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vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

BBJoey posted:

any recommendations for books about the russian revolution? my experience is that it's a favourite topic for reactionary dickheads so i'm looking for something that wasn't written by a staunch british anti-communist

also anything about weimar germany.

The Russian Revolution is a huge topic but there was a big wave of centenary books a few years back written by top-tier academic historians for wide audiences. There are a few to avoid (don't read the one by McMeekin) but most of them are solid. My top three recommendations would be Laura Engelstein's Russia in Flames, S. A. Smith's Russia in Revolution and Mark Steinberg's The Russian Revolution 1905-21. I haven't read the Engelstein but it was very well received in the field, I've read Smith and Steinberg and they're both good. I also know them as people and neither of them is a staunch anti-communist, so they give pretty even-handed readings of the revolution's causes and consequences.

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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Does anyone have a recommendation for viewing epubs on a desktop computer as a Windows application? I've just been using a Firefox extension, but it's very rudimentary, and I'd preferably want something that can search for text within the work, and something that can add bookmarks and highlights

vyelkin posted:

My top three recommendations would be Laura Engelstein's Russia in Flames, S. A. Smith's Russia in Revolution and Mark Steinberg's The Russian Revolution 1905-21.

Thank you for this!

papa horny michael
Aug 18, 2009

by Pragmatica
I've been reading the Biden Sanders Unity Commission's report. It's really giving me good vibes about Biden presidency. VBNMW!

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

gradenko_2000 posted:

Does anyone have a recommendation for viewing epubs on a desktop computer as a Windows application? I've just been using a Firefox extension, but it's very rudimentary, and I'd preferably want something that can search for text within the work, and something that can add bookmarks and highlights


Thank you for this!

Calibre https://calibre-ebook.com/

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

i read adam tooze's The Deluge, which basically tracks the attempt by the allies in ww1 to impose a liberal world order from american entry into the war up to the great depression; and the factors that lead to the failure of the interwar period and the beginnings of ww2. there's quite a bit of interesting stuff in there- a big part of his argument was that the main problems were basically america refusing to cancel war debts owed by the allies and wilson's insistence on american dominance.

one thing i'd like to get a tack on from cspam perspective is his take on lenin. obviously we've all been over the arguments about domestic politics (though, as someone who's not super knowledgeable about the russian revolution, i did find it interesting that the bolsheviks did get like 25% of the vote making them the second biggest party, and over 80% of the vote was for socialist parties). but tooze also argues that he mismanaged his foreign policy- basically arguing that the allies were too busy with the war to go after the soviets until they got too close to germany; though im a touch fuzzy on the details. as a radical lenin centrist, i'd like to hear from people who've read the book or really more stuff on russia in general

Renaissance Spam
Jun 5, 2010

Can it wait a for a bit? I'm in the middle of some *gyrations*


So I'm still shocked that Harry Turtledove isn't a CHUD. I remember reading some of his CSA books (WW1 and Interwar, never got into the ww2 stuff) and while he definitely seemed like he was trying to do a tapestry of all walks of life which is good Alt-History but I always kind of assumed he at least leaned right if not Proto-Chud, but apparently he's a decent human being?

cool dance moves
Aug 27, 2018


StashAugustine posted:

i read adam tooze's The Deluge, which basically tracks the attempt by the allies in ww1 to impose a liberal world order from american entry into the war up to the great depression; and the factors that lead to the failure of the interwar period and the beginnings of ww2. there's quite a bit of interesting stuff in there- a big part of his argument was that the main problems were basically america refusing to cancel war debts owed by the allies and wilson's insistence on american dominance.

one thing i'd like to get a tack on from cspam perspective is his take on lenin. obviously we've all been over the arguments about domestic politics (though, as someone who's not super knowledgeable about the russian revolution, i did find it interesting that the bolsheviks did get like 25% of the vote making them the second biggest party, and over 80% of the vote was for socialist parties). but tooze also argues that he mismanaged his foreign policy- basically arguing that the allies were too busy with the war to go after the soviets until they got too close to germany; though im a touch fuzzy on the details. as a radical lenin centrist, i'd like to hear from people who've read the book or really more stuff on russia in general

