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This was a favorite thread in the now-defunct New York Times forums. We can here discuss significant books that we are reading, not limited to those with obvious connections with Fourth Turning theory. Please discuss books that will be of interest to other posters, which can obviously include literary classics, biographies of important figures of culture and history, general history, political theory. So go ahead and discuss any reading projects underway.
I got a $50 gift card from a used-book dealer and got a literary gold mine:
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
A Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns-Goodwin
Peter the Great, Robert Massie
the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant
As I can read only one book at a time, I have started on The Magic Mountain. My brother, who gave me the gift certificate, has gotten a start on the Grant biography.
Please discuss books that other people might want to read and discuss. No semi-pornographic novels, technical manuals, or conspiracy
theories -- please. Books off internet sources in the public domain are welcome. That is how I had Les Miserables as a reading project.
Previously read -- and it did not take much time, but it did get me thinking while it jerked some tears was Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, a short, concise, and powerful tale of child neglect and exploitation.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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12-29-2018, 08:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-29-2018, 08:33 PM by Tim Randal Walker.)
Destined For War Can America And China Escape Thucydides's Trap? by Graham Allison.
Check out the web site, http://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file
In one particular aspect the book seems out dated-one can't expect China to be a "responsible stakeholder" in an American led international order...if Donald Trump seems to want to smash said order.
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Just got "Civilization on Trial", a collection of essays by Toynbee.
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02-07-2019, 12:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-07-2019, 12:21 PM by Bill the Piper.)
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-as-Rel...B003XT60BS
A fundamental ideal of the modern West on trial. By a Silent (which may be important for Hintergrund. He's not fond of this generation at all)
I will try Toynbee, too.
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02-13-2019, 01:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-13-2019, 01:44 PM by Tim Randal Walker.)
Everything Under The Heavens. How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power by Howard W. French.
The author indicates that todays Chinese have that old Middle Kingdom mind set, and that all other cultures are expected to defer to Chinese awesomeness.
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I just finished reading this book, and enjoyed it very much: Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr (2018). It's about young punk rockers in East Germany in the 1980s, their persecution by the Stasi, who classified them as the number 1 most threatening youth culture of the day, and their role in the underground movements that brought down the Wall. Their motto (one of their mottos): "Don't die in the waiting room of the future."
"Like visual artists and writers, political activists could melt back into anonymity after a demonstration. While politically focused activists might appear at first glance to to have represented a more serious threat to the dictatorship, their protests were discrete events separate from everyday life. Punks, by contrast, because of the way they looked, represented active constant opposition any time they appeared in public. You couldn't spray hoses on punks and throw them in the slammer overnight to stop their particular form of protest. Because the next day they would just walk down the street again, embodying constant active protest, an all-encompassing protest tied to their very person and being. From the perspective of the Stasi, punk was a menacing outsider cult causing more and more kids to opt out of the preordained future the government had in mind for them." --from the book
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I am currently reading Citizens by Simon Schama (French Revolution), The Quest For Meaning by Tariq Ramadan, a philosophical approach to political pluralism, and Ruling The Waves by Debora Spar, which I just posted a review of in the Technology forum.
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
Saecular Pages
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Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl; Hillbilly Elegy, J.D.Vance; the autobiography of Walter Cronkhite.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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I just completed Radium Girls.
Radioactivity had a literal glow about it, but people did not yet realize what came with it: destruction of the working-class girls who painted dials with the glowing paint.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(07-16-2020, 06:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I just completed Radium Girls.
Radioactivity had a literal glow about it, but people did not yet realize what came with it: destruction of the working-class girls who painted dials with the glowing paint.
There's a play based on the plight of these workers which is fairly popular in High School theater-
https://www.dramaticpublishing.com/radium-girls
And a film version of the story as well (not sure if it's based on the play or if it's a separate adaptation)-
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6317180/
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
Saecular Pages
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I've been using https://www.goodreads.com/ to track my reading. It's kind of fun and you can leave reviews. I'm always in the middle of multiple books.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10...ly-reading
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
Saecular Pages
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07-16-2020, 09:21 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-16-2020, 09:21 AM by David Horn.)
(07-16-2020, 07:36 AM)sbarrera Wrote: ... I'm always in the middle of multiple books...
Bravo. I'm incapable of that feat myself. If I try, at best I finish one of them.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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John Dickerson's "The Hardest Job in the World."
Dickerson began a whole series of podcasts on the history of the U.S. Presidency some years ago. That probably contributed to this book - an excellent read.
[font=Arial Black]... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.[/font]
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The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775 - 1777 by Rick Atkinson.
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Well, apart from near-daily readings for the intensive outpatient program of one of those places which isn't jail but you're strongly advised not to leave for at least 30 days (unless of course ordered there by a judge) because of your problem with certain beverages, leafy greens, and or powdery substances (I spent nearly a week in the hospital in February, much of it tethered to an IV and heart monitor, heavily medicated, subsisting on a diet of liquids, and at least for the first couple/few days unable to get out of bed without permission, and oh I had shown up at the ER in roughly the same shape two weeks earlier), I'm reading "America's Bitter Pill" (about the passage of the ACA), "There is Power in Union" (history of the labor movement here), "Going Clear" (about Scientology), TS Eliot's greatest hits (because I often am), and "The Bacchae" (because at least the first part of the idea of being able to drink a lot then go out into the woods and tear people limb from limb doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world just now ie you guys go ahead, I'll just stay behind and guard the wine).
Anyone live in the Boston area? I'll be on the Dr. Joe show (apparently before too long), which is on WATD radio and the internet, talking about some of my, um, problems. (If any of you ever watched the 2t PBS show "Zoom" he was among the original cast.)
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I finally took a trip to a bookstore that has largely been closed since COVID-10 became a menace... on a Christmas gift card.
The book that I have started to read is The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt.
I thought that it would be of little relevance to America once Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 election. Then came an event that resembled in some ways the Bolsheviks storming the Winter palace in Petrograd and the Beer Hall Putsch.
I still see Trump banners flying high and proud. I never saw that for Obama.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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03-19-2021, 04:51 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2021, 04:52 AM by Captain Genet.)
(03-19-2021, 02:32 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I still see Trump banners flying high and proud. I never saw that for Obama.
Maybe the Obama worshippers are flying their banners in other places:
The worship of Obama (markhumphrys.com)
The same guy on Trump:
https://markhumphrys.com/trump.html
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This is after Trump egged people on to charge into the Capitol to "stop the steal". Support of someone after that indicates that some people think that their idealized leader is beyond conventional questions of Right and Wrong.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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