some of the non-fiction books i read are "grad-school read" (even tho i'm not in grad school), i.e. more like "processed", something like read the intro and conclusion and skim in between. i no longer think of this as fake reading but it's not the same as cover-to-cover reading
This book is really dense, but I feel like it's the kinda book where even if i'm not getting everything, i still get lots by pushing through.
Was super into it for about 3/4 then he jumps the shark hard with some (imo, obviously) really bone-headed thinking about China. Completely buy his argument that we live at the transition between u.s.-centric world system and china-centric one. His optimism around this being the birth of greater equality and respect among humanity is from nowhere. He seems to see this as the end of imperialism and maybe capitalism which just seems completely ridiculous. Idea that china isn't capitalist because the state hasn't been seized by capitalists is staggering.
The central point of this book is that canada is not good and that it's birth as a settler colony for the dispossession of Indigenous nations continues to be fundamental to its present nature, both in terms of the ongoing settler-colonial relationship to Indigenous peoples and lands, and in terms of Canada's foreign policy.
I completely agree, but the book is not good. If you need a compendium of bad things Canadians, the Canadian state, or Canadian business have done, this works. If you think being Canadian makes you good, or that "the world needs more Canada" maybe this book will be eye-opening. But it's theoretically very weak. It doesn't really think through any of the concepts or processes (for example, what is Canada?). Despite the fact that the author is clearly a communist, it's often very idealist. Canada is a bad idea which makes Canadians think bad ideas which …
The central point of this book is that canada is not good and that it's birth as a settler colony for the dispossession of Indigenous nations continues to be fundamental to its present nature, both in terms of the ongoing settler-colonial relationship to Indigenous peoples and lands, and in terms of Canada's foreign policy.
I completely agree, but the book is not good. If you need a compendium of bad things Canadians, the Canadian state, or Canadian business have done, this works. If you think being Canadian makes you good, or that "the world needs more Canada" maybe this book will be eye-opening. But it's theoretically very weak. It doesn't really think through any of the concepts or processes (for example, what is Canada?). Despite the fact that the author is clearly a communist, it's often very idealist. Canada is a bad idea which makes Canadians think bad ideas which makes them do bad things.
The parts where I was less familiar with the topic were more interesting but also I had little trust in the author by those points. For example, I don't see how his portrayal of the Red Power movement as "explicitly communist" and the Sandinistas as supported by "Indigenous organizations in North America, especially AIM, many of whose members went to Nicaragua to fight alongside the Sandinistas" is anything other than dishonest. Communism/Marxism and the Sandinistas in particular were contributors to major schisms in the Red Power and AIM movements, and the Sandinistas in particular. Russell Means, one of the most prominent AIM members, opposed the Sandinistas due to their relocation of many Miskito. The Miskito opposed the Sandinistas and fought with the Reagan-funded Contras. Means gave a very well-known speech "For America to Live, Europe Must Die", much of which is dedicated to arguing that Marxism, anarchism, etc. are all part of the European (colonizer) tradition and so has nothing to offer to decolonization movements. I don't mean that the opposite of Shipley's point is true, but that it's much more complicated and it is inconceivable that he doesn't know that.
He also bases much of his section on Rwanda on the work of Robin Philpot, who denies that genocide is an appropriate word for what took place in the country in 1994. Philpot is not a respected or reliable source here.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a 2019 science fiction epistolary novel …
I really liked this time travel romance, even though I usually don't like either of those genres. Romance is fun, but the overwrought all-consumingness of it (which is the fun part) is indistinguishable from harmful relationship dynamics (co-dependency, social isolation, gendered violence, etc.). I'm always frustrated by the rules of time travel stories never making any sense.
This avoids both by being kind of unreal and dreamlike. We get enough about the world to get a cool sense of the characters moving between timelines as part of their larger war, but it's not quite pinned down enough for the paradoxes to bother me. We get enough of the characters for them to feel real and to some extent human, but they are also so beyond-human, their world so unlike our own that the romance doesn't feel bound up in the shittiness of romantic tropes in our own world.
Mao Zedong envisioned a great struggle to “wreak havoc under the heaven” when he launched …
the single best book about the Cultural Revolution
5 stars
Models the most interesting approach to the GPCR. Doesn't give much of the broad historical outlines, so maybe another book (I've used MacFarquahar and it seems good, but haven't read it fully) or part of a book (Meisner's Mao's China and After is great and covers it) should be your first. The point being that real class and power struggle was going on in the period, not just mob violence or pogroms (although this too). I love the anecdote of the guy Wu interviews who begins by talking about how he was persecuted and how terrible the CR was, and then slowly over the course of meetings, starts opening up and it turns out he was in a rebel group fighting for those whose official class status didn't reflect their actual class status, has all these old documents, actually was really enthusiastic about it in the early days (the "short" …
Models the most interesting approach to the GPCR. Doesn't give much of the broad historical outlines, so maybe another book (I've used MacFarquahar and it seems good, but haven't read it fully) or part of a book (Meisner's Mao's China and After is great and covers it) should be your first. The point being that real class and power struggle was going on in the period, not just mob violence or pogroms (although this too). I love the anecdote of the guy Wu interviews who begins by talking about how he was persecuted and how terrible the CR was, and then slowly over the course of meetings, starts opening up and it turns out he was in a rebel group fighting for those whose official class status didn't reflect their actual class status, has all these old documents, actually was really enthusiastic about it in the early days (the "short" cultural revolution, roughly 1966-68).
too anthropology. global history is a nice idea but..
2 stars
fundamentals of marxism bit in chapter 3 was pretty great; i'll probably share/recommend/reread that in the future. rest is pretty banal to weak. endemic flaws of anthropology and global history. overbroad (missing the forest for the forest), white male anthro perspective, details like what the word is for a particular social role in a particular society don't actually tell you anything meaningful. disappointing overall.
