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Historical Atlas of Central America. Text by Carolyn Hall and Héctor Pérez Brignoli. Maps by John V. Cotter. 321pp. 2003. ISBN 0806130377. Dewey 911.7
Historical Atlas of Central America. Text by Carolyn Hall and Héctor Pérez Brignoli. Maps by John V. Cotter. 321pp. 2003. ISBN 0806130377. Dewey 911.728; Library-of-Congress G1551.S1. 13.25" tall × 10.25" wide × 1.0625" thick. Not just an atlas. A history, with lots of maps. Coffee-table-book size; textbooky writing. Just the facts. "In December 1989 a U.S. military invasion deposed Noriega, who was arrested on drugs charges and deported to the United States." p. 233. That's /all/ it says on the subject! If you want to know, say, "Noriega was our thug in 1985. In 1989 he was getting independent," you'll have to go to, say, /Understanding Power: the Indispensable Chomsky/, Noam Chomsky, p. 152. goodreads.com/review/show/1929263118 During the late Spanish colonial period, 1793–1797, trade in Central America was controlled by merchant guilds, /consulados de comercio/. Everywhere except in the capital (Santiago de Guatemala) the institution was perceived as a constraint on economic development, operating to the exclusive advantage of a handful of wealthy Spaniards and criollos (American-born Spaniards). The consulado promoted trade only where it exercised greatest control. pp. 167, 169. Spain taxed its colonies' trade among themselves, and insisted that only Spain conduct trade between its colonies and anywhere else. Direct trade between Spanish colonies and Europe or the United States was considered contraband--which was rife. p. 167. Spain lost control over trade in its empire in 1797 during a war with Britain. p. 167. At the bottom of colonial society were indigenous people and slaves; at the top were wealthy and privileged, protected by church, military, and commercial forces. p. 169. [Not much has changed. See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and others: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... ] Indigo industry tanked when Napoleonic wars disrupted trade. Even the university in Guatemala City was unable to pay salaries, and put its library up for sale. pp. 169, 176. Spain peaceably abandoned control of Central America in 1821, when Mexico gained independence. Then Central American elites fomented civil wars over control. Both /fiebres/ (pro-merchant Liberals) and /serviles/ (pro-landowner Conservatives) often seized power in coups d'etat or fraudulent elections, and ruled as dictators. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica formed a federal republic, 1824–1839. pp. 170–171. But the colonial heritage, 300 years of autocratic rule buttressed by military might, was not easily eradicated. p. 172. Civil wars prevailed 1822–1835, 1837–1840. (Lightly-populated) Costa Rica suffered civil war only 1823–1824 and 1835. pp. 170, 173. It lacked political parties and was geographically isolated from its warring neighbors. Costa Rica established civilian rule; the rest of the isthmus continued military autocracy. (Populous) El Salvador suffered most. pp. 170, 174. These wars were about which elites would rule. Uprisings by indigenous people were quickly crushed. p. 174. By 1840 the federation was over, Conservative military regimes ruling in all its states. p. 175. Civil wars destroyed property, took labor from production, curtailed trade. p. 176. Anarchic wasteland. Subsistence agriculture was far the most important economic activity on the isthmus. p. 176. [And survives today, wherever /peones/ can escape forced work on plantations. See Beatriz Manz, /Paradise in Ashes/.] Central America would long lack the capital, technology, entrepreneurship, and even the labor for industrialization. p. 176. Mid-1800s, Central American countries increasingly supplied primary products to the U.S. and Europe--lessening the importance of trade with each other. p. 176. Adventurers from the U.S. in the 1850s intervened in Central American civil wars, hoping themselves to seize control and turn Central America into more slave states like those in the U.S. South. Combined armies of the Central American states, with help from Britain, defeated the adventurers. pp. 184-185. Coffee grows from 300 meters (1000 feet) above sea level in Guatemala, to 1500 meters (5000 feet) in Costa Rica. Cobbled roads were built for oxcarts. The trans-Panama railroad in 1855 obviated the need to round Cape Horn to get the Pacific crop to Eastern U.S. and Europe. The rich got richer on the backs of laborers, except in labor-poor Costa Rica, where thousands of small growers and carters prospered. Even in Costa Rica, a few families dominated processing and commercialization. p. 192. (Pro-merchant) liberal governments took indigenous communities' common lands and gave them to plantation owners--simultaneously lowering thousands of people from self-sufficient to landless-laborer status. El Salvador's dense population especially suffered. Cold high-altitude areas of Guatemala couldn't grow coffee, so indigenous land was left alone--but the people were coerced into laboring on the (lower-elevation) plantations. pp. 193-196. In Belize by 1935, thirty-three owners held almost all private land in the country. p. 198. Regular transatlantic steamship crossings began in the 1830s. p. 200. Steamers by the 1850s began arriving every 7, 14, or 21 days on the isthmus, where Spanish sailing fleets had come only yearly. Liverpool around Cape Horn to El Salvador took 2 months by steam; it had taken 5 months by sail. Steamship companies demanded and got government subsidies. pp. 200-201. Railroads were built by foreigners under contracts that left Central American governments deep in debt. p. 202. A U.S. company built the transisthmian railroad across Panama, 1850-1855. U.S. gunboats replaced British, to maintain foreign corporate control of Central America. pp. 208-209. The U.S. proposal to build a canal gave Colombia insufficient compensation and threatened its sovereignty: Colombia refused. The U.S. ensured the secession of Panama from Colombia in 1903. p. 225. Teddy Roosevelt's tour of the Canal Zone in 1906 was the first time a U.S. president had travelled abroad while in office. The U.S. Government built the canal, creating the largest artificial lake in the world: Lake Gatun, 21 miles long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatun_Lake Most of the original rail line was flooded. Yellow fever was eradicated locally in 1906. The canal opened in 1914. By the 1990s only 20% of the world's ocean-shipping tonnage could fit through the canal. Not aircraft carriers, either. The canal was no longer essential to U.S. security, and was losing money, when the U.S. gave it to Panama, Dec. 31, 1999. p. 214. Oligarchies and armies wield political power in Central America. p. 217. People of Costa Rica, Belize, and Panama are less impoverished than Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans. Rarely has a Central American president been peacefully succeeded by an opponent, except in Costa Rica. p. 219. Coffee oligarchs controlled Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. p. 224. When a strongman president weakened, civil war broke out. In the Depression 1930s, more-repressive regimes arose to stamp down public unrest. Anti-imperialist sentiment arose in the 1920s and '30s, against U.S. control of the banana industry and railroads, banks, and public utilities. p. 228. Liberal Nicaraguan general Augusto César Sandino led a revolutionary war, 1926-1933, against oligarchs, their armies, and the U.S. military. He failed. Expropriation of El Salvadoran common lands in 1881-1882 left land in few hands, with many landless laborers poorly paid and harshly treated. p. 228. A Labor Party president was elected in 1931, but deposed in a few months by the army. p. 229. In 1932, indigenous coffee workers uprose, killing 20 owners, police, and officials. The army massacred thousands of indigenous people in reprisal. A strike in Costa Rica, by contrast, was largely nonviolent; Costa Rica gained labor laws to address strikers' demands. p. 229. Since the 1930s, the US has supported pro-imperialist Central American military dictators. After WWII, the U.S. trained Central American military in counterinsurgency. Eisenhower's CIA armed, trained, and participated in the coup that overthrew reformist president Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. 1961-1979, revolutionary Sandinistas fought and finally overthrew Nicaragua's Somoza-family kleptocracy, in power since 1936. pp. 230-235, 262-265. About half of the Central American forest area of 1940 had been deforested by 1990. p. 274. é ...more |
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Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy, Victor Perera (1934–2003), 1993, 382pp., ISBN 0520079655, Dewey 972.8106, Library-of-Congress F1466.7 2% o Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy, Victor Perera (1934–2003), 1993, 382pp., ISBN 0520079655, Dewey 972.8106, Library-of-Congress F1466.7 2% of population (latifundista) control over 65% of arable land. p. 8. 8 of 10 Guatemalan children are undernourished. pp. 25, 289. 84% of Guatemalans are landless and hungry. p. 351. Agrarian reform act, 1952: uncultivated land of United Fruit (Chiquita) & other large landowners was forcibly purchased & let to peasants. Allen Dulles' CIA armed & equipped Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas & his 300 irregular soldiers, to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in June 1954. Armas abolished labor unions, gave land back to United Fruit. The author, Victor Perera, was out of Guatemala 1959–1971. pp. 40–. For this book he travels to each area of the country and tells of the horrors that have occurred, and are still occurring there, through mid-August 1993. p. 353. Impoverished Guatemalans have been massacred by the army, to keep them from supporting insurgents. Most army officers were trained in the United States, or in Israel. pp. 127-128. Guatemalan government soldiers murdered leaders of communal organizations that led to campesinos' betterment. (He's referring specifically to the Carter-Reagan-Bush I-Clinton years. Was there /ever/ a time it was otherwise?) p. 279. The Guatemalan president was permitted to assume the office he was elected to only after signing an agreement with the military officer corps that was armed, trained, and advised by the U.S. military. p. 283. "If I don't keep the generals happy, I'll be overthrown." p. 293. Central-American presidents' unanimous vote to demobilize the Contras in August 1989 was a slap in the face to US hegemony dating from the Monroe Doctrine. The U.S. then sharply reduced military and economic aid. (Under Bush I.) p. 288. The land is being clear-cut to enrich local elites. p. 154. Locals could've harvested xate, allspice, chicle from a standing rainforest, gaining more revenue than was earned from clearcutting--but big landowners and the army would've gone on a murder spree to stop any such grassroots movement. p. 248. Remittances from emigrants to the US enable locals to get title to their land, displacing Ladino owners. Especially in Huehuetenango, from whence the largest number of migrants went north. p. 155. Plantation owners advance pay to laborers, who spend it on drink in the plantation store. They have to come back next year to work off the debt. Real wages are lower now than 2 generations ago. p. 159. The huge tracts of land seized by the conquistadors were worthless without indiginous slaves to work them. p. 271. "Disobedience [of parishoners, as in demanding a less-contemptuous priest] simply cannot be tolerated in the Catholic Church, as Pope John Paul II made eminently clear." --Bishop Eduardo Fuentes. Church sides with landowners & businesses that exploit the poor. See "The Clamor for Land," a Feb. 1988 letter by dissenting bishops calling for social justice. Can't find an English translation; here's the original: www.iglesiacatolica.org.gt/ptn/clamor... These bishops reiterate: [section 1, Guatemala's agrarian problem, pp. 2-8 of 18] 1.1.3.2: "the vast bulk of the arable land is in the hands of negligibly-few people, while most people have nothing." [Poverty is /because of/ wealth.] 1.2.3: As bad as colonialism was, the use of government to take from the have-nots and give to the haves worsened after independence (1821). 1.2.4 And worsened more as coffee for export replaced other crops around 1871. 1.2.5 The Árbenz land reforms of 1950-1954 were crushed by massive force [by the Eisenhower administration, crying antiCommunism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob... ]. 1.4.2.1 Most Guatemalans have no school, no public sanitation, no economic nor physical security, no dignity. Any setback can threaten starvation. [Religious section, pp. 8-12 of 18] If you have tens of thousands of acres, give your neighbor an acre. (Luke 3:11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/... ) Especially if you're not using it. Section 2.2, p. 12 of 18. Mister, we could use a man like Jacobo Árbenz again. Without U.S. intervention. 3.1.4 The clamor for land has been met with military force. 3.1.5 Guatemalan law & enforcement aids the rich in taking from the poor. 3.2.4.3.11: Tax the rich. This letter was signed by Archbishop Próspero Penados del Barrio and a list of other bishops, including Bishop Eduardo Fuentes, who expressed the opposite view. (We, the elite, must maintain control of our peasants.) pp. 200, 203. Another letter by the Guatemalan Conference of Bishops, "500 years of Sowing the Gospel," Aug. 1992. Conciliatory, but stops short of calling for real reform. p. 350. "The belief that Jesus converted the fish into loaves of bread is pure crap. The miracle was that he convinced the wealthy who had bread to share it with the poor."--Fr. Andrés Giron, Nueva Concepción, Guatemala, Aug. 1986. p. 301. The Guatemalan Army draws up and publishes its own list of 200 prominent local people it has marked for death--and claims it's the revolutionaries' death list. November 1987, Santiago Atitlán. p. 201. "We can import corn from Iowa cheaper than we can grow it. [U.S.-government-subsidized agribusiness-grown.] Thousands of farm laborers are dying of cancer, in my parish, the water they drink is contaminated by the cotton planters' pesticides. U.S. dumps lethal poisons on us that your own farmers are forbidden from using." p. 304. Communism feeds on hunger and discontent. "Stop sending us poisons and weapons!" After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency soaked their vegetable crops in glyphosphate, hundreds of peasants turned to poppy cultivation. p. 292. ...more |
