TFMethane

Author loves the history and loves his characters

Revisado: 11-22-24

I am a big fan of Fall Of Civilizations on YouTube, by the same author. if you listen to the episode about Assyria before reading/listening to this book, you will understand and appreciate the richness of the history. I can imagine the author poring over artifacts and history, desperately wanting to know the stories of how these items came to be where they are found... to understand the people who left them, and to feel the connection with them. this is a beautiful story that brings that all together. very satisfying if you are a fan of the podcast/YouTube channel. you won't be disappointed.

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Such a Cunning Linguist

Revisado: 10-28-24

I have long espected and admired John McWhorter. This book does not disappoint his fans. His elevated prose and able wit are the perfect balance to this inherently bawdy subject.

I must point out the glaring omission of "cunnilingus" from the discussion of words related by sound to the c-word. I would have enjoyed a paragraph in his delightfully entertaining style about it.

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short. tried it to earn an achievement badge

Revisado: 08-17-21

hoping I can get that badge for finishing a whole "book" in one sitting. well see if it counts.

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good history, interesting points, revelatory.

Revisado: 08-17-21

I learned some new details and perspective on world war ii, thank you and Russell crisis, the decision to drop the bomb on japan, and some very interesting details about American nuclear war planning and what SAC was really intended to do.

the idea of how close we came and still could come to Total worldwide destruction is chilling.

agree with some of the others that the performance is fairly robotic, but these speeches extremely clear, and amenable to playing at high playback speeds.

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nerds will all love this

Revisado: 08-08-21

look, he's pretty out of touch, but generally a loveable guy with lots of insight from a life of learning and experience. Love how his "current" references are all from the 90s. Anyway, tTlhe performance is the most extemporaneous and unscriptedly scrumptious of any great courses/teaching company lecture I've ever heard (And I've heard a lot). This feels like a guy you'd love to have a beer with just riffing on the things he's passionate about, and it's just a great, elucidating time. Check it out. you won't regret it.

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hodgepodge. like interesting podcasts

Revisado: 08-02-21

kind of provides enrichment on a lot of stuff you kind of already know the basic historical scaffolding for.

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Necessary listen, lacks motivation

Revisado: 06-22-21

Every white person who has ever thought "Am I racist?" or "was that racist?" or "does that make me racist?" or "I'm not a racist," should read this book. This book is written by a white woman who has advanced degrees in the subject and does racism seminars for corporations - mostly for white people. The target audience of this book is white people, but is probably still useful for people of other ethnicities/social groups to read, as many of the behaviors discussed are present in a broader segment of the population than just white people.

The book provides a critical perspective that will change the way you view yourself and the concept of racism - much much for the better. In short, we all have the capacity for racism and transgressions. Despite the huge stigma that is attached to being thought of as a racist (either by yourself or by others), the reality is our racism changes from moment to moment, and can really only be assessed by our moment to moment behavior. That behavior can be adjusted and changed. It's not about making a moral judgement that is immutable as soon as you do something that is remotely considered racist. We need to drop the defensiveness that comes from feeling judged - at least that is the author's thesis that is probably mostly correct.

There is a lot of talk these days about the "woke mob," and I'd suggest that this author is both "woke" and anathematic to the "woke mob." She focuses on the constant search for betterment and redemption, and would not be a proponent of cancel culture.

Having said that, I think the author misses a couple of key points:
1) She pretty much glosses over the real-world fears that white people have of real world consequences for being labelled a racist. She advocates that we accept the fact that we have racist thoughts or (intentionally or unintentionally) do racist things sometimes. But she almost totally ignores the fear that many of us have that, if we accept or are forced to accept such a thing, we might lose our jobs and our families may not be able to eat or have healthcare.
2) She doesn't have an endgame. She focuses totally on how our society can do this or that to improve, and how individuals as a part of that can do this or that to constantly combat and hammer out racism. But the closest thing she mentions to an overall goal and motivating factor is that it satisfies her own desire to see herself as a good, ethical, moral person. Of course we'd all like that, but perhaps not at the expense of paying for our children's college. What is our endgame? Do the processes she prescribe have any hope of yielding a noticeable benefit beyond us feeling better about ourselves? I'm not saying she doesn't point out multiple inequities in hiring, workforce, opportunities, etc. It's just that her interventions are all focused on individual interactions, and not on any kind of action that might directly correct these inequities. She seems to just hope (although she doesn't even say) that being better as a person will naturally improve the system. I personally have my doubts about that.

