Marcus
Wow. This book really surprised me. What a fun story! The plot moves quickly, was interesting and at times very complex. I'd say the plot was easily as good as Harry Potter. The characters were maybe not quite as captivating, but still a great read.
I keep telling myself I'm not going to read any more children's books unless I'm reading them to my children. I convince myself that I'll find more enjoyment or more utility reading grown-up books. Lately though, I've found that every time end up reading a book with a child protagonist, I prove myself wrong. Huck Finn is another case in point.
The most poignant part of the book for me was when Huck was struggling with whether or not to turn Jim in. Huck knew that it was his duty to allow Jim to be returned to his master, but Huck had grown to love Jim and didn't want to hurt him. His reasoning was that he'd feel bad not turning Jim in, but then again, he'd feel much worse if he did betray him and turn him in. Faced with a no-win situation, Huck went with his heart and was true to his friend. The payoff when Jim once again shows his gratitude to Huck is powerful and moving.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking–thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a- floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a- trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I'll GO to hell”–and tore it up.
“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”
“It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours.”
“Only think of that, now! What's the matter with her?”
I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:
“Mumps.”
“Mumps your granny! They don't set up with people that's got the mumps.”
“They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with THESE mumps. These mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”
“How's it a new kind?”
“Because it's mixed up with other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all.”
“My land! And they call it the MUMPS?”
“That's what Miss Mary Jane said.”
“Well, what in the nation do they call it the MUMPS for?”
“Why, because it IS the mumps. That's what it starts with.”
“Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, ‘Why, he stumped his TOE.' Would ther' be any sense in that? NO. And ther' ain't no sense in THIS, nuther. Is it ketching?”
“Is it KETCHING? Why, how you talk. Is a HARROW catching–in the dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say–and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good.”
“Well, it's awful, I think,” says the hare-lip. “I'll go to Uncle Harvey and–“
“Oh, yes,” I says, “I WOULD. Of COURSE I would. I wouldn't lose no time.”
I wrote this review as if the Crusoe had come out now, in 2009, rather than in the 1700's... trying to be clever. My attempt at humor failed, but here it is anyway.
....
You have to applaud an author who produces such a successful work in the already crowded “castaway on a deserted island” genre. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe definitely holds its own among the likes of The Swiss Family Robinson, The Lord of the Flies and The Island of the Blue Dolphins, not to mention existing film and TV takes on the theme such as Cast Away, Gilligans Island and Lost.
Defoe differentiates Robinson Crusoe by leaving him stranded for over 28 years, making the short stints served by the protagonists of the aforementioned stories seem almost laughable. Defoe's risk was worth it–people change slowly and it takes a lone man a long time to complete tasks the size Cruose's endeavors. The long span of time gives him ample time to undergo large changes, to begin and end large projects and it really gives the book a depth and dimension that is lacking elsewhere.
The prose is dense but well written and generally flows nicely. The throwback to early 18th century English is, while occasionally tiresome, educational and appropriate for the setting. It is quaint, for instance, to hear Brazil called “The Brazils.”
At times, Defoe goes out on a limb and throws political correctness to the dogs, for example, native inhabitants are “savages”, Crusoe shows a propensity for colonialism, there is frequent and gratuitous bloodshed of animals, the periodic mention of taking on slaves etc., but these faux paus can almost be overlooked when taken in context of the setting and in contrast with the beautiful spiritual transformations and moral lessons Crusoe learns and applies in his adventures. The overall theme of the book is enlightening, human and hopeful. It is a story that is well worth your time to read.
There are some crazy techniques being used in marketing and they will only get crazier, more intrusive and more subtly manipulative thanks to guys like Martin Lindstrom. He seems a little conflicted about what he does - on one hand he tries to come off as a consumer advocate, exposing marketing tricks so we can be aware of them, on the other he actively employs the same techniques in the companies he works with. He had me going back and forth about whether he is the ‘good guy' or the ‘bad guy.'
