This four­teenth cen­tu­ry French prose work is an odd item. It’s a “roman” — prose fic­tion. But it’s noth­ing like the fan­tas­tic fan­tasies that dom­i­nat­ed the era. No quests, no drag­ons, no trips to the moon. Instead, it’s a real­is­tic nar­ra­tive focus­ing on tour­na­ments and deeds of arms. In the first few chap­ters, the cen­tral char­ac­ter arrives at court as a page, at the age of thir­teen. A Great Lady imme­di­ate­ly begins a cam­paign of seduc­tion, twist­ing and tor­ment­ing the lad until he sur­ren­ders his inno­cence. This is coy­ly, but still pret­ty bla­tant­ly recount­ed by the author. But the romance is meant to be edi­fy­ing as well as tit­il­lat­ing… she is giv­en to quot­ing Greek philoso­phers while mak­ing love, and rec­om­mends a long list of books for him to read between carv­ing the King’s roasts, learn­ing to fight, and pro­vid­ing her with stud ser­vice. Few teenagers have to face this kind of stress, today. Read more »

This is an unusu­al­ly clear-head­ed work of ethnog­ra­phy, describ­ing the Sarha­di Baluch, a peo­ple of south­east­ern Iran. Salz­man is splen­did­ly immune to the the­o­ret­i­cal fads that have suc­ceed­ed each oth­er like Third Cen­tu­ry Roman Emper­ors. He looks at the Sarha­di, describes what he sees in plain lan­guage, inter­prets it with the min­i­mum of abstrac­tions and jar­gon. He has a par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp instinct for describ­ing polit­i­cal life. Focus­ing on who makes deci­sions, how they are imple­ment­ed and enforced, and what exter­nal and inter­nal cir­cum­stances trig­ger, lim­it, or mod­i­fy them, he avoids most of the essen­tial­ist, pseu­do-evo­lu­tion­ary and a pri­ori quag­mires. There’s no “post-mod­ern” gib­ber­ish. There is no roman­ti­ciz­ing, no pom­pos­i­ty in his obser­va­tions. I strong­ly rec­om­mend this to any­one who is inter­est­ed in the nature of deci­sion-mak­ing in nomadic seg­men­tary societies.

18049. (Matthew Jarpe) Radio Freefall
18050. (Phil Gor­don) Phil Gor­don’s Lit­tle Green Book
18051. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Impe­r­i­al Deca­dence ― The Fish­er King 
. . . . . Bleeds [arti­cle]
18052. (Ray­mond DeMallie) Male and Female in Tra­di­tion­al Lako­ta Cul­ture [arti­cle] Read more »

An enter­tain­ing first nov­el that pulled me in after a few pages and made me want to know the out­come. The rock musi­cian char­ac­ters make a nice change from the usu­al cyber-punk heroes, and the music lore feels cred­i­ble. There are some minor char­ac­ters too obvi­ous­ly para­chut­ed in for the sole pur­pose of giv­ing back­ground expla­na­tion. Unob­tru­sive­ly reveal­ing the back­ground has always been a dif­fi­cult writ­ing prob­lem in SF. The set­ting is in the near future, with a tech­nol­o­gy and social his­to­ry that seems unlike­ly in so short a time-span, but that’s a quib­ble. It’s a good, sol­id SF read, and I’ll seek out the author’s next work.

17961. (David G. Man­del­baum) The Plains Cree ― An Ethno­graph­ic, His­tor­i­cal, and
. . . . . Com­par­a­tive Study
17962. (Jane Jacobs) The Nature of Economies
17963. (John S. Mil­loy) The Plains Cree: Trade, Diplo­ma­cy and War, 1790 to 1870
17964. (Josi­ah Gregg) Com­merce of the Prairies 
17965. (Geof­frey Ashe) Camelot and the Vision of Albion
Read more »

This, the sec­ond-last of Jane Jacobs books, con­tin­ues the “dia­logue” ini­ti­at­ed in Sys­tems of Sur­vival. The start­ing point of the con­ver­sa­tion is this prof­fered axiom: “human beings exist whol­ly with­in nature as part of the nat­ur­al order in every respect”. From here, Jacobs argues that ecosys­tems and economies should be con­cep­tu­al­ized in rough­ly the same way, and that the same prin­ci­ples of co-ordi­na­tion, inter­de­pen­dence, com­bi­na­tion, and re-com­bi­na­tion under­lie them. It is good, sol­id stuff — vin­tage Jacobs. Plen­ty of con­crete exam­ples are used to bring the abstract argu­ments down to earth.

