Subpar for Jared Diamond, the feeling was more of unedited ramblings and an old man's memories, than anything consistent. Not that I necessarily disagSubpar for Jared Diamond, the feeling was more of unedited ramblings and an old man's memories, than anything consistent. Not that I necessarily disagree with his reasoning on many things but as a book, meh, no....more
Hochschild writes that in 1999, the date he published the book, the Museum of Congo in Belgium was still operating as it was in Leopold's time, havingHochschild writes that in 1999, the date he published the book, the Museum of Congo in Belgium was still operating as it was in Leopold's time, having on display all the treasures, plant and animal specimens and other artifacts Leopold has plunged from former Congo. In 2005 when I visited, it was not so. In contrast, the museum was bipolar, a part remained as it was before and another part was a documentary of the atrocities the Belgian regime has committed on the land. Like Eisenstein's montage technique, putting two contrast images one after the other and letting you deduce the contrast's meaning. I remember leaving the museum feeling sick and with a knot in our stomachs, as big as a volleyball. I am reading now that the museum is shut down, undergoing further decolonization process.
Hitler and Stalin are the first names coming to mind when it comes to genocidal maniacs. Noone mentions Leopold, although he exterminated more than 15 million people. You should ask yourself why we tend to brush off as less important genocides and atrocities happening away from our land of plenty (a stolen plenty in this case). King Leopold's atrocities can be considered a notch up even from Hitler, morally. He wasn't driven by any ideology, he didn't do what he did for ethnic, religious or political reasons,nor he was a mad king. He did everything for his own personal profit (he didn't even want to share his wealth with his daughters who he tried to erase from his will). He wanted to become rich and die rich. All in all, he was just an early specimen of the modern neo-liberal investor, nothing more nothing less. Clean-cut, cunning, secretive, good at lobbying and excellent at PR. In a sense he was a man born a century early. And this makes me think of all our contemporary Leopolds and the mechanism that whitewashes them and it makes me think of all the future accusators who will point at us and ask, but how could you not know? Hochschild did an enormous research on his subject and presents it with simple and beautiful writing, without sensationalism. He makes the portraits of all involved come to life, from Leopold's mistress to the man that was probably the inspiration of Conrad's Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, from the early human rights activist E.D. Morel to John Tyrel Morgan, lobbying for King Leopold in the US. ...more
I see that many of the bad reviews this book has received come from believers or from scholars accusing Aslan of cherry picking information from the gI see that many of the bad reviews this book has received come from believers or from scholars accusing Aslan of cherry picking information from the gospels to make his point. I will argue that Christianity has been created by cherry picking from the gospels the way its leaders saw fit and they way it suited the agenda of the church in each era. It was inevitable to do so, in absence of historical evidence and in the position of power they had accumulated. Though raised as an atheist, by one agnostic and one atheist parent, being Greek, you can't escape the orthodox church that is all around you (compulsory lessons every year, starting from elementary school, an image of Christ on top of the blackboard in every class and compulsory group prayer, every morning at school (which I somehow always managed to stand as far back as possible and growing older, timing myself perfectly, so that I would arrive at school, after the prayer has ended)). I also couldn't escape my paternal grandmother who was fervently Christian and kept dragging me to churches and monasteries and miracle places, until I was big enough to say no (I bet that I can't find a fellow Greek that has visited ALL the monasteries and ALL the churches of most the Greek islands, ha, I did!). The point in saying all this, is that I have a knowledge about Orthodox Christianity, even though I never asked to have it, and I always thought that what I knew must come from a concrete foundation of gospels and scriptures. Reading Reza Aslan's book, I realized that for each thing I have been presented as a "fact", there is another point in another gospel that negates it, or is more ambiguous about the "fact". I've been taught cherry pickings. So, to circle back to Reza Aslan and this book, yes, it seems so, that he sometimes cherry picks information to make his thesis, that's why I am not giving the 5th star here, but he does something utterly interesting and important. He places the gospels in their actual historical settings (and then each in their actual historical time and place of writing), and by doing so, tries to draw conclusions and create a historical biography, not only of Christ and his apostles but of the whole region. And this makes for a fascinating tale and compelling history. Add to the mix, that he writes with an energetic tone, without sounding neither a scholar nor a layman, and you have a history book that you can read in a couple of days, holding your breath. He also avoids irony and insults, which is an extra, I have become tired of atheism that insults, Dawkins et al. I'm looking at you. I am not a scholar to know if and what mistakes he does, and do not wish to be a scholar, I just wanted an informed history of the region and of the historic Jesus and this book delivered that. ...more
