Dave

Sanctions are a favorite instrument of the American Empire and as such it is valuable to investigate their history and scrutinize their efficacy. Mulder traces the history of economic sanctions (in their contemporary incarnation) to those directed against the Central Powers in the First World War, when the war time leaders conceived of sanctions as “the economic weapon”, a means to inflict damage against the enemy without shells or mortars. As Mulder demonstrates, it is fairly difficult to gauge the effectiveness of sanctions, though he demonstrates that it is very unlikely that sanctions have worked as intended more in more than two or three limited examples, confined to now forgotten international disputes in the interwar period. Mulder traces the intellectual history of sanctions, which were simultaneously understood as a weapon with which to coerce enemies into desired by outcomes, but also by the day's liberal internationalist thinkers as a potential ‘non-violent' tool in the arsenal of diplomacy. Mulder demonstrates that sanctions have largely remained ineffective and have in fact often induced ‘bad' behavior from authoritarian militarist states who are induced ultimately to double down on illegal foreign interventions and focus on autarkic internal industrialization, state behaviors which, to this day, sanctions are deployed to try to prevent.

Offers a new history of a largely overlooked period in American history (mid-to-late 17th century). The war turned out to be an inflection point in colonial-indigenous relations, with the dark forces of capital and religious conservatism violently absorbing New England's native peoples into their new regime centered ideologically around fanatic protection of private property. Most notably, Brooks offers a critical reading of a fascinating primary document: “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, in which a Massachusetts Bay Colony housewife recounts the story of her kidnapping by a war party of the Wampanoag coalition. Brooks reads between the lines of Mary Rowlandson's terror and uses the work to highlight the results of the conflict of understandings of the world.

A history of the calamity of Hurricane Katrina, and the city of New Orleans itself of the span of a century, yes, but more than this, Horowitz's book is a work of political theory that uses history to demonstrate how disastrous the hollowing out of the state under neoliberalism has been for life in the United States. Between the hurricane of 1915 and the decade long recovery from 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the history of New Orleans was shaped by brutal racism and systematic oppression of blacks orchestrated by the interests of capital and the politicians in charge. By the time Hurricane Betsy struck the city in 1965 the geography of racial oppression (importantly, not just the geography of housing but the geography of resource distribution) meant that the storm was a devastating warning shot about the destruction such a status quo would allow to be wreaked. Instead of preparing for the next storm in any meaningful way, the political infrastructure of the State of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans was deteriorated under the regime of neoliberalism that began in the 1970s and continues to this day. Horowitz's book is a haunting and infuriating demonstration of the importance of state power and capacity.

Hyper modern thriller in modern day France that grips readers with its central narrative while providing a deeply enriching portrait of the personalities that can be found among France's vital immigrant community. Provides more valuable insight into the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim French people than can be found in the works of other notable contemporary French authors, I submit.

Nice overview of the history of the underrated supervillain of German cinema, Dr. Mabuse. Covers the 12 or so movies that have featured Dr. Mabuse including concise but interesting biographies of the respective directors, summaries of their plots, histories of their productions, analysis of their themes, and relevant contextual placement within German and filmic culture as well as in relation to each other.

This book in the University of Nebraska series of the state politics and government covers Maryland state political history. The book offers a comprehensive overview of every political institution in the state from the state, county, municipal, and local level on down. In addition, the book offers around 100 pages of useful political history and context that help explain the history of Maryland's politics from its colonial days in the early 1600s to the present. A useful book for anyone hoping to learn more about government in Maryland.

Mark Twain describes his travels on a luxury cruise that takes him and a couple hundred other Americans from New York across the Atlantic to the Azores, Gibraltar, Morocco, Marseille, Paris, much of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine in 1867. It is fascinating to hear about an American traveler's experience at such a time when the world was industrializing and probably already as different from the 18th century as it was different from our world in the 21st century today.

Twain takes in the hallowed sights and sites along the “grand tour” of Western Europe and the near Middle East with a wry and usually hilariously cynical skepticism. Rather than recount how extraordinarily beautiful the art of the old masters is, Twain instead typically comments on the way that tourists take in that art–almost always using the stock observations of the guidebooks. Twain never holds back and freely describes the uglier, chintzier, seedier, and more unpleasant experiences that a traveler would have faced, be they underhanded tour guides, fraudulent histories offered at sites, bad food, awful weather, shameful behavior from fellow American tourists, or otherwise.

This is the first pre 20th century travel writing that I have read, but I suspect that Twain's is among the most readable, in large part because he seeks to parody the stodgy cliches of other travel writing popular of the time. It offers a fascinating insight into the way people lived in urban and rural places from a perspective that is unique and historical, but familiar (as an American). This does not mean Twain's work is without fault. Despite many instances where Twain works to dispel prejudices (his preface even includes a famous epigraph about the power of travel to give one empathy and dispel racism), Twain expresses ugly attitudes towards “the Turk” and “Mohammedans”, perhaps consistent with his general anti-religious sentiments, but frustratingly ignorant nonetheless.

A huge work of astonishing creativity that synthesizes fascinating work from the past 30 years of archeology and anthropology to pose massive questions about our understanding of human political history.

