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August 24
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Tresy
is currently reading:
The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention (Paperback)
by Guy Deutscher
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my rating:
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Tresy said:
"A fantastic, funny, and insightful book drawing on a vast amount of material to answer the seemingly unanswerable question? How does language come to be and what makes it change? Not as overtly partisan as Steven Pinker (an innatist) , Deuatcher open...more
A fantastic, funny, and insightful book drawing on a vast amount of material to answer the seemingly unanswerable question? How does language come to be and what makes it change? Not as overtly partisan as Steven Pinker (an innatist) , Deuatcher opens up more avenues for exploration, and his wit is just as sparkling. ...less
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April 14
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Tresy
gave
to:
Water for Elephants (Paperback)
by Sara Gruen
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my rating:
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read in March, 2008
Tresy said:
"A good read, well researched by the author, about life in a traveling circus during the Depression.
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Tresy
gave
to:
The Road (Hardcover)
by Cormac McCarthy
bookshelves:
must-read
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my rating:
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read in March, 2008
Tresy said:
"An utterly compelling read about a man and his son trekking across a blasted, post-nuclear American landscape, and the bond between them. Despite the relentless horror and bleakness, the novel is almost impossible to put down, and McCarthy's command ...more
An utterly compelling read about a man and his son trekking across a blasted, post-nuclear American landscape, and the bond between them. Despite the relentless horror and bleakness, the novel is almost impossible to put down, and McCarthy's command of language is a thing of beauty. ...less
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Tresy
gave
to:
The Cold War: A New History (Paperback)
by John Lewis Gaddis
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read in March, 2008
Tresy said:
"A good, if utterly tendentious account of the cold war from a pro-US perspective, by a "dean" of foreign policy at Yale. No amount of ink is too much to expend on the USSR's and China's crimes against humanity, but all similar US crimes are...more
A good, if utterly tendentious account of the cold war from a pro-US perspective, by a "dean" of foreign policy at Yale. No amount of ink is too much to expend on the USSR's and China's crimes against humanity, but all similar US crimes are rationalized away as reluctant departures from our true and virtuous nature, necessitated by the evil we were confronting. Funny how we keep finding ourselves reluctantly violating these values we supposedly hold (e.g, torture and warrantless wiretapping) even after the evil empires are gone (or in the case of China, making its cheap labor available to our Wal-Marts). Gaddis supposedly was an admirer of the Bush Doctrine, and it shows....less
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Tresy
gave
to:
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (Paperback)
by Jon Lee Anderson
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my rating:
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read in August, 2008
Tresy said:
"A comprehensive, meticulous, if somewhat plodding biography of one of the most universally misappropriated figures of the 20th Century. I'm not yet in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel, but the prologue to Che's rendezvous with history is still compellin...more
A comprehensive, meticulous, if somewhat plodding biography of one of the most universally misappropriated figures of the 20th Century. I'm not yet in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel, but the prologue to Che's rendezvous with history is still compelling. Did you know he was on hand when the CIA overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala? And folks wonder why Fidel didn't wait around for the US to do the same with the Batistianos (and they tried anway). BTW, if you ever wondered where he got the nickname, it is an Argentine catchphrase mean roughly, "Hey you!" that he was apparently fond of. ...less
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February 15
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New comment on Job's review of
Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)
reply to this comment
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February 14
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Tresy
gave
to:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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read in November, 2007
Tresy said:
"This is an important book. A sweeping tour de force of the last 30-odd years of world economic history, The Shock Doctrine examines the rise of what is often known as "neoliberalism" and its toxic effect on every society exposed to it. This...more
This is an important book. A sweeping tour de force of the last 30-odd years of world economic history, The Shock Doctrine examines the rise of what is often known as "neoliberalism" and its toxic effect on every society exposed to it. This sounds pretty dry, but it's anything but. Klein's research traces the roots of neoliberalism--the ideology of radical free market capitalsm--from the twin incubators of the psych lab and Chicago School of Economics to its ascendant position in the world today. Most of us know about the horrors of Pinochet coup and the other similar abuses that accompanied dictatorhips in Indonesia and elsewhere. Most of us, too, know about the hideous abuses and corruption in Iraq. Fewer perhaps are aware of the complicity of neoliberalism in these and other nightmare societies, however, and it's for this reason that Klein's book is a must, because what she manages to do is show how systematically a antidemocratic ideology has been dismantling the structures of society after society since the early 70s. And "antidemocratic" neoliberalism is: with virtually no important exceptions, in every country where radical free maket policies have been implemented, suppression of democratic control has been a precondition. Where feasible the suppression merely takes the form of IMF enforced austerity measure and kindred tools of fiscal strangulation, but where necessary it will and does resort to horrific violence to accomplish its ends.