Either way, the book is somewhat of an eye opener to the work being done to perfect advertising techniques that are effective despite what consumers think works, and instead basing them on what brain scans show actually works–often two completely different things.
I'm only rating it 3 stars because the first 30 or 40 pages were full of repetitive hyperbole building up Lindstrom's research techniques and unprecedented large study group size and generally amazing work only to to be followed by much less than revolutionary results throughout the rest of the book. It's an interesting read, but definitely not as groundbreaking as it's made to sound in the first few chapters.
At no point do you get the sense that Martínez is censoring himself beyond what he might absolutely have to do for legal reasons. He's all in. His personal life is a wreck and he shamelessly puts it out there for all the world to see and judge him by. His career in both Wall Street and Silicon Valley is full of of ups and downs and decisions that are, at best, morally ambiguous.
The writing is good. It's funny, irreverent, and shows more than a passing knowledge of history and literature. There's a ton of hard won advice and insight into not only Valley culture, but business, negotiation, and how to live the startup life. For all the self deprecation: “there was nothing badass about my career in technology. The scant success I had was due purely to happenstance, combined with being a ruthless little shit when it counted.” it's clear that his mostly upward career trajectory was due to more than just luck.
You'll learn a lot about the cutthroat world of online ads. About how decisions are made inside Facebook, and to a lesser degree, Twitter. You'll get some lessons in the mysterious machinations of His Holiness Paul Graham and vice-pontiff Chris Sacca. You'll learn how to optimize your job offer, how to read a term sheet and how to win from a position of weakness. It's information that someone who wasn't willing to sacrifice their career at the alter of full-disclosure could never tell you. I seriously doubt you'll ever read anything like this again.
Come for the schadenfreude, stay for the insight.
I'm reading the series with Max (8) and he loves it. I think they're okay, but I can't get over the Harry Potter connections. My problem with the Percy Jackson series isn't so much that, that it blatantly copies the format of Harry Potter, but that it doesn't do it nearly as well as the J.K. Rowling. They are undeniably similar though:
Parallels (Harry Potter / Percy Jackson):
UK / US
Witches / gods
Summer at home / school year at home
Boarding school / summer camp
Harry / Percy
Hermione / Annabeth
Ron / Grover
The same:
An evil antagonist, once dead, slowly restoring himself to power with the help of traitor gods/halfbloods/magicians
Confused teenager and his two close friends as the main characters
Main character has major issues with his parents
Gods/witches constantly hide their magical doings from humans through diversion and subtle tricks
Despite all that, the story isn't bad, the characters are actually decent, the greek god connection is sometimes fun, sometimes even educational and the writing isn't too bad.
Edit: Just found a review that better sums up the similarities between the two series than mine does: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/50165597
This is a book about self-awareness. What Mark Manson would probably tell you, and he'd probably be right, is that you don't have enough.
“Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you're going to start crying at inappropriate times.”
He describes three layers of the self-awareness onion: 1. A simple understanding of your emotions. 2. The ability to ask why you feel an emotion. 3. Personal values which determine how you measure yourself and those around you. Personal values define success and failure. This last level he says is the hardest to get to and is “full of f*cking tears.” But it's the most important because “our values determine the nature of our problems, and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives.”
“Everything we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.” And “What is objectively true about your situation is not as important as how you come to see the situation, how you choose to measure it and value it.”
There's a lot of wisdom there if you're ready for it.
As you might have guessed by now, the title isn't really descriptive of the book. Mark, in fact, gives lots of f**ks, they're just about the things that are in line with the values that he's determined are worth caring about which are:
1. Radical responsibility. You don't control everything that happens to you, but you're responsible for it.
2. Uncertainty - realizing you're ignorant and need to constantly reevaluate what you believe.
3. Willingness to fail and recognize your own flaws.
4. The ability to be rejected and to reject others when their values don't align with yours.
5. Contemplation of your own mortality for the purpose of keeping perspective.
All five of these values are united by one theme: recognition of our incredible propensity for self-deception.
