Review of 'The Left Behind : Decline and Rage in Rural America' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The book contains a great description of the concerns of rural people in a variety of communities as the describe them, as well as the interesting and valuable concept of the "moral order," which essentially seems to be a set of norms about how things should be done and how people ought to behave. When those norms are violated or come under pressure from the outside, the community reacts angrily and considers itself under siege by people who have no "common sense", as demonstrated by their lack of adherence to these norms. They would prefer to handle everything their way, according to the norms inherent in their conception of how the world should work. Yet the rural communities are dependent on global markets and funding from Washington. This is especially galling because part of the "moral order" is that you're supposed to be totally self sufficient, unless you're recovering from …
The book contains a great description of the concerns of rural people in a variety of communities as the describe them, as well as the interesting and valuable concept of the "moral order," which essentially seems to be a set of norms about how things should be done and how people ought to behave. When those norms are violated or come under pressure from the outside, the community reacts angrily and considers itself under siege by people who have no "common sense", as demonstrated by their lack of adherence to these norms. They would prefer to handle everything their way, according to the norms inherent in their conception of how the world should work. Yet the rural communities are dependent on global markets and funding from Washington. This is especially galling because part of the "moral order" is that you're supposed to be totally self sufficient, unless you're recovering from some kind of short term setback such as illness or a bad harvest, etc. This coupled with people seemingly "rejecting" the community by moving out en masse, businesses shutting down, etc. leads to the perception that their community is under siege by hostile and culturally alien forces.
This part of the book is good, but I sometimes wish the analysis was deeper. The author brings up a number of racially charged statements made in small towns in the final chapter but seems to dismiss them as being important motivating factors in politics, on the basis of citing a single NYT article. It seemed a little thin to me, especially because of numerous places in the text where he alluded to the potency of barely submerged racial animosity as a motivating factor for people, e.g. passages where he described hatred of the government in a community going back to anger at northern carpetbaggers at the end of reconstruction and how older people in the community remember voting for Goldwater in opposition to the civil rights movement. Given that this seems implicitly to be a book about explaining rural Trump voters to city people who don't understand them, I think that this topic should have been explored more fully. I feel that the author's deep sympathy for small communities and his origin within one makes him reluctant to call out the negative aspects of this kind of community, and when he does he always seems eager to shift back onto more positive ground as quickly as he can. I still think it's a valuable book in that the positives of rural communities in America are often neglected, and the people in these communities experience real difficulty with the government that should not be ignored. Even as someone who is very progressive leaning and a "big government liberal," I felt sympathetic to the town officials describing the impact of unfunded federal mandates on their small town budgets, and how they were forced to cut money from core services such as police and park service in order to meet them. But I don't know that I understand or sympathize so much with the proferred "moral order" that seems to implicitly include the disapproval and/or oppression of gay people, black people, Muslims, and a host of other minority groups in addition to the more positive elements of promoting politeness and compromise within the in-group.
Review of 'How Jesus Became God : the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A great overview of the theological disputes along the path to the Christian belief that Jesus is the same as God. A bit repetitious in some parts, and perhaps not something that religious fundamentalists will appreciate due to the author's stated agnostic beliefs and the thesis that the historical Jesus did not believe himself to be God, nor did his followers until decades after Jesus' resurrection. These points, while I've heard them from multiple biblical scholars, still seem threatening to the bulk of Christian believers, whose faith is founded on the dubiously coherent understanding of Jesus as simultaneously "fully man" and "fully God," part of a Trinity of divine beings that is somehow actually just one God, that is expounded in the Nicean creed.
"Quantum mechanics is humanity's finest scientific achievement. It explains why the sun shines and how …
Review of 'What Is Real?' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
An entertaining and interesting overview of some of the issues surrounding the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The author has a strong opinion that the Copenhagen interpretation (to the extent that such a thing exists) involving wavefunction collapse is bankrupt, although he's not certain which of the competing interpretations are correct.
The book lingers more on the story of the people behind the science and how various interpretations were formulated and debated than on the technical or philosophical issues associated with each interpretation, although these are also briefly discussed.
Overall I think that this is a great book for a layman (such as myself) who wants a brisk, readable introduction to some of the history and controversy surrounding the science. I also think that the book is interesting enough that readers might be inspired to explore the subject more deeply than this book allows after reading it.
Review of 'The New Geography of Jobs' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Fairly accessible, if brief, explanation of the economic trends driving inequality and urbanization in the US. The section at the end about the need to encourage educated people to migrate to the US reads as kind of a gut punch knowing what happened in 2016 though.
Review of 'White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Much more thoughtful than the title suggests, though perhaps not less incendiary. This is a concise and well-cited survey of the backlash against civil rights throughout the history of the US, up until the election of Trump. A very good read for black history month.
"Before the Mayflower" traces black history from its origins in western Africa, through the transatlantic …
Review of 'Before the Mayflower' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
An engagingly written survey book of African American history. There are some sources cited in the early book that seem dubious, and some statements made that strike me as false in ways that should be especially relevant to a black history textbook. For example, Rosa Parks did not sit down in the white section of the bus on an "impulse," but rather as part of a calculated civil disobedience strategy. But overall the breadth of the book's focus and the liveliness of its prose counterbalance these flaws.
The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work, wherein she …
Review of 'The origins of totalitarianism' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The book is very uneven. Some parts are exhilarating to read and intellectually provacative. Others are plodding and dull enough to serve as a soporific. Argument seems to be made too often by assertion, with a few supporting quotes from arbitrary places as weak buttresses for weighty premises.
Nevertheless the analysis of the principles of totalitarianism and their relationship to loneliness and a sort of monomanaical obsession with developing the consequences of an ideology are fascinating reading, as are the portions dealing with the relationship of imperialism and industrial capitalism to the development of fascist ideas.
Ultimately the book strikes me as an excellent essay collection, straddled somewhere between history and philosophy.
