What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Currently reading Red Victory: A History Of The Russian Civil War, 1918-1921 by W Bruce Lincoln.
https://www.amazon.ca/Red-Victory-History-Russian-1918-1921/dp/0306809095

There are many books on the Russian Revolution but there are very few books on either the Russian civil war or the Kronstadt Uprising.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

To be sure, I've just started reading it, but I hope to read the three volumes that make up the series "Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century" by Fernand Braudel. This is possibly the most ambitious set of books ever attempted, as it attempts to describe the economy (in the full sense including resources, human capabilities and ideas) that existed over the entire world pre Industrial Revolution (which ultimately set the stage for the Industrial Revolution, at least in England.)

For an example of the sweep, Braudel starts off by trying to calculate what economists now call 'the production possibilities frontier') which is the total possibility of all potential output (or what non economists refer to as capacity.) Of course, it's a 'frontier' because there isn't one single potential output but higher and lower amounts of different things depending on where resources are allocated - i.e where tradeoffs are made.

I don't know if Braudel is the first to develop the idea of the production possibilities frontier, but it's incredibly ambitious.

Apparently Braudel's underlying thesis is that the markets as they existed over those 300 years were as dominated by monopolies and oligopolies as they are now.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

I finished reading Emperors of the Deep last night. McKeever did a fantastic job explaining the biology, behaviors, and habitats of numerous different shark species; highlighting the tantamount importance of sharks as apex predators and oceanic custodians; and warning about how aggressively hunting and fishing sharks has threatened and will continue to threaten the health of the oceans without stronger protections in place.

I also appreciated McKeever's investigations into human trafficking on fishing vessels on the high seas and his detailed arguments about how shark conservation is mutually beneficial to sharks, coral reefs, seals, fishes, and humans. (And I'm thankful he discussed the positive impacts that reintroduced wolves have had on Yellowstone's ecosystem as an analogy for the similar benefits of shark conservation.)

Now I'm reading Tony Birch's novel The White Girl, about an Aboriginal grandmother in 1960s New South Wales trying to prevent her mixed-race granddaughter from being taken away by state authorities.

I'll always promote this. If you liked the shark book you should read the Karen Bakker's The Sounds of Life (if you haven't already.)
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691206288/the-sounds-of-life