Nate's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 26 Sep 2022 15:54:30 -0700 60 Nate's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Woke, Inc.: Inside the Social Justice Scam]]> 59144571 A young entrepreneur makes the case that politics has no place in business, and sets out a new vision for the future of American capitalism. Ěý There’s a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives. It affects every advertisement we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes.Ěý “Stakeholder capitalismâ€� makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world, but in reality this ideology championed by America’s business and political leaders robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.
Ěý
Vivek Ramaswamy is a traitor to his class. He’s founded multibillion-dollar enterprises, led a biotech company as CEO, he became a hedge fund partner in his 20s, trained as a scientist at Harvard and a lawyer at Yale, and grew up the child of immigrants in a small town in Ohio. Now he takes us behind the scenes into corporate boardrooms and five-star conferences, into Ivy League classrooms and secretive nonprofits, to reveal the defining scam of our century.
Ěý
The modern woke-industrial complex divides us as a people.Ěý By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when we as Americans lack both.
Ěý
This book not only rips back the curtain on the new corporatist agenda, it offers a better way forward. America’s elites may want to sort us into demographic boxes, but we don’t have to stay there. Woke, Inc.Ěýbegins as a critique of stakeholder capitalism and ends with an exploration of what it means to be an American in 2021--a journey that begins with cynicism and ends with hope.ĚýĚýĚý]]> Vivek Ramaswamy 1800751176 Nate 3 3.75 2021 Woke, Inc.: Inside the Social Justice Scam
author: Vivek Ramaswamy
name: Nate
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/09
date added: 2022/09/26
shelves:
review:
Riddled with truisms and insider anecdotes, but espousing a powerful message. Some things one will agree with, others disagree with, and the rest simply cringe at. Ramaswamy oversteps into the moral/political terrain, which I do not think is his intellectual milieu. It would be better if he stuck to the corporate/legal patches he knows best and can shed the most light on. In a way, my reaction to the book can be characterised by a tepid "yeah, sure..."
]]> <![CDATA[Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles, 1974-2001]]> 2265789 340 Don Felder 0297844628 Nate 4 3.99 2007 Heaven and Hell: My Life in The Eagles, 1974-2001
author: Don Felder
name: Nate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/22
date added: 2022/08/21
shelves:
review:

]]> On the Road 55880908 On The Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognized as a modern classic, Kerouac's American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than F. Scott Fitzgerald's, and the narrative goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and passion.]]> 281 Jack Kerouac 0141182679 Nate 4 3.41 1957 On the Road
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Nate
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/04
date added: 2022/08/04
shelves:
review:
Entertaining joy-read, but I found it lacking any serious depth -- plot, character development, even writing are all wafer-thin, but it has its moments and is definitely a book that I will revisit for the sheer pleasure of going on the road with Kerouac and his posse of colourful characters.
]]> <![CDATA[Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers]]> 12074
An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight.]]> 368 David Edmonds 0060936649 Nate 3 3.76 2001 Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers
author: David Edmonds
name: Nate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/06/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Updated Edition)]]> 1051136
In 1968 a coup d'Ă©tat brought into power an extraordinary regime in Iraq, one that stood apart from other regimes in the Middle East. Between 1968 and 1980, this new regime, headed by the Arab Ba'th Socialist party, used ruthless repression and relentless organization to transform the way Iraqis think and react to political questions. In just twelve years, a party of a few thousand people grew to include nearly ten percent of the Iraqi population.

This book describes the experience of Ba'thism from 1968 to 1980 and analyzes the kind of political authority it engendered, culminating in the personality cult around Saddam Hussein. Fear, the author argues, is at the heart of Ba'thi politics and has become the cement for a genuine authority, however bizarre.

Examining Iraqi history in a search for clues to understanding contemporary political affairs, the author illustrates how the quality of Ba'thi pan-Arabism as an ideology, the centrality of the first experience of pan-Arabism in Iraq, and the interaction between the Ba'th and communist parties in Iraq from 1958 to 1968 were crucial in shaping the current regime.

Saddam Hussein's decision to launch all-out war against Iran in September 1980 marks the end of the first phase of this re-shaping of modern Iraqi politics. The Iraq-Iran war is a momentous event in its own right, but for Iraq, the author argues, the war diverts dissent against the Ba'thi regime by focusing attention on the specter of an enemy beyond Iraq's borders, thus masking a hidden potential for even greater violence inside Iraq.]]> 323 Kanan Makiya 0520214390 Nate 0 currently-reading 3.81 1989 Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Updated Edition)
author: Kanan Makiya
name: Nate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Inside Story 55877563 560 Martin Amis 1529113474 Nate 5 4.23 2020 Inside Story
author: Martin Amis
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/07
date added: 2022/06/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Time's Arrow 23031 Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward in time toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.

]]> 165 Martin Amis 0679735720 Nate 0 to-read 3.78 1991 Time's Arrow
author: Martin Amis
name: Nate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wuthering Heights 32929156 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Emily Brontë's only novel, a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence, the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights is the definitive edition of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.]]> 359 Emily Brontë 0141439556 Nate 4 4.04 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Nate
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1847
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/23
date added: 2022/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> The Luzhin Defense 55966334 192 Vladimir Nabokov 0141185988 Nate 4
To my mind, Nabokov's story portrays a conflict between the rational and the irrational - a dichotomy that is encapsulated in the game that is central to its plot. Chess is, after all, not simply a game of calculation; it is also an art that is meant to push boundaries, a caveat that Nabokov beautifully captures through a comparison with music. The tension between the rational and the irrational lies at the heart of the novel, making itself especially palpable in the weird workings of Luzhin's mind and the purpose to which he puts it, but also in the love story that dominates the second half of the book. Luzhin's future wife is unable to understand why she loves the peculiar grandmaster and why she agrees to marry him despite the persistent (and often unbecoming) protestations of her parents and her own doubts about the suitability of the match.

In short, Luzhin's Defense is an enjoyable, if ultimately sombre and despiriting, tale about the travesty that is obsession, which is given a jocular spin by the vibrantly colourful (although sometimes lurid) albeit tragic character of Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. My only grievance is the density and occasionally jumbled character of Nabokov's prose, but most readers will certainly appreciate its nuanced nature.]]> 3.78 1929 The Luzhin Defense
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/08
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves:
review:
The narrative of Luzhin's Defense perfectly reflects the chaotic mind of its eccentric protagonist. Quite like the story of Dr. B in Zweig's novella Chess, Nabokov shows us the scintillating manifestation of prodiguous talent, but also the terrible price it at which it comes. Luzhin is a strange creature, meandering the fine line that separates genius and lunacy. His social interactions are simltaenously pathetic and endearing, as his inability to communicate with others results in jovial exchanges and comical situations (particularly those with his stand-offish mother-in-law).