What makes Klein's book dazzling is the way she ties together such disparate crises as Hurrican Katrina, Iraq, Chile, the Indonesian tsunami, and Iraq to show how, at every juncture, neoliberal ideologues used the crisis at hand to ram through its agenda in defiance of popular will. If you find it ironic that policies touted as "free market" have to use force and coercion to achieve its ends, then there's plenty more of the same in this book. Read it to understand how we got to where we are today, and how we can hopefully turn things around in the years to come....less
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February 05
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Tresy
gave
to:
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Hardcover)
by Vincent Bugliosi
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my rating:
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read in August, 2007
Tresy said:
"There's an old saying, never get in an argument with someone who can buy ink by the barrel. There should be a second: never get in an argument with Vincent Bugliosi. Former Manson prosecutor ("Helter Skelter") and scourge of OJ Simpson (&qu...more
There's an old saying, never get in an argument with someone who can buy ink by the barrel. There should be a second: never get in an argument with Vincent Bugliosi. Former Manson prosecutor ("Helter Skelter") and scourge of OJ Simpson ("Outrage"), Bugliosi seemed to go into understandable seclusion after watching and raging about the insanity of the Clinton witchhunt ("No Island of Sanity") and the Bush-Gore debacle ("Betrayal of America").
Now we know what he was really up to: marshaling his outrage against the Kennedy conspiracy industry. The result is an absolutely brutal, 1600-page, prosecutorial takedown of very single Kennedy assassination conspiracy you've ever heard or read about. Beginning with an exhaustive, sometimes minute by minute account of Oswald's documented activities leading to Dealey Plaza, Bugliosi leaves absolutely no doubt that not only did Oswald kill Kennedy, but that he did so alone and unaided by anyone else.
Why should we care? For several reasons. One is intellectual hygiene; most Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK and a cover-up of same, which if true would be a monstrous indictment of the US government. Simple self-respect, if not love of country, demands that one subject those beliefs to the test of evidence and reason.
Another reason is somewhat more sociological. Once you undertand how simply overwhelming is the evidence of Oswald's guilt (and his lack of accomplices), the question naturally arises: how did so many of us come to believe, as almost an article of faith, utter and complete horseshit? (I was one of those for many years.) It's tempting to call this a hoax, but as with the Bush Administration's lies about WMD, it's a blurry line when the liar believes his own lies, and it's clear that the cottage industry of conspiracy buffs largely believes the crap they peddle. So really, what emerges from Reclaiming History is a case study in mass popular self-delusion, one moreover that ignited and burns steadily even today without much help from the mass media (Oliver Stone's dishonest film JFK being a glaring exception). That so many can be so easily fooled by so few is a cautionary lesson in its own right.
Lastly, there is the sheer drama of the story. Like Mailer's Executioner's Song, there is a mysterious fascination in the life of a disturbed man with big ambitions trapped in a small, hopeless life, and Bugliosi does a great job of putting us in Oswald's shoes. There is also the car-wreck appeal of watching so many tragic contingencies line up to yield a nightmare we're still not yet awake from.
The main flaw in the book is Bugliosi's unconcealed contempt for the buffs. While justified, his contempt boils over at various places in the book in almost comical fashion, sometimes making him sound like the crank, rather than the buffs. (25 years of reading crackpot conspiracies will probably do that to one.) Something tells me that either he refused a professional editor, or more likely, a professional editor refused him. I can't imagine Vince is very easy to work with.
Still, even more than Posner's Case Closed (which Bugliosi also castigates for historical slipperiness), Reclaiming History is one of those rare books that challenges one's beliefs and in the end definitively answers them. Read the book so that we can all finally let JFK rest in peace. ...less
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