I can take a stab at this! So, it's a bit hard to define what is "Soviet foreign policy" in the immediate post-revolution because so much of it is based on the successor conflicts that tend to crop up when an empire falls. For instance, I'm guessing Tooze makes specific reference to the Polish-Soviet War that began in 1919. The war began sort of by accident; Polish and Soviet armies sort of ran into each other and started skirmishing because the borders between the two countries hadn't really been defined. Then, once the shooting started, the Soviets made their play at spreading the revolution: the idea was that if Poland falls, the Germans--already spoiling for a revolution--would rise up, and from there to France, the UK, etc. That plan wouldn't collapse until the Soviet defeat at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. By that point, the Western expeditionary forces were already in Russia.

I guess you could make the argument that Lenin mismanaged by thinking he could spread the revolution like that. But it also wasn't a situation that allowed much room for error; the allies certainly had an interest in knocking the Bolsheviks out of power, if only to keep Russia in World War I. Nevermind the threat of communism.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

StashAugustine posted:

i read adam tooze's The Deluge, which basically tracks the attempt by the allies in ww1 to impose a liberal world order from american entry into the war up to the great depression; and the factors that lead to the failure of the interwar period and the beginnings of ww2. there's quite a bit of interesting stuff in there- a big part of his argument was that the main problems were basically america refusing to cancel war debts owed by the allies and wilson's insistence on american dominance.

one thing i'd like to get a tack on from cspam perspective is his take on lenin. obviously we've all been over the arguments about domestic politics (though, as someone who's not super knowledgeable about the russian revolution, i did find it interesting that the bolsheviks did get like 25% of the vote making them the second biggest party, and over 80% of the vote was for socialist parties). but tooze also argues that he mismanaged his foreign policy- basically arguing that the allies were too busy with the war to go after the soviets until they got too close to germany; though im a touch fuzzy on the details. as a radical lenin centrist, i'd like to hear from people who've read the book or really more stuff on russia in general

I haven't read Tooze but the gist is that Lenin and Trotsky, who started out as the foreign minister of the nascent Soviet state, basically thought diplomacy was unnecessary because the world was on the cusp of a huge communist revolution resulting from WWI. They thought this for two reasons, one ideological and one practical. Ideologically, they (initially at least) believed in what was then Marxist orthodoxy, that revolution would come to advanced industrial states before backward developing ones. Lenin had argued that Russia was a bourgeois industrial state at the time (he thought emancipating the serfs in 1861 was Russia's transition from feudalism to capitalism, and that the 1905 revolution when Russia got a neutered proto-parliament confirmed that the bourgeoisie had enough power for Russia to be considered capitalist and therefore potentially socialist), but it was obvious to everyone that Russia was still mostly agricultural and nowhere near the level of economic development as Western Europe (this was, incidentally, one of the big doctrinal differences between Lenin and other Russian socialists, they thought Russia still had to pass through a capitalist stage before it could become socialist, and so up to and during 1917 they remained open to partial capitalism and to alliances with liberals as representatives of the bourgeoisie, whereas Lenin thought Russia was already fully capitalist and so they could go straight to socialism without needing more capitalism or any alliance with the bourgeoisie). So the ideological belief in transitioning to socialism in developed states before developing ones led to a line of thinking that you could sum up as "if things are so bad that we're getting socialism here in backward Russia, then the advanced industrial states must be right on the verge of a revolution too". And practically, they initially thought that socialism wouldn't survive in Russia unless there was revolution elsewhere, because the other great powers would never let a socialist country survive.