To my mind, Nabokov's story portrays a conflict between the rational and the irrational - a dichotomy that is encapsulated in the game that is central to its plot. Chess is, after all, not simply a game of calculation; it is also an art that is meant to push boundaries, a caveat that Nabokov beautifully captures through a comparison with music. The tension between the rational and the irrational lies at the heart of the novel, making itself especially palpable in the weird workings of Luzhin's mind and the purpose to which he puts it, but also in the love story that dominates the second half of the book. Luzhin's future wife is unable to understand why she loves the peculiar grandmaster and why she agrees to marry him despite the persistent (and often unbecoming) protestations of her parents and her own doubts about the suitability of the match.

In short, Luzhin's Defense is an enjoyable, if ultimately sombre and despiriting, tale about the travesty that is obsession, which is given a jocular spin by the vibrantly colourful (although sometimes lurid) albeit tragic character of Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. My only grievance is the density and occasionally jumbled character of Nabokov's prose, but most readers will certainly appreciate its nuanced nature.
]]> <![CDATA[Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 54682459 Vladimir Nabokov Nate 0 to-read 3.87 1955 Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chess 32599701 83 Stefan Zweig 0241305160 Nate 5 4.27 1942 Chess
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Nate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/19
date added: 2022/04/19
shelves:
review:
A scintillating and jovial short-story depicting the limits of sanity and the often heavy toll that genius takes on the mind. Life's gifts can turn to curses, as Zweig amusingly shows.
]]> Anna Karenina 153
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0140449175 Nate 5
Unsurprisingly, Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' belongs in the anthology of literary classics. It is a powerful, gripping, and most of all heart-rending story depicting the way in which the blazing fires of a passionate love are capable of consuming the world and burning it down to ash. Vacillating on the boundaries of love and hate, honesty and deceit, betrayal and devotion, social expectations and personal desires, Tolstoy perfectly conveys the intricacies and complexities of the fundamental human emotion in an accessible and relatable way.

What I found personally riveting about the eponymous protagonist is the moral ambivalence that we, as readers, must approach her character with. One finds it hard not to pity Anna, whose heart yearns for the warmth of a feeling she cannot receive from her cold, career-minded husband. Her entire life revolves around a son whom she loves more than anything in the world, and who she cannot imagine giving up. Yet she also is a person for whom one often feels little sympathy for as she eventually abandons her beloved son and convinces herself that the man she truly loves pursued her out of vanity and has turned cold just like the husband from whom she had fled. Perhaps the problem lies with Karenina herself?

Anna's love affair with Count Vronsky and her troubles disentangling herself from her husband are often overshadowed by a more touching and meaningful story of Konstantin Levin and Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya. Although they are not the main couple, Kostya and Kitty often find themselves stealing the spotlight from the more stale and (later) resentful ravings of Anna and her two Alexeis. In a way, Kostya and Kitty give us a glimpse of what an genuinely happy couple look like -- their marriage comes up rather unexpectedly when the dashing debonair Vronsky ditches Kitty for Anna and the young princess is forced to reevaluate her heart's desires. She turns her affections to Kostya, who had been in love with her for as long as he can remember, and the two eventually marry. The initial love-driven euforia abates rather quickly, and Kostya even begins to doubt his feelings for his newly-wedded wife. Kitty is troubled by doubts of her own, mostly stemming from her husband's behaviour, but the couple brave all the obstacles they encounter and emerge as the only ones who are happy in matrimony; Karenina commits suicide driven by the paranoid delusions of her lover's unfaithfulness and apathy, whereas her brother, Stepan 'Stiva' Oblonksy (Kitty's brother-in-law, who had cheated on his spouse -- an Oblonsky family trait?) through financial recklessness and personal irresponsibility has estranged his wife from himself to the point where she is seeking a divorce.

Apart from the philosophical and political exegeses that sometimes drown out the drive of the main storyline (though, fortunately, these more cerebral passages are not overwhelmingly tedious), 'Anna Karenina' is a beautifully crafted book that stands the test of time as a classic monument of human literary achievement.]]> 4.21 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Nate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1878
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/17
date added: 2022/03/17
shelves:
review:
"And where love ends, hate begins."

Unsurprisingly, Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' belongs in the anthology of literary classics. It is a powerful, gripping, and most of all heart-rending story depicting the way in which the blazing fires of a passionate love are capable of consuming the world and burning it down to ash. Vacillating on the boundaries of love and hate, honesty and deceit, betrayal and devotion, social expectations and personal desires, Tolstoy perfectly conveys the intricacies and complexities of the fundamental human emotion in an accessible and relatable way.

What I found personally riveting about the eponymous protagonist is the moral ambivalence that we, as readers, must approach her character with. One finds it hard not to pity Anna, whose heart yearns for the warmth of a feeling she cannot receive from her cold, career-minded husband. Her entire life revolves around a son whom she loves more than anything in the world, and who she cannot imagine giving up. Yet she also is a person for whom one often feels little sympathy for as she eventually abandons her beloved son and convinces herself that the man she truly loves pursued her out of vanity and has turned cold just like the husband from whom she had fled. Perhaps the problem lies with Karenina herself?

Anna's love affair with Count Vronsky and her troubles disentangling herself from her husband are often overshadowed by a more touching and meaningful story of Konstantin Levin and Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya. Although they are not the main couple, Kostya and Kitty often find themselves stealing the spotlight from the more stale and (later) resentful ravings of Anna and her two Alexeis. In a way, Kostya and Kitty give us a glimpse of what an genuinely happy couple look like -- their marriage comes up rather unexpectedly when the dashing debonair Vronsky ditches Kitty for Anna and the young princess is forced to reevaluate her heart's desires. She turns her affections to Kostya, who had been in love with her for as long as he can remember, and the two eventually marry. The initial love-driven euforia abates rather quickly, and Kostya even begins to doubt his feelings for his newly-wedded wife. Kitty is troubled by doubts of her own, mostly stemming from her husband's behaviour, but the couple brave all the obstacles they encounter and emerge as the only ones who are happy in matrimony; Karenina commits suicide driven by the paranoid delusions of her lover's unfaithfulness and apathy, whereas her brother, Stepan 'Stiva' Oblonksy (Kitty's brother-in-law, who had cheated on his spouse -- an Oblonsky family trait?) through financial recklessness and personal irresponsibility has estranged his wife from himself to the point where she is seeking a divorce.

