"The Managerial Revolution"

Not a corporate-manager-type book,
despite the prominent pyramid graphic

Political theorist James Burnham published "The Managerial Revolution" in 1941 in the shadow of a depression and world war.¹  He observed that capitalism had recently had a bad run and appeared to be in an unstoppable decline, but saw little evidence that it was being replaced by socialism. In fact, socialism itself, as practiced by Russia, appeared to be morphing into something quite different from its ideals. Stalin's five-year plans, European fascism, and Roosevelt's New Deal seemed to point to a different way of organizing societies and economies around governmental planning. A new class of official, the Manager, would hold power in the coming regimes.

"Anabasis"

I read the Henry Graham
Dakyns translation

"Anabasis" – sometimes translated as "The March of the Ten Thousand" – is Xenophon's autobiographical account of the tribulations of an army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to fight against his brother, Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II. Cyrus is cut down by a javelin in the Battle of Cunaxa, and the Greeks are left stranded and surrounded by enemies with no supplies, shelter, or even pay¹.

Art Spiegelman on "Maus"

 

A few times each year, the Chicago Public Library chooses a book reflecting some societal theme, sets up programming and events, and presumably procures a bunch of extra copies. This season's pick is Art Spiegelman's "Maus," a graphic novel depicting his father's experiences during the Holocaust. I saw Spiegelman speak last week in Chicago¹ about the case for comics, his relationship with his father, and more, and it was fantastic.

"Ancient Greece"

Urn art: so pretty!

One of my favorite books as a child was an illustrated collection of Greek myths. There was something fantastic and evocative in imagining those people and times: the fierce gods, mountain palaces, extravagant feasts, sleek ships, sun-dappled olive groves, secluded riverbanks, valleys echoing with Pan's mournful flute melodies.

Thomas Martin's "Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times" surveys the history and culture of the land and people who told those tales. Surprisingly, it also convinced me to add two additional works to my one-day reading list. A few takeaways follow.

"War and Peace"

...and Love and Feuds and
Ironic Money Troubles and
Tolstoy's Philosophy of History, etc.

When I tell people I've read Tolstoy's War and Peace, the two most common reactions are "The whole thing?" and "Eh, I liked Anna Karenina." I think a few things make this a difficult read: the length¹, that the recommended translations use overly florid language², and the subject matter. It's a novel that reads a bit like history, or perhaps more like philosophy wrapped in a parable about, well, war and peace.

"Hidden Figures"

 

 

Not the film adaptation cover, which
ironically obscures the actual people!

"Hidden Figures" is a historical account of the important and often unrecognized role African American women have played in U.S. aeronautical and space research. It focuses on the contributions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson from the 1930s through the 1960s as computers (all that rocket science math used to be done by hand!), researchers, and engineers at NACA, and its successor organization NASA.

"All The Light We Cannot See"

Redundant Subtitle: A Novel

I added Anthony Doerr's "All The Light We Cannot See" to my reading list after hearing about it on the radio. I remember that someone said it's a different take on a French World War II story. Besides that, I was going in blind.

"Angela's Ashes"

Ireland but sepia

It took me about four months to read "Angela's Ashes" – averaging perhaps two chapters a week – not because it was incredibly long or I found it boring, but because parts of the book were so poignant or heart-wrenching I had to put it down for the day. A few details and thoughts below.

"Bobos in Paradise"

Bobos = Bourgeois bohemians

I've been reading David Brooks's op-eds in the New York Times for years. He typically writes about society and politics and I find that his columns are sometimes insightful, sometimes scathing, sometimes on-point, and often thought-provoking. A couple of his books have been on my reading list for a while, and "Bobos in Paradise" is both the first he wrote and the first I finished.

The central premise of "Bobos" is that today's ruling elite consists of bourgeois bohemians who have synthesized the corporate culture of the 80s with the rebellious counter-culture of the 60s. Brooks walks us through some of the strange and amusing contradictions this has caused, and argues that many of today's mainstream values, such as the meritocratic ideal and self-expression, arose from this synthesis.

Some flavor quotes and my take below.

"Devil Take the Hindmost"

"This time is different!"

Edward Chancellor's "Devil Take the Hindmost" is an in-depth study of financial speculation and panics over the last 500 years. The book's 400-plus pages really drive home two messages:

1. In the long run, greed is not good.
2. This time may be different, but probably not in the ways we hope.

"Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future"

The 1930s future: so quaint!

