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Most of the non-fiction I read is biographies; of those, probably my all-time favorite is Edmund Morris' three-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt (Theodore Rising, Theodore Rex, Colonel Roosevelt). They're all excellent but of the three the volume covering his path to the White House is most interesting and the one covering his decline presents the most compelling character study. Other interesting biographies on my shelf: Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman, about a young white-boy American who moves to China to learn traditional martial arts; Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, by Edward Rice, a detailed biography of the Victorian-era british explorer who made the pilgrimage to Mecca in disguise, first translated the Kama Sutra into English, etc.; Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman by Francis Stonor Saunders. Hawkwood was a 14th-century English mercenary captain who was active in France and Italy; his exploits have been fodder for many later authors, including Arthur Conan Doyle. The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great by Benjamin Merkle. This book is general-audience, not scholarly, but not dumbed-down either and does a good job of fleshing out the time period and society surrounding Alfred, not just the man himself. I'm also working through The Landmark Arrian. Arrian was 1st/2nd century AD Roman general who wrote what's probably our most comprehensive surviving biography of Alexander the Great; he had access to a lot of period sources now otherwise lost. The Landmark editions are, as always, amazing, with ten or more footnotes on every page and detailed maps so you can follow Alexander's wars every step of the way. I'm a the depressing part now though where Alexander is about to die so I've kinda paused in my reading. Beyond biography I've read two other non-fiction books recently. The first one was The Reign of Arthur: from History to Legend by Christopher Gidlow. The general academic view of "King Arthur" has been that there's so little evidence that we essentially ahve to consider him fictional. There are lots of popular-audience books defending one or another "Historical Arthur" thesis, but they're almost universally utter bullshit of the "well, what if x actually means y" purely speculative variety. Gidlow's basic thesis is that even though there are only two or three (depending on how you count) period references to Arthur that we have records of, those are enough to at least establish that there was probably someone named Arthur who 1) was a war leader of the Celtic Britons sometime a generation or two after Rome left the island, and 2) had some major victories against the Saxons. The standard "anti-arthur" argument is that those few references to Arthur are clouded with vaguely mythic-sounding references and thus untrustworthy, but Gidlow points out that academic consensus has accepted far worse evidence for many other post-Roman kings. From there he argues that the academic consensus against a historical Arthur is mostly bias, and that even if we can't say much about Arthur, the balance of the evidence indicates at least in favor of his existence. The real virtue of this book is that Gidlow really knows his source material cold -- he's read them in the original and is familiar with the different variant surviving copies and is able to analyze them in historical context. That right there is enough to discount and dismiss 95% of the popular-audience arguments (for example, one popular critique of the historical Arthur theory is that a contemporary chronicler, Gildas, doesn't mention him by name; Gidlow points out that Gildas uses almost no proper names in his entire manuscript. Conversely, many pro-Arthur theories rely on 12th-century "Saint's Lives" documents; Gidlow dismisses them all as mostly useless concoctions written by monasteries to document their land rights). Overall this is one of the best books I've read if you're interested in this sort of thing -- does a good job of presenting the actual historical evidence to the layman without bullshit or worthless speculation. The other really interesting nonfiction book I've read lately was The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by Betty Mezger. It's primarily a history of the 1970's burglary of the FBI offices by peace activists that (directly or indirectly) revealed all the exploits and abuses of Hoover's FBI -- COINTELPRO, etc. It gives the story of the event from the viewpoint of the burglars themselves (who have finally come forward) and the investigating agents. If you've been following the NSA scandal and Snowden's revelations it's a must read; the historical parallels are overwhelming. As a net effect the book ends up making a very strong case that the problems Snowden revealed aren't modern accidents, but endemic to the very structure of America's intelligence agencies. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 2, 2014 |
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Mar 2, 2014 18:07
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CestMoi posted:Delusions of Gender is really excellent, good choice. I'm reading The Myth ogf Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz and I personally think it is mostly bunk but it is good and thought provoking bunk. Everybody go read it if you ever think about mental illness at all. Oh! Oh! If you're interested in that kind of topic, Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness by Peter Early is a really comprehensive investigation of all the different problems with America's mental health system. Only flaw is it's from 2007 so slightly dated. On the whole though I can't recommend it highly enough. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Mar 2, 2014 |
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Mar 2, 2014 18:29
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KoldPT posted:Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, is the culmination of decades of research, and it's one of the most amazing books I've read on how the brain works. Kahneman and his research partner Tversky are also pretty important guys, I've even seen their work referenced in Computer Science papers, of all things. Thinking sounds very interesting and this reminded me to actually put the Game Change books on my to-read list. Thanks!
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Mar 14, 2014 04:07
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