Grand unified books thread

[CountDeMoney]

Thanks, I've never even heard of di Cavour. 

  And you went to Harvard. 

[Ed Anger]

He ate too much cottage cheese there.

[Gups]

Who here has read Infinite Jest?  Currently tackling it.

I thought it was brilliant and irritating in equal measure. Probably the best book I'd never recommend to anyone.

[Beenherebefore]

Does anybody have a recommendation on a book about Italian political movements?  Mainly interested in the 19th c. (unification/anarchism/etc.) up to pre-WWII fascism period, but something on the 60s-80s Operation Gladio/Red Brigades period would be of interest as well.

Find a biography on di Cavour;  as a political figure, he was out-Bismarcking Bismarck before realpolitik had a name.  One of the greatest statesmen Italy ever produced.

And you can't do early 20th century Italian Marxist theory without reading Antonio Gramsci.  If you don't want to plow through his Prison Notebooks (and it is a plow, but Mussolini gave him plenty of prison time to write), try his Selected Readings;  good essay-sized bites.

Thanks, I've never even heard of di Cavour. 

I've only read a little bit of Gramsci.  Enough to cite to him for "cultural hegemony," but not enough to really know what he's talking about. 

You want to know about Italy, but haven't heard of di Cavour? I suggest Wikipedia.


"Life under the dictatorship" by some Oxbridge Brit was quite good at laying out the pre-WWI social situation in that quilt that is Italy.

I suppose I am the only one who loved "The Prague Cemetary" by Eco. Was my holiday reading in Croatia last summer.

[Capetan Mihali]

You want to know about Italy, but haven't heard of di Cavour? I suggest Wikipedia.

I've honestly never read much great-statesmen classic political history. I'm shockingly ignorant about the 19th century in particular; don't know hardly a thing about German unification either.

[Capetan Mihali]

"Life under the dictatorship" by some Oxbridge Brit was quite good at laying out the pre-WWI social situation in that quilt that is Italy.

And after my local library gets that Wikipedia book you mentioned, I'll be sure to check this one out.

[Beenherebefore]

You want to know about Italy, but haven't heard of di Cavour? I suggest Wikipedia.

I've honestly never read much great-statesmen classic political history. I'm shockingly ignorant about the 19th century in particular; don't know hardly a thing about German unification either.

Prussia. Bismarck. War. France. Done.

[Admiral Yi]

I've honestly never read much great-statesmen classic political history. I'm shockingly ignorant about the 19th century in particular; don't know hardly a thing about German unification either.

What you need to do is pick up a book on Garibaldi and the wars for Italian unification.  Great, swashbuckling story.

[Beenherebefore]

I've honestly never read much great-statesmen classic political history. I'm shockingly ignorant about the 19th century in particular; don't know hardly a thing about German unification either.

What you need to do is pick up a book on Garibaldi and the wars for Italian unification.  Great, swashbuckling story.

Indeed. It's a story you just couldn't make up.
And, man, do they have many Garibaldi statues in Italy.

There's a lot written in the English language about Germany and the unification of Germany. Italy hasn't gotten the same number of volumes. Suffice to say, the general image I am left with is that Italy is a country in full disagreement with itself and a lot of regions that seem more important to the inhabitants than "Italy" does. Except when it comes to football.

[Queequeg]

Who here has read Infinite Jest?  Currently tackling it.

I thought it was brilliant and irritating in equal measure. Probably the best book I'd never recommend to anyone.

This seems like the most accurate description of my experience thus far. 

[crazy canuck]

Can someone recommend a book on Pitt the younger.  Seems a fascinating man.

[crazy canuck]

Can someone recommend a book on Pitt the younger.  Seems a fascinating man.

bump,

Sheilbh, paging Sheilbh

[Sheilbh]

William Hague's one volume biography got good reviews. Again, though, I've not read it - I'm woefully ignorant about Georgian Britain:

Three bottles a day
Simon Sebag Montefiore reviews William Pitt the Younger by William Hague

As William Pitt, aged just 46, lay dying in the early hours of January 23, 1806, exhausted by 18 years as first minister, by alcoholism, by the stress of running an endless war and the disappointment of hearing of Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz, his last words were characteristic.

