Tightly written high fantasy noir mafia revolution family drama story with racial subtext and a little dragon.
Vlad Taltos's society is highly stratifTightly written high fantasy noir mafia revolution family drama story with racial subtext and a little dragon.
Vlad Taltos's society is highly stratified and deeply racist. But folks from the despised outsider population can buy a measure of position and access. Taltos's father absorbed society's belief that Easterners like him were lesser folks. He worked hard and bought that possession and access , which he passed down to his son. His son also absorbed those lessons but instead of making them hate himself, he hated those who were at the top of the social order. He became an assassin and crime boss. But he also has friends who are at near the highest level of those on top.
These three books are mostly a swashbuckling tale of a man who solves problems through brains, connections, magic, violence, and a little dragon. Along the way, he has to wrestle with the implications of living in an unjust society as a person who is simultaneously privileged and oppressed; living and working with people who despise him, love him, need him, and would happily use him for their own ends. He reminded me an awful lot of Chris Rock's character in the fourth season of Fargo.
Someone told me once that some aspect of law I was struggling with “was an artifact of the way funding was done.” And oh my god, can that be leveragedSomeone told me once that some aspect of law I was struggling with “was an artifact of the way funding was done.” And oh my god, can that be leveraged by sociopaths.
The "Bezzle," I have learned from this book, refers to the time between a person being scammed and realizing they've been scammed. During that time, they feel like they're richer. They aren't -- the damage is done as soon as they've been scammed. But because of the play in the market theory of value, in some way they ARE richer -- a way they can realize if they pass that poisonous potato on -- right up until the moment they know it.
This is a book about bezzles. About short cons and long cons. Mostly about long cons. It suggests three strikes and your out was a long con done by the prison industrial complex, which might be true and is nauseating. About the ways sociopaths leverage value out of systems without adding any.
I also learned -which I'd managed to miss somehow -- that the Los Angeles Police Department had literal police gangs operating within it, one of which, the "Lynwood Vikings" used the tattoo "998." That's the code for the rage-inducing euphemism "officer involved shooting."
It's powerful and heartbreaking and hard to put down....more
Martin Hench, an aging forensic accountant, tackles cryptocurrency shenanigans, cooks a lot of meat and has a lot of sex.
I really love Cory Doctorow. Martin Hench, an aging forensic accountant, tackles cryptocurrency shenanigans, cooks a lot of meat and has a lot of sex.
I really love Cory Doctorow. Love the big ideas he builds his books around. I'm really glad he's tackling crypto-bros and block-chain charlatans who are using these tools to leverage value out of our shared home without adding any. At best. Some of them do tremendous harm.
This book didn't delight me. Maybe that was deliberate. Martin Hench -- whose name evokes "handmaiden of war" to me -- has been penetrating financial schemes for decades. He's on the red team, that tries to attack systems, rather than the blue team, which defends them. He drives around the country in a luxury bus solving mysteries for rich people. Some of the thrill is gone and he's contemplating retirement. Then he gets pulled into One Last Job.
There's lots of old friends and lots of dead bodies. California seems on the edge of The Bell Riots and the government is happy to keep to the status quo because it has determined its the best of all possible worlds. When Marty, who has been perfectly happy to go along with this, learns something that could get him killed, he has to decide whether to stick to the red team where he's always thrived or go blue. He decides to provoke -well, I suppose that's a spoiler.
I liked the big ideas, but I got pulled out of the book every time he stopped to cook a meat-heavy meal. I also didn't really understand the rhapsodic ending. It involves economics lectures. Not lectures we get to see, just lectures we hear were Feynmanesque. Also he does pay his taxes (at last?) which cheers me.
I really wanted him to turn his energies towards more than just reducing the number of baddies, having sex, and leaving enormous tips to helping create a sustainable economic system. He seemed so close to something grand.
A powerful and heartbreaking book about why things suck so much.
