Reviews and Comments

This book is a pleasure to read and dense with history about the Arabian peninsula and the surrounding area. The narrative is thematic rather than chronological, so there are chapters on labor, ports, and wars which go over the same periods but with different views. The author's own trips help bring the vessels to life.

A deeply deeply disturbing history about the foundation of US power domestic and abroad.

This book was difficult to read, although the author's prose was itself easy and approachable, the subject is tough. He succeeded in destroying any faith I had left in how media in the USA reports on foreign policy. The book begins with Operation Cyclone, a haunting semi covert operation that began the funding and arming of extremist terrorist in an effort to "transition democracies". It ends with an afterward summarizing nicely the brief post cold war history of Russia and how Russiagate and the neocons around it created a new cold war.

A captivating read, Mieville illustrates the events of 1917 with vivid details and a special literary flourish, clearly an experienced novelist and now historian. It feels vividly present, and it helped me keep up with my Trotskyist reading group thanks to Mieville's appreciation for Victor Serge. Maybe the main thing that threw me out of the revolutionary trance Mieville invokes, is that he uses so many interesting and peculiar words that I have to constantly consult a dictionary!

A short and valuable read, with clear and convincing arguments.

This bourgois analysis disguised as "20 lessons" is a baffling ahistorical take on power. He is firmly planted in liberal democracy lala land, apparently the last beacon against the twin evils of nazism and communism 😕. Snyder has uncritically accepted US State actions and positions (prior to Trump). He definitely has a hard on for Churchill, or just about any noble leader of the free world. He sees zero of the irony in discussing the persecution of muslims as terrorists as a Russian innovation. At the end he unravels into pure russiagate rambling. It is telling that when mentioning how important the Reichstag burning in 1933, he says about who set the fire, "we don't know, and it doesn't really matter"

Extremely speculative and unconvincing. I appreciated the charts and the SCAD framing, but the historical summaries were disappointing. I also expected more of a proper textual analysis.

I certainly learned a lot about Africa of the last twenty years. I thought the book was missing historical context.

very fun to read! I was surprised it felt a bit disjointed as each chapter is pretty separate. But this book is filled with fun histories and the author is clearly super smart, both noticable from her elegant style and diction, as well as her nuanced takes on history and politics.

This book was challenging for me, but I learned a lot, especially about the theoretic foundations of modern finance in free market economics, as well as the convoluted details of derivative markets and how they led to the last financial crisis (as well as others).

I especially appreciated the authors prose and ability to illustrate complex ideas with examples. She used many words I didn't know (and not just the finance jargon).