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Grand unified books thread

Started by Syt, March 16, 2009, 01:52:42 AM

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grumbler

Quote from: Syt on September 08, 2022, 08:42:23 AMThanks. :) 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.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

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)
Que le grand cric me croque !

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.
Let's bomb Russia!

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
Let's bomb Russia!

Syt

Quote from: grumbler on September 08, 2022, 05:04:36 PM
Quote from: Syt on September 08, 2022, 08:42:23 AMThanks. :) 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! :)
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Syt

Quote from: grumbler on September 08, 2022, 05:02:44 PMIf 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 :o I like buying my non-fiction books, but I may keep an eye out for it at libraries ... :unsure:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Maladict

Quote from: Sheilbh on September 23, 2022, 06:14:19 AMRIP 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.)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Oexmelin

I don't know, isn't Vader a Dark Lord of the Shit?
Que le grand cric me croque !

The Minsky Moment

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson

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.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

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.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

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.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.