Fool
Focuses in on a dozen or two American POWs taken in North Korea and follows them through their experiences in the camps, and the court martials that followed their return for crimes of collaboration with the enemy. Discusses the huge level of early mortality (over 40% died in first 6 months) followed by far fewer deaths and fewer cases of beatings and overt killings after the Chinese take over the camps and especially after the list of POWs turned over the UN forces.
Makes great use of transcripts but left me feeling uneasy about a number of things:
1) The anecdotes that he builds more than half the book on come from transcripts and records that he then shows to be deeply problematic when used in the context of court martial trials. How much can we believe? There needs to be a similar work which hopefully can find some other Chinese or Korean sources.
2) Would love to have seen even some slight discussion of the conditions of ROK prisoners in the North or of Chinese/DPRK soldiers in Koje (very brief mention of latter)
3) Because the book focuses almost entirely on some of the court martialled troops, there isn't much discussion of those who never came under suspicion for collaboration - instead this larger mass are merely referred to as a majority who mostly did similar things to those who were put on trial. I suspect the picture is more complex.
4) The transition from high-coercion, torture, beatings, killings, and completely inhumane conditions in the earliest stage to still problematic and underfed prisoners in camps after the first half year is really important - whenever Lech wants to emphasize the evil of the Chinese/Koreans he keeps referring back to this first stage - seeing the transition as one of strategy, rather than explained by availability of supplies, better organization, and correction of excesses. I think this is deeply unfair to the PRC/DPRK side which, though clearly guilty of atrocities I doubt are quite the monsters throughout that are described.
This book came as a disappointment. I read it immediately after completing an incredibly well written and balanced history of the 1948 war by the same author. By contrast, this work was far more of a polemic. It begins with a summary of new supporters of the one state solution, beginning with the famous essay by Tony Judt and following up with dismissive critiques of several other supporters.
What follows is an occasional summary of Israeli-Palestinian relations, with an emphasis on showing how horrifying the “one state” solution proposed by Palestinians is and how deceptive their calls for a secular single state are. He also portrays as completely marginal and radical the few figures on both the Israeli and Palestinian side who actually hope for an equal and democratic single state.
While I was willing to be persuaded by his more pragmatic arguments, I found myself increasingly revolting at his dismissiveness and myopic analyses that never addresses some of the core arguments in support of the single state (or binational as he calls it) proposals that have gained favor in recent years. The argument seemed to lose focus gradually, get more sloppy, and his final proposed solution: having Palestinian territories become part of Jordan etc. not as terribly helpful or realistic.
This is a collection of Serge's writings from the time of the Russian revolution - long before he turned against Stalinism and was expelled from the Communist party. On almost every page you feel the discomfort of a former (libertarian) anarchist trying to come to terms with the “necessity” of terror and violence in the service of a revolution he believed would begin the final step towards the eradication of the state. His dream failed completely and his justifications are the universal ones of total civil war, but he is an interesting and unusual critical witness to a revolution he committed himself completely to.
Learned a lot and enjoyed it immensely but the chapters are each very separate projects, some far better than others. For those who have read Judt's later works, they will recognize earlier versions of many of ideas here.
Interesting, if relatively straightforward work on the history of malaria in Italy. Begins with debates over the origins of the disease, on the shortcomings of quinine as an all-in-one solution, the interconnection between the battle against malaria and social/gender/education history as well as the impact of war on fighting the disease. Chapter on fascism and malaria, with the holistic approach taken then. Follows with chapter on wartime biological warfare of Germans using malaria, and questions narrative of DDT as almost solely responsible for eliminating the disease in the early postwar. Ends with caution for current policy makers who attempt a single-solution approach (nets, for example) and emphasizes the success in history of an approach which combines social reforms with a range of other approaches.
This book, with a title she didn't approve of, is written by fascinating and unique anarchist Emma Goldman. It is part of a genre of works by anarchists, socialists, and former Communists who went to Russia full of optimism for the revolution and had their hopes dashed when faced by the terror, corruption, and incompetence of what they saw.
I recently read Memoirs of a Revolutionary by another anarchist, Victor Serge, which also offers a view of despair from the early days of the revolution but Goldman's account is a much different sort of book. While Serge gives us one terrifying scene and anecdote after another, Goldman's memoir is more like a methodical collection of evidence. He was given amazing access to a large range of important political figures, early Soviet institutions, and different geographical areas, and in this work she gives voice to not only her many fellow anarchists trying to find a place in the revolution, but to a wide range of different characters. She is increasingly harsh in her criticism but always separates her final condemnation of the Communists with her evaluation of the many diverse characters who worked among them.
Basically the only serious option around for AppleScript. Unfortunate there isn't a similar book for AppleScript Studio.
Wonderful range of essays. Exceptional but for one or two of the less argumentative essays. Covers a range of key topics while also has a useful opening introduction which plays with the ideas of “myths of nationalism” but in this case “myths of internationalism”
Fantastically concise. Read this along with two other more detailed grammar books on French but found this one to hit just the right balance of useful vs. comprehensive. Great range of example sentences for each lesson.