Most chapters are interesting and informative and entertaining, some are outdated by recent finds and a few are complete speculation with misinformed Most chapters are interesting and informative and entertaining, some are outdated by recent finds and a few are complete speculation with misinformed logic and oversimplifications. Maybe it would be wise to revise this book for this century's discoveries....more
[image] A few years ago, I saw the movie The Salt of the Earth, a biography of Sebastiao Salgado, a photographer whose work I admire. I still remembe [image] A few years ago, I saw the movie The Salt of the Earth, a biography of Sebastiao Salgado, a photographer whose work I admire. I still remember being haunted by the images of the Rwanda genocide, an event I didn't know much about till then, but most of all, by the photographer's expression and his eyes when he was talking about what he had witnessed. He was haunted. (No surprise after that experience, he gave up journalistic photography and turned to Antarctica and Amazonian tribes). [image] So, when I tripped upon the angry title We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, I knew I had to read the book, as I always wanted to know more about what was behind Salgado's haunting. And make no mistake, this is an angry book. Gourevich does a very nice work balancing several things: anger, atrocity, despair, heroism without falling to easy sensationalism and categorization of good and evil (although he seems to be a Kagame fanboy, I'm not sure I can blame him though, his were very interesting political ideas). He lets the story tell itself through interviews of all sides and does poignant historical and contextual analysis when needed. He is also good at giving a brief background on colonialism and post colonialism in Africa to tie everything together. I begun reading the book with a huge question mark WHY and I'm not sure I got an answer. But maybe, like in the Holocaust, the WHY is irrelevant, the HOWis important. Oh, and see The Salt of the Earth, it's a great movie. ...more
A long time ago I went on a road trip around Holland and Belgium. In the time before GPS, we took the itineraries of the Dutch Automobile Association A long time ago I went on a road trip around Holland and Belgium. In the time before GPS, we took the itineraries of the Dutch Automobile Association (or something like that, forgive me, I forget) and one of them was passing through all the major battlefields of WWI. Thus, the photo below, a french cemetery (among the 170 total cemeteries found at Ypres). It is an understatement to say that the whole region is a cemetery. I knew little about WWI then. I remember driving speechless and music-less for kilometers, feeling upset and depressed at the end of that day. I felt the same while reading this book (and after).
[image] It is an excellent book that combines all the aspects of the history of WWI in one tome, written with the average reader in mind. This doesn't mean that it is oversimplified, but that it assumes you are not a historian and every time it presents new data (places, events, people), it takes the time to give you some background, so you don't get lost. It has a background chapter in front of each chapter so that you get basic information for what's to come and elaborates in a variety of themes (from Hapsburg family history to women in the war to Lawrence of Arabia). It keeps a great balance between describing battles and tactics, politics, social-economic results and down to earth historic excerpts from diaries, poems, first-person narratives. Required reading to understand a historical event that its aftermath affects us still....more
What can I say about Gulag Archipelago that has never been told before. Answer: nothing. It requires a big time investment to go through all the threeWhat can I say about Gulag Archipelago that has never been told before. Answer: nothing. It requires a big time investment to go through all the three books but it is worth every minute you invest in it. It is easy to read as a text but difficult to read as context. It is a great reminder to what can happen when the system overgrows, morally, the person. When the system does that, humanity fades to extinction. And, if you are first to blame communism for that, I'd have to hyperlink you to (obviously) nazism and Hitler, the Southern Korea regime (yes, southern) portrayed at Human Acts, modern Greek history, Abu Ghraib etc. In Solzhenitsyn' Archipelago you can even find that the methods are the same. Keep people scared, invent a war or an enemy and you have stolen some (or all) of their humanity to your advantage. The examples are countless really. It is a story that needed to be told to become history. And everybody should read it.
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