Apart from the philosophical and political exegeses that sometimes drown out the drive of the main storyline (though, fortunately, these more cerebral passages are not overwhelmingly tedious), 'Anna Karenina' is a beautifully crafted book that stands the test of time as a classic monument of human literary achievement.
]]> Homage to Catalonia 876061 against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it.� Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion, and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode.]]> 264 George Orwell 0141183055 Nate 0 currently-reading 4.05 1938 Homage to Catalonia
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Down and Out in Paris and London]]> 873273 246 George Orwell 0141184388 Nate 5 4.09 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1933
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/11
date added: 2022/02/11
shelves:
review:
An exhilarating account of Orwell's period of 'going native' in the French and British capitals despite the sombre undertones of the book's theme. Filled with anecdotes, aphorisms, contemporary popular wisdom, colourful (if occasionally lurid) and memorable characters, Down and Out in Paris and London is for me an unparalleled page-turner.
]]> The Road to Wigan Pier 30553 215 George Orwell Nate 4 3.92 1937 The Road to Wigan Pier
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/09
date added: 2022/02/11
shelves:
review:
An informative if depressing survey of the conditions faced by millions of working-class people in inter-war England. Orwell's plain but powerful prose paints a tenebrous picture of life in industrial towns that really makes a modern reader consider basic utilities and goods as exotic luxuries. The book ends with an honest, if somewhat naive, panegyric of democratic socialism.
]]> <![CDATA[Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics)]]> 54848220 This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?

Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor � and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.

Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life � from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy � to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction � to the philosopher who becomes a pirate � to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph � to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad � to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.

You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.

This is a mystery story, not about the murder � and rebirth � of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.]]> Ayn Rand Nate 1 Dagny Taggart, the protagonist of the novel, is a frustrating character with whom one can hardly develop any relationship, a difficulty that seems to mirror the nature of her own convoluted heart as the mercurial businesswoman switches between her love interests throughout the novel; from the dashing debonair Francisco d'Anconia, to the workaholic and unfeeling Hank Rearden, and finally ending with the plainly depressing and mysterious John Galt, who had been stalking her for a decade.
Although over a 1,000 pages long, the plot of the novel along with all its mysteries become obvious around a third of the way through, which makes the remaining two-thirds a gruelling hike for even a most patient reader. The boring mid-section is redeemed ever so slightly by Dagny's brief sojourn to Galt's Gulch, the furtive utopia where all successful entrepreneurs abscond to in a paradoxical strike of the capitalists against the working class, only to be ruined by her incomprehensible decision to leave this new-found paradise and the man she feels she truly loves and return to the real world to fight a losing battle. Galt's Gult paints a picture of what society would look like in a rabid anarcho-capitalists wet-dream, a cold and unfeeling society where every human interaction has been reduced to the form of a financial transaction; one does not find charity in such a society, only justice and the money that upholds it.
But my greatest qualm against this book is directed at its author, a woman who consciously or not reveals her own resentment towards her sex. The view of women in Atlas Shrugged is simply revolting. Despite being the sole brains behind the successful operation of Taggart Transcontinental based on her equal if not superior mental capacities to the dominating male characters, even the heroine of the book, Dagny Taggart, voluntarily reduces herself to the demeaning role of an object of pleasure at the discretion of the men she professes to love. It is hard to feel pity for even more pathetic characters, such as Lilian Rearden, given the absolutely lamentable way in which the author decided to depict them.

]]> 3.91 1957 Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics)
author: Ayn Rand
name: Nate
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1957
rating: 1
read at: 2022/02/07
date added: 2022/02/07
shelves:
review:
Littered with unending and tedious monologues, opaque uninteresting characters, an obscene if not outright vulgar perception of women, an emaciated transactionary understanding of love, Atlas Shrugged is a perfect metaphor for the society it seeks to portray; you wish it would just end, but somehow it just keeps on going.
Dagny Taggart, the protagonist of the novel, is a frustrating character with whom one can hardly develop any relationship, a difficulty that seems to mirror the nature of her own convoluted heart as the mercurial businesswoman switches between her love interests throughout the novel; from the dashing debonair Francisco d'Anconia, to the workaholic and unfeeling Hank Rearden, and finally ending with the plainly depressing and mysterious John Galt, who had been stalking her for a decade.
Although over a 1,000 pages long, the plot of the novel along with all its mysteries become obvious around a third of the way through, which makes the remaining two-thirds a gruelling hike for even a most patient reader. The boring mid-section is redeemed ever so slightly by Dagny's brief sojourn to Galt's Gulch, the furtive utopia where all successful entrepreneurs abscond to in a paradoxical strike of the capitalists against the working class, only to be ruined by her incomprehensible decision to leave this new-found paradise and the man she feels she truly loves and return to the real world to fight a losing battle. Galt's Gult paints a picture of what society would look like in a rabid anarcho-capitalists wet-dream, a cold and unfeeling society where every human interaction has been reduced to the form of a financial transaction; one does not find charity in such a society, only justice and the money that upholds it.
But my greatest qualm against this book is directed at its author, a woman who consciously or not reveals her own resentment towards her sex. The view of women in Atlas Shrugged is simply revolting. Despite being the sole brains behind the successful operation of Taggart Transcontinental based on her equal if not superior mental capacities to the dominating male characters, even the heroine of the book, Dagny Taggart, voluntarily reduces herself to the demeaning role of an object of pleasure at the discretion of the men she professes to love. It is hard to feel pity for even more pathetic characters, such as Lilian Rearden, given the absolutely lamentable way in which the author decided to depict them.


]]> <![CDATA[Pluralism and the Personality of the State (Ideas in Context, Series Number 47)]]> 3080887 300 David Runciman 0521022630 Nate 4 4.00 1997 Pluralism and the Personality of the State (Ideas in Context, Series Number 47)
author: David Runciman
name: Nate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/15
date added: 2022/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Burmese Days 9650 276 George Orwell 1421808307 Nate 5 3.87 1934 Burmese Days
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/16
date added: 2022/01/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Animal Farm / 1984 5472 This edition features George Orwell’s best-known novels�1984 and Animal Farm—with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.

In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Animal Farm is Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution - an account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones’s Manor Farm into Animal Farm - a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. But are they? AUTHOR: George Orwell (1903-1950) was born in India and served with the Imperial Police in Burma before joining the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was the author of six novels as well as numerous essays and nonfiction works.]]> 400 George Orwell Nate 5 4.29 1949 Animal Farm / 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2021/11/11
date added: 2022/01/09
shelves:
review:
Powerful and honest, as any of Orwell's writings.
]]> <![CDATA[Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience]]> 562714 379 Gitta Sereny 0394710355 Nate 0 4.27 1974 Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience
author: Gitta Sereny
name: Nate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic]]> 43204812 Librarian's Note: This is an alternate cover edition of ASIN B06XRKMBHJ

Having won two civil wars, conquered Ireland and Scotland and seen off Charles II, in 1653 Oliver Cromwell assumed the title Lord Protector. The same Protestant wind that had filled the sails of Drake's ships in 1588 was surely behind him.

Determined to avenge the loss of the Puritan colony of Providence Island, he decided to take on the Spanish in the New World; but an assault on the island of Hispaniola proved a disaster.

