, lying behaviors behind--and presumably ahead--of him that they can take him down at any time they decide to put their little minds to the task. It just depends how long they can keep him on their leash. This has nothing to do with “popular opinion.” That pleasantry will go right out the window when the politicos decide enough is enough. Brutus and Caesar. Anyway, O'Brien's telling is a hoot. I first read David Cay Johnston’s The Making of Donald Trump which allowed me to relax into this more casual history. Both books have great stories about Trump in conflict with one powerful billionaire after another. I particularly liked the story about Trump so admiring the Plaza Hotel that he bought it despite its flaws at a price which began to suck his wallet dry. "This isn’t just a building, it’s the ultimate work of art," Donald said of his hotel. "I was in love with it…I tore myself up to get the Plaza."It’s nice to know there is some sentiment in the guy, even if it is only for a building and not for the blond bombshells he married to amuse himself and dazzle us. Somewhere along the time O’Brien recalls the testimony from Steve Wynn, Las Vegas developer, discussing Trump(1) do I begin to see that Trump’s election is a fluke, and that he is hanging again by his toenails to this high bar he has managed, by luck and bravado, to scale. But there isn’t much underneath him, and it is just a matter of time before the Washington establishment declares “This emperor has NO clothes!” Endlessly amusing if one can detach the real-world implications of Donald Trump as President of the United States, this book should be required reading for those too distressed to listen to news since the election. It is a reality inoculation to stave off despair. We knew we had a lot of work to do to repair the political system. Now we have no choice. It is not a question of “if” or “when.” The answer will have to be “now.” Be prepared to become involved. (1)Steve Wynn on Donald Trump: "No sane or rational guy would respond to Trump," Wynn responded. "His statements to people like you, whether they concern us or our projects, or our motivations, or his own reality, or his own future, or his own present, you have seen over the years have no relation to truth or fact. And if you need me to remind you that, we’re both in trouble. He’s a fool." This is featured as a Goodreads giveaway for another 24 hours or so. Sign up! You may want something to laugh through over Christmas vacation, before rolling up your sleeves to get to work next year putting some structures in place when he goes down. Think positively. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 20, 2016
|
Dec 03, 2016
|
Nov 14, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0241977541
| 9780241977545
| 0241977541
| unknown
| 4.06
| 6,235
| Sep 08, 2016
| Sep 08, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
These stories are pure enjoyment. David Cornwell makes up for all those years he refused interviews, answering questions we never got to ask. If he do
These stories are pure enjoyment. David Cornwell makes up for all those years he refused interviews, answering questions we never got to ask. If he doesn’t quite “bare all,” within are things we may have felt strongly about at the time, but now excite us just for the pleasure of hearing a different voice tell us indeed, we may have been right all along. The written word is fine, but I am going to urge readers to consider the audio of this memoir which is read by the author himself. He is quite good at accents and inflection, and it is riotous in parts to hear his plummy enunciation explaining moments of real learning: when he was sent to Paris as a sixteen-year-old to pick up a debt for his father, or on learning the ways of Hollywood. Society’s view of spies changes with the times, and David Cornwell acknowledges this, and along with us is horrified at the waste and destruction many of those pointed in the direction of the interests of state have wrought through arrogance and incompetence. What is most appealing about le Carré’s writing is that David Cornwell has never stopped being the man that attracted MI-5 and-6 when he was recruited early on in his career. He is capable of enormous leaps of understanding—and judgment, when it comes to it. A few of his books will remain in the stacks, long-lasting as literature, because he managed to capture something we acknowledge as real, if dark and depressing and somehow enormously sad. This le Carré autobiography is arguably even more engrossing than his novels because he applies his writing talent and unparalleled observation and pacing skills, but he shares the sources of his inspiration, highlighting for us where his characters diverge from their real-life counterparts. Real people in real crises are almost always more interesting than their fictional counterparts, aren’t they? Best of all, we get cameos of famed leaders and crooks, winners, losers, and those who tried. The most affecting bits he saved for the end, where he talks about his “confected” childhood memories, including a mother, all angles instead of curves, whom