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shanehawk's reviews
421 reviews
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson
5.0
Candide by Voltaire
4.0
(Required reading for an 18th century Enlightenment course)
This is a great novella on human nature through the lenses of optimism, pessimism, deism, greed, warfare, material wealth, etc. Voltaire is very sarcastic here like in his Philosophical Dictionary entries. He lashes out at the Catholic Church through use of sarcasm, parody and the like. He also mocks his Enlightenment peers who believe in optimism and/or particular providence when it comes to a god (mainly Leibniz).
There's much to dissect which isn't what I'll use my time for. I just think this is a very important book to teach and I see why it's used as an example time and time again. It isn't boring in the least and a very quick read unless you are taking notes on themes and saving quotes.
This is a great novella on human nature through the lenses of optimism, pessimism, deism, greed, warfare, material wealth, etc. Voltaire is very sarcastic here like in his Philosophical Dictionary entries. He lashes out at the Catholic Church through use of sarcasm, parody and the like. He also mocks his Enlightenment peers who believe in optimism and/or particular providence when it comes to a god (mainly Leibniz).
There's much to dissect which isn't what I'll use my time for. I just think this is a very important book to teach and I see why it's used as an example time and time again. It isn't boring in the least and a very quick read unless you are taking notes on themes and saving quotes.
Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman
3.0
A decent Western geared toward young adults. Remorseless revenge. Revolvers and horses. Girl power. An Apache trail guide. Saloons, whiskey and poker. A harmless, fun read.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
4.0
A succinct critique of blindly following tradition, genuflecting before authority, and democracy itself.
Jackson wrote this post-WWII at a time when Americans saw themselves as solely the “good guys” and Hitler and his party were separated from humanity by being referred to as monsters. Here she is saying anyone can be a monster with a lack of rationality. She was most likely also criticizing small town America as she moved to a small town before writing this and was never accepted by them.
[Side note: The Milgram experiments took place in the summer of 1961 a few months after the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Milgram used these experiments to find an answer to the pertinent questions at the time: Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices? Indeed, these experiments gave us fruitful evidence to demonstrate that humans have an overall blind obedience to authority even when their coerced actions inflict massive pain on someone else.]
The main messages I took away were:
Question tradition if it seems counterintuitive
Question authority if it seems immoral
Question the masses’ groupthink
Jackson wrote this post-WWII at a time when Americans saw themselves as solely the “good guys” and Hitler and his party were separated from humanity by being referred to as monsters. Here she is saying anyone can be a monster with a lack of rationality. She was most likely also criticizing small town America as she moved to a small town before writing this and was never accepted by them.
[Side note: The Milgram experiments took place in the summer of 1961 a few months after the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Milgram used these experiments to find an answer to the pertinent questions at the time: Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices? Indeed, these experiments gave us fruitful evidence to demonstrate that humans have an overall blind obedience to authority even when their coerced actions inflict massive pain on someone else.]
The main messages I took away were:
Question tradition if it seems counterintuitive
Question authority if it seems immoral
Question the masses’ groupthink
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il by Michael Malice
4.0
Dear Reader,
Comedy gets us through tough times. It’s what we turn to in order to cope. This is a reason why it’s used in the mundane subject of politics. There’s nothing funny about north Korea or its millions of slaves under the Kim Jong Un regime. To make us grasp the concept of a modern day holocaust Malice employs irony and comedy. This serves as an aid to douse nasty medicine in tasty sugar before administering. Thanks to this mixture of comedy and tragedy his readers gain a fruitful understanding of this country’s history and how it came to be one of the largest and most ignored humanitarian crises of our lifetime. To every laugh there’s a tinge of heartbreak.
Malice read numerous books on the subject of north Korea and its leaders from both the Western canon and north Korea’s own propaganda. He mixes historical fact with propaganda from both camps to express Kim Jong Il’s life.
This is a book I highly recommend to anyone especially those who have laughed at north Korea in the past.
I’ll leave you with the first sentence of this great book:
“I remember the day that I was born perfectly.”*
*Notice how Malice doesn’t add a comma after the word “born?” It’s intentional and is foreshadowing for the intense hubris to come later from the novel. Hope you enjoy it.