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My Opponent Is Eating a Doughnut, Tim Just (1948- ) and Wayne Clark (1953-2021), 2015, 95 pages. ISBN 9781530385003 A player who habitually quit tourna My Opponent Is Eating a Doughnut, Tim Just (1948- ) and Wayne Clark (1953-2021), 2015, 95 pages. ISBN 9781530385003 A player who habitually quit tournaments early without notifying the tournament directors--leaving his next-round opponent waiting for a player who would never show up--was fined an "appearance fee" of $50 to enter a tournament. He would get the $50 back if and only if he completed the schedule, or withdrew properly. This cured his bad habit. p. 89 The grandmaster who owned the off-brand clock set it for 40 moves in 25 hours, instead of the 40 in 2.5 required. It wasn't noticed until late in the game. "I don't know how to set it. I just bought it." The tournament director didn't know how to set it. "I have an old analog clock in my office. I'll go get it." He was back in 60 seconds with the old clock̇--by which time the grandmaster's clock was set correctly. p. 54. Garry Kasparov (world champion 1985 to about 1996, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... ) spoke at the 2009 Super Nationals in Nashville (combined High School, Junior High, Middle School, and Elementary, K-12, K-9, K-8, K-6, K-5, K-3, K-1: 5,247 players that year http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.p... )--and he made the ceremonial first move for White on a top board. Kasparov asked the player with white what move he wanted to make, the idea being that Kasparov would make the move for him. White said he wanted to play Knight to f3, the King's Indian Attack. "You should have given that opening up in junior high," Kasparov replied. "Why don't you play 1. d4 or 1. e4?" Here was a recent world champion coaching a high-school player on his move to start the tournament! The section chief asked the chief tournament director the academic question, "What if there were a complaint? What would you do?" "You're section chief. I'd direct the complaint to you." "What if there were an appeal?" "I'd say, 'Suck it up. It's Kasparov.'" "No one should eat at the board!" The offending player was keeping the doughnut in his lap; no crumbs were getting on the table. Grievance denied. Tournament staff didn't have the heart to tell the complainant that the organizer had ordered doughnuts for every player to be delivered to the playing room shortly. p. 33 There's only one copy in a worldcat library anywhere, in Wheeling, IL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/my-opp... It's available from USCF https://www.uscfsales.com/my-opponent... and amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530385008/ Tim Just edited the 5th, 6th, and 7th editions of USCF's Official Rules of Chess. Tim Just http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmt... Wayne Clark http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmt... Tim's short obituary of Wayne: https://new.uschess.org/news/iantd-wa... ...more |
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Bernard Cornwell The Saxon Stories: twelve books: goodreads.com/series/43581 bernardcornwell.net/series/the-last-k... Online map: google.com/maps/d/u/0/v Bernard Cornwell The Saxon Stories: twelve books: goodreads.com/series/43581 bernardcornwell.net/series/the-last-k... Online map: google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en_US... Great historical novels. The story of the making of England, behind the human story of individual people (fictional and historical). King Alfred "The Great,” 866 CE and later. Many times it seems that England should have been Daneland—Saxons eke out one unlikely victory after another. Cornwell writes as though he’s stood in a shield wall and gutted his enemy; as though he’s raced a viking longboat through a rocky channel on a flooding tide. Cornwell puts you there—much better than either a dry recitation of facts or a worshipful biography. Each book ends with an exciting battle. Protagonist Uhtred of Bebbanburg was born 857 CE. Sword of Kings (The Saxon Stories, #12) Uhtred has sworn to kill three Saxon leaders, so heads south to join a Saxon civil war which, if Uhtred succeeds, will hasten the day when Saxons attack Uhtred's Northumbria. Set in 924 CE. Uhtred is 67 years old. War of the Wolf (The Saxon Stories, #11) Book opens in early 919 CE. Uhtred fights Norse warriors who've occupied western Northumbria. The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories, #10) 917 CE, Northumbria, East Anglia. Uhtred hopes to retake the almost-unassailable fortress of Bebbanburg. Against him are the warriors of his usurping cousin, of the West Saxons, of the Scots, of the Norse, and of a treacherous mad bishop. Warriors of the Storm (The Saxon Stories, #9) 914 CE. Mercia, Ireland, Northumbria. Irish expel Norse. Norse ravage Merica. The Empty Throne (The Saxon Stories, #8) 911 CE. Mercia and Wales. Saxons try to retake Mercia from Danes, while Norsemen invade from Ireland. The Pagan Lord (The Saxon Stories, #7) 910 CE. Danes lure Saxon defenders away; Danes invade Saxon Mercia with a massive army. Death of Kings (The Saxon Stories, #6) 898–902 CE. Alfred dies. Son Edward tries to hold Wessex against Danish, and traitorous Saxon, attack. The Burning Land (The Saxon Stories, #5) 892–898 CE. Danes attack Mercia. Fates toy with Uhtred—attack or defend? Sword Song (The Saxon Stories, #4) London and environs, 885 CE. Danes are a gathering threat to Saxon rule on the lower Thames. Lords of the North (The Saxon Stories, #3) England and surrounding seas, 878–880 CE. Danes, Saxons, Scots and churchmen contend for control of Northumbria. Exciting finish. Slavery and sea trade. The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Stories, #2) Southern England, 877–878 CE, Alfred's West Saxons try to keep Guthrum's Danes from completing the conquest of England. Bernard Cromwell writes with "you are there" immediacy. Wonderful stories. The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1) Great historical novel, England 866–877 CE, Danes take northern England, Alfred's West Saxons fight to save the south. Our protagonist is the son of an English earl, captured and raised by the Danes who kill his father, age 9–20. Well-drawn characters, a page-turner. Cornwell’s approach is to put his heroes in a difficult situation, then see how they get out of it. Works a treat! Uhtred is delightfully irreverent: “small group of priests I admired and liked, hugely outnumbered by the corrupt, venal, ambitious clerics who governed the church.” (book 9 p. 132 of 481) “Good decent men rarely achieve power in the church. Sly and ambitious ones gain preferment.” (book 8 p. 141 of 296) “I wouldn’t trust your god to save a worm.” (book 9 p. 271 of 481) “The Christian god was just as capable of losing his temper and slaughtering children as any god in Asgard. If the purpose of life was to be an unpredictable, murderous tyrant, then it would be easy to be godlike.” (book 9 p. 308 of 481) The books are fiction but mostly consistent with what’s known to have really happened. Cornwell will take a terse note in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and write a story around it. Uhtred is fictional—but people like him existed. There’s a Historical Note at the end of each book where Cornwell “confesses his sins”—admits some of his main departures from history. The chronology is pretty close to true, with departures for the sake of the story. In Cornwell’s books, Alfred’s grandson Æthelstan (actually born 895) is about 9 or 10 in 911 CE (book 8, pp. 4, 48, 56 of 296), 14 or 15 in 914 CE (book 9, pp. 10, 56 of 481), and 22 or 23 in 917 CE (book 10, pp. 138, 281 of 284). Cornwell says he started writing because he was refused a green card by the Carter administration: writing novels was a job you don’t need a government permit to do. Cornwell says it takes him about 6 months to write a 125,000-word book. Amazingly prolific: and his stuff is good. There's a TV series, The Last Kingdom, but it bears little similarity to the books. ...more |
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What do you want to do? Have a (view spoiler)[vanilla (hide spoiler)] ice cream. (view spoiler)[Frustratingly (hide spoiler)] loop repeatedly through th What do you want to do? Have a (view spoiler)[vanilla (hide spoiler)] ice cream. (view spoiler)[Frustratingly (hide spoiler)] loop repeatedly through the same scenes & choices, not seeing enough to figure out what's going on. (view spoiler)[Infinitely (hide spoiler)] loop through world destruction and travel back to an earlier time, but (view spoiler)[never (hide spoiler)] able to stop it. Be told that in the nothing-ever-happens interpretation of quantum mechanics, every event spawns a universe where it doesn't happen. No matter what, there's always some universe where you never die. You're immortal. In the real world, act on that belief. Go on. Could an interpretation of quantum mechanics be wrong? Give this book to a clever 10-year-old boy you (view spoiler)[dislike (hide spoiler)]. Watch a movie with the same premise but a (view spoiler)[happy (hide spoiler)] ending: Groundhog Day. Read instead a novel of (view spoiler)[the futility of life (hide spoiler)] in French from mid-20th Century, in German from early 20th Century, or in Russian from any time. Have an ice cream. ...more |
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The Coming of Conan, Robert E. Howard, 2002 compilation of the first 13 Conan stories Howard wrote, in the order he wrote them, 1932 - 1934. Drawings
The Coming of Conan, Robert E. Howard, 2002 compilation of the first 13 Conan stories Howard wrote, in the order he wrote them, 1932 - 1934. Drawings by Mark Schultz. 464pp. ISBN 9780345461513 Lad lit. Sword-and-sorcery. 1. The Phoenix and the Sword. Conan is king in Aquilonia. "I did not dream far enough, Prospero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless." p. 11. **** 2. The Frost-Giant's Daughter. Conan is a reaver in the frozen north. **** 3. The God in the Bowl. Conan is a thief in Nemedia. *** 4. The Tower of the Elephant. Conan is a thief in Zamora. "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." p. 63. **** 5. The Scarlet Citadel. King Conan of Aquilonia is captive in Koth. **** 6. Queen of the Black Coast. Conan is a pirate on the coast of Cush. ". . . the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull . . ." p. 123. "Crom. . . . is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?" p. 133. Bêlit. **** 7. Black Colossus. Conan is a mercenary captain in Khoraja. **** 8. Iron Shadows in the Moon. Conan is a rogue on the borders of Koth, Zamora, and Turan. Vilayet, the inland sea. "As she tore her tender skin and bruised her soft limbs on the rugged boulders over which Conan had so lightly lifted her, she realized again her dependence on the iron-thewed barbarian." p. 208. **** 9. Xuthal of the Dusk. Conan is survivor of an army destroyed on the borders of Kush. **** 10. The Pool of the Black One. Conan is a pirate off the southern coast of Zingara. The pirate captain "made the mistake so many autocrats make; . . . he under-estimated the man below him." p. 254. *** 11. Rogues in the House. Conan is a thief in a nameless city. *** 12. The Vale of Lost Women. Conan is war-chief of the Bamulas in Kush. "Women are cheap as plantains in this land, and their willingness or unwillingness matters as little." "If a man is strong enough, he can enforce a few of his native customs anywhere." p. 308. "You're not the proper woman for the war-chief of the Bamulas." p. 317. **** 13. The Devil in Iron. Conan is chief of the /kozaks/ harrying the borders of Turan. p. 324. **** Howard's world is the land that would one day be Europe and northern Africa--but it's set after the sinking of Atlantis, yet before the last glaciation, before the formation of the Mediterranean, North, and Baltic Seas and part of the northeastern Atlantic, and before the massive inland sea of Vilayet evaporated down to what would become the Caspian. Howard's races are ancestors of today's races. Howard drew maps, pages 423 and 425, and wrote a thorough prehistory, history, and posthistory of the Hyborean Age, pages 381-398. The Conan stories take place during the heyday of the Hyborean nations. Permalinks: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