To Cromwell, obsessed with God's plan for an elect nation, this was a grievous blow. Concluding that God had deserted him because his domestic reforms had not gone far enough, he introduced the hardline puritan rule of the Major-Generals. Sectarianism and fundamentalism ran riot; Levellers and royalists joined together in conspiracy against Cromwell. The only way out seemed to be a return to the Parliament presided over by a King. But would Cromwell accept the crown?]]> 224 Paul Lay Nate 4 3.56 2020 Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic
author: Paul Lay
name: Nate
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/08
date added: 2021/10/13
shelves:
review:
A riveting analysis of how the tide turn on Cromwell following the loss of Providence Island. Examines the declining purchase of political purism faced by the Commonwealthsmen following the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth.
]]> <![CDATA[The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism]]> 75831
"The achievement of The Fatal Conceit is that it freshly shows why socialism must be refuted rather than merely dismissed—then refutes it again."—David R. Henderson, Fortune.

"Fascinating. . . . The energy and precision with which Mr. Hayek sweeps away his opposition is impressive."—Edward H. Crane, Wall Street Journal

F. A. Hayek is considered a pioneer in monetary theory, the preeminent proponent of the libertarian philosophy, and the ideological mentor of the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions."]]> 194 Friedrich A. Hayek 0226320669 Nate 0 to-read 4.22 1988 The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
author: Friedrich A. Hayek
name: Nate
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World]]> 52047752
Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and
leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global
influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations.

The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.
]]> 424 Anu Bradford 0190088583 Nate 0 to-read 3.93 The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World
author: Anu Bradford
name: Nate
average rating: 3.93
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]]> <![CDATA[The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies]]> 36360077 464 Richard Vinen 0241343429 Nate 0 to-read 3.26 2018 The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies
author: Richard Vinen
name: Nate
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy]]> 9143216 As Urbinati shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision makerOCOs direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Siey s, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy.]]> 344 Nadia Urbinati 0226842800 Nate 0 to-read 4.10 2006 Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy
author: Nadia Urbinati
name: Nate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Corporate Commonwealth: Pluralism and Political Fictions in England, 1516-1651]]> 26195550
Henry S. Turner uses the resources of economic and political history, literary analysis, and political philosophy to demonstrate how a number of English institutions with corporate associations—including universities, guilds, towns and cities, and religious groups—were gradually narrowed to the commercial, for-profit corporation we know today, and how the joint-stock corporation, in turn, became both a template for the modern state and a political force that the state could no longer contain. Through innovative readings of works by Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, among others, Turner tracks the corporation from the courts to the stage, from commonwealth to colony, and from the object of utopian fiction to the subject of tragic violence. A provocative look at the corporation’s peculiar character as both an institution and a person , The Corporate Commonwealth uses the past to suggest ways in which today’s corporations might be refashioned into a source of progressive and collective public action.]]> 344 Henry S. Turner 022636335X Nate 5 3.50 2016 The Corporate Commonwealth: Pluralism and Political Fictions in England, 1516-1651
author: Henry S. Turner
name: Nate
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/17
date added: 2021/03/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Free Speech And Why It Matters]]> 56962255
Since then, the victories of Political Correctness have formed the basis for a new intolerant mindset, one that seeks to move beyond simply reassessing the social contract of shared discourse to actively policing speech that is deemed offensive or controversial. Rather than confront bad ideas through discussion, it has now become common to intimidate one's detractors into silence through 'cancel culture', a ritual of public humiliation and boycotting which can often lead to the target losing his or her means of income.

Free Speech is a defence of our right to express ourselves as we see fit, and takes the form of a letter to those who are unpersuaded. Taking on board legitimate concerns about how speech can be harmful, Andrew Doyle argues that the alternative - an authoritarian world in which our freedoms are surrendered to those in power - has far worse consequences.]]> 128 Andrew Doyle Nate 0 to-read 4.23 2021 Free Speech And Why It Matters
author: Andrew Doyle
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Notes from Underground & The Double]]> 17881 Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the â€ant-hillâ€� of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence â€undergroundâ€�. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him â€� his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulson’s introduction discusses the storiesâ€� critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksy’s great novels.
]]> 287 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140442529 Nate 0 to-read 4.19 1864 Notes from Underground & The Double
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Nate
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Machiavelli and the Modern State: The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Extended Territorial Republic]]> 22146752 340 Alissa Ardito 1107061032 Nate 0 to-read 3.67 2014 Machiavelli and the Modern State: The Prince, the Discourses on Livy, and the Extended Territorial Republic
author: Alissa Ardito
name: Nate
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/31
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]]> Representation 9106312 213 Monica Brito Vieira 0745641601 Nate 0 to-read 3.58 2013 Representation
author: Monica Brito Vieira
name: Nate
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond the Blue Horizon: On the Track of Imperial Airways]]> 509935 430 Alexander Frater 0330433121 Nate 0 to-read 4.25 1986 Beyond the Blue Horizon: On the Track of Imperial Airways
author: Alexander Frater
name: Nate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show Trial]]> 3658837 379 Yoram Sheftel 0575057955 Nate 0 to-read 3.00 1994 The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show Trial
author: Yoram Sheftel
name: Nate
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes, his embodied state, its contexts and sources]]> 52994657 293 Horst Bredekamp 3110681366 Nate 4 4.00 Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes, his embodied state, its contexts and sources
author: Horst Bredekamp
name: Nate
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/19
date added: 2020/11/19
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]]> Unforgiving Years 780991 Unforgiving Years is a thrilling and terrifying journey into the disastrous, blazing core of the twentieth century. Victor Serge’s final work, here translated into English for the first time, is at once the most ambitious, bleakest, and most lyrical of this neglected major writer’s works.

The novel is arranged into four sections, like the panels of an immense mural or the movements of a symphony. In the first, D, a lifelong revolutionary who has broken with the Communist Party and expects retribution at any moment, flees through the streets of prewar Paris, haunted by the ghosts of his past and his fears for the future. Part two finds D’s friend and fellow revolutionary Daria caught up in the defense of a besieged Leningrad, the horrors and heroism of which Serge brings to terrifying life. The third part is set in Germany. On a dangerous assignment behind the lines, Daria finds herself in a city destroyed by both Allied bombing and Nazism, where the populace now confronts the prospect of total defeat. The novel closes in Mexico, in a remote and prodigiously beautiful part of the New World where D and Daria are reunited, hoping that they may at last have escaped the grim reckonings of their modern era.

A visionary novel, a political novel, a novel of adventure, passion, and ideas, of despair and, against all odds, of hope, Unforgiving Years is a rediscovered masterpiece by the author of The Case of Comrade Tulayev.]]> 341 Victor Serge 1590172477 Nate 0 currently-reading 4.05 1971 Unforgiving Years
author: Victor Serge
name: Nate
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/18
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Noise of Time 25912206 The Sense of an Ending.

In 1936, Shostakovitch, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, executed on the spot), Shostakovitch reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children—and all who are still alive themselves hang in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, for decades to come he will be held fast under the thumb of despotism: made to represent Soviet values at a cultural conference in New York City, forced into joining the Party and compelled, constantly, to weigh appeasing those in power against the integrity of his music.