The authors posit -- with a daunting amount of evidence -- it's because we Americans A powerful and heartbreaking book about why things suck so much.
The authors posit -- with a daunting amount of evidence -- it's because we Americans have fallen for a myth that that benefits the few to the severe detriment of the rest: "that capitalism and freedom are two indivisible sides of the same coin." (5). This, the authors say, was promoted by industry groups who were fighting against attempts to ban child labor, provide worker's compensation, and provide electricity to everyone through propaganda and outright lies. They hired academics to rewrite textbooks to prevent pro-market, anti-government perspectives as established wisdom. They lied about electricity. They blamed labor for the Depression. And, assisted by the best minds money could buy, they came up with a story that appealed to people and promoted it in ways fair and foul. Or, as they summarize:
A key part of the manufacturers' propaganda campaign was the myth that of the Tripod of Freedom, the claim that America was founded on three basic, interdependent principles: representative democracy, political freedom, and free enterprise. This was a fabricated claim. Free enterprise appears in neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution, and the nineteenth-century American economy was laced with government involvement in the marketplace. But NAM [the National Association of Manufacturers] spent millions to convince the American people of the truth of the Tripod of Freedom, and to persuade Americans that the villain in the story of the Great Depression was not "Big Business" but "Big Government." They spread this myth to weaken Americans' confidence in government institutions that reined in abusive business practices and protected ordinary citizens.(5-6)
They did this through Reader's Digest versions of big books, dumbed down and propagandized to prove their point, through importing economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek who reasoned from "first principles" (insert sarcastic eyeroll here) that libertarian solutions are best; by promoting authors and reporters who sincerely believed terrible things (see Ayn Rand); and by hiring Ronald Reagan to host weekly market fundamentalist propaganda sessions presented as wholesome television.
I already disliked Baron von Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman. This book made me dislike them more. From this book I learned:
*That a young man born in American in 1899 would have been safer going to fight in WWI than a railroad worker. (16)
*That coal miners in Scranton were more likely to be killed, seriously injured, or permanently disabled than not. (16)
*That the private industry group National Electric Light Association (NELA) lied and attempted to suppress the fact that European farmers had electricity before American ones did (105)
*That NAM suppressed the fact that American wealth was built on genocide and slavery. (124)
*That von Mises was an advisor to Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor who ended the republic and and established an authoritarian regime. (128)
*That as early as 1945, NAM was promoting the lie that there was no difference between socialism and fascism. (150). ("This was absurd. It was as if one insisted there was no difference between the Greek and Orthodox Jews -- since both are forms of orthodoxy -- or between the American Republican party and the Republicans who battled Franco in Spain.")
*That Laura Ingells Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane rewrote her mother's life story to falsely support the idea the family had been self sufficient when in fact they depended on the government and their neighbors. (164-69)
* That leaders in NAM and NELA fought hard to change how most Christians thought about their obligations to each other to fight the New Deal in part because the last two of the Four Freedoms - Freedom from Want and Fear" -- were perceived as anti-capitalist. Some Christian leaders went along with it because they thought less folks would go to church if they weren't hungry and afraid. These pastors got a lot of support from the folks funding NAM and NELA. (189-90).
*That the first federal law to promote competition was the Sherman anti-Trust act of 1890 -- more than a century after the constitution was written.
*That in 1946, the president of the Motion Picture Association, and former head of the US Chamber of Commerce told screenwriters that "We'll have no more Grapes of Wrath, we'll have no more Tobacco Roads, we'll have no more films that deal with the seamy side of American life. We'll have no more films that treat the banker as villain." He did not want calls for economic justice. He wanted glorification of the wealthy. (211)
*That Milton Friedman thought externalities like pollution should be tolerated because FREEDOM. (269)
*That Milton Friedman thought racial discrimination was wrong but inconsequential. (272)
*That Milton Friedman's central premise in Capitalism and Freedom, that capitalism and freedom are indivisible, was immediately proven wrong by economist Paul Samuelson. (276).