Thus, based on a dual belief that a) revolution elsewhere was right around the corner, and b) without revolution elsewhere, Russian socialism wouldn't survive anyway, they basically didn't do any diplomacy at all for the first little while. They ghosted the German peace negotiators, humiliated the Allies by publicly airing their dirty laundry, and assumed that none of it would matter because revolution was right around the corner. This was a huge diplomatic blunder, but it was also a huge tactical/strategic blunder too--for example, the majority of the Russian Imperial Army's war materiel fell into German hands after the revolution because the Bolsheviks didn't bother doing anything with it, because they thought it didn't matter since the Germans would be their revolutionary allies any day now, and so the advancing German armies just grabbed a bunch of free guns and ammo on their way into Russia. They were only forced into signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk when it became obvious that the Germans weren't going to stop advancing into Russia, and even then they justified signing away huge parts of Russia's population and economy because the Germans were going to have a revolution any day now and then the treaty would be null and void.

Then, on the Allies, yeah Lenin et al thought the Allies would never tolerate the existence of a socialist state, and the Allies were in fact pretty distraught about the Bolsheviks seizing power, but initially at first their bigger concern was losing the Eastern front. Russia was not a reliable ally through all of 1917, but it was still an ally tying up German troops. The whole reason for the disastrous Kerensky offensive of Summer 1917 was to prove to the Allies and the Germans that Russia was still an active participant in the war, preventing the Germans from moving all their troops to the west and trying to guarantee Russia a seat at the table in peace negotiations. And every potential Russian leader except Lenin was committed to staying in the war for that exact reason, they wanted a seat at the table and they were afraid that if they signed a peace it would mean Germany could turn to the west, defeat Britain and France, then break any deal with the Russians and come back and crush them too. If you read Russian sources from 1917 they're chock full of concern that the only way to get a lasting peace is to defeat Germany because you can't trust the militarist Germans and if you sign a peace then before you know it they'll come back and crush Russian democracy and reinstate the tsar. Lenin was less concerned with that, partly because he saw the whole war as an unjust imperialist war (the other Russian socialists thought this too, they just also recognized that there was no way for Russia to gracefully exit the imperialist war three years in) and that Russia should get peace at any cost because the cost didn't matter because a worldwide socialist revolution was going to happen any day now.

Anyway, once you get into the Civil War era it's a little past my time period so I'm not as familiar with what Lenin thought about the prospects for immediate Allied intervention. I do know that he thought the capitalist powers would never let a socialist state live alongside them, a fear that drove Soviet foreign policy basically all the way through the 1980s but especially through Stalin's death. I also know that a big reason for Allied intervention up until November 1918 was to reinstate a government that would keep fighting the Germans. The immediate concern was the war, they didn't really care who ended up in charge in Russia as long as the new government would keep fighting Germany. And then after November 1918 there may have been some intellectual ideas about large-scale intervention to overcome socialism but there was no actual appetite for it since the Allies were all more or less exhausted from the war and had little interest in fighting a brand new one to prop up a bunch of failures and proto-fascist buffoons, so Allied intervention was less an existential threat to the Bolsheviks and more a reliable way of shipping supplies into and rich people out of a few major ports, before the Allies realized they were propping up a losing cause and yeeted their way out of there. Turned out the desire to not fight another war right after finishing The War To End All Wars was more powerful than the desire to make sure socialism didn't take hold in Russia.

vyelkin has issued a correction as of 00:53 on Jul 11, 2020

Cheesasaurus
Jul 11, 2020

mormonpartyboat posted:

oh

well i guess I can switch to Giant of the Senate, ive heard its got some gripping prose

I’m an idiot and responded to a 6 month old comment, but...

Master of the Senate is fantastic. I spent the last month reading the whole series and finishing The Power Broker — everything Robert Caro writes is phenomenal and you won’t be able to put it down.

I’m listening to Terrance Williams’s bio of Huey Long right now and it’s great, too, and I really want to understand what Long’s deal is.

