History

**History’s Dictionary ** History is an excellent teacher, with few pupils. * After finishing this book I can understand why. 10 volumes into the Story of Civilization, the Durants have struggled to find narrative thread in the haystack of personalities and surviving documentation. While this book begins and ends with Rousseau, it is not a biography, and it certainly does little to tell about the epoch defining French Revolution, analysis left for book 11. Yet is also not a history of civilization nor even a history of Europe. It overlaps with volume 9 in timeline, and only vaguely splits the political and economic history of the times. Instead, the fundamental building block of this book is short biographies proto-wikipedia style entries of the great thinkers, politicians and artists of the time. ...

aka: the dangers of attending a masquerade ball and credulity of accusations of adultery.

3.5 stars. Review TBR

politics by a non politician who becomes a politician fed up with politics. good read

49th book of 2020: Millenia of bad emperors Quoted as a primary source often enough to warrant a read. For a work nearly 2000 years old, it remains eminently readable, and in english translation surprisingly similar in style to more modern works like Gibbon or Keay’s history of China. I enjoyed the tone and commentary as much as or more so that the content, as Suetonius does little to create a narrative connecting different emperors and periods. Alas such mnemonic devices are a modern invention. Here’s mine: ...

71st book of 2020. ** Tidy History of an Important Story, Perhaps Too Tidy ** The story of Genghis Khan is of course amazing. If I could start over with history, this might be the first story I’d want to learn. Genghis Khan (Temüjin) started as an orphan and a slave, eventually won over his rivals, unified the steppe, then launched a dynasty that over the course of the next 100 years conquered more of humanity than any other. Mongolian steppe culture may be alien, but seems like the nomadic version of many modern successful companies: “they did not find honor in fighting, found honor in winning.” ...

** 67th,61st books of 2020: Civilization is Just Another Tale… ** **Arabs: a 3000 year journey. “Ink is thicker than blood” ** What does it mean to be an Arab? Western ideology is so enamored with the idea of a nation-state, that it has become difficult for us to imagine the world split on orthogonal axes. Nobody ever speaks of ‘pan-romanism’ as an influence in modern affairs, or the ‘Romantic speaking world’. Without nations, peoples, or states to fall back upon, and unable to write histories without the enforced separation of church and state western historians are often lost when trying to understand العالم العربي ’the Arab world’. ...

54th book of 2020. ** tl;dr: ** Read the cover, read the appendix, skip the rest. ‘Destined for War’ introduces the Thucydides trap, named after Thucydides’ recording of the war between Sparta and Athens. In this pattern, rising powers (e.g. Athens) can end up at war with dominant powers (e.g. Sparta) even though the outcome is against the interests of both parties. According to Graham, in 12/16 cases over the last 500 years, similar shifts in power balance have led to war. The book relies on practical history, using past examples to try predict future events. Indeed, this method seems to be the most effective means at predicting political outcomes, and is so simple that it’s baffling we don’t see more of it. Tetlock’s book on political predictions has good evidence on how this method is one of the best ways to make predictions about complex systems (i.e. politics), with repeatably better outcomes than what specific expertise (i.e. professors at Harvard) can achieve. ...

** 44th, 47th, 51st books of 2020: Roosevelt Trilogy: The most interesting American ** Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t supposed to be president. Coming from a wealthy family, he was nearly on track to become a naturalist. Living in a world of books, he devoured literature, “reading some twenty thousand books and writing fifteen of his own”. But since he suffered from asthma while growing up, doctors advised ‘avoiding strenuous exercise.’ “Doctor,” came the reply, “I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.” ...

42nd book of 2020: A History of the Belle Epoche: Strap in for an abstract ride. This book was eating vegetables in between the main course (age of revolution and age of capital) and dessert (age of extremes). There were fewer world-changing military conquests, much of the change happening at this time was in the ideological realm, something that Hobsbawm addresses critically rather than at the level of concrete events. This makes it harder for somebody like me to follow, as I only have the vaguest notions of the actual events of import during this time. ...