*That Milton Friedman supported the right of property owners to refuse to sell to Black people. (306)
*That Reagan supported restrictive covenants as late as 1966. (306)
*That the Reagan administration simply lied about the causes and dangers of pollution. (357)
*That at least 40% and possibly up to 90% of American COVID deaths could have been avoided if we had a better administration, greater trust in institutions, and greater trust in each other based on the death tolls in otherwise similar countries. (396)
*That the happiest countries are ones where people trust each other and their institutions, have strong social safety nets, and robust family and community ties. The idea that racial homogeneity plays a party has been falsified. (404).
*That Judge Richard Posner took a hard look at the 2008 Great Recession and rejected market fundamentalism. (415)
Ends with a bang:
The deification of markets and demonization of government has deprived us of the tools and the insights we need to address the challenges before us: to live long and healthy lives, to generate prosperity, and to coexists in concord with each other and with the nonhuman inhabitants of our planet. It is time we rejected the myths of market fundamentalism and re-embraced the proven tools we have at our disposal. It takes governance to address the problems that people, pursuing our self-interest, create. One does not have to be a socialist to come to this conclusion. Only an observer.
Ronald Reagan was wrong. Our most consequential problems have arisen not because of too much government, but because of too little. Government is not the solution to all our problems, but it is the solution to many of our biggest ones. 426
I've wrestled with the Tripod all my life and have tentatively concluded that market fundamentalism is not coequal with representative democracy and personal liberty. But I've never seriously doubted that the people who believe there's a third leg to that stool weren't sincere and maybe even right. The thing that is really daunting about this book is that it strongly suggests that the folks who paid to have that myth spread were indifferent to its truth; they just cared about what it could get them.
A good history book masquerading as a “you’re wrong about” text, I suspect because those are popular than history books. Reminds me just how bad BaronA good history book masquerading as a “you’re wrong about” text, I suspect because those are popular than history books. Reminds me just how bad Baron von Mises was....more
Capitalism says it's about competition. Capitalism as practiced is about monopoly and monopsony. Antitrust legislation can keep competition meaningfulCapitalism says it's about competition. Capitalism as practiced is about monopoly and monopsony. Antitrust legislation can keep competition meaningful. The Chicago school convinced the government not to.
This is a tough book. It's a catalog of some of the ways big market players use their dominance to prevent competition and suck value out of creators. It's also a sobering look at how governments help them with, Doctorow and Giblin suggest, democracy-distorting results.
The God of Looming has written a book that's about something. About how we make the world and are made by the world. How these systems we participate The God of Looming has written a book that's about something. About how we make the world and are made by the world. How these systems we participate in turn people into things. About England. About the sociopathy of the invisible hand. About eating fairies and planting their eyes. About deadly cough drops and the coming climate wars. About race, class, sex, poverty, and urban planning. About art. About Cromwell. About Northampton. About Alan Moore himself as a gender-swapped artist telling stories about the stories that make us and destroy us.
This book deserves to be read and read again. I do not know if I have the capacity to do. It's big. Sprawling. A thousand years and hundreds of characters.
Three year old Mick Warren chokes on a cough drop and dies, in large part because a busy doctor did not notice his tonsillitis. One of the few neighbors with a truck takes him to a hospital where, miraculously, he is revived and goes on to live a full Northampton life. For nearly fifty years, he does not remember what happened while he was dead. While he was dead, he was taken in by the Dead Dead Gang; partially saved from a demon; road a mammoth; helped save a living girl; learned he was part of a cosmic war; and ate a lot of fairies. Among the gang is a woman who died trying to save her dog and was in turn saved from being consumed by a forgotten Roman water-nymph-turned monster; his own uncle dead in the war; people who died of old age and chose to be children; and much more. Fifty years later, he dies again, briefly, in an industrial accident and remembers some of what happened. He tells his sister Alma (Alan Moore's self insert character) who turns it into art. Meanwhile, both above and below are being consumed by The Destructor, which is both mythically and really destroying the world. I know I'm missing a lot.