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Open Borders, Bryan Caplan, drawn by Zach Weinersmith, comic book, 2019, 248pp., ISBN 9781250316967 Caplan wants open borders. It's heartening to read Open Borders, Bryan Caplan, drawn by Zach Weinersmith, comic book, 2019, 248pp., ISBN 9781250316967 Caplan wants open borders. It's heartening to read a plea for more humane immigration policy. But he's an ivory-tower economist, at Koch-funded George Mason University economics department. [My take, in brackets]:(view spoiler)[ We already have open borders for money and goods--just not for people. Moreover, The US government subsidizes agribusinesses, that then dump commodities on the world market at less than cost, making it impossible for people to make a living in agriculture. Immigrants work hard for low pay: we can buy more for less because they're here: they make us wealthier. Immigrants mostly come when they're already ready to work: we didn't have to pay to educate them. Their country of origin is subsidizing the US, by raising them until they're ready to work. Age-group populations charts p. 60 show this. Unauthorized workers pay taxes, including social security and medicare taxes, which they're NEVER eligible for benefits from. Immigrants' kids are fully bilingual, and their grandkids are English-only. It's the same with today's Spanish- and Asian-language speakers as in past generations with Polish, Italian, German, Scandanavian immigrants. (hide spoiler)] Keeping workers unauthorized, ineligible for protections from wage theft, sub-minimum wages, mistreatment, drives down wages and conditions for all of us. If we want to earn living wages, the only way we do that is by making sure /everyone/ gets living wages--in this country and everywhere goods are produced that enter this country. We need to: 1. Authorize the unauthorized workers, get them decent pay and conditions. 2. Stop issuing visas that tie people to a particular employer. That's an invitation to abuse, up to and including slavery. See The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today, Kevin Bales, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... 3. Stop subsidizing agribusiness to dump US-Government-funded cheap commodities on the world market at below cost. 4. Import only from countries that ensure decent pay and working conditions, and environmental protections. [But all of the above is me talking.] Here's Caplan: Caplan trots out 7 worldviews that he says all argue for open borders (p. 165): 1. Utilitarianism. J.S. Mill: Maximize the sum of human happiness. [No. Making a majority happy by preying on a minority is wrong.] 2. Egalitarianism. John Rawls. Inequalities must benefit the worst-off. [This is much closer to the mark.] 3. Libertarianism. Robert Nozick. "From each as he chooses. To each as he is chosen." [No. Laissez-faire is a licence for the powerful to prey on the rest.] 4. Cost-benefit analysis. Richard Posner. Maximize the total value of social resources. [No. A high maximum that accrues to a few barons, while the masses suffer, is bad.] 5. Meritocracy. Lee Kuan Yew. The best job for the best person. [That person had the benefit of an expensive education, paid in part by working people's taxes. He's able to to that best job /only/ because everybody else is doing all the other jobs that have to be done, to keep him and all the rest of us alive and comfortable and provided with what we need to have, to do what we do. Being a surgeon or lawyer or banker should not be a license to pile up unspendably ever-increasing wealth, while the working people you rest on have too little.] 6. Christianity. Jesus. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. [Wouldn't /that/ be nice!] 7. Kantianism. Immanuel Kant. Treat every person as an end in himself, never as a mere means. [Amen.] Now Caplan says how, in his view, each of these ideas supports open borders: 1. Utilitarianism. p. 167. Caplan has J.S. Mill say, open borders increases global GDP: therefore increases the sum of human happiness. [Ever-increasing global GDP doesn't equal happiness. In the last 60 years we've gone from around 3 billion to near 8 billion humans; caused the extinction of half the species of plants and animals on Earth; started a self-reinforcing polar melt, increasing storms, floods, droughts; and continue destroying the last natural areas, faster and faster. As Naomi Klein says. /This Changes Everything/. Caplan and his profession don't get it. Plus, maybe I could earn a higher wage in Japan or Norway. I'd be away from family and friends; I'd be forever seen as a stranger; I wouldn't know the language; I wouldn't even like the food. Migration costs the spirit a lot. Even the higher wage would be worth little, where a hamburger is $25, versus $5 in the U.S..] Caplan's J.S. Mill also says, open borders decreases inequality, so it's good. [Immigrants who find work here may survive in the U.S. where they wouldn't've at home. So their migration does /decrease/ inequality. Yet it's /still/ true that the /entire increase/ in wealth, more or less, accrues to a few people who have no use for it but inflating speculative bubbles and increasing their dominance.] 2. Egalitarianism. p. 168. Caplan's John Rawls says, do what's best for the worst-off. [Yes, open borders would help the global poor. But there's a lot else that would help too: Stop using the U.S. military & CIA to prop up governments that subjugate the people to multinational corporations & banks. Stop using trade agreements for the same purpose. Stop dumping U.S. government-subsidized agricultural commodities.] 3. Libertarianism. p. 169-170. Caplan's Nozick says, property owners should rule, with no government curbing them. [That's a vile world, the aristocracy of wealth, that we were supposed to have left in 1776.] Caplan's Nozick would support the liberty of a plantation owner to import all the low-wage or no-wage labor he wants. 4. Cost-benefit analysis. p. 171. Same as utilitarianism, but unconcerned about inequality. Whatever piles up the most dollars is best, regardless of the suffering and destruction. Open borders would double global GDP, so go for it. [Again a vile world: despoiled land, water & air, people worked to enrich a fat cat.] 5. Meritocracy. p. 172. Hire the best person for the job, wherever they're from. [One more "what's best for wealth" perspective. The employer & immigrant are happy. But the working American will work harder for less, if he can get a job; and pay more for housing, if he can afford housing at all.] 6. Christianity. pp. 173-174. Whom would Jesus deport? [This simple moral statement is Caplan's strongest argument. But we need to recognize there are winners and losers. Open borders lets those with money buy more with less. It forces those who work, to compete with hardworking, low-paid, frugal people, and so earn less for more work. In Caplan's fantasy world, Americans mostly manage immigrants, not compete with them. p. 38. Outside the ivory tower, unknown to Caplan, most Americans work for a living. And increasingly in low-paid, no-benefit, gig-economy jobs. Open borders gives those who /collect/ rent or mortgage interest, more, in a tighter housing market. Open borders extracts more from those who /pay/ rent or mortgage interest.] 7. Kantianism. pp. 175-180. Here Caplan equates borders with a "collective" claim to "own the whole country"--which he says is (prepare to be scared!) "socialism!" (illustrated by the Red Army on parade, amid immense pictures of Lenin). [Nazis & Soviets /called/ their politics socialist--but really they were just dictatorships. Real socialism is public schools, public universities, public fire departments, public parks, public roads, public transportation, public post offices, public utilities, public hospitals. We still have some of that; we could use some more. Caplan's equation of socialism with military dictatorship is irresponsible. Several places in the book he has Communists holding "Property is Theft" signs as an example of scary, unhinged immigrants. It would not occur to Caplan to realize that property /is/ theft. p. 25.] In Caplan's world, life is better in the U.S. because of efficient production. p. 30. [He doesn't consider the extent to which the U.S. economy rests on plundering resources and exploiting labor of the rest of the world.] p. 5 In 2013, there were only 800 million people living on $1.90/day, down from 1.8 billion in 1993. [is that inflation-adjusted?] Caplan says there's plenty of room: everyone on Earth could move to the U.S., and it'd only be as densely populated as Los Angeles. [Yikes. Caplan says it without irony.] p. 8. You /can/ have open borders and a welfare state, as immigrants /more/ than pull their weight. p. 75. Caplan says immigrants have lower IQ, [without recognising that IQ /measures/ cultural assimilation, privilege, and wealth]. p. 127 People with /least/ contact with foreign-born neighbors are most xenophobic. Maps of Britain, p. 203. "The Overton window," Joseph P. Overton. There's a vast range of possible policy options. Only a small slice of which is considered politically possible at a given time. Constant pushing your take on it, shifts the window. p. 208. [The all-for-the-rich crowd has moved the window far its way in recent decades. This book is a worthy attempt to push for more humane immigration policy. But it's also pro-wealth policy, which is why servants of wealth, Presidents Reagan & Clinton, both granted amnesty to unauthorized immigrants.] The author is a professor at George Mason University's economics department, which is largely a Charles Koch pro-billionaire, anti-protection-for-the-rest-of-us think tank. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/... http://www.unkochmycampus.org/george-... Caplan's voice in this book is to present the ideas of other people rather than his own--but his perspective is Koch. See also Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, Reece Jones https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... permalink: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
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The Second World War, Antony Beevor (1946–), 2012, 863pp, ISBN 9780316023740, Dewey 940.54, Library-of-Congress D743 (loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco). A conc The Second World War, Antony Beevor (1946–), 2012, 863pp, ISBN 9780316023740, Dewey 940.54, Library-of-Congress D743 (loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco). A concise history of World War II. One strength is some glimpses into the effects of the war on ordinary soldiers and civilians. CAUSES WWII was largely about grabbing natural resources. Hitler wanted his neighbors' coal, metals, food, "living space," slave labor, and Hungarian Black-Sea oil. Mussolini joined what he thought would be the winning side, expecting some of the losers' colonies as a reward. Japan wanted the Pacific and Asian colonies of the crumbling European empires, especially Dutch East Indies oil. pp. 7, 247, 249, 419, 429. Corporate America wanted them too. (UK & US froze Japanese assets, July 1941, for Japanese occupation of French Indochina. AND embargoed oil from entering Japan. p. 219. The oil embargo was effectively a U.S. declaration of war on Japan. p. 277.) Everybody wanted the oil of the Middle East, and control of the Suez Canal. pp. 313, 319. USSR & UK invaded neutral Iran, Aug. 1941, to get its oil & routes from USSR to Persian Gulf. p. 221.) Hitler also wanted to reverse the humiliation of Germany's WWI defeat. Mao wanted to seize power. War was the way. p. 53. Lenin said so. Japan continued its war to subjugate China: Japanese officers felt about China as Germans felt about Slavs: conquer & enslave them to feed the homeland. pp. 6, 278. The U.S. wanted to preserve its world trade, which would be in danger if Germany beat the British. p. 180. CHANGING TECHNOLOGY Roosevelt green-lighted the nuclear-weapons program December 6, 1941, knowing that the Japanese were planning to attack. p. 247. On being congratulated on reaching Berlin after all the USSR had suffered, Stalin replied, "Tsar Alexandr went all the way to Paris." (Potsdam, July 1945.) p. 765. After the fall of Berlin, the Red Army had 400 divisions; the US planned to leave Europe; Britain and France could not oppose the might of the USSR. Stalin planned to take France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, … . It was learning (from his spies) that the US had the bomb that caused him to cancel his plans. p. 765. The British Navy had not yet learned the lesson that the age of the battleship was over. Attack by aircraft now decides naval battles. pp. 171, 257. German 88mm antitank guns destroyed British armor. 