Stuff I've been reading: History books
I've been doing a lot of reading in the last few months and I thought I'd tell everyone about some of it. :-)
First installment: books about history.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond:
Everyone who can read the English language should read this book. :-)
I think I might mean that, actually. Collapse is a study of a series of civilizations that... well, collapsed, specifically that collapsed for largely environmental reasons, with discussions of why and how the collapses came about. The implications for modern society are clear, obvious, and discussed in the latter part of the book. I wish everyone who pooh-poohs environmental concerns as trivial luxuries worth worrying about only if they have no effect on the economy could be forced to read this, again and again, Clockwork-Orange style.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond:
After reading Collapse I decided to go back and read Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had flipped through this book briefly in grad school when I saw it on an end table at a party. At the time I thought it was too dense to tackle, but that might just prove that you can't judge a non-fiction book by whether or not it's good party reading! In non-party settings I found it quite readable.
Guns, Germs, and Steel essentially asks the question, "Why did Europeans conquer North America and import Sub-Saharan Africans as slaves, instead of the other way around?" Short answer: we had Technology, Germs, and Writing (I guess that sounded less catchy than "Guns, Germs, and Steel"). Longer answer: for a variety of reasons (more suitable plant and animal species for domestication, East-West axis that makes the spread of farming technology easier) Eurasia developed agriculture earlier and carried it farther than other parts of the world. (In particular, we had domestic animals large enough to be pack animals, which besides being insanely useful in farming and trade, also gave us epidemic disease, which aided us enormously as far as world domination was concerned.)
This book is more historically sweeping than Collapse, addressing a fundamental issue concerning the shape of world history. However, I don't think it's as relevant to the issues of the day. It's too late for Native Americans to go back and acquire cows, but it's (hopefully) not too late to prevent the collapse of modern society.
I will say, though, that the book got a little repetitive in parts, making the same points about lack of domesticable plants and animals or the East/West orientation of Eurasia multiple times throughout the book -- a few times too many for my taste. (I was paying attention the first few times, thanks!) Partly this might be because the author started by talking about general causes, followed by a series of specific historic examples -- but because the causes behind the historical examples were the same as the general causes, it felt like it boiled down to telling the same few stories repeatedly.
A special mention to a book I started but didn't manage to finish: Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children by Ann Hulbert. It's not a bad book, but I just decided that chapter after chapter about the advice of various 20th-century child-rearing experts wasn't my cup of tea.
One interesting factoid: I'd always gotten the impression that the breast-vs-bottle controversy was a postwar phenomenon (Michael Pollen, I know, considers it a product of Big Agriculture). But apparently it dates back to at least the turn of the century, and probably farther... well before Big Agriculture, or for that matter, pre-packaged formula. Rather, people made formula at home, from milk that wasn't pasteurized, and apparently contaminated milk was a leading cause of infant mortality. Given the danger and effort involved in formula feeding back then, it's interesting that so many women did it despite expert advice that breast was best.
First installment: books about history.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond:
Everyone who can read the English language should read this book. :-)
I think I might mean that, actually. Collapse is a study of a series of civilizations that... well, collapsed, specifically that collapsed for largely environmental reasons, with discussions of why and how the collapses came about. The implications for modern society are clear, obvious, and discussed in the latter part of the book. I wish everyone who pooh-poohs environmental concerns as trivial luxuries worth worrying about only if they have no effect on the economy could be forced to read this, again and again, Clockwork-Orange style.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond:
After reading Collapse I decided to go back and read Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had flipped through this book briefly in grad school when I saw it on an end table at a party. At the time I thought it was too dense to tackle, but that might just prove that you can't judge a non-fiction book by whether or not it's good party reading! In non-party settings I found it quite readable.
Guns, Germs, and Steel essentially asks the question, "Why did Europeans conquer North America and import Sub-Saharan Africans as slaves, instead of the other way around?" Short answer: we had Technology, Germs, and Writing (I guess that sounded less catchy than "Guns, Germs, and Steel"). Longer answer: for a variety of reasons (more suitable plant and animal species for domestication, East-West axis that makes the spread of farming technology easier) Eurasia developed agriculture earlier and carried it farther than other parts of the world. (In particular, we had domestic animals large enough to be pack animals, which besides being insanely useful in farming and trade, also gave us epidemic disease, which aided us enormously as far as world domination was concerned.)
This book is more historically sweeping than Collapse, addressing a fundamental issue concerning the shape of world history. However, I don't think it's as relevant to the issues of the day. It's too late for Native Americans to go back and acquire cows, but it's (hopefully) not too late to prevent the collapse of modern society.
I will say, though, that the book got a little repetitive in parts, making the same points about lack of domesticable plants and animals or the East/West orientation of Eurasia multiple times throughout the book -- a few times too many for my taste. (I was paying attention the first few times, thanks!) Partly this might be because the author started by talking about general causes, followed by a series of specific historic examples -- but because the causes behind the historical examples were the same as the general causes, it felt like it boiled down to telling the same few stories repeatedly.
A special mention to a book I started but didn't manage to finish: Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children by Ann Hulbert. It's not a bad book, but I just decided that chapter after chapter about the advice of various 20th-century child-rearing experts wasn't my cup of tea.
One interesting factoid: I'd always gotten the impression that the breast-vs-bottle controversy was a postwar phenomenon (Michael Pollen, I know, considers it a product of Big Agriculture). But apparently it dates back to at least the turn of the century, and probably farther... well before Big Agriculture, or for that matter, pre-packaged formula. Rather, people made formula at home, from milk that wasn't pasteurized, and apparently contaminated milk was a leading cause of infant mortality. Given the danger and effort involved in formula feeding back then, it's interesting that so many women did it despite expert advice that breast was best.