This is an omnibus vol­ume pre­sent­ing Robert Hein­lein’s first four “juve­nile” nov­els, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Scrib­n­er’s in 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1950. Hein­lein wrote twelve sci­ence fic­tion nov­els for teenagers, and put more care and artistry into them than most writ­ers put into seri­ous adult fic­tion. Their impact has been aston­ish­ing, and they remain wide­ly read long after their sci­ence and “futu­ri­ty” has become out­dat­ed. They were tremen­dous­ly lib­er­at­ing for young read­ers, espe­cial­ly when you judge them in the con­text of North Amer­i­can soci­ety when they were writ­ten. Unlike any author writ­ing for young peo­ple, up to that time, Hein­lein treat­ed his read­ers with hon­esty and respect, as well as pro­vid­ing them with a rich intel­lec­tu­al feast. Hein­lein strug­gled with his edi­tors, who con­stant­ly pan­icked over the pos­si­ble “unsuit­abil­i­ty” of his treat­ment and sub­ject mat­ter. But they were devoured by libraries, and thus were avail­able to peo­ple (like me) who were in no posi­tion to buy books. Scrib­n­er’s pub­lished them in a hand­some for­mat, with illus­tra­tions of great artis­tic mer­it by Clif­ford Geary. I came to them when they were start­ing to show their age, but their “sense of won­der” and their moral impact remained vivid. Cit­i­zen of the Galaxy, for exam­ple, was one of the three books that most stim­u­lat­ed my life-long fas­ci­na­tion with the issue of free­dom and slavery.
 
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16317. [2] (Arthur Conan Doyle) A Scan­dal In Bohemia [sto­ry]
16318. (Charles Lamb) On the Tragedies of Shake­speare [arti­cle]
16319. (Andrew Cur­ry) Raiders or Traders? [arti­cle]
16320. (Stephen Jay Schnei­der –ed.) 501 Movie Stars [arti­cle]
16321. (Will McLean) [blog A Com­mon­place Book] The 14^th Cen­tu­ry Social Pyra­mid [arti­cle] Read more »

Nov­el­ist Bar­bara King­solver and her fam­ily med­i­tate on their efforts to feed them­selves out­side of what I call “cor­po­rate com­mu­nism” — the glob­al­ized and col­lec­tivized sys­tem of agri­cul­ture that is rapid­ly destroy­ing health, envi­ron­ment and free­dom on this plan­et. King­solver doesn’t use my ter­mi­nol­ogy, and con­fines her­self to imme­di­ate issues of per­sonal health, aes­thet­ics, ani­mal ethics, and local eco­nomic vital­ity. But the book is use­ful back­ground for the kind of issues that inter­est me, as well as being enter­tain­ingly writ­ten. The book doesn’t have the sanc­ti­mo­nious tone that ham­pers much that is writ­ten on the sub­ject. King­solver knows that real fam­i­lies have to make eco­nomic choic­es under the con­straint of shrink­ing finan­cial resources, and prac­ti­cal real­ity. She is a strong advo­cate of the “eat local / eat sea­sonal” move­ment, which lies at the crux of her strat­egy, and takes every occa­sion to point out that both econ­omy and plea­sure tend to be max­i­mized by it.

16271. (George Wood­cock) Gabriel Dumont
16272. (Shashi Tha­roor) The Ele­phant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone ― Reflec­tions on India, 
. . . . . the Emerg­ing 21^st-Cen­tu­ry Power
16273. (Richard van Emden) Boy Sol­diers of the Great War Read more »

One of the more annoy­ing bits of non­sense that crops up is the notion that there are forms of chat­tel slav­ery which are some­how benign. It is often claimed that “tra­di­tional” slav­ery in the Islam­ic world was some­how less of an abom­i­na­tion than the slav­ery in the Amer­i­can South or the Caribbean. Clas­si­cal his­to­ri­ans often pro­mote a sim­i­lar Gone With the Wind-ish inter­pre­ta­tion of slav­ery in ancient Rome, always con­cen­trat­ing on the less numer­ous domes­tic ser­vants while ignor­ing the mil­lions who were worked to death in the mines, on plan­ta­tions, or by the urban syn­di­cates that owned the water-carriers. 

Those who are inclined to accept this con­stant­ly resur­fac­ing fan­tasy are encour­aged to read this book. It’s an account of the life of Thomas Pellew, a Cor­nish child cap­tured by slave-raiders in 1716. He became a slave of the Moro­can sul­tan Moulay Ismail (whose descen­dant still rules Moroc­co today. In the 17th and 18th cen­turies, slave traders from the Moroc­can port of Salé ter­ror­ized the Cor­nish coast, often raid­ing vil­lages and seiz­ing hun­dreds of men, women and chil­dren to sell in the lucra­tive slave mar­kets of North Africa. It is esti­mated the rough­ly a mil­lion Euro­peans, Amer­i­cans and New­found­lan­ders were cap­tured in this way, dur­ing that peri­od. British mon­archs dealt with these assaults with a com­bi­na­tion of blus­ter, mis­di­rec­tion, dou­ble-deal­ing, self-inter­est­ed hypocrisy, fake sabre-rat­tling, bribery, alliances with their own ene­mies, and over­whelm­ing cow­ardice that was vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal to the Bush administration’s response to 9/11. Them­selves active in a colos­sal slave trade, Euro­pean Chris­t­ian aris­to­crats and wealthy “entre­pre­neurs” were hap­py to col­lude with their Mus­lim counterparts.

In Thomas Pellew, who spent a great part of his life as a slave in a par­tic­u­larly good posi­tion to form an over­all eval­u­ation of slav­ery in North Africa, and who escaped to tell the tale, we have plen­ty of tes­ti­mony to the bru­tal­ity of slav­ery in North Africa. Even Pellew, who sur­vived as a “priv­i­leged” per­sonal slave, suf­fered unspeak­able tor­tures, begin­ning at the age of eleven. The bulk of the cap­tives were abused, tor­tured, and quick­ly worked to death in mas­sive con­struc­tion projects, or laboured in chains in the fields. There was no “benign” slav­ery, because there has nev­er been any form of slav­ery that was benign, any­where. Slav­ery is slav­ery, always filthy, evil and dis­gust­ing, at any time, in any place, in any culture.

Giles Milton’s book, tak­en large­ly from Pellew’s account, but well cor­rob­o­rated and researched, is well-written.

Gabriel Dumon­t’s role in the North­west Rebel­lion of 1885 is well known to Métis Cana­di­ans, and many peo­ple in our three prairie provinces, but oth­er­wise he is over­shad­owed by the more roman­tic fig­ure of Louis Riel. Riel, after all, had reli­gious visions, under­went mar­tyr­dom, and left a writ­ten lega­cy. His insta­bil­i­ty is the stuff that attracts atten­tion, and he’s the one that’s been treat­ed in nov­els, plays, movies, songs, and even an opera. But in many ways, Dumont is a more inter­est­ing man, and deserves more respect than the dubi­ous­ly sane Riel. George Wood­cock, in this short biog­ra­phy, empha­sizes how much Dumont exem­pli­fied the most admirable aspects of Métis soci­ety. Read more »

(Pierre Clas­tres) Recherch­es d’anthropologie politique:
. . . . 16178. (Pierre Clas­tres) Le dernier cer­cle [arti­cle]
. . . . 16179. (Pierre Clas­tres) Une ethno­gra­phie sauvage: A pro­pos de Yanoa­ma [arti­cle] Read more »