1941. p. 179. British army conservatism prevented adaptation of their 3.7-inch antiaircraft gun as antitank. German artillery was horse-drawn until they took the French motor transport—which they then used to attack Russia. p. 197. RESOURCES Sweden supplied iron ore to Germany. p. 45 Spain's survival depended on U.S. grain & oil. p. 145. USSR provided 26,000 tons chromium, 140,000 tons manganese, 2+ million tons oil to Germany, before Nazis invaded USSR. p. 189. Also large amounts grain, cotton, Southeast-Asian-bought rubber. USSR dismantled factories & moved them far east out of Nazi bomber range. p. 198–199. US bombing raids on Japan in June 1944 dwindled when airplane fuel ran short. p. 563. Chinese Communists knew that control of food supplies would mean control of everything. Communists' slightly better treatment of peasants won the people to their cause. p. 778. WAR ECONOMY IS GREAT! British cash payments of $4.5 billion for arms in 1940 lifted U.S. out of Great Depression. p. 181. (In Britain, scarcity continued postwar.) MILITARIZATION Roosevelt started in 1938 building 15,000 Air Force aircraft per year. p. 180. U.S. army grew from 200,000 to 8 million. pp. 180, 281. The galvanization of U.S. military industry produced an overwhelming arsenal, with nearly 100 aircraft carriers at sea by the end of 1944. p. 620. ME FIRST Most arrests by Nazis were in response to denunciations by fellow Germans. pp. 3–4. Hitler's rearmament put Germans back to work. Nazi brutality & loss of freedom seemed a small price to most Germans. p. 4. The Pope did not speak against persecution of Jews. p. 543. COURAGE OR COWARDICE Death before dishonor was the Japanese commanders' creed: they preferred national suicide to loss of face. p. 248. Unlike the French, the Red Army fought on, refusing to acknowledge that they had been defeated. p. 208. Poland was one of the few countries where collaboration with the conqueror was virtually unknown. p. 51. The greatest proportion of UK defeatists was in the upper classes. p. 106. Moral courage is a rare virtue in [Germany, but, fill in the blank]; it drops to zero when a [German] puts on a uniform. —Otto von Bismarck. p. 4. Nazis wanted almost everyone in uniform—especially children. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND The harsher the reaction, the greater the determination to resist. p. 210. Germans bombed Coventry. Allies returned the favor many times over on German cities. p. 510. As Allied bombing of Germany intensified, Hitler wanted revenge & terror inflicted on UK. p. 543. After Germany seized a U.S. freighter, U.S. began selling arms to Allies. Oct 3, 1939. p. 40. Hitler in 1940–41 refused to let U-boats prey near the U.S., to avoid provoking U.S. into war before Germans beat USSR. pp. 182, 438, 440, 443. The appalling violence of Japanese attack led to bitter Chinese resistance. 1937. p. 7. Hitler repeated the error in USSR in 1941. Germany's harsh treatment of the Serbs was to become dangerously counter-productive, since it led to the most savage guerrilla war and interfered with their exploitation of the country's raw materials. p. 161. [December 1941: Germans retreating from near Moscow] Soviet revenge was fierce after German [genocidal] treatment of prisoners and civilians. German officers and soldiers began to regret their treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. pp. 244–245. SOME HELP, HERE? Churchill was as aggressive as he could be, to persuade Roosevelt to join the Allies. pp. 123, 179. Churchill was "foxlike," pursuing multiple plans of varying merit; he was also "hedgehoglike," with the one big idea of getting the US as an ally. p. 219. (Isaiah Berlin, "fox knows many things; hedgehog knows one big thing.") Roosevelt worked to drag his country into the war. Britain is "a man whose house is on fire asking his neighbor for the loan of his hose." Dec. 17, 1940. p. 181. U.S. demanded /all/ U.K. money and gold, and some colonies. U.S. navy convoyed British shipping as far as Iceland. p. 182. Roosevelt's lend-lease to USSR provided steel, antiaircraft guns, aircraft, food (saved many in USSR from famine, 1942–1943 winter), jeeps, trucks. p. 222. It was U.S. lend-lease trucks that enabled the Soviet army to reach Berlin before the Americans. p. 689. (The Red Army suffered 350,000 casualties taking Berlin. p. 756.) China would've fallen to Japan but for US fighting Japan. p. 186. Japan wouldn't've dared attack the U.S. had Hitler not started the European war. p. 278. Hitler was joyful the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. With U.S. at war in the Pacific, Hitler felt free to fully engage U.S. in Atlantic naval war. p. 279. The U.S. contributed to Chinese Nationalists' defeat by Mao's Communists—by forcing Chiang Kai-Shek to concentrate his best forces toward Indochina in 1945 to cut off Japanese retreat—instead of reoccupying the agricultural regions in the north to feed his troops and starving people. p. 770. The U.S. aided and armed the Communist Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, who assisted the Allies against Japan in Indochina. pp. 619, 697. MISUNDERSTANDING Stalin wrongly assumed Churchill & Roosevelt enjoyed absolute power in their countries. p. 222. Roosevelt's overestimate of his influence over Stalin would become a dangerous liability, especially toward the end of the war. pp. 281, 512, 638. Churchill too thought he, Churchill, had turned Stalin into a friend. p. 339, 638–639. Churchill failed to see that Stalin was even more successful than Roosevelt at manipulating people. Roosevelt, convinced that the United Nations led by the US & USSR would be able to solve everything afterwards, had a dangerous disregard for postwar consequences. p. 562. ESPIONAGE Stalin was amazed at the Americans' naivete in talking candidly among themselves in their quarters in the Soviet embassy in Teheran. Didn't they /know/ Stalin had them bugged? This is how Stalin found out that Roosevelt wouldn't oppose Stalin's plans for Poland (/after/ Roosevelt would secure the Polish-American vote in November 1944); no need to fear that Churchill would sway Roosevelt. pp. 512–514, 638–640. Stalin repeated the bugging in Yalta in the Crimea in Feb. 1945: he knew what Roosevelt and Churchill's teams were thinking. pp. 710–711. Japanese spies, through prostitutes servicing US airmen, knew every detail of the US air force base at Kweilin. p. 562. COLONIAL IMPERIALISM The British government of India declared war on Germany—without consulting any Indian. p. 28. STRATEGY Brits repeatedly stretched insufficient resources in too many directions: failing at several, where they could've succeeded at one. Hitler ruthlessly prioritized. Churchill unwisely bit off more than he could chew. p. 174. Stalin insisted the Allies commit to a massive invasion of France in Spring 1944 (which US also wanted). This left the Balkans & Central Europe under Red Army control (as Churchill feared). p. 512. German & Japanese air forces both failed to use their best pilots as flight instructors. Instead they kept them sortieing to exhaustion & a fatal mistake. Despite increased aircraft production [General Motors made engines for the Luftwaffe during the war —Stiglitz, /Making Globalization Work/, p. 341], by D-day the Luftwaffe was a spent force. p. 550. By June 1944, most Japanese pilots had just 2 months' flight training. p. 564. CRYPTOGRAPHY Though the UK navy suspected the Nazis had broken their codes, they kept using them 10 months longer, with disastrous consequences. pp. 282, 436, 453. 1,100 UK, 1,800 Allied ships were sunk in 1942. (continued in comment 1) ...more |
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In Schools We Trust, Deborah Meier, 2002, 200pp., ISBN 0807031429 Teachers at small innovative public schools, who give even more of themselves than av In Schools We Trust, Deborah Meier, 2002, 200pp., ISBN 0807031429 Teachers at small innovative public schools, who give even more of themselves than average teachers at ordinary schools, can achieve impressive levels of high-school graduation and college entrance, among "at-risk" students (with only average per-pupil funding). "I have recently reconsidered the fact that I have no formal office. My easy accessibility sometimes feels like a handicap, if I'm honest, because it removes the formality and spatial intimidation that a desk in a big office offers." (p. 46) "To provide even humdrum homework every night requires several hours per day. Thirty kids times five minutes per child equals 2.5 hours." (p. 55) "In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."—Marian Wright Edelman, 1992 (p. 78) This sort of success IS scalable: /Many/ small schools can operate within a public school system—each successful if given sufficient autonomy. High-stakes standardized testing is a huge destroyer of public education. Standardized-test questions are /designed/ so that the "right" answer will be more obvious to the "in" group than to the "out" group. Scores on standardized tests correlate with wealth, whiteness, and maleness. NOT with future academic success. Women get lower SAT scores than men: women do better in college than men. Black students who score 1000 on the SAT are far better students than whites who score 1200. The author shows amazing commitment and inventiveness in creating schools that work. And she's not alone. She gives us an impressive reading list in the last several pages, books by people who've performed similar miracles in the past few years. One of Meyer's hot buttons is making adults accessible for kids to interact with. /The Tipping Point/ by Malcom Gladwell gives a nod to this idea in noting that there is a tipping point in neighborhoods: where fewer than about 5% of the adults have some sort of professional status, school dropout rates and teen pregnancy rates soar. Part of Meyer's program is letting kids /know/ their teachers. ...more |
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Heart doctor prescribes ultra-low-fat diet to reverse coronary-artery disease. For those of us without blocked arteries on our hearts, ultralow-fat ma
Heart doctor prescribes ultra-low-fat diet to reverse coronary-artery disease. For those of us without blocked arteries on our hearts, ultralow-fat may not be the healthiest diet long term. I lost 30 lb. in 3 months on the diet in 1995, without intending to lose weight--but I didn't feel right. Just-add-boiling-water nonfat soups and rice cakes must lack something. (The author's recipes tend toward unrealistically gourmet.)
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Fall of Wisconsin, Dan Kaufman, 2018, ISBN 9780393635201. Not just about 2011, when our Koch-puppet governor & legislature began repealing 100 years of Fall of Wisconsin, Dan Kaufman, 2018, ISBN 9780393635201. Not just about 2011, when our Koch-puppet governor & legislature began repealing 100 years of good government. Sets the stage with some of the history, and sequel, 1793 through Mar. 2018. The Kochs & a few other billionaire extractive-industry barons have taken over state governments in over half the states, using their "American Legislative Exchange Council" (ALEC, see alecexposed.org) to push through antienvironment, antiworker, probillionaire laws. The book came out before the 2018 election, when Democrat Tony Evers won the governorship. Since then, the wholly-Koch-owned Republican legislature hasn't got all its own way. Neither has Evers been able to undo the damage, with still-Republican legislature, and still-corporate-vassal Wisconsin Supreme Court. The history tells us it's always like this. 1800s politicians were owned by railroad, lumbering, and other monied interests (pp. 20-24). They must be re-beaten in every generation if there's to be a government of the people. (Fighting Bob LaFollette, p. 5) "Which shall rule--wealth or man; which shall lead--money or intellect; who shall fill public stations--educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?" --Edward G. Ryan, Wisconsin Chief Justice, 1873 (pp. -6, 22) Gerrymandered Wisconsin: Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... Dan Shafer: https://recombobulationarea.substack.... Don Moynihan: https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/th... The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentis... (Remember that Democrats, when they were in power, could have, and did not, institute a fair, neutral, districting process. Just as Republicans are now doing, Democrats wanted to, and did, draw districts in their own favor when they had the opportunity.) The author says, "conservative," where he means feudalist, all-for-the-billionaire, screw-the-populace, rape-the-planet. Veterans are disposable. (pp. 37-38) Janesville Congressman Paul Ryan (R) waged war on community's safety net. (p. 42) Wanted to privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the gains of the past 100 years. (pp. 44-45) Fri. 2/11/2011 Gov. Walker announces Act 10: eliminate collective bargaining for public employees, take $1 billion/yr. from them in pensions & insurance. (pp. 46, 55) (And cut corporate taxes.) Billionaire Diane Hendricks: can we crush unions? Gov. Walker: We'll divide and conquer: public-employee unions now; next private sector. (pp. 47-48) As Reagan broke air-traffic-control union in 1981. Duty of government: protect the weak from the strong. Power and wealth mean the subjection of the many. --John Bascom, University of Wisconsin president, 1874-1887, "the guiding spirit of my time" --Fighting Bob LaFollette (p. 57-58) 1901, Gov. Bob LaFollette establishes Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau: university experts write model bills, reforming a process that had been corrupted by lobbyists. (pp. 58-59) 1911 Wisconsin passes fair, progressive, state income tax, written by a professor. By 1920, 11 states had followed suit. (pp. 59-60) 1911 workers' compensation for on-job injury. (p. 60) For companies, workers' lives were cheap. 