Yuletide & nonfiction
My Yuletide story was Covert Affection, a Covert Affairs story featuring Annie/Auggie, Danielle, and schmoop. I believe this might be the first year I wrote and received in the same fandom.
I guess you wouldn’t: “One actor explains, ‘If you’re in L.A., you take a job when you get it. You don’t do porn, but you take a job when you get it. You never think, Is this going to cause unrest in the Middle East?’” Via
cofax7, though relevant to me academically.
Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening: What were Americans-Southern, Northern, Western, white, black-thinking at the outset of the Civil War? What made large numbers of Northerners willing to fight to keep the South in the Union, and eventually to get rid of slavery (as patchy and incomplete as that willingness was)? Goodheart argues that, while there is no doubt as to the right and wrong sides in the war, the standard narrative in which the South triggered the war downplays the agency of those in the North. He packs his account of that year with lots of physical details, from the sound of gunfire to the smell of shit in the Capitol where early troops were housed before better accommodations were found. It was hard not to read this history of the growth of apocalyptic thinking and the abandonment of compromise in the face of a Southern intransigience that seemingly wouldn’t be appeased by anything short of begging for forgiveness for electing Lincoln and letting slavery become universal as saying something about the Tea Party/the current role of the white South in our national war of all against all.
Mariana Gosnell, Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance: This is one of those single-item books that were in vogue before Malcolm Gladwell-esque One True Ideas took over, like Cod and Salt and Mauve and the like, except that this one is twice the length, clocking in at just over 500 pages. It’s not particularly well organized, with chapters like “Ground Ice I” and “Ground Ice II”-why not one long chapter on ground ice? It’s a mystery, like ice itself, which turns out to be a deeply weird and changeable substance, though not weird enough to sustain this book; for many of the weird behaviors she describes we just know they exist and not really why, and I didn’t need quite so many descriptions of the different shapes ice can take.
Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today: Z’s comment was that you get most of the value of this book by reading the editorial version, and that seems right to me. Ricks argues that, in WWII, the military was willing to fire generals (that is, remove them from their positions, not force them into retirement) in order to bring about desired results, but that as a result of change in military culture generals stopped getting fired during the Korean War. Without a culture of rapid relief that wasn’t necessarily career-ending but was fire-under-butt-lighting, the military rotted from the top. Reluctance to fire generals was highest during unpopular wars, Ricks suggests, but the overall culture shifted to careerism and caution, including the stated position that generals weren’t supposed to weigh in on political decisions, when what was often needed was risk-taking and willingness to speak truth to power about the feasibility of strategic objectives (like a democratic transition in Iraq imposed by invaders). While there was plenty of detail about particular battles, both real and personnel-wise, I never felt that I got a great sense of why the culture changed, which is why Z’s judgment rang true with me.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
I guess you wouldn’t: “One actor explains, ‘If you’re in L.A., you take a job when you get it. You don’t do porn, but you take a job when you get it. You never think, Is this going to cause unrest in the Middle East?’” Via
cofax7, though relevant to me academically.
Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening: What were Americans-Southern, Northern, Western, white, black-thinking at the outset of the Civil War? What made large numbers of Northerners willing to fight to keep the South in the Union, and eventually to get rid of slavery (as patchy and incomplete as that willingness was)? Goodheart argues that, while there is no doubt as to the right and wrong sides in the war, the standard narrative in which the South triggered the war downplays the agency of those in the North. He packs his account of that year with lots of physical details, from the sound of gunfire to the smell of shit in the Capitol where early troops were housed before better accommodations were found. It was hard not to read this history of the growth of apocalyptic thinking and the abandonment of compromise in the face of a Southern intransigience that seemingly wouldn’t be appeased by anything short of begging for forgiveness for electing Lincoln and letting slavery become universal as saying something about the Tea Party/the current role of the white South in our national war of all against all.
Mariana Gosnell, Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance: This is one of those single-item books that were in vogue before Malcolm Gladwell-esque One True Ideas took over, like Cod and Salt and Mauve and the like, except that this one is twice the length, clocking in at just over 500 pages. It’s not particularly well organized, with chapters like “Ground Ice I” and “Ground Ice II”-why not one long chapter on ground ice? It’s a mystery, like ice itself, which turns out to be a deeply weird and changeable substance, though not weird enough to sustain this book; for many of the weird behaviors she describes we just know they exist and not really why, and I didn’t need quite so many descriptions of the different shapes ice can take.
Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today: Z’s comment was that you get most of the value of this book by reading the editorial version, and that seems right to me. Ricks argues that, in WWII, the military was willing to fire generals (that is, remove them from their positions, not force them into retirement) in order to bring about desired results, but that as a result of change in military culture generals stopped getting fired during the Korean War. Without a culture of rapid relief that wasn’t necessarily career-ending but was fire-under-butt-lighting, the military rotted from the top. Reluctance to fire generals was highest during unpopular wars, Ricks suggests, but the overall culture shifted to careerism and caution, including the stated position that generals weren’t supposed to weigh in on political decisions, when what was often needed was risk-taking and willingness to speak truth to power about the feasibility of strategic objectives (like a democratic transition in Iraq imposed by invaders). While there was plenty of detail about particular battles, both real and personnel-wise, I never felt that I got a great sense of why the culture changed, which is why Z’s judgment rang true with me.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.