The power of monopoly is immense and all-encompassing. Humanity has been thrust into a deeply unnatural state, we have become trapped in a prison whose author’s names are multitude but all follow the same ideology: capitalism. Enclosure is now the rule. The downtrodden cannot break their chains until all of the lower classes become a union of people.
A beautiful book. It felt as though each fallen soldier was given their own gorgeous, and many times amusing, epitaph. The detailed descriptions of warriors on the battlefield being maimed or committing acts of heroic combat made me feel like I was there at Troy, as well as feasting, and indulgent-to-death drinking. Achilles behaving as a godlike man-child. All these complex feelings compounded when gods such as Neptune would help a soldier or engorge a river to stop the relentless advance of one side. I wish I could sit around a campfire and listen to the oral re-telling of this story in its original form.
A final response to the lie that capitalism has existed since the inception of humanity. The author deftly and succinctly explores where the transition into capitalism began. A whole year’s worth of education is packed into this very accessible book.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. This capitalist system we live under cannot continue. We must commit to the struggle to free ourselves. There has been an often silent war from the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and the peasantry and we cannot stand idly by any longer. Workers! Unite! And break your chains!
There is not much I can write here to express my gratitude for this Menshevik-Internationalist deciding to write this book from his journals. This is the raw view of the revolution, nothing held back, not even his scathing views of the Bolshevik and their insistence to ‘go at the speed of the proletariat and peasantry’, something the Mensheviks clearly thought abhorrent and un-marxist. Towering intellectual figures like Martov brought down part by their rigidity and part by circumstance, this tome feels like the Menshevik counterpart to Trotsky’s (Bolshevik) telling of the revolution. You cannot get a complete view of the revolution without reading this (and one day in the future I will likely read the entire unabridged version, it is that insightful). Sukhanov does a very good job of being impartial, but he does not hold back from criticism—and in many ways his disdain for certain figures like Kerensky and even his own non-International ‘fraction’ of the Mensheviks almost feels modern, perhaps from the language he uses in frustration. The most heartbreaking moment is when he’s at the Soviet Congress around October 26th, on the outside looking in after the ‘pure’ Mensheviks and SRs left in protest. These ‘pure’ groups blind to the fact that the Soviet was now the only centre of power; Sukhanov sits there physically in congress but on the outskirts of the revolution he cared so much about—after he was one of the first executive committee members in February… now he’s nothing, in touching distance yet unable to effect change any longer in the very heart of the world socialist revolution. His accurate-to-reality sarcasm is entertaining, but being keen is not being correct, and he himself is still blinded by his Menshivism, and in that darkness despite seeing so much he could not understand what the Bolsheviks knew so plainly: the people cannot wait.
The confusion, the insanity, the absence of timely communication, the benign terror! I simply love the way this book makes me feel. It’s a maze of bureaucracy, a 1920s disintegration of a man, an annihilation so impersonal and so rote and quiet that they’ve almost gone back in time to erase him from ever existing. For some reason reading his confusion and anguish is calming, because I know the ending. The story structure feels a bit Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness, where every chapter he loses more options and has no way out, a claustrophobic ever-narrowing corridor!
One of the best fiction books ever written. Pinpoints and then extracts society's future issues and puts it in this book. I'm surprised she didn't have a time machine or a crystal ball when she wrote this. The chaos of the future is clear to see for anyone with a brain to think.
“In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class”. Clear as a turquoise lake and as blunt as a sledgehammer, Mao gives one of the most well-thought out and simple delineations between practice and theory. For understanding and acting in the correct manner in the development of our current mode of production into scientific socialism, one needs theory to guide you, but theory alone will never be enough, practice fulfills the other half the of the equation. And after practice? Theory again and so on in a perpetual cycle the duality of theory and practice feed each other.
The evolution of Saint Petersburg into the nexus of the revolution. The workers learning, coalescing, cooperating. Building themselves and each other up to take control of their labour. The workers wheelbarrowing their bosses out of the factory in a rage to the edge of the Neva, only to laugh when he wets himself in fear, and he wobbles away ultimately unharmed. Watching a revolution form from the downtrodden workers is better than drugs.
A pamphlet with the ability to plant the seeds of a better world in the minds of every reader. Deftly explains the basic and truthful facts of the relationship between a worker’s wage, their labour-power, and capital.
Remarkable in its breadth this extensive tome details accurately and with clear Marxist thinking those sad revolutionary days. The SPD, the USPD, and to some extent even the Spartacists of 1910s were maddening cases of wasted potential. When Lenin didn’t even believe the newspaper report stating that the SPD supported war credits in the Reichstag, I too, would’ve believed it was planted by the enemy; I was incredulous one-hundred and seven years later as to the SPD’s nationalistic support for the Great War. The anti-Bolshevism in Germany was extraordinary, this seemingly German socialistic chauvinism, how could they not learn the lessons from their would-be brothers and sisters in the East? To ignore the utility of a vanguard party and to overly concern yourself with pacifism and ‘procedure’ is suicide. The labour aristocracy is truly a sad sight to see and immediately makes we wonder if the lessons contained herein are what helped produce third-worldism. The attitude, the consistently unresponsive behaviour of party bureaucrats ‘representing’ the proletariat of late 1910s Germany are so similar to modern day Western nations that I find myself dumbstruck. Over and over again you can see the people begging the so-called socialists to run, to sprint(!) to action, only for them to be told no over and over again for esoteric or confusing reasons. And even if the socialists/communists responded appropriately, they had no real cohesive organisation yet, no training like the Russians in those long years between 1905 and 1917, as the author points out. Delay delay delay, all of which allowed the Noske goons to catch up and there went Luxemberg and Liebknecht, murdered by soldiers of capital.
Brilliant satirical that managed to simultaneously entertain and sadden me greatly. Only the horrors wrought upon Ireland could allow for something this biting; from witnessing the deep and prolonged suffering of the Irish people Swift fills in the negative space and gives form to the absurdity of a devilish subjugation.
Reading Lenin tear apart the most foolish of the left’s most self-defeating group does not get tiring. Needs to be re-read.
I seemed to enjoy this, it was so long ago I need to re-read it.
An succinct and expert lesson in dialectical materialism explained with clarity and relevance in modern (for the time) revolutionary circumstances. Embrace fluidity and leave behind the dogmatists who seem to shackle socialism with the dead-chains of metaphysics.
Dystopian classic. The focus on excessive, mindless entertainment at the bereft of all other things bothered me immensely because of the parallels to what I was seeing personally. Also, books being burned at he delight of the masses sent chills up my spine.
The debauchery and unrestrained nature of this book gave me strong parallels to modern society, and it made me feel oddly sick. A prescient dystopia.
This book is the reason for my obsession with the Transantarctic mountains. Lovecraft's nightmare at its finest.