Along the way, we learn about the history of Northampton, "this land's load-bearing centre." (441). It's involvement with making England and the empire.
Walking through the story (among so many others) John Newton, the slave trader who wrote Amazing Grace; Oliver Cromwell, Ken Lay, Margaret Thatcher, Isaac Newton, Diana Spencer, James Joyce, Carl Jung and so many more.
Some parts are absolutely brilliant. The Chapter "Clouds Unfold" recaps existence "from bang to crunch, from germ to worm to glinting cyborg and beyond, the woven tapestry unpicks itself, reorganizes itself into new designs . . . . The worms grow backbones and the newts spout feathers. Bus routes alter and post offices are closed." (807). The whole chapter is beautiful and weird and heartbreaking and inspiring.
Some parts are didactic but still amazing. Apparently, the first power-driven mill in the world was in Northampton. According Alma Smith, the Industrial Revolution kicked off on the city’s Green Street. She tells her brother:
“Adam Smith, the bloke who’s on the twenties, the economist, he either comes and see the mill or hears about with, with its looms, all working nineteen to the dozen and its shuttles whizzing back and forth and no one there, as though it were a factory being run by ghosts. He thinks it’s wonderful, tells everybody that he knows it’s as though a massive unseen hand was guiding all this furious mechanical activity, some manner of industrial Zeus rather than basic principles of engineering. . . .
“So Adam Smith, with his half-baked idea about a hidden hand that works the cotton looms, decides to use that as his central metaphor for unrestrained Free Market capitalism. You don’t need to regulate the banks or the financiers when there’s an invisible five-fingered regulator who’s a bit like God to make sure that the money-looms don’t snare or tangle. That’s the monetarist mystic idol-shit, the voodoo economics Ronald Reagan put his faith in, and that middle-class dunce Margaret Thatcher when they cheerily deregulated most of the financial institutions. And that’s why the Boroughs exists, Adam Smith’s idea. That’s why the last fuck knows how many generations of this family are a toilet queue without a pot to piss in, and that’s why everyone we know is broke. It’s all there in the current underneath that bridge down Tanner Street. That was the first one, the first dark, satanic mill.” (1260-61)
There's a whole lot in this book I didn't get. There are whole chapters that were written in a made up dialect that made no sense to me or in poetry I found inaccessible. The book spins a web of allusions and I'm sure I missed at least half of them. This is a book written by a man who is both extraordinarily generous and extraordinarily merciless. This is a worthy successor to The Killing Joke, V for Vendetta, Judge Dredd, Swamp Thing, and Watchmen.
But I'm so glad I read it. Bring me my chariot of fire....more
Future world where nation-states have been replaced by free trade zones and intellectual property protection is done with assassins and overwhelming fFuture world where nation-states have been replaced by free trade zones and intellectual property protection is done with assassins and overwhelming force. Jack Chen is a pharma-pirate who steals from the mega corporations to provide life-saving drugs to the masses. She funds herself by making party drugs. One day, she copies a new drug that makes people like work. It's a killer. Causes people to work until they die, making progressively worse decisions that often bring others along. The Pharma-Masters sends a hunter/killer cyborg/messed-up guy after her. Hijinks ensue.
Plays with hard questions about the meaning of property and autonomy. In this brave new world, people are not automatically franchised; you have to buy in (or have a family buy in for you). One of the main human characters is slave. There are also several sentient machines, some of which have a path to autonomy, some of which don't. One, Paladin, the robot half of the hunter/killer team sent to kill Jack has a human brain as part of her tool set. It is mostly surplus to requirements but does let her process facial expressions. Paladin's partner decides she's the gender of the donor. She rolls with it because she's programed to make him happy. But she doesn't have a gender.