Interestingly, Nixonland isn't a biography of Richard Nixon but instead more a history of the 1960s in America with Richard Nixon as the main character. Perlstein tells the story of the political, social, and cultural history of the U.S. in the '60s in very entertaining fashion, jumping from historical event to historical event with very satisfying in-depth analysis and exploration. Perlstein's most valuable contribution is his ability to see past the surface of historical actors' words and analyze their rhetoric and ideology with a precise clarity. Nixon becomes the perfect protagonist for such analysis because, as Perlstein makes clear, he was a master of politics and language and controlling the conversation. Nixon chose his public words very carefully, always making sure that the American public saw the version of himself (a down-to-Earth outsider who understood their frustrations, grievances, and resentments) that he wanted them to see. His actions were carefully taken as well. Nixon was able to craft coalitions with elements of the right that suited him when he needed, be they far-right John Birchers and Southern Segregationists, or moderate liberal Republicans like those who were likely to support George Romney or Nelson Rockefeller.

Perlstein believes that the present day culture wars and sociopolitical divides trace their origins to the mid 1960s and that Richard Nixon was the soothsayer who identified them first and was able to exploit them to his benefit, ultimately winning him the presidency. I do believe that the general reactionary right wing / progressive left wing cultural dispute probably is older than suggested here, but Perlstein is able to present evidence from every single part of American society (electoral politics, mass pop culture, academia, student organizing, housing, literature, military, labor) to demonstrate how this divide grew to become a great chasm in the 1960s.

Brown expands her original “Perversion of Justice” reporting from the Miami Herald and includes a crucial, extensive outline of Jeffrey Epstein's absurd 2008 plea deal and further insight into his 2019 arrest and murder.

Seems to me this was written in large part to counter the arguments of Kracauer's notorious 1947 “From Caligari to Hitler” which argued that the prewar German movies, including the expressionist films, presaged Hitler and represented a traceable trajectory in the German mindset. Eisner instead spends most of this book talking about what Expressionism wasn't, as overly simplistic generalizations have been quick to call every German film “expressionist”. The book starts with more immediacy than it finishes but it does a good job of laying out the influence of German Romanticism, the theater of Max Reinhardt, and of the small stable of competent German filmmakers on one another.

A modern classic, and should be mandatory reading. Despite covering historical material, author Bevins' background as a journalist serves the subject matter well. In the spirit of what investigative journalism should be, Bevins performed extensive interviews with the (surviving) people effected by mid-20th Century anticommunism in Indonesia, Brazil, and Chile. Despite being an American, Bevins outlines the history of the early CIA's covert operations and counterintelligence scheming with the dispassionate perspective of an outsider, an angle that is all too rare in such works. The sheer ruthlessness and brutality of the events of the anti-communist killings are haunting and stomach-turning, but the urgency of understanding the logic and circumstances that can allow individuals and interest groups to perpetrate such violence cannot be overstated. With this book, Bevins performed the important work of demonstrating the way that global anti-communists collaborated and shaped their own plans based on the experiences of others, and it would serve any politically motivated person well to read The Jakarta Method and know what you may one day be up against.

Manages to provide detailed recreations of the timelines of Mohammed bin Salman's most dramatic and psychopathic moments, culminating in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi but including his consolidation of power in pursuit of the Crown Princedom, the warnings to the country's clerics, the crackdown on corruption (executed by jailing power-brokers at the Ritz Carlton), his bizarre kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister, and others. Hubbard also does well to paint a portrait of life on the ground for ‘normal' people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the changing sociopolitical climate there. Unfortunately MBS is so shrouded in mystery that the psychology behind his actions is often unclear, but this seems to be a result of the Crown Prince's proclivity to move in the shadows as well as his initial lack of proficiency in English.

Darkly thrilling tour through the ludicrous story of abject corruption and violence inflicted by the Baltimore Police Department's elite plainclothes squad ‘the Gun Trace Taskforce', a gang of cops who used their position to steal from drug dealers and others. The corruption was of course covered up and only ultimately prosecuted after the scale of their crimes and hijinks spiraled so out of control they could no longer be ignored. The authors piece together the timeline effectively but more importantly bring a refreshing critical perspective which isn't afraid to be skeptical or even hostile to traditional narratives from the administrations of the Police Department, State's Attorneys office, or City Government.

Taken with ‘Invisible Bridge' the 2 books are amazing and unbelievably in-depth sociopolitical history of the 1970s in america. Extremely entertaining and explains the dismantling of the New Deal era and rise of the right in vivid detail.

Entertaining tour through a 140 year history of “populism” and the panics that its few surges in power have instigated. The prairie populists of the end of the 19th-century represented a new class-based political movement in the United States that has been largely forgotten. Frank gives an effective and concise overview of their history as a political movement (including their foibles, most notably being investing too much into William Jennings Bryan the man, as well as emphasizing the Free Silver movement as the end-all be-all) but more importantly, presents a survey of the absurdly frenzied panic that the movement promoted from those who represented the interests of capital.