Comedy gets us through tough times. It’s what we turn to in order to cope. This is a reason why it’s used in the mundane subject of politics. There’s nothing funny about north Korea or its millions of slaves under the Kim Jong Un regime. To make us grasp the concept of a modern day holocaust Malice employs irony and comedy. This serves as an aid to douse nasty medicine in tasty sugar before administering. Thanks to this mixture of comedy and tragedy his readers gain a fruitful understanding of this country’s history and how it came to be one of the largest and most ignored humanitarian crises of our lifetime. To every laugh there’s a tinge of heartbreak.
Malice read numerous books on the subject of north Korea and its leaders from both the Western canon and north Korea’s own propaganda. He mixes historical fact with propaganda from both camps to express Kim Jong Il’s life.
This is a book I highly recommend to anyone especially those who have laughed at north Korea in the past.
I’ll leave you with the first sentence of this great book:
“I remember the day that I was born perfectly.”*
*Notice how Malice doesn’t add a comma after the word “born?” It’s intentional and is foreshadowing for the intense hubris to come later from the novel. Hope you enjoy it.
Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham
4.0
As a rabid anti-communist and former Trotskyist Burnham viewed the world on both world historical and systemic terms. He believed in objective political analysis and put forth sweeping claims. For more: read George Orwell’s Second Thoughts on James Burnham.
Burnham argued the West was committing suicide on a global scale because of its unrelenting adherence to the doctrine of (modern) liberalism. He wrote scathingly of modern liberalism most likely because it shares a close resemblance with communism in which they both have a combination of historical determinism and radical Pelagianism. Liberalism, according to Burnham, made the West feel a constant guilt and undermined its confidence even in its own institutions. He feared the West might have lost the Cold War to zealous communism—keep in mind this was published in 1964.
Burnham argued that an enemy on the Right was imperative to modern liberalism and when this enemy wasn’t apparent or existent “liberalism must invent him.” Hence fascism has “a prominence that has no objective historical justification.”
He presented 39 tenets of modern liberalism and for one to pass as a liberal one must agree with 85% of them. Reading them in 2018 shows how much liberalism has influenced the Right as many conservatives would agree with the tenets as well. As the saying goes, “Conservatism is just progressivism driving the speed limit.”
Despite being a non-ideologue and pragmatist his core thinking ability in 1964 mirrors some traits of today’s far-right, as in: neoreactionary analyses of Leftism, the alt-right’s declensionism, and general fears of the Left’s pathological altruism.
I recommend this book to people interested in (apocalyptic declinist) liberal critique during the 60s, or those interested in the viewpoints of an ex-Trotskyist who worked for the OSS and co-founded The National Review.
Burnham argued the West was committing suicide on a global scale because of its unrelenting adherence to the doctrine of (modern) liberalism. He wrote scathingly of modern liberalism most likely because it shares a close resemblance with communism in which they both have a combination of historical determinism and radical Pelagianism. Liberalism, according to Burnham, made the West feel a constant guilt and undermined its confidence even in its own institutions. He feared the West might have lost the Cold War to zealous communism—keep in mind this was published in 1964.
Burnham argued that an enemy on the Right was imperative to modern liberalism and when this enemy wasn’t apparent or existent “liberalism must invent him.” Hence fascism has “a prominence that has no objective historical justification.”
He presented 39 tenets of modern liberalism and for one to pass as a liberal one must agree with 85% of them. Reading them in 2018 shows how much liberalism has influenced the Right as many conservatives would agree with the tenets as well. As the saying goes, “Conservatism is just progressivism driving the speed limit.”
Despite being a non-ideologue and pragmatist his core thinking ability in 1964 mirrors some traits of today’s far-right, as in: neoreactionary analyses of Leftism, the alt-right’s declensionism, and general fears of the Left’s pathological altruism.
I recommend this book to people interested in (apocalyptic declinist) liberal critique during the 60s, or those interested in the viewpoints of an ex-Trotskyist who worked for the OSS and co-founded The National Review.