People and sentient robots are bought and sold and no one seems horrified by this, even the revolutionaries. Dangerously plausible future.
Reminded me a lot of Cory Doctorow, though more subtly didactic. ...more
Suggests the conventional wisdom about how our modern global civilization came to be is merely a "just so" story to justify the status quo. Suggests aSuggests the conventional wisdom about how our modern global civilization came to be is merely a "just so" story to justify the status quo. Suggests a whole lot more than that. Going to have to sit with this one for a bit. Profoundly unsettling. Hopeful and heartbreaking. So mad we lost David Graeber so young. He might have changed the world. He might have. ...more
Four stories about four horsemen of the dystopia: weaponized copyright; retrenched racism; the brutal commodification of medical care; and the belief Four stories about four horsemen of the dystopia: weaponized copyright; retrenched racism; the brutal commodification of medical care; and the belief that the few can ride out the collapse of civilization.
The title story, Radicalized, was profoundly disturbing. Men suffering unimaginable loss find each other in the dark places of the internet, rage together, radicalize together, take up arms against the forces that killed their loved ones, and . . . make a positive impact? This story will haunt me.
Like all of Cory Doctorow's work, it's exhortative, didactic, and Brechtian. His stories are almost palpably pushing us to be like his generous, smart, clear-eyed heroes. His villains embody neoliberal, Mont Pelerin Society ideals. I wish he had better suggestions for perfecting the world....more
I so wanted to like this book. It starts with epigraphs from Emily Dickenson and David Graeber. I'm still angry at Graeber's untimely death. May his mI so wanted to like this book. It starts with epigraphs from Emily Dickenson and David Graeber. I'm still angry at Graeber's untimely death. May his memory be a blessing. Or a revolution.
This little book sets out to be an exploration of being a person of minor-ish privilege, both racially and economically, in our capitalist world. It turns into noodling on the themes, like jazz. I always vaguely disliked jazz. Fuckin' seventh chords. Drums are meant to be hit, not stirred.
The prose is good. The pages turned. But the wistful anomie made me stabby. There is no revolution here. Maybe there was a little deeper level but I just couldn't get to it.
Powerful attack on white male supremacy. Suggests that a lot of the recurring ways racial injustice keep happening is America working as designed -- aPowerful attack on white male supremacy. Suggests that a lot of the recurring ways racial injustice keep happening is America working as designed -- as consistently advantaging white males first, those that prop them up second, and disadvantaging everyone else in rough proportion to their access to whiteness. With examples and illustrations too depressing to list.
Couple of powerful passages:
I do not believe that these white men are born wanting to dominate. I do not believe they are born unable to feel empathy for people who are not them. I do not believe that they are born without any intrinsic sense of value. if i di, this would be a very different book. I believe that we are all perpetrators and victims of one of the most evil and insidious social constructs in Western history: white male supremacy.
The constraints of white male identity in America have locked white men into cycles of fear and violence -- where the only success they are allowed comes at the expense of others, and the only feelings they are allowed to express are triumph or rage. When white men try to break free from these cycles, they are ostracized by society at large or find themselves victims of other white men who are willing to fulfill their expected roles of dominance. When women and people of color try to free themselves from the oppression of white male supremacy, they are viewed as direct threats to the very identity of white men, and the power structure upholding that identity works swiftly to eliminate the threat.
White male supremacy protects itself not only through the expected violence of white men, but also through control of social norms that keep us invested in the perpetration of white male power.
274
Right now white manhood is on a suicide mission. It is standing at the edge of disaster with a gun in its hands, and it's willing to take us all down with it.
276
The only thing Seattleites love more than recycling is coming up with new ways to avoid talking about race and the city's issues with racism.
Utopian, dystopian, hopeful, grim, elegiac, overwhelming, unsettling, full of grief, full of joy. I suspect this book will haunt me the way Aurora hauUtopian, dystopian, hopeful, grim, elegiac, overwhelming, unsettling, full of grief, full of joy. I suspect this book will haunt me the way Aurora haunts me.