First there was "Hear, hear" - appropriate for one of the great parliamentarians. Then there were the anxieties of a war leader whose fleet had recently won the battle of Trafalgar. He "frequently inquired the direction of the wind", and then said, answering himself: "East; ah; that will do." Finally, he sighed: "Oh my country! How I leave my country!" Therein was the selfless servant, famed for his sincerity, gravity, competence and probity, even in the ruthless, bombastic game of 18th-century politics.

Pitt became first minister when he was 24, and went on to become the longest-serving premier after Walpole, far ahead of Liverpool, Gladstone and Salisbury. Yet, partly because of the colossal scale of his short life and partly because of his reserved, awkward nature, he is little known as a man.

William Hague's biography follows an honourable tradition of politicians writing political lives - Churchill wrote about Marlborough and Roy Jenkins about Churchill. He brings out the relationship between Pitt the Elder and his son, but he is best on the politics. The section that describes young Pitt's entry to the House of Commons at 21 up to his appointment as premier is riveting. As Hague explains, this early success was partly to do with the hereditary principle - contemporaries were accustomed to seeing young men in positions of power - and partly a consequence of the loss of American colonies in 1783, an event that discredited a generation of politicians.

In power, Pitt displayed brilliant debating skills, remarkable administrative competence, and the sang-froid and ruthlessness required to build up power and win a landslide election. He ruled from 1784 until his resignation in 1801, before returning for two years as first minister in 1804. Hague impressively masters the great issues of the day: Roman Catholic emancipation, the Regency crisis on the occasion of George III's madness, and the great struggle of Pitt's career – the Napoleonic wars.

Hague's portrait of Pitt rings true: the ungainly, shy young man becomes a mischievous wit in the company of his old university friends. Indeed, one of the best anecdotes details how, in his forties, already ill and again premier, he had pillow-fights with his friends and family before changing his expression to greet ministers in a neighbouring room. Hague makes excellent use, too, of Pitt's revealing letters to his mother, which read like a typical young man's reports of life - except that the boy is first minister. Advised to drink port every day for medical reasons, Pitt became a "three-bottle-a-day man", and ended his life as an alcoholic. Equally fascinating is the way in which power not only exhausts and coarsens but also the way it isolates, so that, by the end, Pitt has fallen out with many old friends and even his greatest political ally, Henry Dundas.

His sexual life remains, as it should, an open question. Dundas, a crude Scottish politician, wagered that Pitt was a virgin and he probably died one - almost certainly the only prime-ministerial virgin. Or could he have been gay? Pitt certainly became close to protégés such as George Canning, yet he was also fond of Lady Eleanor Eden. Hague quotes from a letter Pitt wrote to Lady Eleanor's father, Lord Auckland: Pitt notes her attractions, yet withdraws his own interest, due to mysterious "insurmountable obstacles". Hague concludes that the cold discipline of power was his true mistress.

He does not claim that this book is based on vast original research, and rightly defers to John Ehrman's three-volume masterpiece, The Younger Pitt. A serious yet readable shorter life was much needed, and Hague has pulled this challenge off, making Pitt his own. He delivers not only a shrewd political biography, full of sharp analysis, but also a sensitive portrait of one of our most enigmatic heroes.

Pitt was a politician par excellence, so much in control that he could vomit out of the door of the Commons and recover to make a superb oration straight afterwards. Yet war, power and booze destroyed his hopes, friendships and health. Hague argues convincingly that Pitt died of a duodenal ulcer. The "pilot who weathered the storm" of war was respected by all and mourned by everyone, even by his enemy Charles James Fox, who reflected: "There was something missing in the world - a chasm, a blank that cannot be supplied."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/William-Pitt-Younger-A-Biography/dp/0007147201

[Ed Anger]

I wouldn't be able to read that. I'd hear William Hague's voice as I was reading it, go mad by page 50 and shoot myself in the head.

[Sheilbh]

I wouldn't be able to read that. I'd hear William Hague's voice as I was reading it, go mad by page 50 and shoot myself in the head.

God. I'm sorry you know William Hague's voice

At least it's not teenage William Hague's voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL_p9qjfu5U