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



okay you pocket protector book dweebs, gimme a shlocky zero effort read at around 250 pages with an audiobook version, just got about as far into The Destroyermen series as I think I will for awhile and I need another good low effort one to listen to while I'm cooking or gaming. Scifi is fine but fantasy probably not, but I'm open to whatever, gimme something I probably haven't heard of

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Epic High Five posted:

okay you pocket protector book dweebs, gimme a shlocky zero effort read at around 250 pages with an audiobook version, just got about as far into The Destroyermen series as I think I will for awhile and I need another good low effort one to listen to while I'm cooking or gaming. Scifi is fine but fantasy probably not, but I'm open to whatever, gimme something I probably haven't heard of
what kind of fantasy limits? I am the penultimate trash fantasy fan and have read way too much and recommend way too much there so I'm probably not your guy here but I will give some effort in a response anyways

As far as sci-fi goes, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson is an easy read and very great, but it's not shlocky so maybe not what you wan and I think its too long. One of my alltime favorite sci-fi books though.

Something sci-fi that's short and very shlocky and well-written is Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36642458-skyward and there's also an audiobook bversion but it's not too long https://www.audible.com/series/Skyward-Audiobooks/B07JZCTPDR I really liked it. This may be the most relevant answer to your question in sci-fi, short, shlocky, zero effort, and actually well-written.

The audiuobook puts a wrinkle it into bc I dont know if a particular audiobook is done well or not. However if you dont mind fantasy, The Greatcoats series by Sebastian De Castell is amazing. It's like a super homage to Alexandre Duma''s Three Musketeers and has a great comraderie swashbuckling adventurey with banter and some sword n magic evil doom they must put a stop it. It's well written and a lot of fun, but there's also 4 books and may be longer than what you're looking for. There is an audiobook version

Something kinda sci-fi/steampunky/fantasy is Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft that I adore and also has an audiobook version which is some dude climbing up an neoliberal-hellscape MegaCityOne dredd tower built long ago as he climbs through the slums to smash the rich people that took his wife but if you have an allergic reaction to the world airship (understandable) then nah. But I really loved that series.


e: nevertmind in re-reading your post, all my recs are trash for what you were looking for. 250 pages is shorter than most i can think of. i guess i lost sight of how long most of that stuff was

Xaris has issued a correction as of 02:32 on Jul 18, 2020

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



Xaris posted:

what kind of fantasy limits? I am the penultimate trash fantasy fan and have read way too much and recommend way too much there so I'm probably not your guy here but I will give some effort in a response anyways

As far as sci-fi goes, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson is an easy read and very great, ut it's not shlocky so maybe not what you want.

Something sci-fi that's short and very shlocky and well-written is Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36642458-skyward and there's also an audiobook bversion but it's not too long https://www.audible.com/series/Skyward-Audiobooks/B07JZCTPDR I really liked it.

The audiuobook puts a wrinkle it into bc I dont know if a particular audiobook is done well or not. However if you dont mind fantasy, The Greatcoats series by Sebastian De Castell is amazing. It's like a super homage to Alexandre Duma''s Three Musketeers and has a great comraderie swashbuckling adventurey with banter and some sword n magic evil doom they must put a stop it. It's well written and a lot of fun, but there's also 4 books and may be longer than what you're looking for. There is an audiobook version

Something kinda sci-fi/steampunky/fantasy is Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft that I adore and also has an audiobook version which is some dude climbing up an neoliberal-hellscape MegaCityOne dredd tower built long ago as he climbs through the slums to smash the rich people that took his wife but if you have an allergic reaction to the world airship (understandable) then nah. But I really loved that series.