I rec­om­mend that any­one engaged in any of the dis­ci­plines of the human­i­ties — his­to­ry, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, archae­ol­o­gy, urbanol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy — should famil­iar­ize them­self with this remark­able wom­an’s work. She made major con­tri­bu­tions to all of these fields, and cre­at­ed a body of thought that tran­scends their boundaries.

(Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light ― Mas­ter­works of Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy [Byron Preiss Visu­al Book, 
. designed by Alex Jay; ill. John Jude Palen­car, Bri­an Humphrey, JoEllen Trilling, Pat Orte­ga, Thomas 
. Canty, David Wis­ner, Robert Gould, Steve Leialo­ha, Paul Rivoche, Ben Asen]:
. . . . 17775. (Fritz Leiber) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 17776. (Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light [sto­ry]
. . . . 17777. [5] (Fritz Leiber) Com­ing Attrac­tions [sto­ry]
. . . . 17778. [3] (Fritz Leiber) A Desk­ful of Girls [sto­ry]
. . . . 17779. [3] (Fritz Leiber) Space-Time for Springers [sto­ry]
. . . . 17780. (Fritz Leiber) Four Ghosts in Ham­let [sto­ry]
. . . . 17781. [4] (Fritz Leiber) Gonna Roll the Bones [sto­ry]
. . . . 17782. (Fritz Leiber) Bazaar of the Bizarre [sto­ry]
. . . . 17783. (Fritz Leiber) Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch [sto­ry]
. . . . 17784. (Fritz Leiber) Black Glass [sto­ry]
. . . . 17785. (Fritz Leiber) Not Much Dis­or­der and Not So Ear­ly Sex: An Autobiographic 
. . . . . . . . Essay [arti­cle]
17775. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Review of A His­to­ry of Mod­ern Iran
. . . . . by Arvand Abra­hami­an [review]
Read more »

Fritz Leiber, over the years, wrote some of the finest fan­ta­sy fic­tion there is, and some pret­ty decent sci­ence fic­tion, as well. This col­lec­tion, enlivened by illus­tra­tions by sev­er­al artists, is a good intro­duc­tion. It con­tains some of his most famous sto­ries — “Com­ing Attrac­tions”, “Gonna Roll the Bones” and the deligh­tul “Space-Time for Springers”, but it also has the unusu­al semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal “Four Ghosts in Ham­let”, based on his expe­ri­ences in his father’s Shake­speare­an com­pa­ny. One well-known sto­ry that I’d missed until now is “Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch”, which involves the miss­ing pock­et watch of the 19th cen­tu­ry chess mas­ter, Paul Mor­phy. Sto­ries like this make you want to buy an over­stuffed arm­chair and take up pipe smok­ing. Read more »

17694. (Stephen Fry) The Stars’ Ten­nis Balls
17695. (Thomas W. Best) Macropedius
17696. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] review of Joan of Arc: La Pucelle
. . . . . by Craig Tay­lor [review]
17697. (Jef­frey Toobin) Diverse Opin­ions [arti­cle]
17698. (Richard Scott Nokes) Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odin­ists [arti­cle]
17699. (Sharon Moalem) How Sex Works
17700. [2] (Damon Knight) Beyond the Bar­ri­er Read more »

This is a stu­pid book. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s also been a very influ­en­tial one.

Hunt­ing­ton starts out by play­ing the old “civ­i­liza­tions” game, pop­u­lar from the late 19th cen­tu­ry onward. Nobody any longer takes you seri­ous­ly if you talk about nation­al­i­ties in a sil­ly, anthro­po­mor­phic way (“The Dutch are cheese-eat­ing, prac­ti­cal peo­ple, but they are doomed to fail­ure as nation because they smoke too much mar­i­jua­na and their feet must hurt from wear­ing wood­en shoes”). But if you shift the dis­cus­sion to “civ­i­liza­tions”, big seg­ments of the globe defined by arbi­trary cri­te­ria, you can get away with it. Read more »