What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[Хahar 🤔]

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm getting sick of everyone hatin' on neocons!!

Hanson's argument is that freedom and free-market capitalism are why "Western civilization" (which to him encompasses everything from Greek city states to Alexander the Great to the Franks to the Holy League to 16th century Spain to Americans in Vietnam) triumphed over... well, he never really defines who they triumphed over, just everyone who didn't love freedom and capitalism enough, I guess. It's a ridiculous, ahistorical, contrived thesis, only saved by his talent at describing battles.

Exactly what you would expect from the title, isn't it?

I think that my favorite part of that book is that the name of the hypothetical Bangladeshi child making shoes in a factory is "bad shoe" in Bengali.

[Хahar 🤔]

And everyone who bought it would immediately regret having done so.

I have a copy. It would be charmingly strange if it weren't so horribly real.

[Хahar 🤔]

Reading the great Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, but terribly worried about a bad translation

all I've ever read of the Russian authors is Constance Garnett, who is probably heavily criticized, but I've managed to enjoy myself all the same... try not to worry about it.

I try not too, but I heard that Garnett 'softened' the language, and I worry about having the plot somehow become weaker. I try to stick with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but library's usually only have the Garnett translation, cheap jerks.

I was pleased with the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Crime and Punishment.

[Хahar 🤔]

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power

I'm also reading this at the moment, although I haven't gotten far yet.

[Хahar 🤔]

Frondizi and the Politics of Developmentalism in Argentina, 1955-62 by Celia Szusterman

[Хahar 🤔]

Frondizi and the Politics of Developmentalism in Argentina, 1955-62 by Celia Szusterman

Dear god why? Argentinean politics in the 1950s is probably the least accessible subject ever.

That's what makes it fascinating! I don't understand Peronism even a little bit.

[Хahar 🤔]

The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 by Richard M. Eaton. It's a fascinating book that details a lot of history about which I know embarrassingly little, but what is most personally relevant to me is its conclusion that the conversion of rural eastern Bengal to Islam in the seventeenth century took place at the same time as the province's forests were turned into arable land. The notion of Bengal (particularly its east) as a frontier region on the edge of Indian civilization is a fascinating one, and I hadn't considered it before.

[Хahar 🤔]

It's funny that now when you mention Orlando Figes the first thing anyone thinks of is his Amazon reviews.