We tell ourselves all kinds of stuff: It's not my responsibility. I have no problems! My problems are the worst ever. I'm special and unique. The world owes me something. I'm going to live forever. I can't help how I feel, I'm the victim here. I'm going to be the greatest ever. It goes on and on.
Recognizing the self-deception we so willingly engage in and reframing it in context of our chosen values is the main message of the book. It's a tough message and it's easy to miss the gravity of it because, as Manson's Law says “The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.”
You probably won't read this for the same reasons I almost didn't. First there's the hyperbolical title, the fact that Manson is just a blogger and because it's a self-help book that, like most self-help books, says it's different from all the others. Maybe you won't like the casual tone or the humor which sometimes feels a little forced. It'd be easy to pass up for those reasons, but you'd be missing out. It's a short, informal book, but it's is anything but shallow.
Before reading this, I was only marginally familiar with Descartes and his contributions to philosophy and science. This book made catching up him and realizing his contributions to, and influence on, modern society very accessible and entertaining. The story of his bones traveling around was at times interesting, though it was definitely overshadowed by the history of his life and his influence after death.
I thought the author did a pretty good job of handling the balance between religion and secularism/science. I wondered if he might go the route of Dawkins and his ilk who completely denigrate all religion. Instead he gives an accurate representation of both sides of the issue and treats it fairly, recognizing that secularism runs the risk of having the similar downfalls to the dark side religion if taken to the same extremes that religion has been taken to in the past (e.g. Sept 11).
On the whole, I'd say it's a great intro to Descartes and does a great job of putting his philosophy into the context of the world today.
I would have never read this book had it not been for the free audio version I found through Zappos.com. I was't looking for yet another business book, much less a management book, but this one really surprised me and hit me hard. The book in a nutshell talks about 5 stages that organizations and the members of organizations go through:
1 - Life sucks.
2 - My life sucks (but maybe there's something better).
3 - I'm in it for me.
4 - We're in it as a group with a core set of values; there is a higher purpose. We're great.
5 - Our values are everything. We're not fighting competition, we're fighting for a cause.
Admittedly, this list sounds pretty straightforward, possibly even obvious, but reading the examples of what kind of thoughts people in each of the five stages think was like having my mind read. It became clear to me what stage I've been in (3) and what stage my company is in (mostly 3, possibly occasionally dipping into 4).
It's one thing to find out exactly where you are, it's another thing altogether to know exactly where you could go next and have a good idea how to get there. This book gave as clear an indication of that as I've ever seen. I feel like after having read this it will be much easier to recognize the next “stage” when I see it and to consciously move in that direction. Great read, and since the audio is free and relatively short (6 hours), there's really no reason not to give it a try.
Part I - The Inspiring Part
While I have mixed opinions of many of the ideas in The Inevitable, this particular paragraph stuck out as insightful and, for anyone interested in building products, potentially inspirational for some good ideas.
“Three generations ago, many a tinkerer struck it rich by taking a tool and making an electric version. Take a manual pump; electrify it. Find a hand-wringer washer; electrify it. The entrepreneurs didn't need to generate the electricity; they bought it from the grid and used it to automate the previously manual. Now everything that we formerly electrified we will “cognify.“ There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or more valuable by infusing it with some extra IQ. In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI. Find something that can be made better by adding online smartness to it.”
Thinking about this at a surface level is pretty exciting. Kelly also talks about how the general feeling in Silicon Valley in the 90's was that the gold rush had passed and that everything good had already been done. He believes that we're again in a lull where it may feel like everything has been done but that in fact we are on the cusp of another flowering of ideas and technology.
Unfortunately, it's not quite as easy as he makes it sound. The way he talks about AI as if it were a simple commodity glosses over a lot of really big problems that aren't going to go away easily. Yes, you can rent a lot of powerful machines from Amazon or Google and install TensorFlow on them, but for any AI to work well, you need a LOT of data to train a model. Gathering data specific to a problem, normalizing it and using it in a way that gives results that are good more than 50% of the time for any given problem is very hard. If it was easy, every bit of software we use today would already have AI.