Barnes elegantly guides us through the trajectory of Shostakovitch's career, at the same time illuminating the tumultuous evolution of the Soviet Union. The result is both a stunning portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man and a brilliant exploration of the meaning of art and its place in society.]]> 184 Julian Barnes 1910702609 Nate 4 3.72 2016 The Noise of Time
author: Julian Barnes
name: Nate
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/11/18
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]]> Aspects of Hobbes 1314399 theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.]]> 660 Noel Malcolm 0199247145 Nate 0 to-read 4.08 2002 Aspects of Hobbes
author: Noel Malcolm
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment]]> 37941844 The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state

In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to "the people," who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.

Demand for recognition of one's identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious "identity liberalism" of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy.

Identity is an urgent and necessary book--a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.]]> 240 Francis Fukuyama 0374129290 Nate 3 3.83 2018 Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
author: Francis Fukuyama
name: Nate
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 3
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Overall insightful, but occasionally confusing. Fukuyama highlights many of the dangers associated with the increasing practice of identity politics by both the right- and left-wing, but fails to denounce it as an inherently harmful doctrine to democratic societies that rest on pluralism and mutual recognition as valid actors on a political stage.
]]> Conquered City 189968 Conquered City, Victor Serge’s most unrelenting narrative, is structured like a detective story, one in which the new political regime tracks down and eliminates its enemies—the spies, speculators, andĚýtraitors hidden among the mass of common people.Ěý

Conquered City is about terror: the Red Terror and the White Terror. But mainly about the Red, the Communists who have dared to pick up the weapons of power—police, guns, jails, spies, treachery—in the doomed gamble that by wielding them righteously, they can put an end to the need for terror, perhaps forever. Conquered City is their tragedy and testament.]]> 196 Victor Serge 0904613518 Nate 5 4.00 1932 Conquered City
author: Victor Serge
name: Nate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/11/11
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]]> Heart of Darkness 4900
A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.]]> 188 Joseph Conrad 1892295490 Nate 5 3.43 1899 Heart of Darkness
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Nate
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1899
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/08
date added: 2020/11/08
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Captivating in its description of the African wilderness in the Victorian Age, an enjoyable read that takes you deeper into the heart of darkness with every page you read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India]]> 10749592 nawab of Bengal and the territorial acquisitions that followed has been perceived as the moment when the British Empire in India was born. Examining the Company's political and intellectual history in the century prior to this supposed transformation, The Company-State rethinks this narrative and the nature of the early East India Company itself.

In this book, Philip J. Stern reveals the history of a corporation concerned not simply with the bottom line but also with the science of colonial governance. Stern demonstrates how Company leadership wrestled with typical early modern problems of political authority, such as the mutual obligations of subjects and rulers; the relationships among law, economy, and sound civil and colonial society; the constitution of civic institutions ranging from tax collection and religious practice to diplomacy and warmaking; and the nature of jurisdiction and sovereignty over people, territory, and the sea. Their ideas emerged from abstract ideological, historical, and philosophical principles and from the real-world entanglements of East India Company employees and governors with a host of allies, rivals, and polyglot populations in their overseas plantations. As the Company shaped this colonial polity, it also confronted shifting definitions of state and sovereignty across Eurasia that
ultimately laid the groundwork for the Company's incorporation into the British empire and state through the eighteenth century.

Challenging traditional distinctions between the commercial and imperial eras in British India, as well as a colonial Atlantic world and a trading world of Asia, The Company-State offers a unique perspective on the fragmented nature of state, sovereignty, and empire in the early modern world.
]]> 320 Philip J. Stern 0195393732 Nate 4 3.84 2011 The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India
author: Philip J. Stern
name: Nate
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books]]> 7603 Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

]]> 356 Azar Nafisi 081297106X Nate 5 3.64 2003 Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
author: Azar Nafisi
name: Nate
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/10/21
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Heart-rending, yet simultaneously uplifting. A must-read for all...
]]> <![CDATA[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]> 396931 Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.]]> 527 Hannah Arendt Nate 4 4.30 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Nate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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date added: 2020/10/21
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]]> The Case of Comrade Tulayev 79787 The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state. Marked by the deep humanity and generous spirit of its author, the legendary anarchist and exile Victor Serge, it is also a classic twentieth-century tale of risk, adventure, and unexpected nobility to sit beside Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and André Malraux's Man's Fate.]]> 400 Victor Serge 1590170644 Nate 4 4.13 1948 The Case of Comrade Tulayev
author: Victor Serge
name: Nate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/21
date added: 2020/10/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in the Century (English and French Edition)]]> 189969 284 Victor Serge 090461395X Nate 4 4.08 1939 Midnight in the Century (English and French Edition)
author: Victor Serge
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/16
date added: 2020/07/16
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]]> Letters to a Young Contrarian 503150 From bestselling author and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, the classic guide to the art of principled dissent and disagreement

In Letters to a Young Contrarian, bestselling author and world-class provocateur Christopher Hitchens inspires the radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young (wo)men of tomorrow. Exploring the entire range of "contrary positions"—from noble dissident to gratuitous nag—Hitchens introduces the next generation to the minds and the misfits who influenced him, invoking such mentors as Emile Zola, Rosa Parks, and George Orwell. As is his trademark, Hitchens pointedly pitches himself in contrast to stagnant attitudes across the ideological spectrum. No other writer has matched Hitchens's understanding of the importance of disagreement—to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress, to democracy itself.]]> 141 Christopher Hitchens 0465030335 Nate 4 4.13 2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Nate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/07
date added: 2020/07/08
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]]> Darkness at Noon 30672
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.]]> 216 Arthur Koestler 0553265954 Nate 4 4.09 1940 Darkness at Noon
author: Arthur Koestler
name: Nate
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/06
date added: 2020/07/05
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Solemn, riveting, with a particularly morbid yet powerful ending
]]> Why Orwell Matters 30551
Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the fifty years since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens's polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.

Christopher Hitchens, one of the most incisive minds of our own age, meets Orwell on the page in this provocative encounter of wit, contention and moral truth.]]> 211 Christopher Hitchens 0465030505 Nate 4 3.95 2002 Why Orwell Matters
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Nate
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/02
date added: 2020/07/02
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]]> On Revolution 127232 Ěý
Hannah Arendt’s penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the eighteenth-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the twentieth century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future. Illuminating and prescient, this timeless work will fascinate anyone who seeks to decipher the forces that shape our tumultuous age.]]> 336 Hannah Arendt 0143039903 Nate 4 4.01 1956 On Revolution
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Nate
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/30
date added: 2020/06/30
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]]> 1984 40961427 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.]]> 298 George Orwell Nate 4 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Nate
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/26
date added: 2020/06/27
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]]> Hitch 22: A Memoir 7332753
In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political.

