Grand unified books thread

[Savonarola]

I was reading Francis Bacon's "Essays: Civil and Moral" and came across a reference to "Antimasques."  A masque was a type of courtly entertainment sort of like opera.  Ben Johnson introduced "Antimasques" between acts, which were a sort of comic or grotesque dance.  The idea was that, since masques were frequently performed by members of the court; antimasques (which were only performed by actors) would make the masques (and their performers) look dignified by comparison.

[Caliga]

I've been reading Mungo Park's travel journals.  Really interesting stuff.

I didn't know this before, but after he reached the Niger, he travelled most of the way back to the Senegal coast in a slave caravan, and he spent a lot of time talking about the slaves.  Most of the slaves in the caravan had become slaves either due to literal debts or because they were starving to death and exchanged their freedom for food.  I had thought most of the African slaves transported via the Middle Passage were essentially POWs captured during African tribal conflicts.

Also, they were terrified of being sold to white men because they believed all white men to be cannibals and assumed they would be eaten.  When Mungo Park told them that they would most likely end up performing agricultural labor, they laughed at him because they believed farming was something which simply didn't happen "on the other side of the salt river", where white men lived.

[Savonarola]

I finished Como Agua Para Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.  If there was such a thing as a magical realism telenovela, this would be it.  (Actually magical realism is no less improbable than the plots of many telenovelas.)  The movie follows the book pretty closely; Esquivel is a screenwriter so that probably influences how she wrote.  I've heard the opposite about F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood career; he wrote screenplays as if they were novels - which is why almost none of his scripts were turned into movies.

Has anyone had Chiles en Nogada?  That sounds positively baroque, even by the standards of Mexican cooking.

[Savonarola]

Another from "Essays: Civil and Moral"; Bacon references "Pine-apple-trees" in his essay on gardening.  He means pine trees; in the Elizabethan/Jacobean era pine cones were known as pine-apples.

[KRonn]

I just finished reading "Washington's Immortals" by Patrick K. O'Donnell. It's about an elite unit in Washington's army during the revolution. A regiment formed from soldiers from Maryland mainly but also Delaware, formed well before the war for local defense.

This unit probably saved the revolution from failure such as the battle in Manhattan in the early war. The American army was out flanked and cut off by the British, being boxed in from escape  by rivers and ocean. The regiment was called on to hold and delay the British. The units held and even attacked against heavy odds, delaying the British until too dark for the Brits to continue the attack. That gave the army the time it needed to make a near miraculous escape in small boats overnight.

The unit would make many other strong contributions, being often called upon when things were toughest.

[The Minsky Moment]

New York City was indefensible against a superior foe on land and sea and it was very dangerous for Washington to try, although politically he was under pressure from the Congress.  Washington knew the danger because right after the fall of Long Island, he speculated that Howe would go up the Hudson and capture the Kings Bridge in what is now the South Bronx, thus cutting off the entire Continental Army.   Howe didn't do that right away and Washington was able to retreat his army step-by-step, relying on rearguard heroics like the Marylanders.

Howe was no fool and could read a map - later in that campaign he did try to cut off Washington in Westchester and succeeded in part. In the earlier part of the campaign, however, he put as much effort into opening negotiations as fighting.  It appears that one of the reasons Washington was able to evacuate the city is that Howe was restraining himself in the hope of advancing peace talks.  That doesn't take away from the bravery of the Marylanders but it gives some context.

[KRonn]

Minsky, good info. Yeah, I think Howe was more sympathetic to the rebel cause, at least at first. At Manhattan, as we say, Howe could have likely ended the war by either military defeat of Washington or maybe what he wanted more was the surrender of the trapped army to try and reduce revolution fervor.   

There was indeed a lot of fighting along the Hudson river, with victories and defeats by each side. The British defeat at Saratoga in 1777 prevented the British from splitting the colonies. In the war's later years, General Washington camped outside New York with General Clinton fortified inside, neither side having the strength to attack the other. Much of the fighting would take place down south in those years.

[Savonarola]

I thought some of our lawyers might appreciate Ovid's advice on where to pick up chicks:

And the law-courts (who'd believe it?) they suit love:
a flame is often found in the noisy courts:
where the Appian waters pulse into the air,
from under Venus's temple, made of marble,
there the lawyer's often caught by love,
and he who guides others, fails to guide himself:
in that place of eloquence often his words desert him,
and a new case starts, his own cause is the brief.
There Venus, from her neighbouring temples, laughs:
he, who was once the counsel, now wants to be the client.

Art of Love, Book I, Part III

[Admiral Yi]

Seems to me he's saying practicing law makes you horny, not that you can pull in a court room.

[Savonarola]

Seems to me he's saying practicing law makes you horny, not that you can pull in a court room.

In this part of the book he is describing where you can meet the girl; though he does add in colorful commentary as he goes along.

Right before this passage he advises to go to shrines and temples including:

And don't forget the shrine of Adonis, Venus wept for,
and the sacred Sabbath rites of the Syrian Jews.

[Savonarola]

I saw this on BBC.com and thought it was interesting:

What the Earliest Fragments of English Reveal

A year or so ago I read The Complete Old English Poems (The Middle Ages Series).  The part I thought was most interesting was the poetic translation of Genesis and Exodus; which was a reinterpretation of the books from the standpoint of a sea-faring warrior culture.  In Exodus, for instance, the Israelites handily trounce the Egyptians, whatever miraculous aid occurred is just mentioned in passing.  The Genesis account may form the basis of Paradise Lost; at least the manuscript was owned by a friend of Milton and the two stories are remarkably similar.

[Syt]

I've been looking for an English language book about the Warring States period of Japan for a while. A lot of the ones I found were either very short or very old. Now I've picked up this one on Kindle, a book about Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomo Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. So far it's good: https://www.amazon.com/Sengoku-Jidai-Nobunaga-Hideyoshi-Ieyasu-ebook/dp/B078X3MVBL

[Habbaku]

Syt, you might also consider this one:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41dPQFmEM-L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Provides more context than just the immediate circumstances of the Three Unifiers. If you get even more curious, it has a "...to 1334" and a post-1615 book in the series as well.

[Syt]

Thanks, but not available as Kindle, it seems, and decent editions seem to go for silly prices.

[The Brain]

I got the two Sansom books to 1615. Nice enough but old.