Grand unified books thread

[grumbler]

Thanks. I also have John Toland's The Rising Sun still sitting in my backlog. It's not exactly a small book, and by now over 50 years old, but it was recommended to me as a well readable account from the Japanese point of view that uses a lot of primary sources research.

Beware of reading too much into Toland, though.  He used Japanese primary sources, but many of those sources have been discredited in the meantime by Japanese scholars.  He also wrote before most of the revelations about US codebreaking.

[Oexmelin]

The Cundill History Prize has released its long list this week:

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism
    J.P. Daughton (W. W. Norton & Company)

Cuba
    Ada Ferrer (Scribner)

The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire
    Henrietta Harrison (Princeton University Press)

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands
    Kelly Lytle Hernández (W. W. Norton & Company)

Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich
    Harald Jähner (Ebury, PRH)

The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
    Mark Mazower (Penguin Press)

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
    Tiya Miles (Random House)

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
   Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton & Company)

Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate
    M.E. Sarotte (Yale University Press)

Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession, and Genius in Modern China
    Jing Tsu (Allen Lane)

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
    Vladislav M. Zubok (Yale University Press)

[Sheilbh]

Just bought (not read yet) The Backstreets which has just come out in the UK.

I believe it's the first English translation of a novel from Xinjian, by Perhat Tursun who is a Uyghur writer who has, since 2018, been detained by Chinese authorities and reportedly serving a 16 year prison sentence.

It's had comparisons with Camus - or perhaps an Algerian Camus (like Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation). Translated into English by a professor and anonymous cotranslator who disappeared in 2017 and is presumed to be in the re-education camp system.

Thought it might be of interest to some.

[Sheilbh]

RIP Hilary Mantel

I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about her incredible LRB essay from when Kate and William got married, Royal Bodies:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

[Syt]

Thanks. I also have John Toland's The Rising Sun still sitting in my backlog. It's not exactly a small book, and by now over 50 years old, but it was recommended to me as a well readable account from the Japanese point of view that uses a lot of primary sources research.

Beware of reading too much into Toland, though.  He used Japanese primary sources, but many of those sources have been discredited in the meantime by Japanese scholars.  He also wrote before most of the revelations about US codebreaking.

Thanks for the warning!

[Syt]

If you are interested in a highly analytical view of the Sino-Japanese war in China (up to Dec 1941),  A Gathering Darkness by HP Willmott and Haruo Tohmatsu is highly recommended.  Notable also for the insane Kindle price that I doubt a single person has paid.  The paperback price is high but worth it, especially for the interaction of the Japanese domestic political situation and the decisions made about the war.  Has some Chinese domestic political stuff I'd never seen before, as well.

For a 196 page book that's a steep price I like buying my non-fiction books, but I may keep an eye out for it at libraries ...

[Maladict]

RIP Hilary Mantel

I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about her incredible LRB essay from when Kate and William got married, Royal Bodies:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

 

[Savonarola]

I've been reading some of the Norton Anthology of American Literature.  A number of the early parts of the book deal with Native American storytelling.  Throughout many of the Native American cultures Coyote features prominently as the trickster character.  One story, that comes from the Chinook people in the Pacific Northwest, deals with how Coyote learns the various taboos about salmon fishing.  The story is largely a repetition, Coyote is unable to catch salmon, so he takes a shit and asks his shit why he can't catch salmon, and the shit responds telling Coyote which taboo he's broken.  (Since the person who preserved this was a lexigrapher rather than folklorist or anthropologist it's written like that.)  While reading that I thought it was too bad Joseph Campbell hadn't picked up on that story; Star Wars could have been quite different.  (Although it's not outside the realm of possibility that George Lucas's shit did tell him how to write the prequels.)

[Oexmelin]

I don't know, isn't Vader a Dark Lord of the Shit?

[The Minsky Moment]

RIP Hilary Mantel

She was not that old.

[Admiral Yi]

She certainly didn't look old in her flyleaf pictures.

[mongers]

Read a book*, returned it to the local library from whence it came.

Felt like a bit of an old-fashion thing to do.


* 'The Evidence' by Christopher Priest, its a return to his Dream Archipelago setting with touches from 'The Prestige', perhaps his most well-known book and source for Nolan's film of the same name.

[crazy canuck]

The update of Cline's 1177BC is worth a read. 

[Savonarola]

I read Thomas Levenson's Measure for Measure which is a combined history of music and science.  He tries to demonstrate how musical instruments and scientific instruments developed in parallel, but the connections are usually tenuous which leaves him to long stretches where he describes the development one or the other.  He confuses scientific instrument and machine at many points; but that does lead to a somewhat better connection, for example a Jacquard Loom and a player piano are similar in concept.  he's an interesting storyteller, if nothing else, so at least it's a readable popular history of music, technology and science.

[The Brain]

Finished Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise 2nd ed, by Speake. A very readable account of Athos today and its history, with a personal touch. And with some nice pics. I have seen Athos from a distance but I have never visited it myself.