Matthew Royal > Recent Status Updates

I'm hoping that after the long list of Roman emperors and judgments of their value and morals, detached from their policies and actions, is only an introduction to the events of their reigns, to follow.

I'm beginning to distrust Gibbon as an omniscient narrator. He oftentimes spouts his judgments and insights without providing underlying facts or instances, or even admitting that the historical record is silent. It's an act of faith to take what he says as true, in these instances. Therefore, his causal analysis is not compelling; it is the unsubstantiated theorizing of one man.

"A hasty zeal to reform the corrupted state, accompanied with less prudence than might have been expected from the years and experience of Pertinax, proved fatal to himself and to his country. His honest indiscretion united against him the servile crowd, who found their private benefit in the public disorders, and who preferred the favor of a tyrant to the inexorable equality of the laws."

Studying piano back in college, I had a music professor tell me that Baroque music must be played without expression, like a machine. Thank goodness for my private instructor -- they had hearts and passions! "...we need to approach these pieces of music in the same manner as was done at the time, rhetorically."

This book is awful, but I want to know how it ends.

So much exposition... Phillips is constantly providing back story it seems like this would be book 3 in the series rather than book 1. He provides a lot of and talk about how awesome and right and dominant the main characters are, but I'd like more showing than telling.

So much exposition... Scalzi is constantly providing back story it seems like this would be book 3 in the series rather than book 1. He provides a lot of and talk about how awesome and right and dominant the main characters are, but I'd like more showing than telling.

Surber attempts to whip the reader into a frenzy by listing a litany of attacks against Donald, follows by the chanting "Down goes Donald. Down goes Donald. Down goes Donald." no fewer than 11 times. I nearly listed this book as DNF with a 1-star review, but checked the chapter listing and found the promising title "Why Goliath Failed"in chapter 46. There may yet be a thesis to this book.

My suspicion that this book is entirely partisan rah-rah-ing is mostly intact at nearly halfway through the book. "Mostly" because the most recent chapter 18 pitted Trump against not only liberals, but the conservative media and establishment.
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"[New Orleans] is physically dark, dark like the negative of a photograph, dark like an X-ray: the atmosphere absorbs its own light, never reflects light but sucks it in until random objects glow with a morbid luminescence."

Don explicitly states his intent to construct a hero narrative and mythologizes him: "but Trump was a winner—“a kind of mash-up of Santa Claus, Scrooge McDuck, and Vito Corleone,” as Reihan Salam had recalled from growing up in Brooklyn."

A phrase that stuck out to me: "Potential to be great, but paralyzed by fear."

So far, this book is fluffy, light, and fast. Good pointers toward achieving cozy lighting at home, though.

I'm about 1/5th through the book, and so far it's a literature review of press clippings that underestimate the Trump campaign and the man on different topics. The pattern helps the text become skimmable -- unless there is some wrap up synthesizing trends, this book may be simple partisan crowing.

Not belonging to either major party, it is not offensive, but I don't see the value. Might be a DNF.

Totalitarianism grows out of absolutism. Nazi leadership believed: "The more accurately we recognize and observe the laws of nature and life, ... so much the more do we conform to the will of the Almighty. The more insight we have into the will of the Almighty, the greater will be our successes." This sounds disturbingly familiar to me, living in the USA today.