What are you currently reading?

[Wakefield]

Instantaneously, Ferrero recalls me my old days in the university and names so heterogeneous like Leon Homo, Fustel de Coulanges and Michel Villey.

[Daverz]

Savage Continent Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
Keith Lowe

Depressing as hell, but an important corrective to some of the triumphalist history I was fed in school.

Also some lighter reading on the Kindle:

[asin]B0081BU42O[/asin]

[Bogey]

Shoul only take a week or so as it is less than 200 pages, but has received high praise.

[SonicMan46]

 

Shoul only take a week or so as it is less than 200 pages, but has received high praise.

Bill - I've not read that one, but many other accounts of the battle; a good bio of J.L. Chamberlain is always a nice accompaniment to reading about Gettysburg and the fight for Little Round Top - enjoy!  Dave

[CaughtintheGaze]

Two stacks of books:

Pile 1 deals with my textual analysis of Louisa McCord's Caius (includes her texts, some secondary sources, and Plutarch's Lives)
Pile 2 deals with my genre defining of Neo-Nazi music (includes mainly secondary sources)

[val]

HEIDEGGER:          "Zollikoner Seminarie"

The seminaries gave by Heidegger in Zurich between 1959 and 1969.  As usual, in this period of his life, the recurrent subject is the objection to science. Heidegger insists that he is not against science but the scientific method. However, I don't see how Physics would exist without their own method. In fact I don't see a real difference between modern physics and the method they use.
To say that the method is subjective and arbitrary doesn't solve anything. What matters is the correspondence between a physical description and the natural event that is described. Not exactly the "why" of something, but the "how".

[Gold Knight]

Edward J. Erickson--Gallipoli and The Middle East, 1914-1918: From The Dardanelles To Mesopotamia.

[bwv 1080]

HEIDEGGER:          "Zollikoner Seminarie"

The seminaries gave by Heidegger in Zurich between 1959 and 1969.  As usual, in this period of his life, the recurrent subject is the objection to science. Heidegger insists that he is not against science but the scientific method. However, I don't see how Physics would exist without their own method. In fact I don't see a real difference between modern physics and the method they use.
To say that the method is subjective and arbitrary doesn't solve anything. What matters is the correspondence between a physical description and the natural event that is described. Not exactly the "why" of something, but the "how".

if Heidegger was so brilliant, then why was he a f-ng Nazi? 

[Corey]

if Heidegger was so brilliant, then why was he a f-ng Nazi?

Probably for the same reason Thomas Jefferson was a white supremacist.

[Scarpia]

Probably for the same reason Thomas Jefferson was a white supremacist.

Thomas Jefferson, in my view, was far worse than a white supremacist. 

In those days if you never saw a non-white you would be a white supremacist by default, since the culture taught you that whites were superior.  Since slaves had no access to education, even a slave owner could rationalize his action to himself by saying 'Africans are not like us, so we have to manage them as we would any other domestic animal.'

Thomas Jefferson had sex, and reproduced with one of his own slaves.  There is no escape.  Either he viewed Africans as non-human, yet he reproduced with one, or he knew they were as human as he was, yet kept them as slaves (including his own offspring).  I'm not sure which is worse.

[CaughtintheGaze]

Thomas Jefferson, in my view, was far worse than a white supremacist. 

In those days if you never saw a non-white you would be a white supremacist by default, since the culture taught you that whites were superior.  Since slaves had no access to education, even a slave owner could rationalize his action to himself by saying 'Africans are not like us, so we have to manage them as we would any other domestic animal.'

Thomas Jefferson had sex, and reproduced with one of his own slaves.  There is no escape.  Either he viewed Africans as non-human, yet he reproduced with one, or he knew they were as human as he was, yet kept them as slaves (including his own offspring).  I'm not sure which is worse.

I was about to say something similar, as I was also surprised by Corey's soft stance. Jefferson was a rapist.

Currently reading books on genre and subcultural theory.

[bwv 1080]

just about every European that lived in the 18th and 19th century was a white supremacist by today's standards, the fact hardly excuses Heidegger for writing stuff like this:

Hundreds of thousands die en masse. Do they die? They succumb. They are done in. Do they die? They become mere quanta, items in an inventory in the business of manufacturing corpses. Do they die? They are liquidated inconspicuously in extermination camps. And even apart from that, right now millions of impoverished people are perishing from hunger in China. But to die is to endure death in its essence. To be able to die means to be capable of this endurance. We are capable of this only if the essence of death makes our own essence possible

[Daverz]

just about every European that lived in the 18th and 19th century was a white supremacist by today's standards, the fact hardly excuses Heidegger for writing stuff like this:

I know I'm going to be offended... just as soon as I figure out what the hell he's trying to say.

[Corey]

I know I'm going to be offended... just as soon as I figure out what the hell he's trying to say.

It's a slow-burner.

[bwv 1080]

I know I'm going to be offended... just as soon as I figure out what the hell he's trying to say.

how about this one, its less obtuse

Let not propositions and 'ideas' be the rules of your being (Sein). The Führer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: that from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler![

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_and_Nazism

[Fëanor]

A great, topical read ...

Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future



Tuesday, Nov. 6th, we'll learn whether the trend to ever greater inequality in the USA is to be moderated or redoubled.

[Wakefield]

Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power. The Natural History of Its Growth.



I'm reading a Spanish translation. Totally fascinating. 

[Scarpia]

Just finished reading (for the second time) The Return of the Native.  If there is a better novel written, I don't know of it.

[Elgarian]

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters.  This is part historical fiction, part ghost story, a tale of a family living in a deteriorating English estate in the post-war 1940's.  One by one the residents meet a bad end, and we are left wonder if the demons assailing them are supernatural, or in their minds.

A well told story, but not as vivid as Water's earlier work, particularly Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet.   I recommend it, but I recommend those earlier works even more, if you don't know them.

Scarps recommended this to me a few months ago and I've finally got around to reading it. I'm just over halfway through and I am completely hooked. It's beautifully written - the kind of prose that seems effortlessly to conjure up the events, places and people in the imagination. And I find it fascinating to inhabit this imagined space, feeling deep head-shaking sympathy for these people who are hanging on to a mode of living that's no longer sustainable (shades of Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry), and watching it all dissolve, slowly and painfully. Of course I don't know how it's all going to end - so don't tell me - but in truth I don't want it to end. I wish the novel were twice as long as it is.

Many, many thanks to Scarps for his recommendation. A real winner.

[Gold Knight]

Barbara Tuchman--The Guns of August