This is the story of his life, a life lived large.]]> 435 Christopher Hitchens 0446540331 Nate 5 Formidable. 4.01 2010 Hitch 22: A Memoir
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Nate
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/06/24
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Formidable.
]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Nate 0 to-read 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Nate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos]]> 30257963 What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.

What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant, and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure, and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith, and human nature while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its listeners.]]> 409 Jordan B. Peterson 0345816021 Nate 0 to-read 3.90 2018 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
author: Jordan B. Peterson
name: Nate
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/20
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]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Nate 0 to-read 4.21 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Nate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Modern Man in Search of a Soul]]> 646175 A provocative and enlightening look at spiritual unease and its contribution to the void in modern civilization

Considered by many to be one of the most important books in the field of psychology, Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of Carl Gustav Jung. In this book, Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology, including dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion. Additionally, Jung looks at the differences between his theories and those of Sigmund Freud, providing a valuable basis for anyone interested in the fundamentals of psychoanalysis.
]]> 244 C.G. Jung 0156612062 Nate 0 to-read 4.20 1931 Modern Man in Search of a Soul
author: C.G. Jung
name: Nate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gulag Archipelago 1918�1956 (Abridged)]]> 70561 The Gulag Archipelago 1918�1956—a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle—has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia.]]> 512 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0060007761 Nate 0 to-read 4.31 1973 The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Nate
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory]]> 609316
Forty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the "true victims" of World War II. For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe.

But over the past decade they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how - despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence - this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, "independent" research centers, and official publications that promote a "revisionist" view of recent history.

One sign of the movement's disturbing resonance is the rise of such figures as the Holocaust denier David Duke to national prominence. Holocaust deniers have also begun to make common cause with radical Afrocentrists such as Leonard Jeffries of New York's City University, who retells racist myths about the Jews; and a recent campaign of ads in college newspapers calling for "open debate" on "so-called facts" about the Holocaust suggests a bold new bid for mainstream intellectual legitimacy.

Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value relativism, and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge.]]> 304 Deborah E. Lipstadt 0452272742 Nate 3 3.97 1993 Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
author: Deborah E. Lipstadt
name: Nate
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2020/06/19
date added: 2020/06/19
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Although the prose is sometimes tedious, this book serves as a timeless warning against the assault on truth and rational inquiry (perhaps more pertinent in our times than when it was written) and the dangers of ideological predilections skewing facts and reality. Perhaps my greatest misgiving with the book, in light of its topic, is the constant referral to the Holocaust as a "German" atrocity, which appears to me to, in a sense, absolve non-Germans from their involvement in what I consider to be the greatest atrocity of the modern world. Lipstadt's incessant referal to the Holocaust as a German perpetration sidelines the involvement of other nationalities, such as Austrians (then under one Greater Germany with their German brothers), Ukrainians (many of whom served as guards at death camps), units from Soviet territories who served as auxillaries in the ranks of the Einsatzgruppen, etc.
]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Nate 4 4.26 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Nate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/16
date added: 2020/06/16
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]]> Selected Poems 559059 94 Alfred Tennyson 0486272826 Nate 0 to-read 4.08 1870 Selected Poems
author: Alfred Tennyson
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1870
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats]]> 53022 The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous reworking of ancient Irish myths and legends, to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest of this century's greatest poet to unite intellect and artistry in a single magnificent vision.

Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeat's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most beloved poets available in paperback.]]> 544 W.B. Yeats 0684807319 Nate 0 to-read 4.23 1933 The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
author: W.B. Yeats
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1933
rating: 0
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]]> Collected Poems 111879 Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984.

This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.]]> 218 Philip Larkin 0374529205 Nate 0 to-read 4.21 1988 Collected Poems
author: Philip Larkin
name: Nate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)]]> 136251
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited.]]> 759 J.K. Rowling Nate 4 4.61 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Nate
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/11
date added: 2020/06/11
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]]> The Case for Impeachment 34379717 The Case for Impeachment, Distinguished Professor of History at American University Allan J. Lichtman illuminates exactly how the impeachment of President Trump might work by showing how his actions—past or future—make him uniquely vulnerable to impeachment proceedings. From his dealings with Russia, to his conflicts of interest at home and abroad, to the numerous civil suits involving him, Lichtman zeroes in on Mr. Trump’s key areas of weakness.

Professor Lichtman also offers a fascinating look at presidential impeachments throughout American history, including the often-overlooked story of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, little known details about Richard Nixon’s resignation, as well as Bill Clinton’s hearings.



Many historians and legal scholars agree that we are facing uncharted political waters and most citizens—politics aside—want to know where the country is headed. Professor Lichtman has correctly predicted every Presidential election since 1984, including the election of 2016. Now, he is focusing on the 45th President of the United States, demonstrating his view that it is not a question of if President Trump will be impeached, but a question of when.]]> 290 Allan J. Lichtman 0062696823 Nate 3 3.88 2017 The Case for Impeachment
author: Allan J. Lichtman
name: Nate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2018/07/10
date added: 2020/06/10
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]]> May at 10: The Verdict 46005140
Written by one of Britain's leading political and social commentators, May at 10 describes how Theresa May arrived in 10 Downing Street in 2016 with the clearest, yet toughest, agenda of any Prime Minister since the Second World delivering Brexit. What follows defies belief or historical precedent. This story has never been told.

Including a comprehensive series of interviews with May's closest aides and allies, and with unparalleled access to the advisers who shaped her premiership, Downing Street's official historian Anthony Seldon decodes the enigma of the Prime Minister's tenure. Drawing on all his authorial experience, he unpacks what is the most intriguing government and Prime Minister of the modern era.]]> 887 Anthony Seldon 1785905287 Nate 0 to-read 4.19 2019 May at 10: The Verdict
author: Anthony Seldon
name: Nate
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Unspeakable: The Autobiography]]> 48758036
In his own words, "I made friends and enemies alike, but from start to finish I sought to do the right, rather than the convenient, thing and to be a decent public servant." From the start, Bercow tackles head-on his regretted fascination with definably right-wing attitudes and describes his inexorable march to more progressive thinking since his election as Member of Parliament for Buckingham in 1997. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the business of politics and how our democracy is - or should be - run, with fascinating insights into Bercow's family background and early interest in politics.

When Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons on 31st October, he had become one of the most recognisable and iconoclastic figures in British politics, and had created a vacancy of huge importance. As Speaker since 2009 he had a ringside seat during one of the most febrile periods in modern British history, presiding over the Commons while it had to contend with key issues such as austerity in the light of the financial crisis; the coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats; and of course the most intractable problem of all - how to deliver on the 2016 referendum decision that Britain should leave the EU.]]> 416 John Bercow 1474616623 Nate 0 to-read 3.73 2020 Unspeakable: The Autobiography
author: John Bercow
name: Nate
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> For the Record 45876984
David Cameron was Conservative Party leader during the largest financial crash in living memory. The Arab Spring and the Eurozone crisis both started during his first year as prime minister. The backdrop to his time in office included the advent of ISIS, surging migration and a rapidly changing EU.