1892 University of Wisconsin "Magna Carta of Academic Freedom." (pp. 60-61) Economists whose views scared off donors from other universities, came to Madison. (p. 61) Need govt. & unions to curb capitalist power. --Professor Richard Ely. Influenced Presidents Roosevelts & Wilson. (pp. 61-62; Donald R. Stabile, /The Living Wage: Lessons from the History of Economic Thought/, 2008) Living wage Wisconsin law 1913 removed by Gov. Walker 2015. (p. 62) Fourteen Socialists in 1911 Wisconsin legislature. (p. 62) Pushed Republicans to the left. Socialists so organized, could print flyers in twelve languages and deliver to every Milwaukee home, in the appropriate language, within 48 hours. (p. 63) Lobbyists knew that they couldn't influence Socialist politicians. Incorruptible. --William Ejuve (p. 64) Socialist Milwaukee mayor Hoan: transparent government, higher minimum wage, libraries, schools, parks. (All that Socialist stuff. pp. 64-65) American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees founded in Madison in 1930s to save Civil Service from replacement with machine-politics patronage system. (p. 66) Racial & economic justice are inseparable. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (p. 67) "when slaves get together, Pharaoh can't hold them in slavery." Anti-conspiracy law was written to bust unions. (p. 67) President LBJ pushed Memphis mayor to recognize sanitation workers' union (AFSCME) after Martin Luther King was murdered, 1968. (p. 68) Millions of public workers gained by strikes. (pp. 68-69) 1948-1979, unions nearly doubled average U.S. wages, and lowered the white/black wage gap. When unions dwindled, white/black wealth gap spiked. (p. 69. epi.org's graph of flat wages & soaring productivity since then: https://www.epi.org/chart/labor-day-2... The Reagan years began seeing the return to a lords-&-serfs world, amplified under every president since. Only in 1942-1981 did top 0.01% take less than 165 times average U.S. income. Hundreds of times avg. now. That graph used to be at Thomas Piketty's world inequality database, https://wid.world/country/usa/ ) Bill Clinton's NAFTA closed thousands of U.S. plants. (p. 70) Republican state senator Scott Fitzgerald admits the mining company wrote the mining bill that repealed environmental and good-government protections. Mining billionaire Chris Cline donated $15M to Gov. Walker & Republican legislators' campaigns. (pp. 104-106) Gov. Walker & Republican legislature gave $4.5 billion of public money to Foxconn, a Taiwanese company--and rewrote laws to protect it from lawsuits. pp. 110, 266. (And took $ billions from public education. p. 125 And cut environmental protection jobs. p. 201) David Koch: "We're spending money in Wisconsin" to shape government to enrich extractive billionaires, to everyone else's cost. (114) Bill Clinton & Obama pushed for taking money from public schools & giving it to private for-profit & religious schools. And for ending welfare. (p. 116) Some of Peter Berryman's "Bring Back Wisconsin to Me" lyrics, p. 117. Full lyrics: https://louandpeter.com/i-don-t-get-it See end of this review for full lyrics Weaponized philanthropy funded the feudalist ascendancy. See Jane Mayer, /Dark Money/, 2016. (p. 117) Weaponized philanthropy lowers billionaires' inheritance taxes, and is bringing back feudalism. (p. 119) Weaponized philanthropy launched Milwaukee's school-voucher program. (p. 120) Public money taken from public schools, given to private for-profit and religious schools. ALEC has been in control since Republicans gained over 700 seats in state legislatures in 2010. Anti-public-education, antivoting, antilabor, antienvironment. Anti-safety-net. Wisconsin: statewide school-voucher law, right-to-work(-for-less, no union shop), voter ID (disenfranchise young, old, poor, minority). Legislators wholly-owned by the billionaire class. (pp. 121-125) After Republican gerrymandering, Democrats have never held more than 39 of 99 assembly seats, even with a large majority of total votes. (pp. 151, 218. Democrats had refused to set up a nonpartisan redistricting process when they were in power.) The fatality rate in construction trades is 40% higher in right-to-work (no union shop) states. (p. 168) Right-to-work generates no economic gains, but drives down wages for all workers. (p. 172) Wisconsin passed right-to-work in 2015. (p. 174) Northern blue-collar voters for racist George Wallace, let Nixon win in 1968. (p. 179; /Unsteady March: Rise & Decline of Racial Equality in America/, Philip A. Klinker, 1999; /Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City/, Barbara J. Miner, 2013.) But union members supported Obama much more than nonunion. (p. 180) Hillary Clinton: 1986-1992 corporate lawyer, on board of rabidly antiunion Walmart. She was part of those decisions. Unsafe work, wage theft, sex discrimination. Waltons donated to her 2016 campaign. Hillary cheerled for NAFTA. Hillary praised Trans-Pacific Partnership throughout her term as secretary of state. Subordinates national sovereignty to corporate profit. Hillary: TPP is "gold standard" of free-trade deals. As presidential candidate, suddenly claims to oppose TPP. Lobbied Congress to pass Colombia free trade as secretary of state. Claimed as presidential candidate to oppose it. 143 Colombian labor leaders have been assassinated since it passed (2011 - Mar. 2018). NAFTA lost .7M U.S. jobs to Mexico. China WTO entry cost U.S. more than 3M jobs. Hillary cheered. 75% of the losses were in more-unionized manufacturing sector. Private-sector union membership 15.7% 1993 when NAFTA passed, to 6.4% 2016, when Hillary lost to Trump. Since 1960, no Democrat has won presidency w/o winning Wisconsin primary. Trump claimed to oppose free trade. Clinton talks labor out 1 side of mouth, but fat cats pull her strings. Right-wing populist beats corporate Democrat. Walker did 3 times. (pp. 183-186) Sanders beat Hillary by 136,000 votes, 13 percentage points in WI primary, won 71 of 72 counties. (pp. 189-190. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... But Democratic-party profoundly antidemocratic rules gave Clinton 47 Wisconsin delegates, Sanders 49. Nationwide, Sanders would've had to beat Clinton about 60%-to-40% to have overcome the Democrats' pro-establishment superdelegate bias. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... Trump beat Hillary in Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, 0.8 percentage point. And in Michigan by 11,000 votes, 0.2%; Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes, 0.7%. Bernie could've won these states, and therefore the presidency, had Democratic-party leadership not forced a Clinton nomination. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... ) Amazing article by Barbara Lee With on Democratic leadership's throwing the nomination to Hillary--and on the particular corporate cabals whose creature Hillary is: https://wcmcoop.com/2019/05/21/why-th... Donna Brazile, who was interim Democratic Party chair after Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, tells us Hillary took /all/ the Democratic party's money for her own campaign: https://www.politico.com/magazine/sto... From her book, /Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House/. Also /What Happened to Bernie Sanders/, by Jared H. Beck: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... Decline in union membership correlates with rising income inequality. (p. 191) Right-to-work(-for-less) laws decrease Democratic vote share by 3.5%. (p. 191) If Act 10 (no public-sector collective bargaining) is enacted in 10 more states, Democratic Party will have no power. --Grover Norquist. (p. 192) Trump used unauthorized foreign workers to build Trump Tower. (p. 199) Windigos are the spirit of greed & excess. The more they eat the hungrier they get. Also known as billionaires. (pp. 204, 231) Walker supported frack sand mining, 26,000-pig factory farm near Superior lakeshore, wolf hunting. (p. 205) Ojibwa prophesy: if wolf goes extinct, man will soon follow. (p. 208) Enbridge pipeline through Wisconsin. Hundreds of Enbridge spills in past 10 years. Canada tar to Chicago & Gulf coast. (p. 209) 2010 Michigan Enbridge spill .8M gallons tar crude in Kalamazoo River. (p. 210) Carcinogenic benzene piped to dissolve tar. Walker's Dept. of Natural Resources: only token fines for polluters, fire over half of scientists. Wisconsin legislature pushed through laws prohibiting pipeline liability insurance requirements, & granting Enbridge the right to seize private property to build an adjacent pipeline. (pp. 211-213) Wisconsin unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. (p. 217) Democrats can't win more than 39 of 99 seats. (Though Democrats get a majority of total votes for legislators. pp. 151, 218) Koch interfere in Iron County Board elections (site of GTac mine. p. 218) Chapter 7: Which shall rule, wealth or man? Since 2011, Wisconsin: child poverty, stagnant wages, defunded education, polluted water, $2 billion budget deficit after tax cuts for the rich. (pp. 233-234) Bob's bride, Belle LaFollette in 1881 made minister remove "obey" from vows. (p. 237) We need Bob now. (We do have Democrat Tony Evers as governor, since Jan. 2019. He's a huge help.) Kathy Cramer, /The Politics of Resentment/, 2016: Rural vs. urban. Resentment continues even after the tall poppy is cut down. Taking wages & benefits from someone else doesn't make you happier about not having them! (pp. 239-245) After Trump won, fans yelled racial slurs at high-school girls in a soccer game. (p. 244) Wisconsin Republicans repealed mining moratorium, Dec. 2017. (p. 246) No state has yet repealed a right-to-work law. (p. 269) Most states now have them. BRING BACK WISCONSIN ©2011 L&P Berryman (melody traditional, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean) https://louandpeter.com/i-don-t-get-it Wisconsin whose motto was “Forward” Was populist as it could be But now the new motto is “Backward” Oh bring back Wisconsin to me CHORUS: Bring Back, bring back ! ! Oh bring back Wisconsin to me, to me ! ! Bring back, bring back ! ! Oh bring back Wisconsin to me They’re trying to stifle our voices They’re trying to keep us derailed (No train!*) They’ll find it’s not easy to do though (Joe) McCarthy once tried and he failed Though we may be “God’s frozen people” We bask in the warmth of our plea Don’t bury our rights in a snowbank Oh bring back Wisconsin to me Our Mother Wisconsin is fragile It’s very upsetting to see She wandered away with a Walker Oh bring back Wisconsin to me Wisconsin's employers are hiring It’s just like the governor says And soon there’ll be no unemployment In Beijing, Mumbai or Juarez (* Gov. Walker cancelled Obama's Wisconsin high-speed-rail plan--after money had been spent and manufacture begun.) Current events, reported by Wisconsin Citizens' Media Co-op: https://wcmcoop.com/ trivia: https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work... ...more |
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The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney, 2019, 504pp (379pp text) ISBN 9780316475266 Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to c The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney, 2019, 504pp (379pp text) ISBN 9780316475266 Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to congress, courts, executive agencies, compulsory arbitration, and policing. It's a comprehensive catalog of failures in our legal system. Marred by author's focus on creating a world that would transfer wealth from the rest of us to himself even faster than it now does. The changes the author /wants/ are those that would enrich venture capitalists such as himself. He wants laws changed to let him invest in law firms, without the inconvenience of himself practicing law. He wants to replace lawyers with artificial intelligence--which he says is better than lawyer intelligence. The point? He then can charge a corporate client $millions for milliseconds of processing time, rather than the same $millions for thousands of lawyer hours, for making minor modifications to a contract. He mentions Social Security and Medicare, saying their funds are running out, so of course cuts will have to be made. (p. 377) The reality is, current benefits have always been paid for with current (or future) taxes—as is all of government. The author will never suggest taxing the few who have all the money. The author's first suggestion for what to do about the sorry state of legal education: close one-third of the law schools! This would guarantee that no one could become a lawyer without wealthy parents, and would further remove access to legal assistance from the nonwealthy. Admits that corporations spend over $3 billion per year lobbying Congress, and that they outspend public-interest groups and unions combined by 30-to-1. Yet, bizarrely, claims that corporations spend this $3 billion per year without getting much in return! saying only that lobbyists "sometimes" write laws. In fact, the return-on-investment from lobbying is almost infinite. For this $3 billion, corporations reap $ trillions in increased plunder. (pp. 97, 100, 102, 103) Tells us Congressional leadership has arrogated outsized power to itself, leaving rank-and-file members mere yes-people. Then proposes that the number of Congressional representatives be vastly increased! (pp. 373¬–374) Leaving each one more insignificant still. This author would not see that we need to officially empower and fund a public-interest research-and-lobbying group, on each and every issue that concentrated wealth lobbies on. These would be in the Citizens' Utility Board mold. State legislatures have outsourced utility rulemaking to Public Service Commissions. Utilities present their rate cases to the PSCs. The CUBs then show the PSCs why the utilities do NOT need such high rate increases. It works because CUB staff is knowledgeable, and genuinely committed to the public interest. And because CUBs receive government funding. (Wisconsin legislators of the