Trotsky lays out a multitude of poignant answers to Kautsky’s heavy criticisms of the Bolshevik’s so-far tenuous rule. The same criticisms that have now in the modern day been extended to all forms of anything remotely resembling socialism. In a way this proves Trotsky’s replies in this book correct. His insight into things such as: Red Terror against interloping elements, food security issues, taming an unruly intelligentsia, the suspending of liberal democracy and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, etcetera are all illuminating. Particularly interesting are the sections on compulsory labour, the falsehood of its inefficiencies, and the idea that the advantageous nature of capitalist competition is at its roots rivalry. This rivalry can be utilised in a socialist society to an even greater effect than in capitalism, the betterment of socialist society is the worker’s reward and motivation. To be the best and most clever of those workers gives the individual the drive that capitalism claims sole ownership of. Those of Kautsky’s Menshivist ilk—in antiquity and the newest altered forms in modernity—show such obvious contempt for the proletariat and peasantry and such a blindness towards the reality of power there’s no wonder so many left-leaning groups today have lost the confidence of the workers. Everyone, most of all the working classes, wants a bloodless revolution, but won’t the slave masters rather burn down their estates before letting go of their chattel?
Like any usual young teen I devoured this book, sat in my lounge chair in an apartment complex in the sun and tried grafting parts of this book onto my already existing personality, successfully, and unsuccessfully.
One of my favourite science fiction books bar none. Every time Marley came and went to a changed world, estranged, I felt an empathy for him and I loved that. The alienation from friends, family, how to explain the things you’ve seen, how do you convey that you’re just not the same? The tour-of-duty becomes traumatic—the death of your pre-existing notions about the world is a culling of your previous self. All the things that you once were are not easily let go of.
A deliciously disturbing short story. AM is one of the greatest antagonists in fiction, a pure malicious force. Set in a true apocalypse this fiction frightened me in the finality of the fate of the characters, and was so vivid that I was left stunned at its ending.
One of the best overviews on modern Chinese history, late-Ming(?) (mid 1600s?) to the recent past. I found this book looking at what UC Berkeley was teaching their students. Sun Yat-sen was a genius of diplomacy, how different the world would be if his life wasn't cut short.
Read the Washington Post or New York Times and tell me they’re not covering for capital. Go read the cowardly media apparatus staffed feckless adult children who wallow in press-room daycare and witness them bend into pretzels to justify whatever neoliberal opinion they’ve spewed out that day. Watch them twist and turn to make Israel look saintly, look as they perform pirouettes, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. Truly pathetic. Their career with their ‘factual’ articles showing themselves on the ‘right side’ are more important than the truth, more important than morality, and apparently worth the heavy toll on humanity of continuing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Darwin lays out his observations and gives his unassailable truth: all species are built on the shoulders of their ancestors. There is an intrepid journey here into the root of all living things—Darwin displays an insatiable and infectious curiosity—that as history has shown left Victorian society completely aghast at the implications. The last three-fourths of the book are there to refute objections made by ‘good’ society that all the claims in this book are false, that spontaneous generation truly makes sense—fools! To view the forefront of science through Darwin’s words made reading this special.
An astute analysis of China from someone with intimate knowledge; this book gave me a penetrating Western view on what China means to the hegemonic United States—all despite the fact that Kissinger was a unique evil.
A highly readable and detailed look into the entire history of liquid rocket propellants. This truly 'lit' my imagination up in regards to the stated topic; read this in Hong Kong and for unknown reasons enhanced the book for me.
“War is the continuation of policy by other means”. A legendary strategy book (but really a collection of extensive notes) that lives up to its name. From outlining the idea that friction is the anathema to success in military matters, to expounding on the brilliance of Frederick the Great, the clarity presented within are to be admired. Its lessons vast and insightful, its ego nonexistent. All critical traits for understanding the vicissitudes of the chaos of war and the intellect required for leadership lie within.
An honest and—at the end very intriguing—assessment of what worked during Stalin’s industrialisation efforts; there is a final chapter on the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union for good measure. To see how collectivisation by force gave the greatest growth to the Soviet economy was truly remarkable. Peaceful collectivisation being marginally better than NEP yet far below forced collectivisation was counter to what I thought would be the case but the proof is there. All this coming from a man who detests Stalin and collectivisation...this leads me to believe him when he can’t help but prove its economic success. These moments remind me of Trotsky’s fight with Kautsky about the necessity of state terror. This book’s only quibble is the drift into political analysis—there is a nasty habit of prefacing all socialist analyses, good or bad, with fainting spells. Do the ends justify the means in the transition away from capitalism? Author gives a Menshivistic no, and if he set himself to an economic-only analysis it would not matter but alas each chapter is punctuated by the colours of the couch that catches him.
I looked up hard science fiction books a lifetime ago, and I found this series. I found it ironic, the fruitless exercise of sending the brightest and best alone, them modifying themselves to be even better and to live longer, and for what? While the population of Earth choked to death and bled and suffered? There is no escaping the tendrils of capital, but to see the adapting meta-humans recognise the better world Mars could be was pleasant. After reading it it truly felt like I took the expedition to Mars with the team; what a fun and engrossing series.
Science fiction classic. I enjoyed the Islamic influences in the book—now that the new movies have come out I’m pretty upset they didn’t say the word itself jihad once, it’s literally integral to the book! The mention of a religious JIHAD specifically, crusade is not a strong enough word, don’t wuss out guys.
A very unique book, hard to describe but the writing was very special. I felt like I was in Gwangju and was killed myself. The author winning the Pulitzer (was that the prize?) was well deserved.
A massive book on an unexpectedly interesting president in US history. Who would’ve thought a quiet boy who hated school would turn out to be such a military genius? Not only a genius, but a kind person to boot. To be great is special, but to be kind is a truly rare thing, but to be both? Very improbable. I would've liked to have known him personally. I respected how Grant treated his wife, he seemed like a real gentleman. I’m glad they had such a big parade in New York for him at the end of the war, he deserved it along with the rest of the veterans who fought against the traitorous Confederate horde. Sherman should’ve went all the way.
Finklestein is certainly banned from Israel with this book! It boggles the mind how duplicitous Zionists can be, how they can be so conniving towards holocaust victims. Endless disgust for those who tread on Judaic values for personal gain in the name of Zionism while holding Judaism as a shield against criticism. This book also repudiates the majority of anti-Swiss propaganda (aimed at the Swiss bankers but the rest of the country gets rolled up in it too) which is a nice change of pace—like Finklestein states, who thinks Swiss bankers need defending, who wants to cover for them when they have more money than god? But by their pigheadedness Zionists make it possible.
