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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.
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Aug 15, 2020 17:25
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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. 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. 
snake and bake has issued a correction as of 16:49 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 16:41
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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.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:45
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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. 
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Aug 23, 2020 14:32
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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
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Aug 25, 2020 18:12
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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
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Aug 29, 2020 14:31
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uhhh what in the gently caress Lin Qi, Yoozoo CEO and Producer on Netflix's 'Three-Body Problem,' Dies at 39 quote:Lin Qi, the chairman and CEO of Yoozoo Group who was hospitalized after having been poisoned on Dec. 16, has died. The Chinese company confirmed that Lin died on Christmas Day. He was 39.
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Dec 26, 2020 17:17
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Whoever mentioned a book club, I would be interested in that. Maybe it will fare better this time, some people finding themselves with an unexpected surplus of reading time  Currently reading: The Consuming Fire (The Interdependancy #2) by John Scalzi Recent cspam worthy reads which I would recommend: The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past #2) by Liu Cixin - y'all know what it is The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependancy #1) by John Scalzi - another good Scalzi sci fi romp Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - fiery first person, written in the 1950s, a story of a black man growing up in America in an era of segregation quote:I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in a circus sideshow, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis - a window into life in tyool 1348, during a terrible plague The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist - great book, very well written but extremely painful to read if you have even a trace of empathy left in your scabby heart
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Dec 28, 2020 17:27
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Epic High Five posted:My votes would be for The Half Has Never Been Told (would love to re-read, can confirm it's a fantastic book and a comprehensive takedown of the Lost Cause bullshit) or The Ministry for the Future (want to read and heard good things) Oh oops. To be more clear, I was just recommending books in general, not necessarily for the book club. I'd be down for whatever though, I don't really care what it is or if I've already read it before I haven't heard of Ministry for the Future but I'll check it out. Literally any book mentioned in this thread gets auto-added to my list of books to read. Y'all have helped me find some extremely excellent books, so thanks for that edit: oh, I forgot to mention one because I'm a scatterbrain, but also currently reading Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov and come to think of it, that would probably be my book club vote because it seems like a potentially valuable read at the current time snake and bake has issued a correction as of 18:11 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 17:50
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err posted:I was the only person to finish the last book club hosted by twoday which was "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, which was really great. If you do make a book club, just know 90% of people won't post again after saying they will read it. Cool. I enjoyed Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series so I'll def check out Children of Time. Thanks for mentioning it Epic High Five posted:This has been the outcome numerous times, and why this is a discussion thread and not a reading group lol Well that's a bummer lol
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Dec 29, 2020 16:50
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Eat This Glob posted:The Half Has Never Been Told is required reading IMO. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America is a decent companion piece and highlights how racism really hosed up many opportunities for class solidarity in the US. 1000% agreed that The Half should be required reading for any American but goddamn it's a rough one to get through. Cried throughout it. I had to space it out in small chunks because it made me so simultaneously furious and sad that I could hardly cope. I don't normally react that strongly to reading about the horrors of history, but that book really loving got me. 
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Dec 29, 2020 16:59
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