That said, the idea is exciting. A lot of problems that seemed “solved” are now ripe for the taking. If Kelly is right, and I think he is, there will be a lot of people who are either going to have to learn to incorporate AI into their products or watch helplessly as they are disrupted by smaller competitors who have products that are less feature-rich but seem almost magical in comparison.
What if your todo list could tell you what you're forgetting to add to the list based on your other tasks? What if your shopping list could suggest recipes based on your list or ingredients that would go well with what you're buying? Maybe it could even suggest your whole shopping list after it learned what you usually buy and how often you buy it.
Those are maybe the two simplest examples of how adding some IQ to an existing software could drastically change it. Niche market products and software that runs internet of things hardware are already evolving to incorporate AI in surprising ways. Kelly explores some of these in his book but the best ideas are yet to come. The more I think about it, the more exciting it is.
Part II - A General Review of the Book
I felt uncomfortable for large portions of the book. Kelly is, to no one's surprise, an unabashed technologist. Even thought the title of the book is “Inevitable,” I get the clear impression that he's not writing about what will happen as much as about what he hopes to happen. In his ideal world screens would be much more prevalent than they are now. Content would flow between them as we move between home, transportation, and work. User created content becomes more widely distributed, remixed and repurposed with micropayments flowing freely between consumers and remixers and eventually compensating original creators. Curators, some human, some AI trained by humans thrive in a world where taste and work drive the majority of humanity's leisure time. Despite having every book ever written available in the cloud, many people move will move from consuming deeply to flitting from thing to thing to satisfy their every whim. In the physical world, ownership will wane as renting and sharing increases. This means everything from clothing to transportation to gadgets and living spaces. Everything from the food you eat to the number of breaths you take a day can and will be tracked and this information will be available to share at will to those who can process it either to provide insight or to sell you more things.
It's quite the vision of hyper-pervasive technology in a hyper-connected world.
I appreciate Kelly's optimism. His excitement is contagious. The problem is, and maybe this is just my resistance to the inevitable, that this all hinges on such an extreme level of consumption that it makes even today's cell phone obsessed culture seem moderate. It comes at the expense of thoughtfulness, environmental stewardship, mindfulness and tangible, real world connection and creation.
It reminds me of the story of the islander who sits on the beach all day eating coconuts. One day he's approached by someone who tells him he should stop being so lazy and sell the coconuts. “Why?” He asks. “So you can make some money.” “Why would I want that?” “So you can get rich and build a big house and have servants.” “Why would I want that?” “So you can sit on the beach and eat coconuts all day.”
What are we looking for in this hyper-connected utopia? If all the connectivity only leads to consumption, entertainment and away from creativity and actual human connection, it hardly seems worth it.
Hilarious. Just as funny as the first Penrod book and easily one of the funniest books I have ever read.
What a tough book to read. Despite Vance's very compassionate portrayal of his family, he doesn't hold back on giving details that I'm sure they would prefer to remain private. It's even more uncomfortable after his explanation of the intense aversion “hillbillies” have to a member of the family even insinuating anything negative about his or her kin. And yet, here it is. A no holds barred look at a culture in serious distress.
It's a book that needed to be written. There's no way to understand this culture unless you either live in it or you get an up close and personal look at it. No amount of statistics about education, drugs, employment, or demographics can give you a clear picture. The Bible Belt is a real place with real people and unless America understands them, their already formidable problems will only intensify. The honor culture is very different from the dignity culture that you are probably part of and unless you get it, it is easy to vilify it or to try to fix it with simplistic solutions that only make it worse.
Maybe the toughest part of reading this was that I can see shadows of what he describes in my own extended family and friends. I was lucky enough to come from a very loving Southern family, but the attitudes of Vance's family members are very familiar to me. I always thought the things I saw were individual quirks rather than something more endemic, but clearly they are a pattern.
Vance is on a mission to help his country, his people, and by extension, my people. The approach he's taking is thoughtful, compassionate, and worthy of your attention.