everything-for-the-rich party recently drastically lowered CUB funding.) It works because PSCs haven't been completely captured by the industry they govern. CUB research and lobbying has the same hundreds-to-one return on investment that corporate lobbying has. A CUB with a tiny staff can save small ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars off the excess rates utilities wanted to charge, for a million dollars in CUB staff work. By contrast, a general-purpose representative of a geographic area can't hope to separate the truth from the lies and spin of lobbyists for hundreds of monied interests. On /every/ issue concentrated wealth lobbies on, we the people /must/ hire a lobbyist. https://www.theonion.com/american-peo... Even in the agrarian 1700s, generic representatives of geographic areas served to further only the interests of the wealthy elite. The sort of representation we need is representation by a knowledgeable public-interest group /on each issue/. The author stops short of suggesting forbidding A to sue B "for reasons A will discover as B gives A all possible information." The author would never suggest putting lawyers under oath in court. The author would strip agencies of all "judicial" powers! (p. 374) They might as well close, w/o power to enforce their rulings. They're already too timid to go to court much to fight the big boys. The author wants government-lawyer pay increased to corporate-lawyer levels. (He'd never suggest anything that might reduce corporate-lawyer pay. Nor even more-progressive income taxes.) And of course he wants more subsidies for law students. But still elite pay for lawyers. The author has a strange habit of invoking the name of an issue and saying /nothing/ descriptive about it. He spends a page on Ledbetter without saying a word describing the issue, nor the controversy, nor the Court decision, nor the dissent, nor what the law provided (p. 82). He drops James Traficant's name, telling us to google him! (p. 94) All he would've had to say was, "congressman James Traficant, imprisoned for corruption." But no. He wants us to google instead. C'mon. Tell us what it is you're /talking about/, without making us research it to find out. The book's strength is its thorough catalog of failings of the U.S. legal system. The author's suggestions: no. Just no. The book answers such questions as: https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work... 25 Britain & New Zealand have no written constitution. 30 Humanity's back always seems to ache for the royal lash. 35 jurisprude 39 "Natural law" (each one's own conception of it) was trumpeted by: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, 18th-century revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Lon Fuller, John Finnis, MLK, & the KKK. 39 Idea of natural law rejected by: David Hume, Hitler, John Austin (28–29), authoritarians. 55 all major graduate-entrance exams have a math section /except/ the LSAT. 61 ukiyo 64 Law school and business school are only graduate programs where many professors teach something they've never done, or not done well. 71 One useless man = disgrace; 2 = law firm; 3+ = congress. —Peter Stone 82 a page on Ledbetter saying NOTHING about what the issue was nor what the Court decided, what the dissent was, or what the law provided. 94 "google for James Traficant. It's worth it." 97 claims staff write bills. ignores the extent to which lobbyists do. 100 corps outspend public-interest groups 30:1. $3B lobbying 2017. Lobbyists know much more than the lobbied. 102 claims unusual for lobbyists to write laws! real: lobbyist wouldn't be doing his job w/o specifying exactly, in writing, what the interest-group wants the law to be. 103 lobbyists "sometimes" write laws. 103 quality of laws ranges from low to non-existent. 129 boil cake until tasty 135 judicial specimens 167–168 Alex Kozinski xxiv sexual harasser 188 furniture-usury case, former 1Ls 193 justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel. —Sir James Matthew 200 $96,000 debt public law school; $134,000 private (+$150,000 opportunity cost) 201 govt lowers its costs by imposing an implicit tax on users of private legal services. 209 avg 5 million pages of documents produced per major case to trial 2010. (1/1000 helpful enough to exhibit) 210 discovery costs as much as a case is worth. 211 American exceptionalism (Stalin, not flattery) 231 a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Sol Wachter. 262 if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. —Warren Buffett 264 U.S. cops killed more people in first 24 days of 2015 than English and Welsh police killed in the last 24 years. 264 on a per-capita basis, /white/ Americans are killed by police at 26 times the rate of their German counterparts. 278 code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving legal text 309 Hammurabi eye for eye 312 a prisoner-year in jail costs the state $210,000 313 lockups cost 2x federal HUD budget. permalink: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom... ...more |
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Wild Alaska (in Time-Life Books' The American Wilderness series), Dale Brown, 1972. 184pp. The tone of the book is, “I'm a stranger here myself, but my Wild Alaska (in Time-Life Books' The American Wilderness series), Dale Brown, 1972. 184pp. The tone of the book is, “I'm a stranger here myself, but my guides are showing me cool stuff.” The author spent 2 weeks backpacking into, and backpacking and rafting out of, the south slope of the Brooks range in far northeast Alaska, in the Arctic National Wildlife Range. This was the real wilderness trip. pp. 140–167. It's the largest wildlife refuge in the U.S., 130,000 square miles. Glacier Bay National Monument, on the coast just south of Yukon Territory, has glaciers that have been melting continually, as long as people have been writing about them, beginning in the 1800s. It may be they've been receding since the ice age. As they melt, they expose wood that grew before the ice age. As the glaciers recede, the forest progresses from lichens to mosses to ferns to alders to willows to spruce to hemlock. Katmai National Monument, at the base of the Alaska Peninsula, includes the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a slowly-cooling volcanic area. In Mount McKinley National Park, between Anchorage and Fairbanks, the author stayed at road level, shows and tells of wolves hunting moose. In the photo on pp. 138–139, the pack is in single file, on a hunt, the one wolf with his tail held high is the alpha male. He's well back from the front—as the leader of a bicycle-racing team is for most of the race—but when needed, he takes to the fore, having saved his strength. In all, the author spent 5 weeks in Alaska, with one or more knowledgeable guides in each place. Well done. Lots of nice photos. The book answers questions like these: goodreads.com/trivia/work/2572146-wil... ...more |
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The King Must Die, Mary Renault, 1958, 338pp. The Theseus legend has many unreal elements, such as the Minotaur. BUT—what if all such elements are just The King Must Die, Mary Renault, 1958, 338pp. The Theseus legend has many unreal elements, such as the Minotaur. BUT—what if all such elements are just embellishments on something that actually happened? That's Mary Renault's take. This is the story that might actually have happened, that gave rise to the fantastic legend. We see a world giving over from rule-by-women to rule-by-men. We see that rule-by-women was NOT necessarily better than rule-by-men! "Thank the gods /women/ aren't in charge anymore!" is often the feeling. By contrast, Evangeline Walton's Theseus book, /The Sword Is Forged/, left me with the strong feeling that the Equal Rights Amendment was a very good idea, first time I read it, in the 1970s. During the story, a cataclysmic eruption blasts away a large part of an island north of Crete. The eruption of Thera (Santorini) may have been in 1642 BCE. There is ash in the Greenland ice from on or about that date, that may have come from there. /The King Must Die/ is part one of Mary Renault's two-part life of Theseus. It ends while Theseus is still quite a young man. The King Must Die contents: Book 1 Troizen p. 1 Book 2 Eleusis p. 91 Book 3 Athens p. 111 Book 4 Crete p. 167 Book 5 Naxos p. 309 Author's Note p. 333 The Legend of Theseus p. 336 Select Bibliography p. 339 (Aboard the large Cretan ship) we saw pirate camps, but none after us. We were bigger game than they had teeth for. (p. 169, Book 4 Crete, chapter 1) The Cretan palace at Knossos had no defensive walls. Minos's walls were on the waters, which his ships commanded. (p. 191, Book 4 Crete, chapter 3) Earth-shaker Poseidon is husband of the Mother Goddess. (p. 295, Book 4 Crete, chapter 10) The native Cretans had known heavy labor and slight esteem, under the rule of the proud house of Minos. (p. 296, Book 4 Crete, chapter 10) We bull-dancers had been torn away from our lives, to die for the sport of the painted Labyrinth. (p. 297, Book 4 Crete, chapter 10) The prince had made my standing mean, and hurt my pride in myself when it was my whole estate. It is what any man will have blood for, who is half a man. (p. 299, Book 4 Crete, chapter 10) Man born of woman cannot outrun his fate. Better then not to question the Immortals, nor when they have spoken to grieve one's heart in vain. A bound is set to our knowing, and wisdom is not to search beyond it. Men are only men. (last paragraph in the book, p. 332, Book 5 Naxos, chapter 2) The labyrinthine Palace of Knossos has sacred axes, pictures of youths and girls performing the bull dance, and seal carvings of the bull-headed Minotaur. The most fantastic-seeming part of the tale having been linked to fact, it's tempting to guess where else a fairy-tale gloss may have disguised what actually happened. (p. 333, Author's Note) Select Bibliography: Plutarch, Life of Theseus J. Chadwick, The Earliest Greeks ...more |
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The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, Colin McEvedy, 1961, 96 pages. (also history is the cover price, $2.65! There's also The New Penguin Atlas of M
The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, Colin McEvedy, 1961, 96 pages. (also history is the cover price, $2.65! There's also The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, 1968. And many other Penguin Atlases https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=pe... ) Europe and Near East: 10° west (Ireland) to 70° east (Samarkand); 25° north (Arabia) to 65° north (Scandinavia). 362 CE to 1478 CE. One political map about every 40 years, with a facing page for each telling what happened. One pattern to notice: when trade collapses, cities evaporate. Piracy and breakdown of order destroy trade. As of 528, there were still 7 Christian cities 25,000+ (3 of 75,000+). By 737, 1028, 1212, the Islamic world had most of the cities of 25,000+. Finally by 1478, Christian Europe was repopulating with cities. Only Constantinople had 75,000+ all those years. Only it and Salonika, Greece had 25,000 all those years. 362 Roman Empire Sudan to Scotland, heavily taxing peasants to pay soldiers. Persian Empire Caspian Sea through Mesopotamia to Persian Gulf. Ostrogoths Baltic Sea through steppes to Black Sea. 406 Huns took steppe, Caspian Sea through Hungary. Goths crossed Danube, Visigoth cavalry destroyed Roman Legion in Thrace. Rome henceforth depends on barbarian mercenary cavalry. Roman Empire is divided, east & west of mouth of Adriatic. Persia took upper Tigris & Armenia from Rome. 420 Rome is helpless against barbarians, who are impressed by civilization and try to save it. Rome has abandoned Britain, the Rhine, southwest France, and northwest Spain. 450 Attila captured Germanic, Slavic, Baltic land, west past the Rhine, north to Riga & Moscow, south through Balkans: everything north of Roman Empire, which they preyed on. As the White Huns harried the Persians. Vandals, Suevi, Britons took Tunis, Portugal, Brittany, respectively. Jutes have started to settle in southeast England. (See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: The Authentic Voices of England, from the Time of Julius Caesar to the Coronation of Henry II, Anne Savage, translator.) 476 After Attila died, Germans beat the Huns, who retreated to land north of the Black and Caspian seas. The Western Roman Empire is reduced to just Dalmatia. Barbarians have all the rest. Vandals control western Mediterranean & North Africa; Visigoths have Spain & southwest France. Slavs again have eastern Europe, but they're fragmented in small disorganized tribes. Angles & Saxons expand into southeast Britain. 528 Goths have Italy, Spain, southern France, Adriatic north to Danube. No more Western Roman Empire. Frankish kingdom has north & west France and western Germany. Germanic tribes west of Elbe, and Bohemia, Moravia, Serbia. Slavs east of them. Anglo-Saxons expanding in southeast England. 528 Religion: Except the Anglo-Saxons, the former Roman Empire is all Christian. But. The proud Gothic rulers of southwestern Europe set themselves apart from their Catholic subjects by adopting the Arian heresy, "God the Son is quite separate from God the Father." Catholics say the two are simultaneously distinct and similar. 