Edward is a pale­on­tol­o­gist who did impor­tant work on the Per­mian Extinc­tion, a peri­od in Earth’s his­tory that seems to have under­gone a cat­a­stro­phe even more spec­tac­u­lar than the bet­ter known Cre­ta­ceous mete­or impact that turned the dinosaurs to toast. In the mass extinc­tions that took place 248 mil­lion years ago, nine­ty to nine­ty-five per­cent of marine species were elim­i­nated, and on land a com­plex pro­to-mam­malian fau­na was wiped out. Edward’s book con­tains only a sim­pli­fied sum­mary of the sci­ence. It’s pri­mar­ily auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. He did most of his research in the Great Karoo region of South Africa, and his vis­its there coin­cided with dra­matic peri­ods in South Africa. He describes the total­i­tar­ian atmos­phere dur­ing the late Apartheid era, and then the chaot­ic one of the post-Apartheid era. This, and descrip­tion of the phys­i­cal and emo­tional chal­lenges of doing hard sci­ence in the field are the rea­son to read the book.

[If you want to learn more about the Per­mi­an Extinc­tion Event, a good place to start is the Hoop­er Vir­tual Nat­ural His­tory Muse­um, run by Carl­ton Uni­ver­sity, Ottawa. It’s a user-friend­ly site, geared to the gen­eral pub­lic. A sec­tion devot­ed to “Cre­ation­ism” makes no attempt to pussy­foot with the tide of igno­rance: it begins with a primer on the four­teen most com­mon log­i­cal fal­lac­ies of argu­ment, straight out of Aristotle]

Writ­ten in 1984, when the Cold War was heat­ing up again, this is a nar­ra­tive of an Eng­lish teenager’s sur­vival after a nuclear war. Swindell attempts to con­vey the utter hope­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. Steeped in the British class sys­tem, he assumes that the rich and pow­er­ful would do every­thing to pro­tect them­selves. and sim­ply exter­mi­nate any­one incon­ve­nient to them. Per­haps this would have been true — I don’t know British soci­ety well enough to judge. The book gives a rea­son­ably accu­rate por­trayal of the effects of a nuclear war on an ordi­nary region (at least in terms of the sci­en­tific knowl­edge then avail­able). As per­sonal dra­ma, it is very effec­tive. Peo­ple who now imag­ine that the world is a new­ly ter­ri­fy­ing place, mere­ly because a hand­ful of ter­ror­ists can plant bombs in planes, have either for­got­ten, or are inca­pable of imag­in­ing, the kind of anx­i­ety peo­ple lived under dur­ing the peri­ods when the immi­nent incin­er­a­tion of the plan­et was some­thing to wor­ry about.

Mey­er pro­vides a basic primer on the his­tory of Cen­tral Asia and the Cau­ca­sus. It’s a short vol­ume, so it can only suma­rize the com­plex­i­ties. Still, even a well-edu­cat­ed read­er is like­ly to know noth­ing about this large por­tion of the Earth. New­shounds usu­ally refer to the post-Sovi­et Cen­tral Asian republics as “the Stans”. Well, at least a flip­pant nick­name is more atten­tion than these places got before.

Despite its low pro­file in pub­lic dis­course, Cen­tral Asia has got­ten plen­ty of atten­tion from geopoliti­cal schemers and impe­r­ial pow­ers, invari­ably cre­at­ing dis­as­ters. Some­thing about the place gen­er­ates fan­tasies and delu­sions. And no coun­try is more prone to liv­ing in fan­tasy than the Unit­ed States, the lat­est impe­r­ial pow­er to decide it is going to bring enlight­en­ment to the land of the moun­tain war­rior clan and the pop­py. As Mey­er demon­strates, the delu­sional chat­ter com­ing from Wash­ing­ton is iden­ti­cal to that which emanat­ed from Britain and Romanov Rus­sia, and the Sovi­et Union when they began the same dis­as­trous projects, end­ing in defeat for them­selves and end­less mis­ery for the peo­ple of the region. Read more »

14695. (N. A. M. Rodger) The Safe­guard of the Sea ― A Naval His­to­ry of Britain, Vol.1, 660‑1649
14696. (John Dille –ed.) Time Cap­sule 1925, A His­to­ry of the Year Con­densed From the Pages
. . . . . of Time
14697. (Jon George) Faces of Mist and Time
14698. (Ray­mond W. Bak­er) Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Mon­ey and How to Renew the 
. . . . . Free-Mar­ket System
14699. (Jared Dia­mond) The Third Chimpanzee
14700. (Mervyn Peake) Gormenghast
Read more »

