Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[Ajidica]

Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. It looks at various African states and how they progressed from the euphoria of the 60's and independence to sordid little dictatorships and the troubles of the 90's.
I'm not that far in, but the book is worth it only for one anecdote in the beginning.
When Ghana declared its independence, Vice President Richard Nixon was sent as the American guest. While there, he asking a Ghanian how it felt to be free. The Ghanian replied "I wouldn't know sir, I'm from Alabama."

 

[Joecoolyo]

Just finished A Storm of Swords, read the entire second half in a day. GoT becomes addicting once you stop knowing what's going to happen.

Onto book four! A Feast for Crows!

 

[Lillefix]

Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. It looks at various African states and how they progressed from the euphoria of the 60's and independence to sordid little dictatorships and the troubles of the 90's.
I'm not that far in, but the book is worth it only for one anecdote in the beginning.
When Ghana declared its independence, Vice President Richard Nixon was sent as the American guest. While there, he asking a Ghanian how it felt to be free. The Ghanian replied "I wouldn't know sir, I'm from Alabama."

I've read the "State of Africa" by the same man. Is it the same book? In any case I loved it. Very informative and interesting.

 

[carmen510]

Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. It looks at various African states and how they progressed from the euphoria of the 60's and independence to sordid little dictatorships and the troubles of the 90's.
I'm not that far in, but the book is worth it only for one anecdote in the beginning.
When Ghana declared its independence, Vice President Richard Nixon was sent as the American guest. While there, he asking a Ghanian how it felt to be free. The Ghanian replied "I wouldn't know sir, I'm from Alabama."

The section dealing with Mobutu Sese Seko was quite interesting in that book. Quite a lot of the Cold War shenanigans from both sides messed up Africa it seems. It also seems to carry the lesson that decolonization might have been far less painful had the African nationalists been more patient in the withdrawal of European powers and the Europeans were slightly more willing to actually act like so-called parents and tell them to wait longer to avoid bad stuff from occurring.

EDIT: I've been reading the Battle Cry of Freedom in my spare time and Hans J. Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace for my college proseminar class.

 

[Ajidica]

Yeah, one thing the book has done well is impress on me just how poor and backwards colonial Africa was. For example, in Kenya, the first African lawyer began working in 1957, less than a decade before independence. When you replace a well trained and educated administration with whatever the country could scrape out of the barrel to fill the vacancies, you are going to have a massive problem.

 

[Masada]

Horns - Joe Hill
Confederates in the Attic - Tony Horwitz

 

[Ajidica]

Could you tell us what the books are about? Otherwise, I'm forced to assume that 'Confederates in the Attic' is a phrase used to express insanity in someone, much like 'bats in the belfry'.

 

[Masada]

The latter is a book about people who <3 the civil war on both sides.

The first is contemporary dark fantasy about a murder, the effects it has on the people around the victim and what happens when you give one of those demonic powers. Its also apparently being made into a movie that Harry Potter will star in.

 

[Traitorfish]

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark. Given to understand it's a good one.

Dubliners by James Joyce for the fiction side of things. Part of a vague effort to start reading novels that aren't about spaceships.

 

[Antilogic]

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark. Given to understand it's a good one.

I'm not saying the mention of that book's title gives me a massive history boner, but I'm not saying it doesn't. In all seriousness, it's quite good, and I wish I read it the moment I got it rather than two months after it started collecting dust.

 

[Arakhor]

I read Introducing Quantum Theory - A Graphic Guide the other week. It was really quite good.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I just finished Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market by Susan Strasser, which chronicles the rise of mass-produced consumer goods in the late 19th and early 20th century. Similar to Strasser's Never Done, which focused on the changing role of 'housework' in the new economy and Waste and Want: A Social History of Garbage in examining American households' transformation from centers of production to consumption, Satisfaction Guaranteed examines how the market came to be. Strasser covers industrial technology, new systems of legal and business organization, and the role of advertising to teach people how to use goods they'd never imagined needing. Impressive as ever, though not as expansive as her other works.

I'm now reading Sky Walking by Tom Jones, one of the few memoirs of space shuttle astronauts out there. The only other one is Mike Mullane's Riding Rockets, which consists mostly of penis jokes. Jones is far more professional.