The bad old 90’s in Russia, if someone buzzes you with a jet fighter during a mafia meet you’ve already lost your negotiating position! The transition away from socialism to capitalism wrought massive changes to society, and one of the most damaging was the emergence of serious criminal syndicates, many deriving from sports clubs interestingly enough.
Rhodesia is positioned in a unique spot in the history of colonial states and to hear its short existence from the horse’s mouth is invaluable. Even in his racially standoffish thoughts Ian Smith is surprisingly respectful towards the black population of his former country, albeit overly patriarchal. If this book was widely read I’m sure it would cause quite a bit of confusion as to how Rhodesia managed to collapse so quickly. Rhodesian leadership were in agreement with, and acquiescent to, the international community to desegregate and begin moving their society away from racial lines, much more so than South Africa, but for odd reasons no action done was enough (this opinion was not formed from this book but it confirms what I’ve read from a half dozen or so other books and papers). It nearly feels like an imperial coin was flipped and they got heads instead of tails and became ‘the sacrifice’. All the while much worse states such as Israel stand tall. Food for thought indeed…
Inexplicably never boring. This was, surprisingly, a highly readable and interesting account of the beginning of public credit during the years stated in the title. Learning about the jobbers, Jonathan’s in Exchange Alley and about the speculation as to why the interest rate began to decrease from around 1690 to 1750 was all very intriguing—I didn’t understand much of the book but it felt like the seeds of many ideas were planted in my mind as well as illuminating facts about the state of modern finance. This book is so detailed, that the appendices are upwards of 50(?)+ pages.
The great terra incognita! An undeniably fascinating and wildly entertaining first-hand look into exploring the south-west edge of a largely mysterious Africa in the mid 1800s. Galton explains all tribulations, dealings with natives, and hyenas and lions oh my! Interesting characters litter the journey: perky rapscallion Timboo, Mr. Hans who knew the area as a native would—very hilariously one man’s wife Mrs. Petrus, a Hottentot, had such outrageous posterior dimensions that Galton would not let sleeping dogs lie and from a distance measured her with his sextant, gobsmackingly funny. Galton explores with his party—making kraals for his many oxen and hopping from vley to vley, communicates—with Damaras and others, and hunts—rhinos white and black, as well as every other type of game you can think of. Many native chieftains were met, such as the aggressive Hottentot chieftain Jonker—an interesting aside was Jonker’s young son found a screaming baby dropped during a raid and “leisurely gouged out its eyes with a small stick”, savage.
Three infants buried under a door-frame to bless a new home, ritualistic child beheadings, anthropophagy, initiation rituals for secret societies that involve handing your spouse over for sexual gratification...if there was any inkling of the myth of the noble savage in the mind then it is destroyed by this archaeological reference book. The author pierces the veil and shows how prehistoric societies had aggrandisers—sociopaths—in their midst who would resort to terrorising others through secret societies, going as far as to practise universal taboos such as cannibalism to obtain and keep power. Secret societies may very well be the missing stepping stone for human development.
A great stroll through many concepts presented in a breezy way. The edition with pictures makes it even better.
A classic science fiction book—I felt like I was there reading the news about the oblong rock-ship. Taking the trip up to it, unlocking its doors finally and seeing the inside of this truly alien object. My imagination was alight with possibility.
A Chinese classic, many good aphorisms. As with many old military strategy ‘guides’, it all seems so simple in our modern day, but we had to start somewhere. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Physics, astronomy, so much beauty in the natural world. Read a very long time ago but the wild world this revealed stuck with me.
A great overview of the history of money and banking. This is a book recommended to many people. An accessible overview even for those not terribly interested in its stated topics.
Read this paper on release in 2020; really brilliant stuff. It’s been a while since reading but it was illuminating. The idea of a digital currency seems like it can be useful with the right precautions in place. One great idea was the concept of a federal(?) bank account. Every citizen having the option to have a free and automatic bank account to park their liquidity. I think that would help immensely with the destitute and make things more efficient in a true sense of the word—not as in ‘we get to pay poor people less benefits’ way like Cameron in 2011 and his ‘Welfare Reform’ scam. Tangent aside it’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the future of money.
I remember enjoying this book immensely but it was so long ago it needs to be re-read.
An intellectual giant whose life was cut far too short. Rosa Luxemburg was truly one of the greats. Need to re-read.
A very enjoyable world to read. For today, we are always under nefarious observation, and as a result this novel feels more relevant each passing year. Since social media and replacing words with algorithm-safe equivalents I’m reminded of this book, a truly agitating situation. The only negative aspect of the book is the slow percolation of Orwell’s real-life paranoid frame of mind, all government bad, disregard political leaning, any control is negative. His insistence on a kind of streak of schizophrenic libertarianism dulls the effect of the book.
Nearly as good as Red Mars. This is where the consequences arrive in the form of ‘immigrants’ or workers to Mars and all the bad (or good depending on your perspective) actors that that entails if I remember this book correctly after a decade and a half. The struggle between wanting the familiar while everything changes around you is a tale as old as time.
Really entertaining, this encyclopedia of pirates/buccaneers (yargh!) is decent reference. A-pyrating is explored in detail from Barbary coast corsairs to the Spanish Main to the Far East—pyrates of the fairer sex and the outrageous personalities in betwixt this book make for acceptable modern companionship to Exquemelin’s work. I was jolly to see upstanding pyrates, those wyth morals refraining from outryght rape and murder: witness Captain Red Legs (Greaves), Captain Mission &c. For a younge lad who loves pyrates in this daye here woulde be butte one of a numerrous compilations of Greatte facts ye will have e’er reade and for ye matured landlubbing darlyngs this booke makes ye pineth to sail sixe and one seas to finde ye a stashe of pieces of eighte and make base in West Indyan Tortuga or perchance Madagascar.
Fair and just, I was very surprised to see the even-handedness of Hammurabi from nearly 4000 years ago in his words directly. Over one-million days have passed since his time and yet its novelty still feels invigorating, this oldest most organised code of laws. If I were to be forced back through time arriving in his kingdom a time-traveler I would at least be secure in the knowledge that there are laws to follow, although avoiding doctoring would be best as the consequences of failure were extreme!
Perplexing arguments punctuate and bookend long and eloquent recollections of Thoreau’s first year living in the woods near Walden Pond. It’s one thing to be ignorant, but to understand the ills of excessive materialism, see the true beauty of the natural world, to write expertly, and then still deal in childish conclusions is a shame. I deeply enjoyed his love of nature, it made me feel a nostalgia I’d forgotten; for my own days of youth trundling unabashedly through the ochre hills that watch over the Pacific, peering out at that westerly golden sunset and breathing the crisp salt-tinged air. Thoreau mentions many things of his time that give a very interesting texture to our past, for that it is worth reading alone. But, this is assuredly a precursor to so much modern conservative thought, intoxicating for the undeveloped mind, unfit for organised society; this progenitor individualism is a Judas of society wrapped in silken prose.