Also worth checking out is Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind and the TV show Justified.
In some sense, I'm glad James wrote Cultural Amnesia in the early 2000's. At that time, he was able to end it on an optimistic note. Despite living in a post 9/11 world, he was able to conclude with the feeling that if the end of history wasn't already beginning, that it was imminent.
It's not.
In 2021 Cultural Amnesia feels more like a coda to the greatest hits of Western Civilization as we enter the neo-postmodern era where nothing beautiful is safe from puritanical purges.
Present context aside, this is a beautifully written book. It's an indulgent tour of the stars of modern history who come together to make a constellation in which the imaginative reader can begin to see the shape of human achievement, both for good and for ill.
This is a book about how to live disguised as a productivity book. If the only thing you're interested in is how to squeeze more work into every day, there are better resources such as David Allen's classic Getting Things Done. If you want more than that, don't miss Deep Work.
The message that stood out most to me was the connection between doing deep work and generally finding meaning in work. This idea seems to be a carry over from Newport's earlier book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, but since I haven't read that book, this was my first exposure to it.
Passion is often trotted out as the show horse we're all to chase if we're to find happiness and success in our careers. In Deep Work, Newport convincingly argues that it's actually skill and mastery that lead to passion and not the other way around. When we work at something long enough to get good at it, we find inherent satisfaction in doing it. This is partly due to Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi's very influential concept of “flow.” Flow the state we attain when we work at something that is right at the fine edge between too hard and too easy. We block out all other stimuli and go into a state of meditative work in which time passes quickly and in a deeply satisfying way. If we practice something enough to easily enter this flow state, we begin to associate these positive experiences with the work and develop a passion for the work.
Additionally, when we create work we're passionate about, it can lead to an overall happier life. This is part of the idea behind another book, Rapt, which again, I haven't read, but is summarized briefly in Deep Work. The core idea is that we are what we think. When we spend time focusing on pleasant or positive aspects of our experiences, we start to frame everything that happens in our lives in a way that is congruous with the positive things we're focusing on. It seems like a pretty obvious conclusion, but when placed alongside the idea of creating passionate work, it's easy to see how important it is to do work we're good at. It is a direct contributor to our overall happiness.
Happiness is great, but there are a couple other things we want from work, both of which circle back to make happiness itself easier to find. Obviously, the first is money. Once the money is flowing, we seek meaning. Newport makes arguments for how deep work can lead to both of these.
Money is the easy one. Robots are taking over the world. If your job can be done by someone with less than a college education, it's very likely that at some point in the not too distant future, it'll be automated by a robot. If you can become someone who builds or works with these robots in a way that increases automation, you will probably make a lot of money. If you don't do that, you can still make money by being one of the best in your field, whatever you field may be. In order to do either of those though, you're going to have to be able focus deeply and produce a lot of good work quick. This comes at a time when people who can do deep work are fewer and fewer. As Nicholas Carr shows in The Shallows, the increasingly distracted world we live in means that many people's brains are permanently altered so as to render them incapable of extended periods of focus and concentration.
It should be said that while deep work is one way to greatly increase your probability of making money, there ways to do it without deep work. For example, having capital to begin with and investing it or there are some forms of management where deep work isn't as much of a requirement. In most other fields though, the ability to work deeply is increasingly rare and increasingly necessary.
We also crave meaning. For a long time, meaning was found principally in the domain of religion, usually state run, or in the government of the state you happened to have been born into. This is argued in the book All Things Shining by Harvard philosophy chair Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. This is another book that I've added to my queue, so I won't take on the argument directly, but rather quote from Deep Work to make the point. Here's how Newport describes the loss of religious or state imbued meaning:
From Descartes's skepticism came the radical belief that the individual seeking certainty trumped a God or king bestowing truth. The resulting Enlightenment, of course, led to the concept of human rights and freed many from oppression. But as Dreyfus and Kelly emphasize, for all its good in the political arena, in the domain of the metaphysical this thinking stripped the world of the order and sacredness essential to creating meaning. In a post-Enlightenment world we have tasked ourselves to identify what's meaningful and what's not, an exercise that can seem arbitrary and induce a creeping nihilism. “The Enlightenment's metaphysical embrace of the autonomous individual leads not just to a boring life,” Dreyfus and Kelly worry; “it leads almost inevitably to a nearly unlivable one.”