 

[Traitorfish]

I just finished Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market by Susan Strasser, which chronicles the rise of mass-produced consumer goods in the late 19th and early 20th century. Similar to Strasser's Never Done, which focused on the changing role of 'housework' in the new economy and Waste and Want: A Social History of Garbage in examining American households' transformation from centers of production to consumption, Satisfaction Guaranteed examines how the market came to be. Strasser covers industrial technology, new systems of legal and business organization, and the role of advertising to teach people how to use goods they'd never imagined needing. Impressive as ever, though not as expansive as her other works.

You had me at "social history of garbage".

 

[warpus]

Finished reading Feersum Endjinn (not bad) and Excession (very good!) by Iain M. Banks at the cottage.

Halfway through Surface Detail (By Banks) now. Really enjoying this one and Excession was probably the best space opera I've ever read.

 

[Kozmos]

Absolution Gap by Reynolds. Keeps blowing my mind with those lesser known theories and experiments in physics.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Finished my Eastern Europe book. Rather annoying. Very preachy at times, with its superior tone when discussing markets and planned economies.

Waiting for classes to start, I've cracked open On History by Eric Hobsbawm. So far a very good book. I would expect nothing less from one of my favorite historians.

 

[Antilogic]

Well, update time! I'm about 80% through the book, and thoroughly enjoying it. The book follows Earl Warren from childhood through his term on the Supreme Court, but fortunately (for me, at least), it moves through quickly through the early days and into Warren's legal career and term as attorney general of California. Then it gets into his governorship, which is simultaneously fascinating and idol-breaking (his role in the Japanese internment, for example, was quite surprising to me given the decisions on the court). Three terms and two failed presidential campaigns later, he's appointed to the Supreme Court and it gets into the politics of the court, the positioning of the justices, how Warren marshals support for the decisions. Fascinating stuff.

Just finished this book--took about two weeks to finish the last bit of the book, but I've been pretty busy with work during the same time period.

It's a really fascinating look into the Supreme Court, and I'm glad the book focused on Earl Warren's tenure as the Governor of California and as Chief Justice. It was somewhat eery, especially with the decisions regarding speech and protesting, how relevant the arguments were to the modern day.

As for my next read... I'll have to look at my library to figure out what that is. Might switch away from the bios for a little while, we'll see.

 

[JollyRoger]

I've got a biography of Earl Warren on my office bookshelf along with biographies of Archibald Cox and Clarence Darrow. Haven't got around to reading them yet - I probably should.

 

[Smellincoffee]

You had me at "social history of garbage".

Fantastic book. It's rivaled only by Garbage Land as the best book on trash I've ever read. If you're interested, I posted a review of it here.


I just finished Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir by Tom Jones, which recounted his four space shuttle missions in the 1990s. Jones was involved in the crews that began construction of the International Space Station. I also finished The Sky is Not the Limit by Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is part autobiography and part popular science. As much as I like Tyson's lectures, his books tend to be a bit drier -- but not this one. Perhaps because it started off on such a personal note...

My next read is as-yet undetermined. I have Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood, and Milton Friedman's Free to Choose to consider. I'm also reading Wendell Berry's Home Economics[ essay collection in 'devotional' form...an essay a night.

(When I read Friedman, I intend to follow it up Born to Buy, on the commercialization of childhood as a rebuttal of sorts.)

 

[Antilogic]

I've got a biography of Earl Warren on my office bookshelf along with biographies of Archibald Cox and Clarence Darrow. Haven't got around to reading them yet - I probably should.

I read Jim Newton's biography, don't quite know how it measures up to the other available bios. The epilogue gave me the impression that Warren is an under-appreciated centrist--there are virtually no monuments or roads or schools or anything named after him because over his long centrist/left-Republican career he has given every interest group something to hate about him. The Old South can't stand his position on segregation while the Japanese-American community objects to his role in the WW2 internment. He was a Kennedy and Johnson Republican and hated by Nixon and members of his own party, yet was never quite accepted in Democratic circles (especially after Vietnam, since he sided with Johnson on the war and that was unpopular in the post-war Democratic party).

Fantastic book. It's rivaled only by Garbage Land as the best book on trash I've ever read. If you're interested, I posted a review of it here.

...

My next read is as-yet undetermined. I have Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood, and Milton Friedman's Free to Choose to consider. I'm also reading Wendell Berry's Home Economics[ essay collection in 'devotional' form...an essay a night.

I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on this one, when you read it. I've been looking at a handful of books to follow up Cronon on the rural/urban divide in America.