If it's schlock I don't care if it's done well. I've read Aurora and it's above what I'd consider schlock ya

I'll check out the Books of Babel, has a sort of Greatship feel with it sounding like a sort of canvas upon which a lot of smaller stories are painted as part of a larger narrative, which is Extremely My poo poo. And no need to burn an Audible credit either!



it's longer than what I asked but whatever

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Renaissance Spam posted:

So I'm still shocked that Harry Turtledove isn't a CHUD. I remember reading some of his CSA books (WW1 and Interwar, never got into the ww2 stuff) and while he definitely seemed like he was trying to do a tapestry of all walks of life which is good Alt-History but I always kind of assumed he at least leaned right if not Proto-Chud, but apparently he's a decent human being?

I remember the communist black rebellion in his alternate Confederacy Survived WWI series.

Idia
Apr 26, 2010



Fun Shoe
Does anyone have a good recommendation on Yugoslavia and the conflict in Kosovo like in the 90s? I know so little of that place and time period.

cool dance moves
Aug 27, 2018


Idia posted:

Does anyone have a good recommendation on Yugoslavia and the conflict in Kosovo like in the 90s? I know so little of that place and time period.

I can! Lucky for you I bookmarked this page a long time ago and got too lazy to actually delete it
https://www.patreon.com/posts/ultimate-balkans-28148819

Idia
Apr 26, 2010



Fun Shoe

cool dance moves posted:

I can! Lucky for you I bookmarked this page a long time ago and got too lazy to actually delete it
https://www.patreon.com/posts/ultimate-balkans-28148819

Thank you so much!

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
I read Grubacic's "Don't Mourn, Balkanize!" from that list and can attest that it's good

thatfuturekid
Jan 5, 2014
I’m thinking of doing Verso’s monthly book club since the memberships are half off. I was just wondering though how their general output is overall, and if it’s worth it!

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



thatfuturekid posted:

I’m thinking of doing Verso’s monthly book club since the memberships are half off. I was just wondering though how their general output is overall, and if it’s worth it!

I've got a buddy who does it and he spoke very highly of it, said it was a good value and he liked the diversity of topics it exposed him to

Suplex Liberace
Jan 18, 2012



Verso is a good pub they put out super interesting books.

thatfuturekid
Jan 5, 2014

Epic High Five posted:

I've got a buddy who does it and he spoke very highly of it, said it was a good value and he liked the diversity of topics it exposed him to

Suplex Liberace posted:

Verso is a good pub they put out super interesting books.

well, that answers that! thanks to both of you!

err
Apr 11, 2005

I carry my own weight no matter how heavy this shit gets...
What plan is best? It seems interesting but I can't really afford $20 a month

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



err posted:

What plan is best? It seems interesting but I can't really afford $20 a month

My buddy has the 5 dollar one FWIW, that's what he was talking about

err
Apr 11, 2005

I carry my own weight no matter how heavy this shit gets...
any recommended book on the IRA/Troubles?

GalacticAcid
Apr 8, 2013

NEW YORK VALUES
Armed Struggle by Richard English, One Man’s Terrorist by Daniel Finn

In Training
Jun 28, 2008

been reading A Very Thin Line, Theodore Draper's exhaustive accounting of the Iran-contra affairs and it's sick. I can't remember the last historical account like this I've read that has such meticulous accounting on an almost day-by-day basis of the entire process. I've started taking notes to remember all the names passing money between intermediaries and across country borders. I'm glad somebody sifted through the 50k+ pages of publicized testimonials and records to present such a thorough critique of the donor class's ability to effortlessly step in to float American imperial policy making when Congress denied the WH the usual legal methods.

this is the first book of his I've read so I'll probably check out more since my local library branch is accepting remote pick up/drop off requests now

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:
Recently read The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. It might have been recommended in this thread before, I'm not sure. I'm working through a huge "to read" list and many of them came from this thread.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's sort of a speedrun history of the world from the Roman empire to now, presented from a non-Euro-centric and relatively unbiased angle.

That's a huge period of history to cover, so it's mostly painted in broad strokes and doesn't really dive too deeply into any particular era. Though it maybe does slow down and go into a bit more detail once it hits the Cold War era.