528 Trade: Vandal piracy and loss of order withered trade in former Western Roman Empire--and with it withered cities. Rome is reduced to a second-tier city. Only Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria have 75,000+ population each. China (via Turkestan) and India (via Persian Gulf) trade go through Antioch. East Africa (via Red Sea) trade goes through Alexandria. Only other towns of 25,000+ population: Rome; Milan; Carthage (Tunis); Salonika, Greece; and 4 Persian towns. 562 Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian retook Italy, Dalmatia, North Africa, & southern Spain from the Goths & Vandals. Frankish kingdoms expanded through France except Brittany, plus western Germany east to the Elbe. East Asian Turks win land east of Aral Sea--pushing Avars into steppe, where they control from the Volga to the Elbe. Anglo-Saxons have eastern England, north to Hadrian's Wall. 600 Avars control north to Baltic Sea, border Franks and Eastern Roman Empire. Empire has lost northern & southeastern Italy, and all but southernmost coast of Spain, and Armenia. Visigoths have Spain & Portugal. Anglo-Saxons now have nearly the east half of Britain south of Hadrian's wall. 626 After Rome's mercenary army revolted & murdered emperor, empire lost western Balkans, much of Greece, Armenia, Mesopotamia, NE Africa, S Spanish coast. Empire to be known as Byzantine. Avars contract to between the Danube & the Dneistr: Slavs regain the rest. Frankish kingdom divides, roughly E & W of Seine. Anglo-Saxons have England except Wales, Cornwall, Strathclyde (western Northumbria). 650 Arabs have formed a caliphate extending from Persia through Tripoli, ruling from Damascus. These will become known as Sunnis. Persia is reduced to SE Caspian coast. Khazars expand north of Black & Caspian seas. Bulgars take eastern 1/3 of Avar land. Muslim-Khazar-Byzantine stalemate in Armenia. Visigoths have all Spain & Portugal, & N African coast S of Gibraltar. Turks are still E of Aral Sea. 737 With conversion of Berbers, (Sunni) Arabs have everything south of Pyrennes-Mediterranean-Caucasus-Caspian-Aral-Sea, to the east edge of the map (except Persian S fringe of Caspian, & Asturian-&-Basque N coast of Spain.) Byzantines have also lost Italy, land E & W of Black Sea, Cyprus. Bulgars have lower Danube & central Volga. Slavs E of meridian thru N tip of Adriatic. Magyars between Dneistr & Don. Turks W of Aral. 737 Religion: Islam has taken Spain, Syria, Africa. Byzantine emperor, effective head of eastern church, has successfully demanded destruction of religious statues & images--which eastern Christians had been worshiping. (Iconoclasm = image-breaking.) Eastern church comprises Byzantine empire + Crimea + Cyprus + Abasgians on NE Black Sea coast. Western church has Britain, Ireland, France, N & central Italy, N coast of Spain, & Germany W of meridian of N tip of Adriatic, N to Cologne then NW to North Sea. 737 Trade: Arabs relied on overland trade, except via Persian Gulf to India & Red Sea to Africa: only small luxury goods. Constantinople is only city of 75,000+ population--but Arabs have cut off most of its trade. Iconoclasm likely due partly to need to melt gold icons for cash. Of the 14 other cities of 25,000+ population, 11 are Muslim; Rome & Venice Catholic, Salonika, Greece Orthodox Christian. Khazar control of Volga & Don let Black Sea be a trade route to Constantinople. 771 (Sunni) Muslims have founded Baghdad (Iraq) as new capital. Annexed last shred of Persian empire. Turn toward Persia, lose touch with Arabs & Moors. Muslims lost part of N Spain to Galician kingdom. Franks took central Italy for the Pope to rule. Bavarians took part of Slavic western Balkans. 830 Muslims have added Crete & part of Sicily. But. They are splintered into various caliphates & emirates, no strong central control. Largely piracy in Mediterranean. North African caliphate south of Spain is Shiite. Charlemagne created empire encompassing France, Germany including Frisian & Saxon land, most of Italy, the western Mediterranean islands, & Slavic Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, & Croatia. After Charlemagne's death, the empire is too big to control. Scandinavian overpopulation sends vikings into Britain, France, Russia. Swedish principalities at Novgorod, Kiev, Tmutorkan (E of Crimea). Anglo-Saxon Wessex fights Danes in Britain. Bulgars have former Avar land. 888 Frankish kingdom has splintered into France, Germany, Italy, Burgundy (upper Rhone), Provence (lower Rhone). Bretons again independent in Armorica. Danes have E & N England, but Alfred's recapture of London denies Danes domination. (See the wonderful Saxon Stories goodreads.com/series/43581-the-saxon-... by Bernard Cornwell for an engaging fictionalized history of the Danes-vs-Saxons contest for England.) Swedish principalities have expanded into Principality of Russia, encompassing the upper Volga, Dvina, Dneipr, Don. Turks beat Magyars for control of steppe. Emirates S & E of Caspian are Shiite. 923 Christendom continues to be raped by vikings, Muslims, & now Magyars, who've taken Hungary & Moravia. Norse have N England & S Ireland. Shiites have Libya through Morocco, & E Arabia. 998 Raids by Vikings, Muslims, Magyars ebb: English & Irish beat Vikings, who still have Normandy. Burgundians, Italians, Byzantines curb Muslim raiding. Germans beat Magyars, Danes, Slavs, French, reestablish east part of Charlemagne's empire: Seine to Oder, North & Baltic Seas thru central Italy, including Bohemia & Moravia. But the German empire is as ungovernable as Charlemagne's had been. Magyars to become Christian Hungary. Byzantine Empire expands slightly at expense of Bulgars, Muslims. Turks take land east of Aral Sea from Muslims. Mesopotamia is Shiite. 1028 Muslims weak. Turks took emirate east of Caspian. Byzantines retook most of Balkans, Crimea, part of Armenia. Danes temporarily took England & Norway. Poles grabbed land from and antagonized their stronger neighbors Germany, Hungary, & Russia. 1028 Religion: Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Scandinavia converted to Catholicism; Serbia, Bulgaria & Russia to Orthodox Christianity. Now the Roman church is followed from Hungary and Croatia, through central Italy to northern Spain, north to the British Isles and Scandinavia, south through Poland. The Eastern church has Russia, the Balkans through Serbia, Greece, Anatolia, and the western Caucasus. Islam has most of Spain, Sicily, all of north Africa and the rest of the Middle East. A mix of Shiites and Sunnis. 1028 Trade: Only Constantinople, Cairo, Baghdad have 75,000+ population each. Venice is the only Catholic city of 25,000+ population. Salonika, Greece, is the only other Orthodox city of 25,000 or more population. There are 17 other Muslim cities of 25,000 or more population. There are still no European cities of any size north of Venice. Vikings controlled northern Europe, and did trade, from Iceland to Constantinople—but Vikings traded only where they couldn't plunder. However, small towns were appearing in Northern Europe. 1071 Seljuk Turks (from Turkestan) have taken Persia, Mesopotamia, the eastern Caucuses, as a large sultanate. Byzantine empire has lost its holding in Italy, Serbia, most of Crimea. Non-Muslim (heathen) Turks have taken the steppe of southern Russia, pushed Patzinaks west to occupy eastern Hungary. Christian kingdoms of Leon and Castile in northern Spain and Portugal have expanded, extract homage of divided Muslims. Normans under William the Bastard have conquered England and Brittany (but not Wales nor Scotland). Robert Guiscard conquers southern Italy and eastern Sicily. The Normans William and Guiscard establish the first effectively-organized states (outside Byzantium and Islam) since the fall of Rome. These will be the seeds of the secular state. German empire has absorbed Burgundy and western Poland. Poland also relost land to Hungary and Russia (but kept the enmity of all its neighbors). 1092 Seljuk Turks have destroyed Byzantine army, occupied Anatolia. (Armenians still hold on in Taurus mountains.) Seljuks have also taken Palestine and western Arabia from Fatimids. Byzantines appeal to West for help against Turks. Western fanatics are unconcerned about Byzantium, but want to free the Holy Land from the Turks. Seljuks are recent converts to Islam, deny Christian pilgrims access to Palestine, which the Fatimids had allowed. Shiite Assassins (based south of the Caspian Sea) give their name to political murder they practice throughout the Muslim (but not Christian) world. Christians have retaken Toledo, Spain, from Muslims. England takes southern and central Wales, and expands north to its final border with Scotland. Normandy has split from England and from Brittany. 1130 Seljuk sultanate has splintered. Crusaders took coastal Palestine; Byzantines retook western Anatolia, plus its north coast on the Black Sea and its south coast on the Mediterranean. Byzantium also retook Serbia. England regained Normandy and Brittany when the Duke of Normandy couldn't repay a crusade loan. Russian principalities have coalesced into one. 1173 The most powerful of the Seljuk sultanates, east of the Caspian, fell to a revolt of its mercenaries. Crusades after the first were led by kings who couldn't spend much time in the east. Sunnis unify Egypt, Syria, upper Mesopotamia. Shiites unify southern Spain and North Africa. Christians gain ground in central Spain, but are split into (west to east) Portugal, Leon, Navarre, Aragon (which also holds Provence). Russia resplit into many principalities. As did Poland. Count of Anjou married heiress of Aquitaine, holds all of western France plus England, and captured most of Ireland. Byzantines take Dalmatia, Croatia, and Antioch. 1212 Saladin established sultanate from Egypt & western Arabia through most of Palestine, Syria, upper Mesopotamia, Armenia. Crusaders have a few fingernails of Palestinian coast, & took Cyprus from collapsing Byzantium. After rout by Turks and losses to Hungarians, Venetians, & crusaders, only fragments remain in Greek hands: part of W & N Anatolia, SE Crimea, NW Greece & SW Balkans. Crusaders E & S Greece, European Turkey, NW Anatolia. Venice has islands from Adriatic through Aegean. Hungary has Croatia & Dalmatia. Serbia, Bulgaria independent. French King took most of English land in France, gains wealth & power to control France: France becomes a modern state (no longer a slew of baronies). German "empire" really just assortment of local fiefdoms. Turkish shahdom from Persian Gulf to N of Aral Sea. 1212 Religion: Eastern church has Russia, the Balkans, most of W Anatolia & Black Sea coast, Georgia (Caucasus). Western church has coastal Palestine, Mediterranean islands, most of Greece, Hungary & Poland W thru N & central Spain, British Iles, Scandinavia, Riga. For centuries both protégé & rival of German emperor, pope at start of 13th century is more powerful than ever. 1212 Trade: Now Venice, Constantinople, Cairo, Baghdad 75,000+; 26 others 25,000+, north to Novgorod, Cologne, Paris. Milan, Genoa, Florence, Rome (welcome back after several centuries), Naples, Palermo: in Italy, a money economy has replaced feudalism. Of the 30 cities, 12 are in Catholic hands (including Constantinople, Salonika & Antioch); 1 (Novgorod) Orthodox; 17 Muslim. Flemish cloth merchants controlled northern trade, but Germans were competing in Baltic Sea. Heathen Turks controlling steppe since 11th century block Russia from trade w/Constantinople. 1230 Genghis Khan conquered Asia from Korea to Persia, and died in 1227. His Khanate remained, controlling everything east of the Caspian. The displaced Turks took Azerbaijan & most of Georgia (W of Caspian). Castilians are pushing southward into Moorish Spain. Portugal is assuming its final border. Danes took Estonia; Germans making inroads in Latvia & Prussia. Greeks retook Salonika, most of Greece, & NW Anatolia from Latins. Turks have most of Anatolia. 1278 Mongols exploded to take Persia, most of Anatolia, the steppe & S & E Russia, SW to the Danube, N to the upper Volga. They raided into NW Russia, Poland, Hungary. Then stopped when their Khan died. Germans have Latvia. Russia took Finland from Swedes. Latin Greece reduced to a slice of the south; Byzantine empire has most of Greece & NW Anatolia. Moors have only southernmost Spain. Turks' sultanate covers Egypt, Palestine, W Arabia. Crusaders shortly to be wiped off the map of Palestine. England will shortly subdue all of Wales, and has most of Ireland. 1360 Mongol territory has splintered into many emirates. Ottoman Turks took NW Anatolia from Byzantines, who now have only European Turkey and NW & far-S Greece. Serbs have most of Greece & SW Balkans. 1401 Ottomans now have most of Anatolia & Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Wallachia. Timur (Tamburlane), a Muslim of Turkestan, conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, & Caucasus. Teutonic Knights have all of Baltics (SE of sea). Poland-Lithiuania united to their SE; Scandinavia united under Denmark. 1430 Henry V of England temporarily took N France; repulsed by Joan of Arc & Duc of Burgundy + French king. Poland-Lithuania retook present-day Lithuania from Teutonic Knights. English have lost control of Ireland. 1478 Swiss pikemen have destroyed mounted Burgundian knights. King now controls most of France. Sweden split from Denmark. Constantinople finally fell to the Turks who were at its gates for a century. The West thus lost the eastern trade. Ottomans have Anatolia, Greece, Balkans, Bulgaria, Wallachia (N of Danube). 1478 Religion: The papacy has been in decline. Unable to govern Italian lands, popes fled for safety to Avignon. Schisms set up competing popes & colleges of cardinals. Reformers challenging doctrinal despotism are burned as heretics. Nevertheless, outside far-southern Spain, Greece, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Europe is Catholic from the Dneipr and Dvina valleys, to the Atlantic. Only the Principality of Moscow and Kingdom of Georgia remain Orthodox. 1478 Trade: Now 6 cities of 75,000+ each: Paris, Milan, Venice, Constantinople, Cairo, Tabriz (NW Iran). Total of 38 cities 25,000+: 10 in N Europe, incl. London, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Lubeck, Novgorod, Moscow. Seville & Barcelona in Christian Spain. Nine in Italy, with Genoa, Verona, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo. Seventeen in the Islamic world. incl. Granada, Spain. Coal is being shipped abroad from Northumberland. England exports cloth. Asian trade collapsed with Mongol empire. Dutch dominate Baltic trade. Wind & water mills power machines. Horse collar enables plowing. Portuguese begin coasting Africa. For more detail, Asimov's Chronology of the World is a terrific 1-volume history of the world, covering from the Big Bang through World War II.) ...more |