Swindells runs two sto­ries in par­al­lel. One is set in 19th cen­tury Lon­don, and tells of an orphan boy who encoun­ters Dr. John Snow, the founder of mod­ern epi­demi­ol­ogy, and dis­cov­erer of the cause of cholera. The sec­ond sto­ry is set in mod­ern times, and fol­lows a young girl who flees sex­ual abuse from her mother’s boyfriend, and lives in a Lon­don “squat”. Inter­spersed through these episodes are news­pa­per let­ters from a con­ser­v­a­tive crank, and the diaries of a nasty Vic­to­rian mag­is­trate. The boy’s nar­ra­tive is writ­ten in pho­netic tran­scrip­tion of his dialect, which may cause trou­ble for a Cana­dian or Amer­i­can read­er. Jug­gling these dis­parate ele­ments is a dif­fi­cult task, and the author pulls it off beau­ti­fully. The nov­el has an obvi­ous mes­sage: the strug­gle against igno­rance nev­er ceas­es. I was delight­ed that a youth nov­el like this draws atten­tion to Snow, who is one of my per­sonal heroes. The more atten­tion is paid to real­ly impor­tant his­tor­i­cal per­son­ages like Snow, the more peo­ple will under­stand the dif­fer­ence between them and the assort­ment of gang­sters, thugs, and con-men who are con­ven­tionally rep­re­sented as “great”.

Bernard DeVo­to was was one of the lead­ing Mark Twain schol­ars, as well as being a his­to­rian of the Amer­i­can far west, a pas­sion­ate advo­cate of nature con­ser­va­tion, and a lead­ing advo­cate of civ­il lib­er­ties. In this curi­ous book, writ­ten in 1932, he devotes most of his ener­gy to crit­i­ciz­ing oth­er Mark Twain Schol­ars. The book is clever, acer­bic, and some­times down­right nasty, but enter­tains pre­cisely for those rea­sons. DeVo­to detest­ed the scholas­tic habits of reify­ing abstrac­tions (The Fron­tier, Puri­tanism, The Artist, Mate­ri­al­ism) and bas­ing grand explana­tory the­o­ries on triv­ial or dubi­ous evi­dence, or no evi­dence at all. Some­times his sar­casm grates on the read­er, but often it is just so good (that is to say, cru­el, like Scot­tish humour) that it brings up a smile from that lit­tle reser­voir of mal­ice that hides some­where in even the kind­est read­er. Here is his treat­ment of one well-known pun­dit: “He exhibits the amateur’s rev­er­ence for the prin­ci­ple of ambiva­lence. This, in his lay psy­cho-analy­sis, is a device for the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of con­tra­dic­tory evi­dence. It explains that a fact can be both its lit­eral self and a sym­bol of its oppo­site, that one fact can prove a giv­en asser­tion on one page and a con­tra­dic­tory asser­tion on anoth­er, that the two facts which seem to indi­cate irrec­on­cil­able con­clu­sions real­ly mean one thing — the pre­ferred thing.” Boy, I wish I could write sar­casm of that dis­ti­lla­tion. DeVo­to could prob­a­bly take on six coral snakes and a griz­zlie before break­fast, then move on to seri­ous sar­casm after cof­fee. Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic crit­i­cism was the bab­ble of that time, but I’m sure he would make mince­meat of today’s equiv­a­lents (“post-mod­ernism”, for example).

There’s a com­mon belief, fos­tered in gen­tle soci­eties, where peo­ple expect their chil­dren to grow up, and famine nev­er stalks the land, that there is no such thing as absolute evil, and that dic­ta­tors are con­fused ide­al­ists who took a wrong turn. This, the first seri­ously researched and accu­rate biog­ra­phy of Mao Zedong, should dis­abuse any­one of such naiv­ité. I have spent most of my life­time study­ing the motives, ide­olo­gies, mech­a­nisms, and agents of slav­ery, but I was still not pre­pared for the con­tents of this book, which is one of the most impor­tant biogra­phies of mod­ern times. It is absolute­ly essen­tial that this book be in every library and school in the world, for Holo­caust Denial is the endem­ic sick­ness of our age, and the wor­ship of mass mur­der­ers the endem­ic sick­ness of all ages.