One day in the near future, a heat wave hits India and twenty million people die. In one village, only one man survives, Frank, an aid worker who had a few more resources and a bit more luck. He survives deeply burned and deeply scared. After years of therapy, he tries to join an Indian ecoterrorism group, The Children of Kali. They will not have him. But they encourage him to freelance.
Meanwhile, the Ministry for the Future is the United Nations agency tasked with speaking for the future as the climate and economic crises accelerate. Through most of this book, it is run by an Irish bureaucrat, Mary, who had been a political leader once upon a time. Mary is doing her best with her tiny team. One night, Frank kidnaps her and howls in anguish that she is not doing enough. She retorts she's doing all she can. But 20 million dead. Extinction accelerating and oceans rising. When her Switzers come, he escapes into the night. But his words echo.
Mary asks her chief of staff if they should have a black-ops wing. Turns out they might already. She maintains -- mostly -- plausible deniability. As she lobbies bankers to establish new currencies back by carbon sequestration and somebody knocks planes out of the sky and coal fired power plants out of commission. At some point, her chief of staff might himself claim to be Kali and ask the children to stand down. (391). Chiefs of staff are freaking terrifying.
It's a strange book. Heroic scientists and engineers stop the glaciers from sliding into the ocean - some dying in the process -- and heroic kayakers we meet for an instant pluck strangers and neighbors from the flooded streets and save them from the flood, never to be seen again. Through efforts big and small, good and bloody, CO2 levels drop and the seas recede.
There's a lot of death. And also habitat corridors and a general repudiation of extractive capitalism. Some of our survivors watch a family of wolverines eat a dead deer. It's affirming and terrible.
Among the bits I particularly liked:
Remember what Margaret Thatcher said? There is no such thing as society! We laughed out loud. For a while we couldn't stop laughing. Fuck Margaret Thatcher, I said when I could catch my breath. And I say it again now: fuck Margaret Thatcher, and fuck every idiot who thinks that way. I can take them all to a place where they will eat those words or die of thirst. Because when the taps run dry, society becomes very real. A smelly mass of unwashed anxious citizens, no doubt about it. But a society for sure. It's a life or death thing, society, and I think people mainly do recognize that, and the people who deny it are stupid fuckers. The kid of stupidity that should be put in jail." (169)
Yes. You can short civilization if you want. Not a bad bet really. But no one to pay if you win. Whereas if you go long on civilization, and civilization (therefore) survives, you win big. So the smart move is to go long. (240)
Everyone know me but no one can tell me. No one knows me even though everyone has heard my name. Everyone talking together makes something that seems like me but is not me. Everyone doing things in the world makes me. I am blood in the streets, the catastrophe you can never forget. I am the tide running under the world that no one sees or feels. I happen in the present but am told only in the future, and then the think they think they speak of the past, but really they are always speaking about the present. I do not exist and yet I am everything.
You know what I am. I am History. Now make me good. (385)
The story jumps from hand to hand. From Frank to Mary. From a slave in a mine to a privileged asshole at Davos. From a photon to history ("Now make me good."). From blockchain to taxes. From a refugee to a kayaker plucking people from a flood. From debt strikers to a scientist on a glacier. Saving the world will take all of us.
I hear a rumor this is the last Kim Stanley Robinson novel. If so, it is a worthy capstone....more
There's a chart in this book titled "Factors Underlying the Broadest Patterns of History." (87). Suggests history turned on two major things: the longThere's a chart in this book titled "Factors Underlying the Broadest Patterns of History." (87). Suggests history turned on two major things: the long axis of continents and the relative available cultivatable plants and animals. It is, of course, more complicated than that. But also not.
Concludes that initial conditions generally lead to ultimate results. Brutal, brutal, ultimate results.