The beauty and emptiness of space. Watch the movie and it is, quite literally, identical to this book. Space is truly a deadlier sea.
One word: imperialism. What the British and the Americans did to Iran should never be forgotten; Mosaddegh was incredible and his tenure cut far too short. It upsets me greatly that Iran was forced to become theocratic.
Good overview on the politics of one of the most heroic men of the 20th century.
A very good book on engineering's core ideas.
Read relatively soon after release I didn’t understand much of what was said, but the little I understood showed why South Korea became an ‘Asian Tiger’ so to speak and seemed to be very useful as a book as a whole—I had no mind for economics nor politics. This was one of the books that helped me ruminate on what exactly an economy is, and how it can develop back in the early 2010s. Needs to be completely re-read.
Well researched this history of the Stasi would be great if the author could refrain from exhibiting the modern German’s great flaw: a nearly always incorrect geopolitical instinct. His Teutonic obsession with data and rules means if this was simply a list of raw information it would be splendid. I found very interesting the way the Stasi leveraged random grievances (in regards to women’s rights or third world exploitation) to derail opponents of the state, that seems to be the tried and true favourite of successful state security apparatuses. He tries very hard to follow the school of ‘end-of-history’ neoliberalism, betraying the efficacy of his own research—philosemitism off the charts, anti-zionism for him may as well be spitting in the face of god itself. His favourite bourgeois epithet is ‘Chekist’ and to see him begrudgingly accept that the MfS was in fact a highly competent security apparatus completely subordinate to the party (baffling him as to the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit’s ideological conviction) was enjoyable. The burden of sifting through his blind liberalism while reading was equivalent to carefully avoiding tripping hazards in a dimly lit factory, tedious.
There are some shocking revelations in this annoyingly dense but extensive book. The US CIA threw caution to the wind for anti-communism and made the world a worse place. Evidence points to globe-spanning corruption: complete subversion of the MoMA, attempting and failing to squash the influence of Pablo Neruda, Fulbright scholarships as cover, project Militant Liberty (Hollywood anti-communism), UK Labour party infiltration, CBS providing cover for CIA agents, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, co-opting the non-communist ‘left’ Democratic Socialists, there is no low to which the CIA will not stoop—internal document half-truths notwithstanding. The CIA force-fed Abstract Expressionism to the world despite tepid interest in the service of countering socialist realism; cultural battles were and are being truly waged on all fronts.
Neoliberalism is a twisting justification of liberalism, wrong, pigheaded and harmful. This book shows how this malodorous force has been thrust on us today.
An intriguing compilation of Mao’s ‘greatest hits’. This book is a great overview of Mao and many of his forward-thinking ideas—all of which can then be supplemented by reading Zizek’s introduction afterwards.
An engaging book, Rome will always be a fun topic of discussion. Cassius and Cicero seemed so intriguing, ruthless, powerful. There is never a lack of interesting characters in the history of Rome.
A pretty good book if you want to know what an exact year of foreign policy looks like for a fledgling country, and especially a fledgling socialist country—one scratching at the dirt just to survive against all odds. It would’ve been great if not for some onerous repetition in a couple of spots. Reading Lenin deftly navigate the reality of the workers in Germany not being fully ready for a transition was heartbreaking especially. The world revolution was not meant to be in those end years of the 1910s. I felt a rush when Lenin said “World capital itself is now coming for us.” November 1918—imagine that? That kind of pressure? The virus that is capital trying as hard as it can to overwhelm socialism the nascent immune system of humanity.
A book edging on great because of its honest assessment of the Cultural Revolution. The uplifting of the peasantry by Mao with the Cultural Revolution is something to be deeply admired even at the (temporary) expense of the city-dwelling proletariat. To read about corrupt officials getting their just desserts from the perspective of the peasantry was very satisfying. It is a complicated thing that Deng Xiaoping felt the need to reverse these gains for various political and Dengist reasons. One can only hope that if there is a second cultural revolution it has more permanent gains. I wish this book was longer and given a second researcher to give a deeper insight into how those corrupt landlords and maleficent village clans planned their vengeance.
Western capitalist society has chosen to forgo utilising labour-saving devices to truly reduce women’s labour, opting instead to focus mostly on relieving men of their traditional household obligations. Cowan even does the reader the favour of outlining examples of ways to save labour for women in the same capacity as has been done for men. The big issue with the book is the discrediting of the insidiously coercive powers of capitalism and patriarchy to conspire to keep women in servitude—which the author chalks it up to essentially “that’s just how people are, especially Americans”. This is perplexing conclusion to arrive to as much of the book are cogent analyses of domestic life.
The most disturbing mainline series of comics I’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of reading. Truly horrific look into what happens if you answered an emphatic yes to every call of the void. Unlimited malice.
Written as best as the author could muster. This book delved into a forgotten war, a mistaken adventure, two brothers against each other. I hope this is the kind of mistake—or foolish political misstep—is not made again by the CCP.
What is a rogue state? This answers it in the obvious affirmative: any country that goes against the United States, duh!
Needs to be re-read.
Orwell’s complicated relationship with his constantly spinning political compass makes a strong showing here. I enjoyed the book but I never developed any attachment to it aside from the general idea that power is a very corrupting influence.
A fun book on Napoleon's invasion, the Battle of the Nile was vivid; It felt as though I could feel the mood of the world.
This was the height of zombie-mania in the media back then. People love zombies, slow but inexorable. Now zombies are walkers or infected and they’re fast as hell, they’re not death, they’re malcontents of society! Oh how culture changes.
Read the synopsis (and I believe the whole thing) of this paper on release in 2015 which alone gave me many ideas to ponder on the heritability of violence. The paper itself provides at least an interesting conclusion to this simultaneous war on violence and decline in violent crime: gene-culture co-evolution. I would love to see further research on the topic.
Detailed account on the third international. Pretty specific slice of history, needs to be re-read as I cannot for the life of me remember much of what went on.
Very interesting story, if this is the book I’m remembering correctly the journey throughout the lifespan of humanity in the universe was very vivid.
A looking glass inside the truth about the Democratic Kampuchea regime, led by peasant fetishising leadership including the notorious Pol Pot. Confused and delusional as they were, Cambodia was already in the throes of violence and the insistence on throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak by ‘starting over’ completely was an extreme error. Destroying industry completely is a severe crime against the people. The Cambodian people were failed, badly; peasant revolutions with the wrong cultural characteristics and unfocused and untrained leadership are highly dangerous, unrestrained chaos.
