*****
Having finally weakened (my concerns still stand, however) and bought an electronic reading "device" (No [Brand] Names here, by golly), I have to admit to enjoying its portability, and the lower price of books. I've bought a few, and doubled my wish list (winning a lottery wouldn't necessarily help - I think I may wind up needing several lifetimes for my ultimate reading list 😀 ), and am slowly working out how best to give references to e-books, as opposed to hard copy books (my reference here to Masha Gesson's book is to a physical book, but to Mary Ann Glendon's book is to an e-book).I'm now reading - as usual - several books at once, in a mix of physical and electronic versions, and would like to give brief comments on several - comments that I may, when I complete reading the books, change.
- Webb Miller's autobiographical "I Found No Peace" (pub. Decoubertin Books, 2013, ISBN 978-0956431318 [PS - Dear Amazon, e-books have ISBNs: please list them! Then I will start linking to your e-books rather than the more expensive, less saleable hard copies . . . ] [Amazon] ), which gives insight into the paternalistic/colonialist attitudes of many in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as what life was like for many people only a century ago (in a quest to read more of Miller's journalism, I've also bought "The Mammoth Book of Journalism", by Jon E. Lewis [pub. Robinson, 2011], but haven't delved into that properly yet);
- Robert McNamara's book / apologia "In Retrospect" (pub. Random House, 1996, ISBN 978-0679767497), which so far is showing elitism, organisational ability, confirms the mistakes I've read of elsewhere and adds a few new ones, and gives some insights into the characters of all those involved (although few are coming out of it with a particularly good image as yet - although I must admit my impressions are also being shaped by my knowledge of people and events from other sources). The attempt to provide a "no holds barred" honesty is pretty good, but I'm still thinking about how well it does that . . . ;
- I've now been able to buy another of Paul K Chappell's books - this one "The Art of Waging Peace" (pub. Prospecta Press, reprint 2015, ISBN 978-1632260314 [Amazon] ) - and am looking forward to getting and studying all that series, eventually;
- "The Biggest Estate on Earth" , by Bill Gammage (pub. Allen & Unwin, reprint 2012, ISBN 978-1743311325 [Amazon] ) - I am hoping this will enable me to expand my comments about Australia's indigenous heritage in my "Humans, Humanity and Human Rights" project - mainly in Chapter 1 (A);
- I am also expecting the following books will contribute to that project (and possibly, when I can buy them, Yuvah Noah Harari's work, referring as it does to a "cognitive revolution 50,000 years ago):
Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" (pub. Penguin, 2012, ISBN-10: 0141034645 [Amazon] ), and already referenced through video lectures by Mr Pinker and online articles;
J. C. Peters' "History That Changed the World" (pub. Odyssea Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-9082506358 [Amazon] );
"On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder (pub. Vintage Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-1847924889 [Amazon] ), and have found the chapter on "anticipatory obedience" stunning.
"The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible. . . . In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS took the initiative to devise the methods of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated what was possible. It was far more than Hitler had thought."
(p. 18 - if I've worked the e-reader correctly . . . and I think I've just found how to identify potential quotes - about six books too late . . . SIGH . . . )
I think the details of that are arguable, but the point about not anticipating what "the boss" wants when that is evil is important.
On page ix of that book is epigraph from Franklin D Roosevelt:
"The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership."That quote, and:
- Roosevelt's citation of a teacher of his (Endicott Peabody), comment "Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising towards the heights - then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilisation itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend";
- a comment by Reinhold Niebuhr (who also wrote the "Serenity Prayer") "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary"; and
- the drawing of parallels between current events in the USA and past events - including the 1948 US Presidential elections that returned Truman (a figure who is admirable in many ways - except for the damage done by some of his or his administration's [as he famously said, the buck stopped with him] Cold War actions, such as backing off on human rights [see Glendon's book] and the reprehensible political decision to hide the work of the UNWCC, . . . but then again, Truman did stand up to the massively damaging [especially to the UN] McCarthyism, the acolytes of which included Richard Nixon and Robert F Kennedy [despite his later human rights work, Bobby Kennedy has been described as "essentially a cop on the beat at heart", and that does provide insight into some of his behaviour);
More, no doubt, to come 😀