Here he talks about how he confronted those challenges, from modernising a party that had suffered three successive electoral defeats to forming the first coalition government for seventy years. He sets out how he helped turn around Britain’s economy, implementing a modern, compassionate agenda that included education and welfare reform, the legalisation of gay marriage, the referendum on Scottish independence and world-leading environmental policies.

David Cameron is searingly honest about the key players from his time in politics. And he is frank about himself � the things he got right and the things he got wrong. He opens up about family life too, including the tragic loss of his eldest son.

We learn why he kept Britain’s promise on overseas aid spending and what it was like to commit British troops to conflicts in Libya, Iraq and Syria. He sets out how he won the first outright Conservative majority in nearly a quarter of a century, and describes the events leading up to the EU referendum, the renegotiation, the campaign � and his thoughts on it all today.

It is the most compelling record yet of what it’s like to lead in modern times and to live behind the most famous door in the world.]]> 744 David Cameron 0008239304 Nate 3 3.71 2019 For the Record
author: David Cameron
name: Nate
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2019/11/10
date added: 2020/06/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days]]> 1525986 Laconia; America's "neutrality" before its entry into the war; the Normandy invasion; the July 1944 bomb plot; his encounters with Raeder, Göring, Speer, Himmler, and Hitler; as well as his own brief tenure as the last Führer. Doenitz's invaluable work allows the reader to view the war at sea through the periscope's eye.]]> 560 Karl Dönitz 0306807645 Nate 0 to-read 4.18 1958 Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days
author: Karl Dönitz
name: Nate
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> An opposing man 4512391 English, German (translation) 418 Ernst Fischer 0713906332 Nate 0 to-read 4.00 An opposing man
author: Ernst Fischer
name: Nate
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution]]> 775985
“One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.� � The New York Times Book Review

The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe.

And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean.

With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.]]> 428 C.L.R. James 0679724672 Nate 0 to-read 4.39 1938 The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
author: C.L.R. James
name: Nate
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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]]> Poirot and Me 18516180
David Suchet is uniquely placed to write the ultimate companion to one of the world's longest running television series. Peppered with anecdotes about filming, including many tales of the guest stars who have appeared over the years, the book is essential reading for Poirot fans all over the world.]]> 298 David Suchet 0755364198 Nate 5 4.15 2013 Poirot and Me
author: David Suchet
name: Nate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/30
date added: 2020/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Nate 4 4.57 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Nate
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/07
date added: 2020/06/07
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]]> From Fatwa to Jihad 6424982 266 Kenan Malik 1843548232 Nate 0 to-read 4.06 2009 From Fatwa to Jihad
author: Kenan Malik
name: Nate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years]]> 255161 ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýĚý
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end."ĚýĚý When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life ofĚýĚýtyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."]]> 544 Victor Klemperer 0375753788 Nate 0 to-read 4.25 1995 I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years
author: Victor Klemperer
name: Nate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number]]> 669859
Jacobo Timerman (1923-1999) was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel in 1980. He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly news magazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best-known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La OpiniĂłn from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, he criticized all repressive governments and organizations, regardless of their political ideologies. His other books include The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, Cuba: A Journey, and Chile: A Death in the South.

The Americas, Ilan Stavans, Series Editor

Winner of a 1982 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Selected by the New York Times for "Books of the Century"

With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans and a new foreword by Arthur Miller.

]]> 184 Jacobo Timerman 0299182444 Nate 0 to-read 3.92 1980 Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number
author: Jacobo Timerman
name: Nate
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/04
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]]> Black Lamb and Grey Falcon 12880 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans, and the uneasy relationships amongst its ethnic groups. The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country's history as well as its daily life.]]> 1181 Rebecca West 014310490X Nate 0 to-read 4.21 1941 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
author: Rebecca West
name: Nate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1941
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography]]> 184350 695 Leon Trotsky 0873481445 Nate 0 to-read 4.20 1929 My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography
author: Leon Trotsky
name: Nate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Constitution of Liberty 1044658 580 Friedrich A. Hayek 0226320847 Nate 0 currently-reading 4.14 1960 The Constitution of Liberty
author: Friedrich A. Hayek
name: Nate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]> 912 J.K. Rowling Nate 4 4.50 2003 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Nate
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/03
date added: 2020/06/03
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]]> <![CDATA[God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]> 43369 307 Christopher Hitchens 0446579807 Nate 4 3.94 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
author: Christopher Hitchens
name: Nate
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2020/06/02
date added: 2020/06/02
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Riveting, compelling, exceptional both in terms of prose and content, a testament to a truly collosal mind which, sadly, is no longer with us.
]]> The Good Soldier Švejk 7629 The Good Soldier Švejk, celebrated Czech writer and anarchist Jaroslav Hašek combined dazzling wordplay and piercing satire in a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war.

Good-natured and garrulous, Ĺ vejk becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.

Cecil Parrott's vibrant translation conveys the brilliant irreverence of this classic about a hapless Everyman caught in a vast bureaucratic machine.]]> 752 Jaroslav Hašek Nate 5 4.09 1921 The Good Soldier Švejk
author: Jaroslav Hašek
name: Nate
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1921
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/02
date added: 2020/06/02
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A literary masterpiece in its humour and comedic force. The honest and cretinous hero of the book is both a pitiable and lovable character who never fails to arouse laughter in the reader, even with his most banal phrase "I dutifully report...".
]]> <![CDATA[Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (Norton Global Ethics Series)]]> 17986385 288 Philip Pettit 0393063976 Nate 0 to-read 3.78 2014 Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (Norton Global Ethics Series)
author: Philip Pettit
name: Nate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/05/31
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]]> On Obligations 4187299 On Obligations (De Officiis) in late 44 BC after the assassination of Julius Caesar to provide principles of behavior for aspiring politicians. It has subsequently played a seminal role in the formation of ethical values in western Christendom. Adopted by the fourth-century Christian humanists, it became transmuted into the moral code of the high Middle Ages. Thereafter, in the Renaissance from the time of Petrarch, and in the Age of Enlightenment that followed, it was given central prominence in discussion of the government of states. Today, when corruption and conflict in political life are the focus of so much public attention, On Obligations is still the foremost guide to good conduct. This new edition is based on a more systematic examination of the vast manuscript tradition than has previously been attempted, and shows with new clarity the major contribution to the improvement of the text made by scribes and readers of the later manuscripts, both in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 218 Marcus Tullius Cicero 0199540713 Nate 4 3.84 -44 On Obligations
author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
name: Nate
average rating: 3.84
book published: -44
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> The Republic and The Laws 5184537 The Republic is an impassioned plea for responsible government written just before the civil war that ended the Roman Republic in a dialogue following Plato. Drawing on Greek political theory, the work embodies the mature reflections of a Roman ex-consul on the nature of political organization, on justice in society, and on the qualities needed in a statesman. Its sequel, The Laws, expounds the influential doctrine of Natural Law, which applies to all mankind, and sets out an ideal code for a reformed Roman Republic, already half in the realm of utopia.
This is the first complete English translation of both works for over sixty years and features a lucid Introduction, a Table of Dates, notes on the Roman constitution, and an Index of Names.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
]]> 288 Marcus Tullius Cicero 019954011X Nate 4 3.69 -51 The Republic and The Laws
author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
name: Nate
average rating: 3.69
book published: -51
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/29
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Nate 5 4.56 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Nate
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2020/05/20
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> The Federalist Papers 110331

Hailed by Thomas Jefferson as “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written", The Federalist Papers is a collection of eighty-five essays published by Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay from 1787 to 1788, as a means to persuade the public to ratify the Constitution of the United States.