A very clinical and detailed overview of the Persian Gulf War from the U.S. perspective. I felt transported back to 1991. It ignited a renewed interest in that period of time for me. I began to read more about what exactly happened at that time, anything possible. I came across The Fire This Time (an audio documentary) and I was blown away by what I didn’t get to read in this book. I cannot believe what happened at the Amiriyah shelter, the horror the US wrought on the Iraqi people should really never be forgotten. On a bit of a lighter note: Schwarzkopf looks a bit like Norm McDonald oddly enough.
A detailed account of the Russian Revolution—I do not remember the book’s political leaning. Read this after reading the Communist Manifesto as I wanted understanding. I wanted to know more about the events leading up to the October Revolution as well as the revolution itself. I do not recall this book delving in the detail I so wanted in regards to anything communistic. I do remember this author mentioning Kerensky many times (transitional govt), along with the Tsar’s incompetence—which, to be frank, this author wrote about him oddly sympathetically. It felt like the book tried not focusing on the Bolsheviks—this very well may be explained by my complete lack of knowledge back then. Who knows! It was a long book.
Classic science fiction. But, it is evident that Issac Asimov does not know how to write women, at all.
There is an importance to this book, but I wasn't fully equipped to understand it at the time. Needs to be reread.
Knew next to nothing about the Soviet-Afghan war and this book enlightened me. Was a straight standard Western book about war that I do not remember including any insightful commentary on the political situation. Most authors would be better off following this example and leaving their odd politics out of it. The raid on the president/warlord's compound was enjoyable.
A very dangerous and dark world made alive with vivid imagery and interesting characters; the Golden Age Arc is one of the best examples of creative storytelling in the medium.
This entire book felt as though the physical locations were poetry made real, or maybe a dream given form. As time has gone on the visual language of the movie overrides the book, and it’s so strong that the book—despite being good—feels like a prototype for the movie. The descriptions here really lend itself well to a visual medium.
A useful and interesting way of thinking about prediction.
Good book to read if you want to learn about race relations in the United States.
Frank and fascinating, I was transported to the jungle with the author in the 1880s, interacting with natives, witnessing their alien culture untouched by outsiders for likely tens of thousands of years. Their strange behaviours and habits put into relief, the author had his very obvious prejudices, but at least he tried confronting them and gave the natives a fair shake as he deeply enjoyed their good humour among other positive traits—that was until reality set in and they nearly all started plotting to murder him to ‘gamma’ or thieve his goods (tobacco, salted meat, his very corpse to be divided and eaten); their bizarre habits made it obvious the noble savage was well and truly a myth. He also saw directly the corrupting influence Western culture became for the Aborigines and it depressed him, the cruelty inflicted on them by settlers and the comments made by the whites shocked him and sounded identical to modern race-hate, shocking me too. Also, dugong meat sounds unfortunately very delicious.
I knew little about the GDR aside from movies containing frightening surveillance, this book depicts a different place. The German Democratic Republic seemed to respect the worker despite the paranoia of the state; things like healthcare, community, industry seemed advanced. The author(s) did not shy away from criticism, complaints centered around tension between state and citizen—I’m marginally skeptical of some of the overly positive claims, but, I can see the majority of the things in this book being generally correct. Treuhandanstalt infuriated me deeply. The institutional rape of East Germany is only unrealistic to the uninitiated, the vacuum left by a collapsing socialist country always gets filled with society raiders, thieves, who plunder every asset. What happened to Zeiss alone is a crime against science and against humanity. All this committed against the former citizens of the GDR was shocking, fascism runs deep in now-unified Germany, the refusal to address it in a non-superficial way will haunt the country for the rest of its existence.
Kim Jong Eun's brother was assassinated so close to the release of this book it could’ve been mistaken for a advanced marketing campaign! I learned the rudiments of nerve agents.
First year at Harvard’s law school is stressful. The movie for this book is also spectacular.
One of the most evil men to have lived makes many interesting points. If you are inoculated against fascism, can stomach the general Nazism and look past the outright blatant lies then within this speech lies a frank and often correct assessment of what propaganda is, how its used, why, and what to do with it.
Read this a million years ago after high-school in an effort to determine whether I wanted to eventually pursue a Ph.D. The answer was a definitive no then, but to be honest the challenges of obtaining a Ph.D. seem enticing today.
I enjoyed the tight constraints the main character (hereon Matt Damon!) had to deal with. His green thumb and science acumen saved him. The hype before the book’s release made me read it when it came out. The movie winded up being interesting but so many elements of the book aren’t translatable to screen.
A Great Depression era short story about a family trapped in poverty and the men that take advantage of its ignorance and desperation. The extremes people are pushed to are unfathomable; many times in service of and at the cost of their children.
Wish it was longer but it was a tense (positive) read. Biological weapons and alien organisms? What’s not to like. Read for the first time post SARS-2.
The Yugoslavian war was brutal and the West’s failures to understand the conflict made a bad situation worse. The rending of Yugoslavia has produced a jagged and throbbing scar across that part of the world.
Interesting historical curio; I think most—not all mind you but much of this paper—does not merit study. Psychoanalysis is something seemingly massive and complex, but only very small parts of it as a whole reveal truths about the human condition. I enjoyed the battle the ego has against the superego, id and the outside world, all these tensions and Freud’s explanations for things when they vaguely made sense.
The Chechen war, predicated on so many lies and confusing circumstances, is the base for this honest book. I can't think of many things worse than being a Russian soldier.
Harrowing account of the Great War from the perspective of a young and non-politically-minded German soldier. Remarkable that Jünger managed to survive. Enjoyed his prose and his effort to give us a lay of the land so to speak. If it was not for his involvement in some major battles this would just be an ‘Ok’ book.
The Selous Scouts were a complicated and lawless group. Their no-rules nearly paramilitary actions are deserving of study and this book doesn’t idolise them unnecessarily. The fights between the rest of Rhodesia’s military structure and the Selous Scouts with their impunity and no-questions-asked nature were entertaining.
Made me see Typography as something special.
It’s rare to have a book that serves as a prequel to a soon-to-be-released game come out and have it enhance the experience. It so engrossed me as a young teen that I read it nearly thrice at the time!
I don't think I've read many books that felt the way this particular novel felt, that 1950s saccharine optimism. It felt as though the worst conceivable event could take place and as long as you were had gumption things would just...work out! Simply put nuclear holocausts were just things you had to go through with a spade in your hands and determination dripping off your brow.
A surprisingly good fiction book set in one of my favourite fictional (thank god) universes: Warhammer 40k.
Interesting look into the conflict that was Rhodesia’s colonial existence.
Another middle-school classic. Traumatised us all!