The quality varies quite a bit from review to review within this text but as a whole this was an incredibly useful volume for a newcomer such as myself to get oriented in several decades of debates in human geography. Wish the various reviews connected to each other somewhat better.
Great book for anyone living in Singapore who wants a nice comprehensive history of the Botanic Gardens but which also touches on its connection to the broader history of its connection to green policies in Singapore. Well researched and the footnotes offer a wealth of material primary and secondary for anyone interested to follow up on.
There is excellent tying of this work to the broader historiography and promising pushes in the direction of linking the story of the botanic gardens to the larger networks of gardens and science in empire but was more limited in following through on this when the chapters dove into the empirical section. The book was more narrative than analytic, more of a survey than an interpretative and argumentative academic work.
Really enjoyed most of the chapters here and learned a lot. I do feel that the whole work could have been tied together somewhat better.
Fast but fairly up to date survey of the Catalonia crisis by a Swiss journalist with broad coverage of themes and issues, including some cultural, historical, and even culinary context.
Wonderful introduction to law and domestic life in ancient Athens
Wonderful introduction to law and domestic life in ancient Athens through the study of a speech that is the only fragment we have of a single murder trial
Informative book on the history of Norwegian Labour Party relationship with Communism. Stays close to the key individuals and their memoirs. I sometimes wished there was more broader coverage of the context, issues, and politics. Breezy narrative at points.
Fascinating history of the development of a collection of tropes about Naples and southern Italy. Detailed discourse history. Sometimes repetitive.
Enjoyed this format. Great overview and taste of each of the five and a long view of the various ways they played a role in Chinese culture and society.
Widely cited book with some valuable theoretical insights useful for spatial history but some chapters so padded with fluff it leaves too little empirical evidence to really allow its arguments to bite into. Assume challenges of sources are limiting factor.
The goal of the work, to “de-center” China and see “what would Chinese history look like” if one looks at it from the perspective of the periphery is admirable and the work offers some gestures in that direction but I don't know if a new perspective on “Chinese history” is either the core of the work nor did it need to be. I think instead this work reaches in multiple directions at once: opening with a dense but very helpful summary of a massive amount of secondary historical research on the frontiers and interactions between the “central plains” states and other states and peoples around it, especially the peoples of the northeast of the continent, the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese archipelago. The second half of the book are three case studies: state rituals, succession, and civilized-barbian discourses that take us on a tour of how these practices and discourse were connected, similar, or unique in the early modern states of northeast Asia. Again, the strength throughout is massive synthesis of the secondary literature, and lots of integration of Korean language scholarship in particular. Was pretty shocked, however, to find that a book with hundreds of toponyms has two barely labeled maps - simply unacceptable.
Very outdated now, but still very widely cited in literature. Distinctive feature is the narrative of decay and decline from Song to 20c with “only” Pure Land and Chan continuing and syncretic trends depicted as signs of decay.
Nice diverse collection of essays. Found chapter on Vinaya adaptations, pure land in 20c, and Nichiren chapters particularly interesting.
Learned a lot from the book and there is broad coverage. The book is interesting throughout. Three areas that can frustrate readers: If you don't already read Scots well, the many and sometimes long Scots passages in block quotes can be extremely difficult. You can guess your way through some phrases but the assumption seems to be (confirmed by the concluding paragraph addressing the reader as someone Scottish) you can read Scots fluently. Only very occasionally are Scots words in quotes glossed. Secondly, pronunciation explanations never include phonetic alphabetic glosses and instead offer occasional comparisons which are ambiguous - “sounds like” comparisons depends a lot on whether the reader is Scottish, English, or American so that readers may be left wondering how many words are pronounced. Finally, while I'm certainly very sympathetic to the overall narrative of the tragic disregard for Scots as a serious idiom of study and promotion, there are moments when readers more familiar with sociolinguistics or of the histories of language and nationalism will find themselves uneasy to encounter extremely curt dismissals of any more troubling connections of the latter, and strange occasional passages (not uniform, as the author is more careful in some places than in others) where Scots is treated as special thanks to glories of Scotland's past, over and above languages/dialects within Scotland (Doric) or beyond (Northumbrian) etc. Languages are dialects and dialects are languages as he says, until they aren't, as he suggests elsewhere speaking of unbroken continuum's and the like. The deeply contested terrain here is not always carefully dealt with by highly normative tone of this work on Scots.
Fascinating history of the art of memory. Links up a number of thinkers in refreshing and apparently when this came out, new ways. Some chapters on Lullism and Bruno and the hermetic tradition were a very heavy slog despite being the climax of the author's most original arguments and I confess to some skimming there. The early chapters through the chapter on Thomas Aquinas were a wonderful survey of mnemotechnics from Greek to medieval European (of course the discussion is limited to the European side of things) history of memory techniques.