he met at the age of twenty-one and who talked nonstop about Ronnie (his father), but supplanting the “he” with “you.” A family of storytellers, then, and all of it manifest in a man torn between the truth and it’s opposite. Cornwell could tell a scam from a mile away, which is why he never went public with the “tell-all” offered to him by Nicholas Elliott, best friend and colleague of Kim Philby, one of the most infamous double agents in British Intelligence history. But hearing Cornwell take on the voice of Elliott as he ostensibly spilled the secrets of the still-classified debriefing with Philby in Beirut is something you do not want to miss, even if you aren’t aware of the significance of that confession. A couple of meetings with Yasser Arafat stand out, as does his unrehearsed seventy-five minute live interview with French television personality and host Bernard Pivot. Cornell speaks so glowingly of what a phenomenon Pivot was on television that I will forever regret not knowing enough French to understand Pivot's wit and sense of style. This book gives enormous pleasure, whatever your preferred method of consumption. The revelations may seem out of date to some, but it is actually one of those memoirs that never go out of date. Classic, I think they call it. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 05, 2016
|
Sep 13, 2016
|
Sep 05, 2016
|
Audio CD
| |||||||||||||
| 0062415832
| 9780062415837
| 0062415832
| 4.19
| 60,108
| Oct 27, 2015
| Oct 27, 2015
|
it was amazing
|
It is hard to argue with Antonin Scalia when he described Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg as “an intelligent woman and a nice woman and a co
It is hard to argue with Antonin Scalia when he described Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg as “an intelligent woman and a nice woman and a considerate woman—all the qualities you like in a person.” Add to that, she is a persistent person and a principled person and a fair person—all the qualities you want in a lawyer. This work is an act of homage. When R.B.G. gave two dissents on one day, on June 25, 2013, fans of her opinions started drawing, composing songs, writing poems. She inspired many up-coming legal scholars but also many women trying to live their lives in the most fulfilling ways—without the constraints traditionally placed upon their gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. She is placed next to the rapper B.I.G. in the pantheon of stars because of the contrast: a large black man, young and flashy with strong opinions next to a slight white female octogenarian, restrained but with strong opinions. Both were looking for equal rights under the law. The book is a loosely chronological description of R.B.G.’s upbringing and early schooling. She met Marty, her husband of 56 years at Cornell and they decided to study law together at Harvard. When Marty graduated before her, she moved on to Columbia Law School to earn her degree. The two had a child already by then, but really expected that the two partners in the marriage would share the burdens and joys of parenting equally. Right from the start R.B.G. chose cases that would move the ball forward on rights for both men and women because gender discrimination hurts everyone. Women will never be free unless men are free of their traditional roles as well. That angle, freeing men from the constraints of societal expectations, proved popular in the courts and made it a little easier for her to introduce the obvious “next step” into women’s expectations of equal opportunity. “Present the court with the next logical step,” she would urge her clerks years later. “Don’t ask them to go too far or too fast, or you’ll lose what you might have won.” In a marriage and in a workplace, “sometimes it helps to be a little deaf.” Anger, resentment, and envy are unproductive. Get over it. The book has lots of pictures of R.B.G. at different stages in her career interspersed with the narrative of what was happening at the time. The authors also include portions of important decisions. R.B.G. was not flashy—in her dress or in her writing—but she did make great effort to write for clarity. She wanted interested people who were not lawyers to be able to understand the substance of what had been decided. She aimed for people to be able to read a paragraph once without the necessity of a reread to understand. That’s a great goal right there. The cases the authors seed throughout the narrative are marked up with handwritten notes about what the case meant for plaintiffs, defendants, and ordinary citizens. The authors are out to make this a fun and informative read, and it is. The audio is enhanced: certain sections have added commentary that can be referenced for further information so that the momentum of the whole doesn’t flag. It’s interesting, especially since this kind of attention has never been paid to a Supreme Court Judge. She’s eighty-three, folks, and still going strong. One of the more interesting short sections in the book is a description of R.B.G.'s workout routine. I am not going to tell you what it is that keeps her fit enough to carry on with a high pressure job that requires enormous intellectual wattage—you’ll have to go to the book for that—but it is im-press-ive. Anyway, I found the audio very listenable, but I’d have to say the photos and extras in the book itself were worth paging through. Big high five on the labor of love that reminds us of someone that has done so much to make a difference in the lives of so many. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 03, 2016