Fascinating and disturbing. Well worth the time. ...more
Traces the development of neoliberal thinking from the Austrian School of Economics (Baron Ludwig von Mises! I almost don't scream anymore when I hearTraces the development of neoliberal thinking from the Austrian School of Economics (Baron Ludwig von Mises! I almost don't scream anymore when I hear his name) to the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Posits that neoliberalism starts with the idea the market his the ideal form of social coordination and ends with property rights being elevated over civil and civic rights.
Had some great lines. "Against Roosevelt's Four Freedoms -- of speech, of worship, from fear, from want -- neoliberals posed the four freedoms of capital, goods, services, and labor." (136).
"Order for Hayek must be as unplanned and spontaneous as the movement of a school of fish in water." (228)
"Neoliberals criticize socialists for their dream of a world economy without losers, but they had their own dream of a world economy without rule breakers and more importantly without idealistic -- or, in their opinion, atavistic - alliances of rule breakers who seek to change the system of incentives, obligations, and rewards. In the mid-2010s, the popular referendum in favor of Brexit and the declining popularity of binding trade legislation suggests that even if the intentions of the neoliberals was to 'undo the demos,' the demos -- for better or for worse -- is not undone yet." (286).
Was hoping for some deeper insights about this ongoing struggle between the idea that civic society should constrain the market and the idea that the market is the ultimate expression of human freedom. But maybe this is all there is.
Many economists, I am told, assert that if we do nothing, racism will end because it’s not rational. Those who are too racist to look for talent, custMany economists, I am told, assert that if we do nothing, racism will end because it’s not rational. Those who are too racist to look for talent, customers, or love wherever it may be will be outcompeted by those who look everywhere.
This book takes on that hypothesis. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that the burdens and benefits of civilization have been distributed unfairly based on race in my country. That distribution, Professor Rothmayr argues, will perpetuate itself until it is disrupted. Inherited wealth, connections, the tendency to like people we believe deep down are like us, the wealth of our neighbors and the qualities of our schools all conspire to perpetuate that unfair distribution, even if every single person on the powerful side of the ledger harbors no racist will at all.
Amazingly snide tale of being an English woman of a certain social class edging into a certain age in the early 19th century. These women had highly lAmazingly snide tale of being an English woman of a certain social class edging into a certain age in the early 19th century. These women had highly limited autonomy -- they could decline a marriage proposal. If it wasn't declined for them by their "family" (father) and "friends" (other interested parties).
Anne Elliot is the sensible middle daughter of a Sir Walter Elliot, a Baronet, which I THINK means he inherited the title from someone who bought it when some king needed to raise money to support armed men or colonists. Sir Walter does no work. He is a vain and silly man with an embarrassment of mirrors. Sir Walter does has income from tenant farmers attached to the family entail because feudalism. He cannot bear to live within the income he derives from others' labor. He also lacks male issue, and, given the conditions of the entail, it appears his choices are get on with getting a son or the title, lands, and income will pass to a distant cousin, Willian Elliot, who unlike Sir Elliot's existing children has the vital qualification of a winkle. To continue living in the style to which he has become accustomed, early in the book he rents out the manor and moves to Bath.
Miss Anne Elliot, the sensible one, declined a marriage proposal from a sailor, Frederick Wentworth, once upon a time because her father and friends thought him to lack prospects. He appears to have done a little piracy (but it's okay because he had some sort of warrant); fought Napoleon; and came back a millionaire, meaning her friends and family's concerns are dealt with.
Conveniently, Fred and Anne are thrust together again when Fred's brother in law rents the manor. Fred is still hurt she declined his proposal and even though he Desires Her Still, he is quite cold. But Billy Elliot, the one with a winkle, has realized that he loses his inheritance should he be supplanted by male issue AND it appears Sir Walter is dating. So he courts Anne in an attempt to thwart any change to his status as pretender to the baronet. Hijinks ensue.