With no specific political direction this essay is Thoreau’s well-written justification and experience in not participating in the American slave trade via tax avoidance. Civil disobedience has its place as pressure against the state, but it is merely a cup of enterprise against the vast pool of powers capital holds—that non-violence cannot dismantle any true injustice and only marginally encumber that seemingly perpetual machine is a feature of that machine.
Middle-school classic that I remember is about killing old people but not much else.
Something about gathering a team of unique individuals being competent and indulging in brutal combat strikes my fancy.
Is this in the omnibus? Not even sure.
The story of the Horus Heresy must be a kind of science fiction staple at this point.
I enjoy how this type of Warhammer book ends with every peer dead having sacrificed themselves, all the while the main character stands alone in some bizarre dimension consumed by some sort of personality disorder or whatever.
Idem Supra
A fun and brief reference of old English-speaking criminal—or as Jackson so hilariously states: professional violators—slang circa 1915. The origin of the American shiv as ‘chiv’, the legend of Detective ‘Hep’ in Cincinnati, and often-thought-of-as-modern female archetype—existent even back then, one-hundred years ago!—the ‘meal-ticket’: “...female of the open market who supports a lover”.
My young mind enjoyed the bending and breaking of rules. I did not enjoy innocents being credit card scammed, the immorality was obvious. If you have the skill to commit crimes of these types you must have the wherewithal to target people who either ‘deserve’ it or won’t feel your criminal ‘sting’ so to speak. The part where he gamed the bus system with his fake tickets to get free bus rides reminded me of my own adventures on the opening of the Orange Line. I thought I read this book in the 2000s but apparently not.
A paper released in March 2021 on the lending practises of the Chinese government to 3rd world borrowers. It was a sober analysis and didn’t feel too lurid but did make me laugh knowing the history of the World Bank and the West’s own much longer and much more conniving lending practises! Even with knowing that it was still interesting.
Perhaps I’m not as well-versed as I’d like to believe on military history. I’m not sure exactly the utility of this book that couldn’t be found in a better book, maybe a future me will find more to like about this.
Pure entertainment. A teenage favourite of mine read so often that you could have sworn a zombie apocalypse was imminent.
What a long and storied history the tip of Africa has had, pre-colonisation Africa in general would’ve been a very intriguing place to visit. Just from the facts presented in this book cultural relativism shouldn’t be applied everywhere, simply put. I need to read another book completely from the historical perspective of the different tribes if there is one. South Africa seems to have been gorgeous but hellish before the Dutch, hell with colonialism, and back to hellish until now where the country as a functioning state just barely exists. Africa as a whole never deserved all this, but is it as simple as plain capitalist exploitation exacerbating long-standing issues? The author also wrote this very delicately, the tension could be felt in every sentence.
For the policy/economic wonk and or well-to-do liberal living in America in the year 2000 this was a panoply of revelations. It made manifest the alienation Americans were feeling creep into their lives at the end of Reagan’s term—social capital, bridging and bonding relations or whatever—and for its copious amounts of references this tome will be useful for the historian 100 years from now. But, in modernity its just a long boring list of stats with commentary so painfully missing the forest for the trees you start to feel bad for people who have read it in its entirety—the revised edition’s final chapter on the internet being so out of touch it made me begin to question the analyses in the rest of the book. You can gain little from this book (in modernity) if you’re an educated human being who has been sentient for more than two decades.
I respect the book for outlining Buchanan and the Libertarian project to revert to some twisted form of corporate feudalism. Fertiliser is always in demand. But, the book provides no alternative/solution that I can remember other than milquetoast liberal resistance.
A look into the failures of the NYC to acclimate ghetto youths into a normal learning facility post segregation. Many problems in this book are still a problem today; instead of attacking the root of it all—America’s imperial behaviour turned inward—we’ve decided to turn public schools into carceral mimicries as a solution. Why should the bourgeoisie care about rehabilitating innocent youths born in some of the harshest urban conditions when they can simply shift the borders of schooling districts? This keeps the racial (class) division alive, and creates the illusion to the middle-class that the bourgeois leadership is helping insulate their children from the lower classes (by proxy, race). Sacrificing a few schools, innocents be damned, is the order of the day until eventually every public school is sacrificed. The author diverges too often into petty NYC politics of the time (1960s/70s) for this book to be good but it’s certainly food for thought as to how not much has appreciably changed for the positive fifty-plus years on.
There was tidbits of decent information in it, but this book is for the reader in 1998. It has become redundant due to the course of time, the facts that get revealed as Sad Island (United Kingdom) becomes sadder switching between Tories and Labour as if there’s a difference after Corbyn. Also unfortunately written in a gossipy way which is unable to be skipped so it’s even more of a slog—otherwise this book would be good. Also, watching Thatcher unintentionally try and destroy the UK through her Reaganistic actions to destroy labour power is useful but depressing.
A harsh time for the Chinese peasantry during these long years. I hope the ones that survived it got to live happier lives in the modern, bustling, and safe China. And that everyone in their families who died didn’t suffer needlessly.
Didn't really resonate with me. I enjoyed Blade Runner much more for whatever reason.
An absurdly funny quarter-truthful account of the Tcheka. Essentially a 1925 long-form article expounding how incredulous that he, the witty and neutral George Popoff could ever be accused of being in league with any enemies of these heathen ‘asiatic’ Bolsheviks.
A lightly interesting book that turns into a bizarre hypothetical tale of a jungle kid in its last quarter—an exercise in word-count padding. Read long before SARS-2.
Made me want to hunt for hidden buried nuclear weapons off the coast of Spain! A fun book on ‘broken arrows’, I found it interesting. Still waiting on the promised movie deal!
A journey through all the chromosomes. Only marred really by this dullard’s obvious Thatcherism; a true Brexiteer he turned out to be too, what a surprise.
Interesting look into the building techniques of colonial America.
The author was quite kind to the Africans or ‘savages’ as he called them so frequently. Even with those demeaning words there’s interesting information in this. I read an extremely racist quote attributed to this book and so it piqued my interest, a false quote it turns out. He seemed to respect Africans despite his view on the primitive nature of the cultures that surrounded him.
Written in an almost paranoid way; odd book written to convince people that China stealing secrets—an action every country does and has forever done and will forever do—is somehow a unique never-before-seen plot against humanity (the West). This book is also written in a way to appeal to people who like to organise tic-tacs in their spare time.
One of the few things I’ve read that made me nauseous, especially at its beginning. If heaping disgust on the reader was the main objective—which it seemed to be—it succeeded in spades. What’s odd is that the book was actually funny in a few parts, but it was a nasty trip to get there. I feel conflicted not giving it a good rating but only a very few times it nearly felt fetishistic and not intentionally like Lolita. Perhaps I don’t have a deeper comprehension of the perspective of literary female pedophile characters?
The brain is an extremely complex organ This book only reinforced my belief that anyone can change into who they want to become.