3) She doesn't look into non-US or historical contexts/comparisons. Many other societies are racist. For example, China right now has concentration camps for Uyghurs. Is there any example of any society in history that has defeated racism, tribalism, or similar ingroup/outgroup systems of oppression? How did they do it? If it has been defeated before, do the author's interpersonal interventions match up with the interventions that worked in those cases? If there genuinely has never been a society that defeated this cancer of racism, is there any hope that ours will? If there is hope, then why is there hope? How do your prescriptions help? I kept feeling like cheering in agreement with the author: "Yeah! Lets be better people!" but then feeling hollow and wondering "Will this all make any difference?"

I absolutely will incorporate what the author proposes into my interactions with black people, and members of other marginalized groups. But I recognize that my prime motivator is so that I and my family can feel better about who I am. I want to be a nice person. I don't see this as an actual solution to the societal level problem. I also intend to take concrete actions for measurable change - I just don't think you'll find the latter in this book.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

provides needed intellectual clarity.

Revisado: 06-22-21

This book has been criticized for over simplification, and by excessively focusing on outcomes, undercutting the soul of the anti racist movement, as it were.

But it is refreshing to me, a physician and engineer, to hear racism and anti racism framed in a way that focuses on measurable, actionable interventions and outcomes. While the author does not provide many specific prescriptions in this book, he does lay out an ideological framework that is tractable and seems most likely to produce tangible effects.

I do not agree with a few of his fairly harsh broad generalizations, but there aren't many of them. And based on the rest of the book, I suspect the author would concede somewhat if challenged on those specific generalizations. it's very hard and awkward literarily to constantly distinguish between "white people believe x" and "most white people believe x." You have to forgive the occasional looseness with this, and perhaps blame the editor as much or more than the author. He goes to great pains at several points to say that such generalizations are both inaccurate and counterproductive, so you gotta give him a pass for not keeping them entirely out of his otherwise precise writing.

As a (I believe well intentioned) white man, I can say that this book lays out a world view, and implies a formula for success.

The last chapter really brings it home, although I admit I may be susceptible to his health analogies because of my profession. But his point that racism is only 600 years old, and like a cancer caught early, has a chance of being vanquished.

While I can't agree 100% with the author, I was surprised to find I agree more than 90%, and I'm personally grateful that he has refocused my attention and future efforts toward effective action. I think that was his goal, perhaps more than selling books, and with me at least it was successful.

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kind of yada yadas the actual war

Revisado: 05-06-21

I knew next to nothing about this topic when I read the book, so I was really interested to delve. almost the entire book goes into the 100 years+ of history about the trading at Canton. There are some modestly interesting side stories about the 2 or 3 europeans who actually went into the interior of china and learned the language before this war. it's odd, because these stories really only serve to make the point that very few foreigners knew anything about China before the final buildup to war... yet at least as much time is spent making this realtively simple point than was made portraying just how the actual war was conducted. one thing I do know about the opium wars is that it has served as a national humiliation that the modern chinese still think about... yet the book doesn't really go into much detail about the conduct of the war and what happened at the various battles, except in the broadest of strokes. I'm sure there are lasting examples of massacres or whatever that the chinese still think about, but there is nothing like that in this book. it focused almost entirely on the high level politics of the issue before and, to a lesser extent, after. To the author's credit, it does give the chinese perspective and discusses the way power structures in china at the time worked. there was plenty of new learning to be had in this book for me. But I don't feel like I learned why the opium wars have left a terrible scar on the Chinese national soul. it might have been nice to have a chapter that focused on how this war changed the politics of china and maybe Britain well into the 20th century, and how it became lore in those countries, and what that says about modern international relations. I guess I'll have to read another book about that.

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listen at 1.5x speed... it's better

Revisado: 05-06-21

if you listen at 1.5x, the whole performance sounds like an old timey newsreel announcer. Very emotionally emphatic and super enjoyable. and over in 40 min - like a podcast.

There's not much in this tract that would surprise a modern listener, but I guess it was historically important for an esteemed general to call out the profiteering that comes with the establishment and maintenance of empire by means of war. Also the modern listener surely all know about the psychological cost if war and how difficult it is for warfighters to psychologically reintegrate with society after war, but I guess this was more shocking to the readers in the 1930s to hear from such an authority.

The context is the buildup to WW2, and there are a few prescient insights Butler had about that impending war. The experience and data he cites are almost entirely from WW1. I learned a few details about how the soldiers were financially mistreated in that war.

Worth the read so you can say you read it, but the performance at 1.5x is actually so enjoyable as to be my favorite so far in all the many audible books I've read.

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