This book is amazing -- masterful -- for what is merely passed over. During the course of this story, England fought wars on the opposite sides of the planet. Major characters in this book fought in those wars. England's freaking survival depended on one of them. A major character is rendered destitute because no one will help her secure property in the West Indies left by her dead husband. I can't imagine that it was not part of the triangle tride. The blooded aristocracy are almost to a person useless and manipulable. Anne is considered amazingly sensible because she thinks to send for a doctor when someone in her party gets a concussion. It's savage.
And yet, it's read as a love story. Maybe it is. I doubt it was intended to be just that.
In 1972, historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. published a book called “The Columbian Exchange.” If I understand correctly, it attempted to map the impact ofIn 1972, historian Alfred W. Crosby Jr. published a book called “The Columbian Exchange.” If I understand correctly, it attempted to map the impact of the world-wide trade routes that arose after Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Mann reports he bugged Crosby to update the book so many times that Crosby finally snapped at him “you do it.” 1493 is that update. It tells the tale of the world’s transformation into one integrated financial, cultural, and biological system.
The general shape of the story is well known. Mann fleshes out a lot of details. Brutally summarized, it comes down to “it was worse than I knew and faster.” Among other things, I learned:
• Scotland finally joined the United Kingdom after England agreed to pay Scottish debts related to a failed colony in Panama. • Many British investors in Jamestown believed it was only a few days march from the Pacific and were quite peeved the colonists hadn’t gotten there so they could get on with the serious business of trading with China. • Sir Francis Drake led a raid on a Spanish mule train carrying silver that would have been terribly successful except for one drunk French guy. • But for malaria, the North likely would have won the Civil War so fast that there would not have been the political will for the Emancipation Proclamation or the 14th Amendment. • 17th Century Chinese tax policy led directly to massive deforestation and loss of top soil despite royal decrees that would have stopped the land management systems that wrecked so much havoc. • An African princess and general, sold to Portuguese slavers, escaped and founded a military settlement in Brazil that controlled a large area of the coastal mountains for decades. • Cortes fathered children on several of Moctezuma’s daughters. He also successfully petitioned the pope to legitimate a child he fathered on his interpreter. • Pizarro fathered several children on different Inca princesses. One married his brother.
The book is sprawling and occasionally self-indulgent but utterly engrossing. Well worth the time. ...more
I liked all of this. I loved some of this. Especially this:
"Decay is inherent in all compounded things, persevere diligently." These were the Buddha's
I liked all of this. I loved some of this. Especially this:
"Decay is inherent in all compounded things, persevere diligently." These were the Buddha's final worlds, or so they tell us."Continued perseverance futures," says the Yijing. Of course anything alive has to persevere, that's the definition of life. So these encouragements are possibly a bit stupid; I often feel that way, I should give up on them. Stating the obvious can sometimes be helpful, but usually, it's only irritating. One towns and says of course to such simpleminded exhortations. Do the necessary things! Yes. Now again the time has come when we have to act. So: act.
I loved that. I loved the idea that protest might -- MIGHT -- bring a better world.
I did not understand the ending. Or maybe I just resented it. I want to imagine a better world. Not just dust on the moon.
Continues Stross's economic-science-fiction-with-fantasy-trappings series. Feudalism vs. mercantilism vs. the surveillance state vs. creeping dominionContinues Stross's economic-science-fiction-with-fantasy-trappings series. Feudalism vs. mercantilism vs. the surveillance state vs. creeping dominionism with just a pinch of "don't wake up the ancient security system." Most of the governments and economic systems are evil; most of the individuals within those governments and systems are trying hard to be do good. The Gunpowder Plot repeats with variations. Also Rumsfeld is president.
Maybe this series is too much like real life for me. I devour the Laundry Files book and am already mourning them drawling to an apocalyptic close. I like this book but they don't sing the same way. Too many princesses, not enough Ice Kings. ...more
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