There was nothing here that couldn’t be easily gleaned from the combined knowledge of better books. The brevity of this seems useful for the uninitiated but its brief nature is what makes it useless for its target audience.
Aside from the revelations laid out by a part of Freud’s work, Erick Erickson and one or two other psychoanalysts this field seems off-course. This branch of ‘study’ seems to be anything but rigorous. Smart men and women falling down the rabbit hole of unfalsifiable ‘experiments’ and analyses and then claiming they are a soft science seems very wrong. It was hard to finish as when it got to the most modern of the analysts as the absurdity became too much. Especially disliked was countertransference, that crossed from whatever-works therapy to dangerous patient-harming myopia.
I understand the utility of this book and its importance, but I very much did not like the way it was written to the point where I thought it made the entire thing less than what it could’ve been. I’m sorry Mark Fisher, and I’m sorry to his fans.
Detailed to the point of absurdity while somehow feeling empty this seems to be written as speculative non-fiction and history book all at once. This examination of the Nazi ‘hero’ Horst Wessel gives a sprawling and minute view on what feels like every day and every person even tangentially related to this self-righteous and annoying twerp’s life and ‘legacy’. His killing was a turning point in the acceleration of the NSDAP’s rise to power and despite never really putting his neck on the line his dedication to the fascist cause still killed him. And, even with his death being a footnote in history, it’s easy to conclude that the person known as Horst Wessel is not deserving of such a precise study.
Since discovering Solzhenitsyn was in some sort of collusion with the CIA—even if unwitting, which if he was truly completely unaware speaks to a lack of intelligence frankly, especially considering he’s written for Encounter magazine—I believe this book even less. Prison is generally harsh. Rapes and murders in many prison systems happen frequently, especially in developing countries.
Tried absorbing much from this reference book.
Idem Supra
A fun, light book to read to get an overview on some design topics.
Fun math history read.
Today an almost entirely useless book. Belonged to a specific period of US political turmoil where Americans were trying to figure out why everyone including themselves were acting like TBI patients.
Unsure of what to make of this book or what utility it may have.
A medical ethics book.
Detailed step-by-step book on every aspect of modern homebuilding.
Book on psychology, not much to say.
A hysterically deranged racist speculative fiction that barely conceals a Neo-Nazi’s guide to action to an all-white Fourth Reich ‘utopia’. Dangerous, filthy, anti-semitic, Hitler-loving and terroristic this monstrosity unfortunately understands many parts of the idiocy and contradictions of liberalism and by extension capitalism—this gives it a heavy lacquer of ‘validity’. Quite a few things predicted here before the Day of the Rope in SoCal—where it really veers off into totally psychotic wishful thinking, replete with feral blacks becoming (specifically) white-children-eating cannibals to the chagrin of the noble Aryans of ‘The Organization’ who are ‘cleansing’ the city—are surprisingly correct observations of the pathe set forth by capital, which makes this not just effective on the impressionable but even those among the general population (the author’s solution being to erase all blacks, browns, Jews, race-traitors making the Aryan race reign supreme). It’s written poorly, very sophomoric, pulpy and comic-like, but if anything that gives it greater purchase among lost boys/young men, its main demographic. The story itself is interesting in the sense that if you can stomach the extreme race-hate you are able to observe the twisted fantasy worlds of the worst people having all their race war dreams come to bear with biological, chemical, and nuclear annihilation for literally all humans that are not white. This is exceptionally potent white-nationalist propaganda that, with obvious glee, understands how to apply real significant pain to the United States government and world at large in the service of what is essentially a global apocalyptic Fourth Reich.
Found it pretty pointless compared to On China. A complete afterthought book.
This anachronistic liberal path-finding and survey after the USSR’s self-destruction is quite something. Fukuyama’s confidence betrays him and reveals his lifelong blindness, the selective kind that conflates fascism and communism, that ignores history and the transient nature of liberalism. His own intellectual guilt fails to undo Marx as he tries twisting the thin string of liberalism into a maritime rope that explains the ages, a liberal universal history—a history to launder the Euro-American hegemony. The philosophical aspects are moot but his political analyses of everything under the 1992 geopolitical sun are reactionary. His ‘Mechanism’ and other terminologies but liberal are tedious obfuscations. I remember the outsized optimism (which many including myself found unrelated to liberalism) until and even after 9/11, but this book’s cobbled together diatribe in service of stamping out Red embers does not give liberalism the total win it desperately sought; head liberals tried forcing democracy as a synonym for capitalism, propaganda like this book helped until recently. Democracy to these people are an ends, when you’re hungry eat ballots and when you’re homeless cover yourself in sheets of ‘I Voted’ stickers.
There was a moment in this book where I could see the chaotic beauty of what ‘perfect’ capitalism is. What Milton Friedman considers a good society, good politics, is nothing short of a uniquely antisocial bedlam. Unfortunately he is intellectual but with no regard for humanity. He has deluded himself into thinking he's helping right the ship of society, Friedman is so certain that anything to the contrary of capitalism is obvious folly. Milton Friedman's legacy will be death and destruction, good riddance.
Mediocre design book for people who think design is secondary to tech-baubles.
This borders on ok for the few pieces of wisdom it holds, but it was a slog. The repetition was outrageous, no editorial oversight. Indigenous culture deserves respect and careful study but this was not careful study. Also, the editor didn’t have the stones to call this author out on page-count padding and in that way felt like a case of liberal tip-toeing.
Meditations-lite. Not really worth reading.
Meditations-lite-deux. Made me think hard about ego-death.
The physical manifestation of an early 2010s strain of “Heck Yea Science!” in the negative. Nothing could be learned from this that couldn’t be gleaned from learning about monopoly. Now in the future, in the modern algorithmic day, this book as a result has become wholly useless. Read the news for a day about the ‘tech’ world and see the hell we’re in.
New Orleans shafted by politics and beaten down yearly by the weather. It’s a shame this book was so boring, Katrina and all the events and people surrounding it as a whole is a very interesting topic—like the alleged horror stories that came out of the Superdome. Some imagery in this book, i.e. of the flooded hospital and whatnot was interesting but I had to skip large parts of this novel because it was really that dull. Here’s hoping for a ‘Katrina Revival’ in the form of a TV series or good book as a form of reflection perhaps.
I remember being incredibly put off by the beginning of this book, the way some of the characters were written were so poor it wasn’t worth reading the rest.
This book was a maelstrom of reawakened teenage fantasies. For an adult, senseless, and for a teenager a lurid wet dream. It’s not rare to see an author self-insert as the greatest human to ever live: smart, handsome, athletic. I can see the self-pleasure he indulged in while writing some of these scenes. Him as a young teen meeting his sixteen year-old muse. I only wonder why didn't I put it down, that is precisely when I realised I was reading the rest of this book to see the main character get maimed or die. By the time they got to the FEMA camp near the end I realised the author didn’t have the stones to kill himself in this book, but of course not, he has sequels to vomit out! To a preteen who is not well-read this book would probably be pretty fun though.