I thought it was a decent, informative and fairly critical overview of how wealth/power has shifted around the world over the last millenium due to shifting trade routes, resources, and technological development.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

snake and bake posted:

Recently read The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. It might have been recommended in this thread before, I'm not sure. I'm working through a huge "to read" list and many of them came from this thread.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's sort of a speedrun history of the world from the Roman empire to now, presented from a non-Euro-centric and relatively unbiased angle.

That's a huge period of history to cover, so it's mostly painted in broad strokes and doesn't really dive too deeply into any particular era. Though it maybe does slow down and go into a bit more detail once it hits the Cold War era.

I thought it was a decent, informative and fairly critical overview of how wealth/power has shifted around the world over the last millenium due to shifting trade routes, resources, and technological development.

Coincidentally, I'm also most of the way through this exact same book and I have mixed feelings. Frankopan's a good storyteller and covers some interesting things, but halfway through he basically switches from a history of global exchange to a history of the British Empire in Asia. I feel like the second half of the book has been kind of a letdown after the first half was quite strong, covering the different kinds of exchange across Eurasia and then how changing historical events altered the nature of global exchange. But then he kind of just forgets about that and focuses on Britain and Asia instead.

Like he has an entire chapter about the European conquest of the Americas and how important that was for shifting networks of global trade and exchange, then after that chapter basically never mentions the Americas again except for a brief reference to how the American colonists were angry about the British government bailing out the East India Company (also literally never mentions Africa, like just as an example the only mention of Africa in the book's index is one reference to, of course, the Afrika Korps) until suddenly it's Cold War time and the USA appears out of nowhere as a global superpower, while we get entire chapters about British investment in the Persian oil industry.

After the first 200 pages or so I was excited for what had until then been a global history focused on the importance of trade and how global trade and exchange patterns changed over time, but the rest of it hasn't lived up to those early sections so far. For me, at least.

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:

vyelkin posted:

Coincidentally, I'm also most of the way through this exact same book and I have mixed feelings. Frankopan's a good storyteller and covers some interesting things, but halfway through he basically switches from a history of global exchange to a history of the British Empire in Asia. I feel like the second half of the book has been kind of a letdown after the first half was quite strong, covering the different kinds of exchange across Eurasia and then how changing historical events altered the nature of global exchange. But then he kind of just forgets about that and focuses on Britain and Asia instead.

Like he has an entire chapter about the European conquest of the Americas and how important that was for shifting networks of global trade and exchange, then after that chapter basically never mentions the Americas again except for a brief reference to how the American colonists were angry about the British government bailing out the East India Company (also literally never mentions Africa, like just as an example the only mention of Africa in the book's index is one reference to, of course, the Afrika Korps) until suddenly it's Cold War time and the USA appears out of nowhere as a global superpower, while we get entire chapters about British investment in the Persian oil industry.

After the first 200 pages or so I was excited for what had until then been a global history focused on the importance of trade and how global trade and exchange patterns changed over time, but the rest of it hasn't lived up to those early sections so far. For me, at least.

Yeah, I agree, those are very valid points. To me the book was a lot more interesting before it got to the colonization of the Americas. But when I wrote my post I didn't realize that was the halfway point, I thought it was further along. I took a break partway through to read something else, so I'm probably mistakenly remembering the first half of the book being longer than it actually was.

Ebooks screw with me sometimes. Since I'm not holding the physical book in my hands, I don't have that "feel" for how much progress I've made. It's also pretty common for me to just slam right into the end of an ebook without expecting it, which can be really jarring. (I know, I can check progress on the app but I'm just not in the habit of it.)

After The Silk Roads, I ripped through Richard Wright's Native Son, which was a rough one, but very powerful. In the same vein, before Silk Roads, I read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines, and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. All three are historical fiction, realistically portraying the very real struggles of black men and women in America.