|
Aug 04, 2016
|
Aug 03, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0307961613
| 9780307961617
| 0307961613
| 4.07
| 5,275
| Jan 14, 2014
| Sep 29, 2015
|
it was amazing
|
During the election pre-season in America, I was as surprised and intrigued at the support for Donald Trump as the rest of the thinking universe (not
During the election pre-season in America, I was as surprised and intrigued at the support for Donald Trump as the rest of the thinking universe (not the pundits, of course). As I laughed at his unscripted policy-free speeches and intentionally note-worthy off-the-cuff remarks, I remember thinking I would love to see the effect of his ‘shock and awe’ campaign on someone like Putin. I thought Trump would be too unpredictable and outspoken for Putin. I am ready to take that back. In a weird kind of way, both men, neither political operatives at the start of their careers, are a similar kind of not-liberal, not-conservative, whatever-works nationalist kind of politician. And both have created a cult of personality to facilitate a kind of one-man rule. Myers allowed me to catch this glimpse of Putin at his start in government as an ordinary man unused to and previously uninterested in political power. When he began in the Sobchak Leningrad government, he may or may not have been involved in skimming from contracts he arranged with the newly burgeoning private sector after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He certainly was in a position to do so, and many of the people he awarded contracts did so: he formed firm friendships and nurtured loyal apparatchiks in Leningrad that reappear throughout his political career. But it is also true that Russia in the early 1990’s was a wild place with many crime lords jockeying for power. Putin’s family was targeted at least once. Putin did not at that time appear to have the trappings of new wealth, though we learned only recently of monies in his name from the Panama Papers. It is possible that his wealth accumulated from later dealings. It has always been difficult to understand why Putin was reputed to enjoy such wide public support in Russia, but I realize now that our media reporting emphasized bad judgment and outcomes while Russian media outlets emphasized good intent and nationalism. Myers gives a far more nuanced picture of Putin growing into his role as president—prime minister—president again in this book. If Putin didn’t begin as a friend to oligarchs, he gradually relaxed into the role. He began as a man with he stated goal of “making Russia great again.” He could see that some people were gaming the system by purchasing national reserves of commodities improperly priced and selling them at more realistically priced international values. This was not illegal at the time, just morally suspect. Rather than trying to fix the system of laws that allowed this rape of mineral and energy resources to continue, Putin selectively applied legal and taxation rules on the books to hamper, entangle, or otherwise inhibit the activities of people who did not work closely with him. Myers charts the hardening of Putin’s character, from his shock and dismay upon learning that Yeltsin had chosen him as a political successor to his chagrin upon learning that his chosen successor, Medvedev, had both an opinion and a weakness that didn’t partner Putin well. And what was very clear in Myers’ telling was the perception of U.S. foreign policy decisions by Russians and Putin. By the time Edward Snowden comes on the scene late in the book, we laugh at Putin’s pleasure in pointing out political dissidence and jail is not just a Russian thing. ”Ask yourself, do you need to put such people in jail, or not?”Putin was more confident during his second presidency and yet the moment he assumed power the second time his poll ratings began to fall. It was the moment citizens realized that there was really no conversation, no political discussion going on. It only takes twenty years for a political climate to change irrevocably: ask Hillary Clinton. In twenty years, young people with no historical memory bring a new clarity to what is happening right now, with no regard to what came before. Pussy Riot called out Putin; Sanders’ supporters are calling out Clinton. Putin operated, and operates now, by relying on a close and loyal group of political “friends” from his time in the FSB and his time working for Sobchak in Leningrad. Loyalty is so prized that it would not surprise me to learn that some of the political murders committed during Putin’s reign were not “ordered” by himself. It seems entirely possible to me that elements in a large bureaucracy might prove their