The most trite and pointless thing I think you can read for the current moment. While politics zooms ahead at 100 miles per hour due to imperial contraction and capitalist expansion, good old fashioned liberalism fades far into the distance. In that rear-view mirror you can also see the authors and ‘abundance adherents’ plodding along the side of the road walking in circles—navel-gazers of the highest order. Many moments were had where I believed I hallucinated Aaron Sorkin popping up like Clippy as I was reading, dramatic West Wing one-liners and all.
In between his long list of grievances against society and democracy are the meandering opinions gained from interpretations of antisemitic and racist propaganda—both pamphlets which were Hitler’s entertainment while he lived in a flop-house in Vienna in his youth, along with influence from his favourite teacher in his childhood. He took these opinions and worked backwards from them to produce his ‘policies’ for a united Germany to be great after Anschluss and then further expansion; there was not a single policy scientific nor sensible. These ideas were the ramblings of irrational and hysterically emotional person. Hitler never moved passed his teenage angst and never gained the intellect he so obviously coveted as he passed into adulthood. Adolf Hitler, incidentally revealed through his own writing(!), was a nuisance to all normal people around him, that was until people even more pathetic than himself found political salvation in his aggressive oration. Based on how poor this book is industrialists pretty obviously hoisted Hitler and his newly adopted party into a position of power to squash who and what was left from the 1918 revolution...and subsequently lost control of their new pet. This often boring book served as a sleep-aid for many nights, and this was the abridged version!
Essentially a book whose only value might come from the entertainment of watching a pathetic industrialist cover his own tracks. There is no political insight, personal reflection, nor financial insight. If I was in the 1940s and read this wastepaper I would send a strongly-worded letter to the publisher with some choice words while wagging my finger in disappointment.
The most unnecessarily dense and complicated book about an interesting subject. Written to make the Babylonian’s bureaucracy look trite, this book, this nearly-encrypted lockbox, wants to be as complex as Phenomenology of Spirit in syntax. All the while the only utility that could’ve been derived from it would’ve been the introduction of bourgeois conspiracy towards the general population, a shame. It’s a wonder the editor didn’t end their own life after trying to decipher this mumbo-jumbo.
Someone spent time, energy, and effort to produce this book...and that is shocking. I think I disliked Command and Control more after seeing Schlosser give this praise. The reason for this book’s existence is to boost the author’s Twitter account and it shows. This book is kindling, just look at the upper-right hand corner of the cover—it's already trying to self-immolate. This is a wholly useless book.
This joke is such a poor attempt at convincing an impotent Western Europe that sclerotic Russia is rattling sabres at their doorstep that it actually becomes amusing. As for the writing style this is Tom Clancy’s deformed closet-bound brother. This intelligence agency abortion, this useless piece of NATO propaganda fails its most basic goals. Those already convinced of these imaginary dangers from Russia won’t lower themselves to read—or seemingly promote—this drivel, and those still neutral will just ignore this undergraduate fiction so what’s the point? Those immune to the false hysterics will be entertained reading it as its content is so hilariously out-of-touch that it comes across as some sort of neoliberal fan-fiction. One positive is that this fireplace stuffer is short.
Shame on the people who tricked this man into spinning what was obviously an Atlantic article into a book. This winded up a wasteful, ill-conceived affair. Being interested in the subject matter gives an equal amount of insight as this book. The publisher saw the writing on the proverbial wall released it with no fanfare—it felt as though they dropped copies by parachute in the night. A waste of time.
Written exclusively for people with regularly occurring religious psychosis, this swiss cheese for brains weapon deceptively somersaults through the world of Communist ‘thought’ and ‘history’ in the service of McCarthy and the other elements of the Red Scare. Various chapters even include a quaint guideline of questions for the plucky evangelical to develop a script for themselves in this great battle against anti-religious evil (Communism). The United State’s religiosity and insular, ahistorical frame of mind make Americans uniquely vulnerable to targeted works like this, which is why to this day new editions to this book are being published. This propaganda is more refined than other older attempts at maligning everything related to communism—people, ideas, places—but thankfully the powers that be have an inherent inability to produce anything that isn’t reactionary. This leaves capitalists to utilise volume (in regards to literature, movies, etc) instead of quality, which as the inherent contradictions in capitalism pile up and the stone starts looking mighty fine for bloodletting, only works for so long.
Possibly the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life in comparison to the amount of undue attention it receives, complete pablum. An introduction to anarcho-primitivism that doesn’t even culminate in a cohesive strategy to ‘retvrn’, so even if you did agree with these ideas it does nothing to help you—anarcho-primitivism is the equivalent of reversing gravity, a very useless endeavour. This book’s diversions into relations between sexes made me realise that Kaczynski very well may be the arch-prototype involuntary celibate. What’s most embarrassing is the modern ‘reaction’ to it, whose adherents are obviously simply Christian theocrats, doomsday crypto-fascists, or confused college boys with very large intellectual egos. The first two groups use this text as flimsy justification on dismantling government so they can play crusader, and the latter uses it to simply reinforce their nihilistic worldview. It is no wonder this manifesto is popular among young men—this world they live in, a world where they’re too scared to ask a girl out over imagined accusations, of course so many of them would cower in the comforting shadow of senseless terroristic psychopathy. Cowards seek the comfort of other cowards. A shame on anyone who can read this and come away with anything helpful, life-changing, or revelatory, seek help.
Nigh unreadable; the equivalent to reading a schizophrenic’s chicken-scratch with a torch on a moldy wall in a defunct asylum. The world’s clumsiest attempt by a still unknown failson of aristocracy (or perhaps some delusional monarchists) somewhere in Imperial Russia to orient the general population against the external enemies including communists (especially Bolsheviks) by way of antisemitism. These enemies, or ‘lodestones of anti-life’ are all under the ‘control’ of an evil super secret Jewish cabal—all the while this dreck of a book ‘reveals’ the truth: that the aristocracy and its religion were actually there to save the poor proletariat, but now thanks to our dastardly Jewish plans they will be nothing but a memory (cue evil laughter)! Only the most feeble of minds could fall for this very sorry excuse of a pamphlet, its reasoning so weak, its content so empty, its facts so absent. At the end of this edition they try to refute the claim that the Tsar had his minions write these ‘facts’ as a way to incite pogroms, this book’s recognition of its real authorship and subsequent refutation makes me believe there may be some truth to these claims of authorship by the Tsar’s scribes.
Last updated..December 2025?
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