Frank offers the term “Democracy Scare” (stemming from “red scares”) as a way of understanding the panics that emerged first in the 1890s, then the 1930s, then, 1960s, and finally again in the 2010s. The elites, coalescing around their preferred politicians, organizations, academic posts, magazines, and news outlets, Frank demonstrates, have consistently managed to present an all-encompassing response to the ebbs and flows of populist movements by painting their leaders and ideas as retrograde, insane, idiotic, and doomed to fail. Frank provides an excellent overview of the emergence of anti-populism as an academic movement among professors and researchers of political science, history, and sociology in the 1950s. The ideas and attitudes formed then have since been absorbed into the liberal worldview, centered around a belief in “meritocracy”, code for rule by elites over the ignorant masses of peons.

Frank's work is frustrating and hilarious, but ultimately hopeful, offering those sympathetic to the aims of American history's various populist movements some refreshing context, and a welcome reminder of one's own sanity in the face of repeated admonishment from the elite establishment who wishes to suppress the ideas hostile to capital at any cost.

A classic of science fiction with epic scale and depth to its worldbuilding and universe, combined with riveting action adventure.

Had to slog through this. Lots and lots of important information and coverage of primary documents and accounts from roughly ~1750 to 1899 in both Oregon and Washington, but it is organized poorly and brutal to actually sit down and read. If I was a graduate student researching PNW Indians this is probably a must own just to use the index to find incidents, characters, and moments from PNW Indian history, but I cannot recommend it to a casual reader. New historiography is badly needed.

Herbert's notoriously weak prose is really grating here because Children of Dune lacks the same propulsive action-adventure of the first two Dune books. The grand scale of the Dune universe is still here, but it is ultimately a slog to get through, in large part due to the uninteresting mystery surrounding the central characters

Dune Messiah is a natural extension of the first Dune and yet suffers from a slightly weaker structure and pacing. The machinations of characters like Edric, Scytale, and Helen are silly and funnier than anything in Dune which often provides very entertaining humor and levity to the sometimes overwrought scenes.

Hämäläinen should be regarded as an author at the forefront of a new American history, in Lakota America he effortlessly pieces together an almost entirely overlooked 400 year history of a mighty empire that was able to legitimately challenge the American imperial machine and govern and perform diplomacy effectively. Lakota America should reframe and re-contextualize any American's understanding of the history of the American West and its extensive details provide an intimate portrait of a fascinating people whose legacy can never be erased.

In Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr., over the course of 11 essays, explores the relationship between Native Americans and different institutions in the United States. The relationship between Native Americans and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, between Native Americans and Black people, between Native Americans and anthropologists, between Native Americans and missionaries and the Christian establishment, between Native Americans and the treaties that have been imposed upon them. The essays can be vicious, self-deprecating, tragic, hilarious, deeply reasoned, eye-opening, but they are always extremely lucid and offer necessary perspective. There are elements of the book that don't age perfectly well: Deloria has grievances with the civil rights movement which at times can seem overly fastidious, and in particular he seems specifically very upset with the failure of Martin Luther King's Poor People's March, which had failed in the spring of the year he was writing (and in the immediate aftermath of King's assassination), and these issues seem less important with 60 years of hindsight as I write this. Additionally, women's issues are almost entirely absent which I imagine some contemporary observers might take issue with. These issues aside, the work clearly comes from a very sharp with who was writing in a way that was all but totally new and totally necessary.

One of the great classics of American History and absolutely masterful work that totally reshaped my understanding of American history, of political, class, and racial relations, and of American political economy. Foner centers Reconstruction as the great failed moment of American history, a central focal point, a second American Revolution, a time when almost anything was possible, and he demonstrates how it all came tumbling down.

Kitchen Confidential condenses the energy, vitality, humor, integrity, and shock appeal that endeared Bourdain to millions of fans. It's impossible to read Kitchen Confidential and not feel some urge to abandon whatever else one may be doing with their life and go become a line cook (or at least take a little more pride while expressing one's self in the kitchen).

As a huge fan of John Ford's work, I appreciated Eyman's biography for offering such detailed insight into the director's life. John Ford was a very strange man, closed off to almost everyone in his life, and capable of very bizarre moments ‘bullying', usually directed towards his actors. His life was centered around films and the film industry, and Eyman's work provides details about Ford's mindset and lifestyle heading into almost all of the dozens of films he directed. Ford would intentionally mislead others about his true beliefs and values, making the work of a biographer difficult, but Eyman is able to offer enough testimonial from those closest to him and enough quotes from movie sets and letters that the reader is able to piece together an image of a brilliant but unpleasant man who was capable of great kindness and was able to stand up for his convictions (which generally seem to have aligned with what seems ‘morally right' to a modern reader) when it mattered. Despite his strangeness, his political and moral understanding of the world seems to have been able to be boiled down to a strikingly simple dichotomy that motivated much of his artistic expression–that the British Empire were imperialistic bullies who dominated decent peoples, his beloved Irish, who represented a pastoral, working class, more egalitarian society. Through this prism a great number of Ford's films can be better understood: who represents the British and who represents the Irish. Thanks to Eyman's book I feel that I have at least a basic grasp of the great director's personality and a good outline of the course of his life.