loyalty by eliminating static that was damaging to the leader. The problem with a large bureaucracy is that it can take on a character of its own and is not easy to change. A really strange event occurred early in Putin’s first presidency: the bombing of the apartment buildings in Moscow and the sacks of FSB-sourced explosives found in the apartment building in Ryazan. These incidents have never been satisfactorily explained, and could be an example of a bureaucracy grinding out [imperfect] solutions to perceived problems that impact Putin & Co. In a case like that, or in the case of sheer incompetence (also an enduring feature of large bureaucracy), it is not hard to see Putin keeping mum out of loyalty to those he is protecting. Some actions, like poisoning political opponents or shooting reporters in the the stairwells of their buildings, are simply too crude, destructive, and beneath the dignity of someone in power to imagine they are a “command.” Bill Browder’s account of his time making money hand-over-fist in the 1990’s in Russia, Red Notice, mentioned that powerful figures known to Putin wanted the real estate on which those apartment buildings were built and were meeting resistance. Whatever the truth of the matter, this did not have to originate in the Kremlin to be horrifying in its motivation. It does appear, however, that it was condoned by the Kremlin since a good explanation was never uncovered. One of the things that motivates Putin is the expanding power of NATO in Europe. Putin still thinks in terms of great powers and feels he is being hemmed in by Western Europe nibbling away at his satellite countries. It is hard not to sympathize. Certainly that is happening, and will continue to happen in a Clinton presidency, further exacerbating Putin’s bellicosity, and sense of infringement and inferiority. Russia is a huge country. “Too big, really” says Ian Frazier in his big book Travels in Siberia . Putin says its size and different cultures is the reason there cannot be a representative democracy like that in America. Since even America doesn’t seem to the have the process working very well at the moment, it is difficult to pretend to know what difficulties arise when trying to restore the kind of power that was shattered by the overthrow of the tsar in twentieth century Russia. The only thing I would concede is that ruling Russia must be a very difficult job, particularly when one is looking backward. One must look ahead, not backward, when one is leading, it seems to me. I feel like I have gotten a terrific education reading this book and am much better able to parse news coming out of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East today. I can now put Putin into the context vis-a-vis U.S. diplomatic relations. Clinton must be the last person Putin would want to see be elected president in the United States, and in some ways Trump is as unpredictable as Putin has claimed he has tried to be. But I am not recommending a vote for Trump. I think a better choice might be neither of these two. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 10, 2016
|
May 26, 2016
|
May 10, 2016
|
Hardcover
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 4.00
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 29, 2023
|
Dec 27, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.68
|
liked it
|
Oct 15, 2018
|
Oct 15, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.24
|
did not like it
|
Jun 30, 2018
|
Jun 27, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 21, 2018
|
Jun 20, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.32
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 22, 2018
|
Feb 09, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.80
|
really liked it
|
not set
|
Dec 10, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 4.00
|
not set
|
Nov 04, 2017
|
||||||
|
| 4.49
|
really liked it
|
Nov 04, 2017
|
Sep 22, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 3.74
|
really liked it
|
Jun 26, 2017
|
Jun 03, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 4.24
|
did not like it
|
Dec 22, 2016
|
Dec 21, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.67
|
really liked it
|
Apr 08, 2017
|
Dec 15, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.65
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.49
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.35
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Dec 06, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.91
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 2016
|
Dec 01, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.49
|
really liked it
|
Nov 20, 2016
|
Nov 17, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.64
|
really liked it
|
Dec 03, 2016
|
Nov 14, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.06
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 13, 2016
|
Sep 05, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.19
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 04, 2016
|
Aug 03, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.07
|
it was amazing
|
May 26, 2016
|
May 10, 2016
|
Loading...