Craftsmanship, Dreyfus and Kelly argue in their book's conclusion, provides a key to reopening a sense of sacredness in a responsible manner. To illustrate this claim, they use as an organizing example an account of a master wheelwright—the now lost profession of shaping wooden wagon wheels. “Because each piece of wood is distinct, it has its own personality,” they write after a passage describing the details of the wheelwright's craft. “The woodworker has an intimate relationship with the wood he works. Its subtle virtues call out to be cultivated and cared for.” In this appreciation for the “subtle virtues” of his medium, they note, the craftsman has stumbled onto something crucial in a post-Enlightenment world: a source of meaning sited outside the individual. The wheelwright doesn't decide arbitrarily which virtues of the wood he works are valuable and which are not; this value is inherent in the wood and the task it's meant to perform.
As Dreyfus and Kelly explain, such sacredness is common to craftsmanship. The task of a craftsman, they conclude, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.” This frees the craftsman of the nihilism of autonomous individualism, providing an ordered world of meaning. At the same time, this meaning seems safer than the sources cited in previous eras. The wheelwright, the authors imply, cannot easily use the inherent quality of a piece of pine to justify a despotic monarchy.
All Things Shining
Deep Work
Deep Work
This is the second book I've read on ISIS but it probably should have been the first. ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror by Michael Weiss is a much denser and more historical book than Black Flags. Black Flags is told like a story where each character and event is presented as a detailed vignette that is woven into a larger narrative. The writing is very good, the stories are tragic and captivating.
If you're looking to understand how we got to where we are now, this is a great place to start.
The story is less cohesive than The Dark Forest but this is easily compensated for by the incredible creativity and inventiveness of Liu Cixin's plot. He slowly builds concept on concept until the most insane universe seems utterly plausible.The book that I can most closely compare this too isn't science fiction at all, it's Nick Bostrom's [b:Superintelligence 20527133 Superintelligence Paths, Dangers, Strategies Nick Bostrom https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1400884046s/20527133.jpg 37286000]. What Bostrom does with AI, Liu Cixin does with interstellar civilizations.Death's End is tough to read in an existential sense, but a very strong finish to the best sci-fi series I've ever read.
I read the first ~150/200 pages of this book before we moved and I had to return it to the library, but even that much was enough to completely change the way I view the global energy situation and the popular quest for “energy independence.”
Especially during elections when it seems every candidate has a plan for energy independence, this book is an eye-opener. It has solid factual evidence (as well as a lot of interesting speculation and analysis) on the current energy situation and why energy independence is essentially an impossible, and possibly undesirable, goal in the near future (50/60 years).
Amazon should ship this book free to new customers because it's practically impossible to read without buying some of the books Fadiman and Major recommend.
Stoicism according to Epictetus, is:
Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life.
In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake it. Otherwise you will begin with spirit; but not having thought of the consequences, when some of them appear you will shamefully desist. “I would conquer at the Olympic games.” But consider what precedes and follows, and then, if it is for your advantage, engage in the affair. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from dainties; exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water, nor sometimes even wine. [...:] When you have evaluated all this, if your inclination still holds, then go to war. Otherwise, take notice, you will behave like children who sometimes play like wrestlers, sometimes gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet, and sometimes act a tragedy when they have seen and admired these shows. Thus you too will be at one time a wrestler, at another a gladiator, now a philosopher, then an orator; but with your whole soul, nothing at all. Like an ape, you mimic all you see, and one thing after another is sure to please you, but is out of favor as soon as it becomes familiar.
If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.