I also just finished reading The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu. Which was a ton of real world data and evidence proving that stimulus works much better than austerity for boosting an economy. Goes into a fair bit of detail about how the IMF has hosed over basically every country it has ever gotten involved with, due to imposing strict austerity measures, which have been shown over and over to cause further economic slowdown as well as horrific outcomes in mortality rates and general health. I found the section on Russia's transition from communism to capitalism particularly enlightening.

Annnd now I'm starting Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. :dance:

snake and bake has issued a correction as of 16:49 on Aug 18, 2020

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
If you want another good book on austerity, Mark Blythe's Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is imo the definitive text on the subject. Be prepared to read it slowly though since it's quite dense.

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:

vyelkin posted:

If you want another good book on austerity, Mark Blythe's Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is imo the definitive text on the subject. Be prepared to read it slowly though since it's quite dense.

Thanks. I think that one might be on my "to read" list already, because the title sounds familiar, but if not, I'll definitely add it.

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:
I'm really enjoying Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Great book. In short it's basically a history and analysis of the economics of debt, from the perspective of an anthropologist. I'm finding it profoundly interesting, as an accounting student. I really wasn't satisfied by what I was taught in macroeconomics class.

However, I hit pause on it because I've been on a long waitlist to check out The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin from the library, and my turn finally came up.

So I started that, but early on it mentions the main character reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Sooo... now I'm reading Silent Spring. :downs:

Idia
Apr 26, 2010



Fun Shoe
I finished The Dangerous Class and Revolutionary Theory: Thoughts on the Making of the Lumpen/Proletariat. The book defines the class or non class that Marx kinda looked and shows the history of this fragmented class either siding with reactionaries or communists during historical upheavals.
I found it really insightful since it's a topic that I rarely found written or talked about amongst leftists.

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:
Good lord, I've read so many books about horrible things. But as someone who deeply reveres nature, I would rate Silent Spring as the saddest and most horrifying book I have ever read, by far.

Wikipedia posted:

Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.

Rachel Carson posted:

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

I knew about the unsafe use of pesticides, but I did not know how astonishingly widespread or severe it was in the decades following WWII (because they had all of these delightful toxins developed for use in war against fellow humans, lol, gotta find a use for 'em!)

Billions of birds, fish, and other wildlife wiped out. Entire ecosystems permanently destroyed. Not to mention the direct and indirect, cumulative harm to human health, which is impossible to measure. All due to greed, carelessness, and utter disregard. Disgusting and shameful. I really don't have words to express how appalled I am.

We are not civilized and we don't deserve this planet

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

We'll be gone soon enough in evolutionary terms. It took like 15,000 years for us to get to this point: do you honestly believe we have 15,000 years left to go?

snake and bake
Feb 23, 2005

:theroni:
Reading Silent Spring before The Three-Body Problem was the best decision. Silent Spring put me in the perfect mindset to understand and appreciate The Three-Body Problem, which was excellent.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

We'll be gone soon enough in evolutionary terms. It took like 15,000 years for us to get to this point: do you honestly believe we have 15,000 years left to go?

True, but it's distressing how many species we're taking with us

err
Apr 11, 2005

I carry my own weight no matter how heavy this shit gets...

snake and bake posted:

Reading Silent Spring before The Three-Body Problem was the best decision. Silent Spring put me in the perfect mindset to understand and appreciate The Three-Body Problem, which was excellent.

Daily reminder for everyone to read The Three-Body Problem

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



err posted:

Daily reminder for everyone to read The Three-Body Problem

it's pretty great, for someone who reads and follows sci-fi pretty actively it's been great not knowing if the weirdness of the books was because of the author being a weirdo or a cultural thing where it's uniquely Chinese whereas I'm just used to western stuff

Silent Spring would definitely feed into it tho, definitely recommend going further in tho, 2nd book is the best of all of them imho

Grapplejack
Nov 27, 2007

I didn't care for tbp because it was incredibly nihilistic

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Finicums Wake
Mar 13, 2017
Probation
Can't post for 8 years!
can anyone recommend me a book on the years of lead written in english?

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