With nearly two-thirds of the essays written by Hamilton, this enduring classic is perfect for modern audiences passionate about his work or seeking a deeper understanding of one of the most important documents in US history.

]]> 688 Alexander Hamilton Nate 0 to-read 4.05 1788 The Federalist Papers
author: Alexander Hamilton
name: Nate
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1788
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[History of the Peloponnesian War]]> 261243 648 Thucydides 0140440399 Nate 4 3.90 -411 History of the Peloponnesian War
author: Thucydides
name: Nate
average rating: 3.90
book published: -411
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> Hamlet 1420 289 William Shakespeare 0521618746 Nate 4 4.02 1601 Hamlet
author: William Shakespeare
name: Nate
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1601
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> The Merchant of Venice 24128 249 William Shakespeare 0743477561 Nate 4 3.77 1596 The Merchant of Venice
author: William Shakespeare
name: Nate
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1596
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> The Iliad 1371
Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer’s poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad’s mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls “an astonishing performance.”]]> 614 Homer 0140275363 Nate 0 to-read 3.88 -800 The Iliad
author: Homer
name: Nate
average rating: 3.88
book published: -800
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> On the Genealogy of Morals 80449 On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. Nietzsche rewrites the former as a history of cruelty, exposing the central values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures. The result is a book which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation. Nietzsche questions moral certainties by showing that religion and science have no claim to absolute truth, before turning on his own arguments in order to call their very presuppositions into question. The Genealogy is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his characteristic concerns. This edition places his ideas within the cultural context of his own time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience.]]> 208 Friedrich Nietzsche 019283617X Nate 3 4.16 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Nate
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1887
rating: 3
read at: 2020/05/20
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> Theogony / Works and Days 27418 Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world and an account of their violent struggles before the present order was established. The Works and Days, a compendium of moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry, throws a unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society, ethics, and superstition. Hesiod's poetry is the oldest source for the myths of Prometheus, Pandora, and the Golden Age.

Unlike Homer, Hesiod tells us about himself and his family (he lived in central Greece in the late eighth century BC). This new translation by a leading expert combines accuracy with readability.]]> 112 Hesiod 0192839411 Nate 3 3.78 -700 Theogony / Works and Days
author: Hesiod
name: Nate
average rating: 3.78
book published: -700
rating: 3
read at: 2020/04/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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Contained some good advice about women who decorate their buttocks.
]]> Metamorphoses 1715
In Metamophoses, Ovid brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 723 Ovid 014044789X Nate 0 to-read 4.08 8 Metamorphoses
author: Ovid
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 8
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]]> <![CDATA[Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Lives (Aemilius Paulus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Grachus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony)]]> 279461 'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.'
In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is also implicitly to educate and warn those in his own day who wielded power. In prose that is rich, elegant and sprinkled with learned references, he explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. While drawing chiefly on historical sources, he brings to biography a natural story-teller's ear for a good anecdote. Throughout the ages Plutarch's Lives have been valued for their historical value and their charm. This new translation will introduce new generations to his urbane erudition. The most comprehensive selection available, it is accompanied by a lucid introduction, explanatory notes, bibliographies, maps and indexes.

Aemilius Paulus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Grachus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony]]> 608 Plutarch Nate 0 to-read 4.08 100 Roman Lives: A Selection of Eight Lives (Aemilius Paulus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Grachus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony)
author: Plutarch
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 100
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]]> The Art of Rhetoric 881319 Art of Rhetoric held a far deeper purpose. Here Aristotle establishes the methods of informal reasoning, provides the first aesthetic evaluation of prose style and offers detailed observations on character and the emotions. Hugely influential upon later Western culture, the Art of Rhetoric is a fascinating consideration of the force of persuasion and sophistry, and a compelling guide to the principles behind oratorical skill.]]> 292 Aristotle 0140445102 Nate 0 to-read 3.90 -322 The Art of Rhetoric
author: Aristotle
name: Nate
average rating: 3.90
book published: -322
rating: 0
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]]> Kant: A Biography 315946 576 Manfred KĂĽhn 0521524067 Nate 0 to-read 4.23 2001 Kant: A Biography
author: Manfred KĂĽhn
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> Common Sense 161744 Pennsylvania Magazine. On January 10, 1776, he published his pamphlet Common Sense, a persuasive argument for the colonies' political and economic separation from Britain.

Common Sense cites the evils of monarchy, accuses the British government of inflicting economic and social injustices upon the colonies, and points to the absurdity of an island attempting to rule a continent. Credited by George Washington as having changed the minds of many of his countrymen, the document sold over 500,000 copies within a few months.

Today, Common Sense remains a landmark document in the struggle for freedom, distinguished not only by Paine's ideas but also by its clear and passionate presentation. Designed to ignite public opinion against autocratic rule, the pamphlet offered a careful balance between imagination and judgment, and appropriate language and expression to fit the subject. It immediately found a receptive audience, heartened Washington's despondent army, and foreshadowed much of the phrasing and substance of the Declaration of Independence.]]> 104 Thomas Paine 0143036254 Nate 5 3.96 1776 Common Sense
author: Thomas Paine
name: Nate
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1776
rating: 5
read at: 2020/05/20
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil]]> 52090 The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication.

This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence,

Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling and unsettled issues of the twentieth century that remains hotly debated to this day.]]> 312 Hannah Arendt Nate 3 4.22 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
author: Hannah Arendt
name: Nate
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2020/01/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction]]> 55998 About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]> 110 Quentin Skinner 0192854070 Nate 4 3.86 1981 Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction
author: Quentin Skinner
name: Nate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/29
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1: The Renaissance]]> 717657 330 Quentin Skinner 0521293375 Nate 5 4.42 1978 The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1: The Renaissance
author: Quentin Skinner
name: Nate
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2020/03/30
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland]]> 647492
Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanaticalĚýNazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.

While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ěý

Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today. Ěý]]> 271 Christopher R. Browning 0060995068 Nate 4 4.10 1992 Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
author: Christopher R. Browning
name: Nate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/29
date added: 2020/05/29
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]]>