I read The Turmoil because it's the first in a three book series, the second of which is [b:The Magnificent Ambersons 127028 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171925907s/127028.jpg 365539], a Pulitzer winner. I'd also previously read Tarkington's [b:Penrod 601107 Penrod (Penguin Classics) Booth Tarkington http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176173780s/601107.jpg 587698] which became one of my all-time favorites. So, how did The Turmoil stack up? It's not hilarious as Penrod, though there are some really funny parts. It's also not as much of a vocabulary lesson, but it definitely stands on its own as a book worth reading. It took some time to grow on me, but grow on me it did, and by the end I, who have maybe cried at the ending of three books in my entire life, couldn't hold back a tear or two. The Turmoil was written well into the Industrial Revolution and as such, the story revolves heavily around business and industry. In some ways this book reminded me of Garrett's [b:The Driver 4495288 The Driver Garet Garrett http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31RtrJbXVLL.SL75.jpg 4544232]. The themes are similar and both have love stories intertwined. Only The Driver is clearly a pro-capitalism, pro-business and anti-intervention book. The Turmoil seems to take the opposite stance, but is more subtle. It heavily criticizes the downsides of the constant striving for “bigness,” both on the land and on those who are wrapped up in the struggle, but it's not an out and out disparagement of business and growth. The theme of the book is actually more about work versus art, love and beauty, or perhaps to state it more concisely, the role of work in life.The main character is Bibbs, the sickly son of the recently made, rich and powerful businessman Mr. Sheridan. Bibbs is a poet at heart and has no natural inclination for business, preferring instead to sit, think and write. In his own words, “The rooster and the prosperous worker: they are born, they grub, they love; they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die. Neither knows beauty; neither knows knowledge.” Bibb's character is almost cartoonish in his unflinching aversion for work and his love of poetry. His father is the opposite. He can't see any purpose for having children other than as heirs to his business. Work is his god, his greatest goal and highest virtue is “to make two blades o' grass grow where one grew before!” Bibbs to him is “a mighty funny boy, and some ways I reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the [b:Bible 7244 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165609814s/7244.jpg 810663].” The book is the complex interplay between these two characters, Sheridan's other children, and their, now poor, old-money neighbors, particularly their daughter, Mary.It's a beautiful and relevant story. Despite the focus on business, it is a story about humanity; our need to provide, our innate desire for growth and the value of the precious series of moments that we call life.“Ugly I am but never forget that I AM a god! The highest should serve, but so long as you worship me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man who makes me ugly, by his worship of me. If man would let me serve him, I should be beautiful!”
This book disappointed me. It meandered away from the plot too frequently and for too long to keep me interested a story that I otherwise might have enjoyed. Every time I found the plot pulling me in, Hugo delved off into 100 pages of 18th century French arcana and lost me completely.
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror is a very well researched history combined with first-hand accounts of the rise ISIS, its relationships with other states and groups in the region and throughout the world, along with insights into its motives, actions, and agendas.
If you're like me and not already particularly knowledgeable of Middle Eastern news and geography of the past 10+ years, you'll probably have some of the same struggles I did to keep up with all the names and places. If you can allow for some ambiguity though, the second half and final third of the book in particular are very well worth it. If you don't want the history, get the book just for the epilogue. The conclusions are harrowing.
Weiss concludes in part, that despite losing ground in places like Ramadi, ISIS is gaining ground elsewhere, even if it is not completely controlling the cities in a more traditional sense:
“ISIS continues to rule more or less uncontested in al-Bab, Minbij, Jarablous, Raqqa, southern Hasaka, Tal Afar, Qa'im, and outside the city center of Ramadi.” ... “ISIS has compensated for its 10 percent territorial losses in Iraq by gaining 4 percent in Syria, though you wouldn't know it to listen to US officials.”
“What's amazing is how we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, in Iraq but also in the broader Middle East,” Ali Khedery told us. “I've seen senior American officials waste time tweeting about the number of air strikes. Who cares about these tactical developments? Sunnis are being radicalized at record proportions. A counterterrorism approach isn't going to work with ISIS. We saw that in Iraq, and we'll see it in Syria.”
