I spent the day mailing out books, and then finishing up and mailing out my latest catalog of SF/F/H first editions.
So I’m going to punt on today’s post and declare an Open Thread.
Since today was given over to books, feel free to share what good books you’ve been reading, or buying, or buying as gifts, in the comments below.
To fill some space and maybe rake in a spare shekel or two, here are some links to books on communist genocide.
- Applebaum, Anne. Gulag : A History. Doubleday, 2003.
- Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. The Free Press, 1997.
- Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. University of Alberta Press, 1986.
- Conquest, Robert. Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. Viking Press, 1978.
- Conquest, Robert. The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities. Macmillan, 1970. (I have not read Conquest’s later Stalin: Breaker of Nations (Viking, 1991), but I believe that it incorporates additional material.)
- Heller, Mikhail and Nekrich, Aleksandr. Utopia in Power The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present. Summit Books, 1986.
- Rummell, R. J. Death by Government. Transaction Publishers, 1994.
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago (Volumes I-III). Harper & Row, 1973-1978.
- Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis; Courtois, Stephane. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999.
Tags: Books, Communism, Open Thread
George Frost Kennan was the most astute American student of the Soviets. His ‘Long Telegram’ is the most important single read on the Soviets at the outset of the Cold War. It can be read in its expanded version, at Wikipedia, as:
‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’
By George F. Kennan (1947)
Kennan wrote a six volume history of the relations between Russia and the West from 1875 to his own time, but did not complete the pre 1914 volume. The three most important volumes are:
‘Russia Leaves the War’
By George F. Kennan (1956)
‘The Decision to Intervene’
By George F. Kennan (1958)
‘Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin’
By George F. Kennan (1961)
His posthumously published diaries bring everything together:
‘The Kennan Diaries’
By George F. Kennan (2014)
Kennan was the author of President Truman’s containment policy, which ended the Soviet Union without nuclear war. His analysis of post Soviet Russia was also trenchant, but is now unwelcome particularly after the start of the Ukrainian War.
I could recommend the following:
“Taking Religion Seriously” by Charles Murray
“The War for Middle-Earth,” by Joseph Loconte
“The Great Math War: How Three Brilliant Minds Fought for the Foundations of Mathematics.” Jason Socrates Bardi
Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic, by Inger N.I. Kuin
“War Without Mercy: Liberty or Death in the American Revolution,” by Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin
Links to my reviews of these books follow.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/taking-religion-seriously-one-mans-journey-to-god-5948039
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/two-great-writers-fight-the-war-for-middle-earth-5949099
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bright/the-great-math-war-get-out-your-pencil-and-ruler-5942632
https://ricochet.com/1900025/diogeness-lamp-and-life/
https://ricochet.com/1887398/the-irregulars-during-the-revolution/
I personally liked His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne (who I didn’t realize lived in Austin).
It’s interesting to me that airships turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end in the history of aviation. Both airships and aircraft had horrible safety records early on: but aircraft evolved, and their safety record improved. Airships just kept crashing and (mostly) killing everyone on board.
It’s also interesting to read about how delusional people were about hydrogen. As in, “Hydrogen isn’t dangerous at all! The real danger is the gasoline we use in the engines!”
And there is something of a political angle. There were two competing airships built by the British. R-100 was built by private industry (subsidized by the government) and made a successful round-trip across the ocean to Canada.
R-101 (the subject of the book) was built by the British government. It crashed on the maiden voyage and killed most of the crew.
Here’s a biography worth reading:
“Shackleton”, by Roland Huntford.
A thorough and detailed story of the man’s life. It was slightly depressing to read of the foibles and failures of a man I hugely admired as a child, but still some inspiring stories of stubborness and courage.
And here’s an autobiography of a raving lunatic:
“The Storm of Steel”, by Ernst Junger (the original 1929 translation)
If you want to see what a fanatic German was like during WW1, this is a book for you.
And for pure escapism into a much worse world than ours (currently is):
The Black Tide Rising series, starting with “Under a Graveyard Sky”, by John Ringo.
It was nice to re-read this during the Covidiocy, and it’s still a greatly entertaing set of reads.
I haven’t read it yet, so this is a limited recommendation, but The Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman, is on my shortlist.
“I haven’t read it yet, so this is a limited recommendation, but The Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman, is on my shortlist.”
Great book. Explains the next 4 centuries. It strictly covers Western Europe, but that was where the Black Death was most significant.
Sure – here (you’re welcome):
https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf