September 27, 2006
The Devil and the White City by Erik Larsen ::
books — tagged books, chicago, crime and history
1:27 pm
Here it is, The Devil and the White City, another in a long line of pop history books I love to read. And yes, as is the case with anything written by Simon Winchester or Mark Kurlansky, I read this book in something like three days. The speed with which I got through this was just as much a testament to my love of the pop history genre as it is to Erik Larsen’s mastery of writing within it. Which reminds me: I have this vision of the publishing industry employing armies of editors and marketing geniuses who hunt down these authors and vet them for exactly the right sort of talent and story ideas, and then run the story through an editorial machine in order to create another book that really is the same—if only in form, not subjectmatter—as all the others I’ve read. And I consume them like processed food.
But getting all that cynicism about marketing out of the way, the book was really quite gripping, and everything that all your friends said it was who talked to you about it at that last dinner party. The story is a study in contrasts, really—on the one hand you had Daniel Burnham, an accomplished yet decidedly non-Ivy-League-Educated architect with something to prove who is charged with building the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, on the other H. H. Holmes, a serial killer trained in medicine who used his knowledge and skills in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable. What tied the two worlds together was the utter lack of rules of Chicago in the 1890’s. It was only in such an environment that you could see the extremes of both individual and societal behavior that was emblematic of pre-progressive era America.
In many ways Chicago was a pioneer city of the time, where a lack of environmental, health and safety, and business regulations allowed the owners of the Worlds Fair to construct it so quickly and without regard to the impact it would have on those building it. And the lack of law enforcement allowed a serial killer to remain undetected and act so brazenly for so long. The lawlessness of the time made me appreciate the relative safety of our current regulatory state, and the increased quality of life it has brought. But it is in that crucible of extremes that a truly great story was able to take shape. So go and enjoy it.
Related:
- The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: review
- Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky: review
- Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky: review
- 1968 by Mark Kurlansky: review
September 24, 2006
Vermonters secede! ::
vermont — tagged history, politics, secession, vermont and weird
8:36 pm
The LA Times has an article about the Vermont secession movement (NB: I, like 92 percent of those polled in the state, do not support it). Overall the article is ok, though its general tone is a little glib. And the two main problems I found? The article refers to the Ethan Allen Institute as a “non-partisan” think tank. However, for anyone who pays any attention at all to politics in the state, the EAI is famous (or infamous) as a group of conservative free-market zealots. So sure, they may be non-partisan, but who do you think they support come election time? Certainly not the party that advocates for single-payer healthcare.
Secondly I noted something about the leader of the Second Vermont Republic, Thomas Naylor. According to the LA Times piece, Naylor grew quite wealthy after running an software company early in the PC era. (His bio substantiates that he did work in tech, but didn’t mention that he might have gotten rich off it.) But now Naylor spends much of his intellectual efforts (when he’s not defending holocaust-questioning anti-semites) railing against the economic systems and cultural phenomena that made him rich and allowed him to pursue his ongoing political ends. Note particularly his complaints in the Technofascist Manifesto (whatever that may be), e.g., Article 1, entitled “Affluenza,” in which he asks some unnamed vaguely defined body of robot citizens to “[t]each me how to be a moneymaking, money spending machine.” Then in Article 2, “Technomania, he longs to “[m]ake high-tech mountains out of low-tech molehills.” And then my two favorites, Articles 3 and 4, in which he complains of the Internet: “our information, communication trade, and entertainment medium of choice – is a wellspring from which money, meaning, power, and instant gratification flow.” (Please note, I found all this on the Vermont Republic’s website.) And finally, of course, the general complaint in Article 4 that we Americans are under the minstaken belief that “[b]igger and faster make better.” So there is clearly some dissonance between Naylor’s professed beliefs and the reality of his life.
For me, I’m really not even interested in debating the merits of the argument that Vermont should secede. In fact, I have to work hard not to dismiss the argument out of hand, because I just can’t get past the stark hypocracy of the movement’s leader.
September 6, 2006
Collapse by Jared Diamond ::
books — tagged books, civilization, energy, environment, history and sustainability
9:37 pm
So in his book Collapse, Jared Diamond is back, and is just as thorough and expansive in his writing as he was in his previous work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Only this time around, he focuses on how societies collapse rather than how they grow and flourish. Although reading the book takes a lot of work—I took about a month and a half to read it, while studying for the bar and reading other books—reading it is definitely well worth the effort. Not only does Jared Diamond once again forge a unique path when trying to explain the phenomenon of collapsing societies, he does a great job of speaking authoritatively, backing up all of his assertions with solid research and compelling stories of how societies decide to either work to preserve their resources and protect their environment or forge ahead with unsustainable lifestyles that ultimately result their demise.
Jared Diamond focuses first on a set of historical societies, including the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi, the Greenland Norse, and describes the mistakes those societies made that, after they went uncorrected, led to their destruction. Those decisions included mass deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and—interestingly—a strange compulsion for certain societies to want to preserve an “old way” of living that was completely incompatible with their new environment. With regard to that last decision, an example that stuck out in my mind were the Greenland Norse, who brought the Norse way of living, the Norse form of agriculture, with them when they attempted to set up a society in Greenland. They found it impossible to sustain such a lifestyle there, and refused to adopt any of the ways of life of the Inuit people already inhabiting the island, even though those people had (slightly) more success in surviving in the inhospitable environment. In each of these examples, it appeared that the ancient societies were faced with a choice of either continuing their course of action, or making fundamental changes in their collective behavior, which could ultimately avert disaster. In many cases, the societies ultimately chose the former, which resulted in their society’s, well, collapse.
Diamond also discusses examples of societies that made decisions that ultimately allowed the socity to continue on and prosper. One example was Japan, which faced a substantial deforestation problem at one point in its history, but which is now one of the most heavily forested industrialized countries in the world, because of what Diamond describes as “top-down” decision making. As the name implies, there was one governing body that made the central decision to protect the country’s forests. Another option that Diamond discusses is the more bottom-up or collective approach to problem solving, which I personally found more attractive (I am, after all, a Vermonter at heart), which has also proven to be historically effective in preserving societies.
Ultimately, all of this discussion of historical societies then turns to a discussion of modern examples of societies that faced the same types of decisions those historical societies did. These modern examples had very similar outcomes, only with modern socities the stakes are always much higher—mostly because, unlike the ancient societies, countries no longer live or die in isolation. Because of globalization, the bad decisions that any single nation makes will ultimately have an effect on the broader global community. This is why the book is ultimately so important. If the human race is going to continue, the individual choices that not only individuals and communities, but entire nations, make will have a profound effect on the ultimate survival of humanity.
December 28, 2004
Lincoln At Gettysburg ::
books — tagged books, conlaw, history, legal, lincoln and politics
9:52 pm
Last semester, my legal writing professor made a practice of starting off our Monday classes with a “featured book of the week.” The event was about what you would expect — he would take thirty seconds to introduce a book, say why it was good, and half-jokingly suggest that we try to read it when we had the chance. (He knew that as law students, we had our noses buried in casebooks for the duration of the semester.) But I wrote down the titles of all the books he suggested, and made a commitment to read at least one of them over the break.
Happily, I can now say that I fulfilled that commitment by finishing Lincoln at Gettysburg. Overall I enjoyed it. The author, Garry Wills, was quite adept at discussing President Lincoln’s mindset without venturing into the realm of psychological biography (a genre for which I’ve found I have very little tolerance). The more compelling points of the book include a discussion of the American fascination with death in general — and cemeteries in particular — during the 1860’s; a refined analysis of Lincoln’s conception of the Confederacy and the Civil War (Lincoln considered the Confederate states still a part of the Union, held temporarily under the sway of a few reckless Confederate leaders).
But the most compelling part of the book was the effect that the Gettysburg Address has had on the way Americans conceive of the Constitution. Wills makes the argument that the Address now stands as the modern understanding of the Constitution. Before that speech, the Constitution was widely viewed as accepting slavery as a base political reality. It was silent on the issue of whether or not slavery was moral. But Lincoln, basing his logic on the Declaration of Independence, made clear that such an institution was in fact intolerable to the Constitution, because ultimately, it committed the nation to equality.
Interestingly, this radical departure from the norms of the mid-19th century has its detractors as well. To this day, a national commitment to equality exists to the consternation of the original intent theorists. As an example, Wills notes the legal minds such as Edwin Meese and Robert Bork, who argue that a national commitment to equality had been “sneaked into the Constitution.” When viewed in this light, the original intent school are really put out in the cold. For example, I would be astonished to find even the most conservative members of the Bush Administration advocating the position that equality should not be a “national commitment.” According to Wills,
the professors, the textbooks, the politicians, the press have overwhelmingly accepted Lincoln’s vision. The Gettysburg Address has become an authoritative expression of the American spirit — as authoritative as the Declaration itself, and perhaps even more influential, since it determines how we read the Declaration. For most people now the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it.
As a final note: I’ve been learning the extent of Lincoln’s talents as a constitutional lawyer. This, of course, has had both good and bad effects. On the one hand, he was able to force Americans to reconceptualize the Constitution as a document that was intolerant of slavery (rather than one that accepts it as a political reality). But, as I’ve learned in the current book I’m reading, he was also able to use his skills to justify the limitation — or complete removal — of civil rights during wartime. I sometimes wonder if such a person could be elected to national office at this point in history.