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Spoiler alert! Beowulf kills (1) Grendel; (2) Grendel's mother; (3, in old age, with young warrior Wiglaf) a dragon. Beowulf dies. That's all. A simpl Spoiler alert! Beowulf kills (1) Grendel; (2) Grendel's mother; (3, in old age, with young warrior Wiglaf) a dragon. Beowulf dies. That's all. A simple superhero story. This graphic novel (a lot of it nearly wordless) is true to the original. Set in 500s in what is now Denmark and Sweden. Known only from one manuscript, written around 1000. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf ...more |
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Rockonomics, Alan B. Krueger, 2019, 325pp, ISBN 9781524763718 A light introduction to the money aspect of the music business. See also: Kurt Dahl, enterRockonomics, Alan B. Krueger, 2019, 325pp, ISBN 9781524763718 A light introduction to the money aspect of the music business. See also: Kurt Dahl, entertainment lawyer and musician: advice at https://lawyerdrummer.com/ EXTREME INEQUALITY There are millions of very able musicians who can't earn a living at it. And a minuscule number very highly paid. The economy as a whole increasingly resembles this. The top 1% of performers take 60% of all concert revenue (p. 14.(view spoiler)[ Counting only concerts big enough to be on the radar of industry bigwigs. Surely an infinitesimal fraction, if it were to include all the "live music tonite" gigs at the average bar, the band playing for drinks and tips. (hide spoiler)]) “PRAISE THE INVISIBLE HAND! IGNORE THE IRON HEEL YOU SEE!” The note the author doesn't hit is, monopoly profit comes of appropriating what should be the commons, and charging us all rent. We all have to buy the same software not because it's good or fashionable but so it works with everybody else's. Laws perpetuating monopoly rent aren't what "we" choose, as the author has it: our representatives don't even /read/ the (lobbyist-written) laws before enacting them. What would be felony graft in a civilized country is constitutionally-protected speech in the U.S. So the analogy misses some key marks. The author's refusal to use the word, "monopoly," calling them, "superstar firms," (chapter 4) ignores the political causes of inequality we suffer. The author has drunk much of the Kool-Aid of his profession. He glibly refers to “the law of supply and demand,” as if we lived in the Econ-101 free-market fantasy, “many buyers, many sellers, no one has control over price.” He speaks as if inequality results from natural laws in the natural world, and can only be accepted. To the contrary, markets are artifacts, created politically—and are not free to all but have been captured by the powerful, to extract wealth from the rest of us. He shows no awareness that the endpoint is, “The supply of slave labor has decreased the demand for free labor. I don’t have to pay you a living wage.” And, “I control the supply of what you need. You’ll pay what I ask.” That inequality is a political artifact and requires political combat, is foreign to this economist’s thinking. He admires the "industrial transformation" of producing music in a disused Polish textile factory (p. 195)—ignoring that we’re /not/ “post-industrial”: clothes are still being made, by ever-more-politically-powerless people. Their degradation erodes dignity and wages everywhere. The author is a fan of letting the market determine royalties, rather than trying to legislate a fair level. (pp. 229–230) In practice this means the market dominator gets his way. And how are millions of musicians to negotiate with thousands of radio stations? The author loves the words, "supply" and "demand" so much, he bolds them! (e.g. p. 243) As if they're immutable and profound. In truth, the supplier of a concert /chooses/ the supply: number of shows, size of venue, staging for seating in what portion of arena. (Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz are less poisoned by market-worship than the average economist. For lessons of the past, learned with workers' blood, most economists ignore: There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, Philip Dray, 2010, ISBN 0385526296.) Sometimes he blithers: … music continues to provide a means of upward mobility. … In 2016, 26.5% of the musicians in the Billboard Top 100 were from the bottom 10% of families by income. … Musicians with a top 100 song are likely to reach the top 1% of income earners that year, so a career in music is associated with a greater bottom-to-top mobility than in the economy overall. (p. 73)No. Fifty-three people making it into the top 1% of a country this size is not upward mobility. He does say that among those whose main work is as a musician, median yearly income from all sources is $20,000. (view spoiler)[(Only 213,738 workers! p. 52.) (hide spoiler)] Only about 1 in 1,000 are in the top 1% of all incomes. This is NOT upward mobility! The author admires small cities' massive arts-complex projects "in an effort to rejuvenate the city and retain population." (p. 42) Usually the city is worse off for building the white elephant. See Michael Moore, Roger and Me, about Flint, Michigan. “Build it and they will come” was from a fantasy movie (Field of Dreams). Madison, Wisconsin did an expensive rebuilding of its civic center, to make a posher playground for the opera set. It's a continual drain on city finances, and obligates the mayor to try to get acts for it. And the average Joe is priced out of what formerly was a civic center for everyone. The author gives a shout-out to In Praise of Commercial Culture, Tyler Cowen (Yay capitalism! It creates a very few winners, some of whom buy cool stuff, and millions of losers, all of whom suffer and some make music! Cool! p. 5) MATH? WHATEVER. The author gets even simple math wrong:(view spoiler)[ He tells us, musical preferences follow a /power law distribution/ of popularity—the popularity of the most popular item is a multiple of the next-most-popular item, and so on down the line. (p. 87)If he’s saying anything here, he’s saying that for, say, Fig. 4.2, “Number of Music Streams of Top 2,500 Artists in 2016, by Rank” (p. 89), number of streams, S, at successive ranks, R and R + 1, is a constant ratio: S(R)/S(R + 1) = constant, for all RHe's describing an exponential distribution: S ∝ e⁻ᵏᴿ, k constantSo plotting log S vs. R should be a straight line: log S = −kR + constantNot even close: wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+(1,log...For low R, log(streams) drops off very steeply with successive R; at high R, log(streams) is nearly constant with successive R. The actual distribution becomes much flatter at high R than does the exponential distribution the author describes. If instead he meant to say that streams, S, is proportional to rank, R, to a power, S ∝ R⁻ᵏ, k constant,then log(S) plotted against log(R) would be a straight line, log S = −k log R + constantA reasonable fit: wolframalpha.com/input/?i=linear+fit+...This could be described by saying, each /doubling/ of rank reduces streams by the same ratio. For $28.00 hardcover, Professor, say what you mean. Plot on scales that reveal rather than conceal how your variables relate to each other. A few general words about power laws from Mark Newman ( goodreads.com/author/show/90676 ): https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... More details: “Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law”: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/c... Krueger tells us that people taking advice from other people on what to listen to, creates this sort of power-law distribution of popularity. He says nothing about why, but points us to Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, David Easley, 2010, ISBN 0521195330, chapter 18, pp. 447–455, here: cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks... The whole book is here: cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks... (hide spoiler)] NOT MUCH MONEY IN MUSIC Krueger tells us there's not much money in music. Figure 10.1, p. 234 shows 49 countries' wholesale spending on recorded music vs. GDP. For all sizes of economy, these countries averaged $5 spent on recordings per $50,000 of GDP. Presumably that's on physical media (mostly CDs), now less than 20% of the total: most is streaming now. (Figs. 2.1, 2.2, pp. 30, 31). Those countries that spent a slightly-higher fraction of GDP on recordings are the wealthy countries. Most countries are too poor to even be in the data set. Even the wealthy countries spend shockingly little on recordings. They spend more on streaming and on concerts. Even Paul McCartney earned 82% of his income from live shows in 2017 (p. 37) But even all told it's a /tiny/ fraction of income. Americans spend more on potato chips than on recorded music (p. 24) (Strangely, the author's data don't include spending on musical instruments, nor employment of music-store clerks, but do include sponsors paying musicians to promote their products, and do include parking at concerts. pp. 27–28.) ROCK STARS ARE NOT DEAD ISBN 9781473541764 Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Star, 1955-1994, opined that never again would a musical act fill a football stadium. To the contrary, says the present author, concerts grossing millions of dollars each are still happening, and not showing signs of dying anytime soon. WE KINDA SORTA MAYBE KNOW A LITTLE As one insider said, “there is a limited amount of transparency in our business.” (p. 29) Most of the data the author presents don’t really exist—much of it is guesses. The author shares some of what he does have at https://rockonomics.com/ and https://themira.org/ (p. 4) STREAMING 33.2M different songs were streamed in 2017. Spotify has 35M tracks in its catalog. It would take many lifetimes to hear them all. (p. 86) SCALPERS Scalpers take $1M–$1.5M per Springsteen or U2 show, to fans' cost. (p. 143) QUIZ TIME The book answers questions such as goodreads.com/trivia/work/65385847-ro... ...more |
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The Saint in Europe, Leslie Charteris, 1953. 195pp. ISBN 0891903879. Seven fun stories of gentleman thief/vigilante Simon Templar, set in France, Holl The Saint in Europe, Leslie Charteris, 1953. 195pp. ISBN 0891903879. Seven fun stories of gentleman thief/vigilante Simon Templar, set in France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. Charteris shows us human nature, Europe, languages, and a good time. The Saint publication order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sai... permalink: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
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Anno’s Aesop, Mitsumasa Anno, 1987 drawings and Japanese; 1989 English, ISBN 0531057747, 63pp., 10.7” × 8.9” × .5” Many Aesop fables, each one paragrap Anno’s Aesop, Mitsumasa Anno, 1987 drawings and Japanese; 1989 English, ISBN 0531057747, 63pp., 10.7” × 8.9” × .5” Many Aesop fables, each one paragraph on a page of eye-catching illustration. Each page also with Anno’s peculiar fractured fairy tale—a different story for the same illustration. The Aesop stories are generally more interesting than the Anno ones. Each Aesop story has a moral. For example: “The Fox and the Grapes,” It’s easy to despise what you cannot get. p. 4 “The Dog and His Reflection,” Envy not your neighbor’s lot; be content with what you’ve got. p. 8 “The Goat and the Donkey,” When you plot to do harm to others, it is you who will be hurt. p. 20 “The Farmer and the Fox,” Revenge is a two-edged sword. p. 24 “The Wolf and the Crane,” The weak cannot demand justice from the strong. p. 29 “The Farmer and His Sons,” Union is strength. p. 34 “The Miser,” Like talent, money unused has no value. p. 37 “The Enemies,” Do not rejoice in another’s misfortune while you are in the same boat. p. 43 “The Woodcutter and the Noble Trees,” The rights of the smallest must be defended, or even the strongest will eventually suffer. p. 52 “The House Mouse and the Field Mouse,” Luxury may not be worth the risks it entails. p. 59 Anno tells us Aesop collected stories in the early sixth century BCE. The written collections that have come down to us date from the late first century CE, in Greek and Latin. In the 15th century they were translated into German, then French, and English in 1483. p. 61 permalink: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom... ...more |
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