Somehow, imagining a brighter future seems quintessentially American. "Yesterday's Tomorrows" explains the country's obsession with futurism not in terms of technology, but as an evolution of society itself. From the preface:

To imagine that the future will resurrect cherished values of the past has no doubt been comforting to modern Americans. If only the material world changes, leaving social arrangements intact, the prospect of technological innovation becomes less intimidating. Yet this may well be in illusion. Technology has historically been a catalyst of change, not a conserver of traditions or a refuge for established ways of life and thought. The visions of the future gathered here are of little interest as prophecies. As artifacts of culture and belief, however, these past visions of the future—testaments to the pervasiveness of this illusion of technological utopianism—are guideposts to a better understanding of our own future.

Reading "Yesterday's Tomorrows" is a bit like walking through a history museum: the curator's text guides interpretation, but it's up to the visitors to make up their own minds about the past.

"Legend of the Galactic Heroes" Vol. 1

Politics...in...spaaaaaace!

"Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Dawn" (LOGH) is the first volume of the English translation of (in my opinion) the greatest TV show ever made. The author Yoshiki Tanaka is known for his historical writing style, which comes through clearly in the novelization. Though it's set centuries in the future, "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" explores issues that are incredibly relevant today, such as the problems with various forms of government, the tension between regressive religious doctrines and the modern economy, terrorism, when war is justified, and much more.

"The Education of Little Tree"

Truly a story, at any rate

"The Education of Little Tree" is a coming-of-age story set during the Great Depression. After his parents' death, the young Forrest "Little Tree" Carter moves in with his Cherokee grandparents in the mountains of Tennessee and learns the importance of self-reliance and understanding others. But the book is not what it seems – though allegedly autobiographical, it is actually a work of fiction written by the infamous Asa Earl Carter.

Minor spoilers below.

Future historians, rock & roll, narratives

The record that just might go gold galactically

The New York Times magazine recently published a fun article about which iconic rock artists might still be remembered 300 years hence, but also about how it's not facts but narratives that shape history. Here's an excerpt for flavor:

I have no data on this, but I would assert that if we were to ask the entire population of the United States to name every composer of marching music they could think of, 98 percent of the populace would name either one person ([John Philip] Sousa) or no one at all. There’s just no separation between the awareness of this person and the awareness of this music, and it’s hard to believe that will ever change.

Now, the reason this happened — or at least the explanation we’ve decided to accept — is that Sousa was simply the best at this art. He composed 136 marches over a span of six decades and is regularly described as the most famous musician of his era. The story of his life and career has been shoehorned into the U.S. education curriculum at a fundamental level. (I first learned of Sousa in fourth grade, a year before we memorized the state capitals.) And this, it seems, is how mainstream musical memory works. As the timeline moves forward, tangential artists in any field fade from the collective radar, until only one person remains; the significance of that individual is then exaggerated, until the genre and the person become interchangeable.

I'd say it doesn't stop with musical memory, though: this is how almost all memory works.

"The Great Depression: A Diary"

Diaries are always so serious

Benjamin Roth's diary is a month-by-month account of one of the U.S.'s most socially and financially turbulent eras. The contagion began in the equity markets, as investors discovered assets they'd thought a bargain were worthless. As the economy cratered, unemployment spread; mortgages went into default; millions lost their homes¹. Banks failed – and in many cases, illegal activity and insider kickbacks gave them the final push over the edge. Radicalism was on the rise. Some thought they were witnessing the death of capitalism.

This book's subject is the Great Depression, of course, but doesn't it sound eerily similar to 2007-2009? That's ultimately why I picked up "The Great Depression: A Diary": to see what lessons the past holds for the present.

For the first time in my personal business life I am witnessing a major financial crisis. I am anxious to learn the lessons of this depression. To the man past middle life it spells tragedy and disaster but to those of us in the middle thirties it may be a great school of experience out of which some worthwhile lesson might be salvaged.

—Benjamin Roth, June 5, 1931

"The Gardens of Light"

Prophet, painter, conscience-waker

"The Gardens of Light" introduces Mani, a third-century Babylonian prophet who founded the now-extinct Manichean religion and who preached nonviolence and tolerance across the Middle East. Very little about him has survived the passage of time, so Amin Maalouf dramatized his life and times in this work of historical fiction:

This book is dedicated to Mani. It [tries] to recount his life, or what can still be made out after so many centuries of lies and oblivion.

Minor spoilers below.