I remem­ber when col­lege cam­puses were adorned with posters of Mao, when Jean-Paul Sartre was pro­claim­ing that Mao’s “rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence” was “pro­foundly moral”, when uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sors prat­tled the moron­ic, mega­lo­ma­niac slo­gans of Mao’s Lit­tle Red Book [“Pow­er comes from the muz­zle of a gun”] as if they were pro­found phi­los­o­phy, and a lawyer and fem­i­nist activist tried to slap me in the face when I told her that Mao was a geno­ci­dal crim­i­nal. I remem­ber when anoth­er stu­dent activist glee­fully showed me a pho­to­graph of one of Mao’s “projects” — thou­sands of ragged, starved, bru­tal­ized slaves dig­ging up earth with their bare hands while machine-gun-tot­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty cadrés watched over them, smok­ing cig­a­rettes, barbed wire and wood­en watch­tow­ers clear­ly vis­i­ble in the back­ground. This, he explained, was the ide­al soci­ety, Utopia being con­structed for the com­mon good. This was not even the death camps or the lao­gai, mind you, of which no pic­tures where per­mit­ted to exist, but of one of the projects the Par­ty liked to pub­li­cize. And their cal­cu­la­tions were cor­rect. To the cam­pus intel­lec­tu­als in Paris, Berke­ley, or Toron­to, such pic­tures were appeal­ing. To any actu­al human being, they could not be any­thing but hor­ri­fy­ing and dis­gust­ing. Read more »

The two hefty vol­umes of Rodger’s his­tory of the British Navy bring the sto­ry only up to 1815. But this life­time schol­arly work is well-bal­anced with read­abil­ity. Rodger thinks strate­gi­cally more than tac­ti­cally. He knows that the eco­nom­ics of get­ting ships on the sea, admin­is­ter­ing and sup­ply­ing them, and mak­ing sure they do some­thing use­ful is the heart of the mat­ter. Britain had exer­cised con­sid­er­able sea pow­er in the north­ern world in Anglo-Sax­on times, but the land-lub­bing, horse rid­ing Nor­man aris­toc­racy used ships very crude­ly. Even in the Renais­sance, there was no real “navy”, but mere­ly incon­sis­tent attempts to put togeth­er fleets for var­i­ous tem­po­rary pur­poses, and naval tac­tics remained prim­i­tive. Hen­ry VIII was par­tic­u­larly irre­spon­si­ble and destruc­tive, as he was with every­thing else. Elizabeth’s reign was dom­i­nated by “pri­va­teer­ing”. It was only dur­ing Cromwellian times, when the rul­ing dic­ta­tor­ship feared dis­loy­alty among sea­men, that the first attempts were made to orga­nize and admin­is­ter what would fit our mod­ern notions of a nation­al navy. Much of the sto­ry, of course, involves the more eco­nom­i­cally advanced Dutch, with whom British polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary and eco­nomic rela­tions were inter­wo­ven for cen­turies. Rodgers is very adept at sort­ing out these complexities.

This book, by the author­i­ta­tive expert on glob­al mon­ey laun­der­ing, out­lines the involve­ment of the gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, and banks in the pro­cess­ing of crim­i­nal mon­ey on a vast scale. But he is more con­cerned with the sys­tem of false book­keep­ing with which the world’s poor­est regions are sys­tem­at­i­cally drained of cap­i­tal. Bak­er is no philo­soph­i­cal light­weight: he remains trapped in a false sys­tem of def­i­n­i­tions and ter­mi­nol­ogy, but he knows that there is some­thing wrong with it. He cor­rectly points out that the cur­rent Con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­ogy of glob­al finance has noth­ing to do with Adam Smith’s the­o­ries of free mar­kets, which it vio­lates in every par­tic­u­lar, but is descend­ed, instead, from the moral blank­ness of Jere­my Bentham’s platophistries. But he can­not pull him­self out of his received frame­work to make the nec­es­sary next steps in analy­sis. There is no doubt, how­ever, of his basic decency..

A very good show for a first nov­el: A young prodi­gy at Cam­bridge uses her dis­cov­ery of bod­i­less time trav­el to enter the mind of a young Amer­i­can sol­dier at the inva­sion of Guam dur­ing World War II. The sto­ry is told in par­al­lel with the clas­si­cal Greek myth of the Labours of Her­cules, and also draws on the native folk­lore of Guam. George pulls you into the sto­ry quick­ly and treats his char­ac­ters with sen­si­tiv­ity. I espe­cially respect this kind of work because it requires real research to pull off. Get­ting things right, his­tor­i­cally, psy­cho­log­i­cally, and cul­tur­ally, has not been a big goal in the big SF pub­lish­ing hous­es, late­ly, and this is an encour­ag­ing excep­tion. I found only a few choic­es of words that I would quib­ble with.