Empires and Barbarians: Migration Development and the Birth of Europe - Peter Heather

A very interesting topic, and the author is obviously an expert in his field.  Unfortunately, his writing style is impenetrable.  I find myself skipping down the page, running over sentences, looking for "the meat".  I keep muttering to myself, "Get to the point!"  Convoluted sentences, overly detailed digressions, very academic vocabulary and structures - unnecessary for the topic.  Too bad.

From the first chapter or so of the books, I came away with some important ideas:

1) the concept of wholesale tribal migration (men, women and children with their culture) has largely been supplanted in early history

2) if there was migration, it was probably of warriors who replaced existing elites in areas conquered, and then integrated with the local population in a two-way dance of mutual influence.  (this ties into a gender article I read recently - shortage of opportunity for males in most societies - warrior-adventurer as a solution to shortage of resources/women for a society's males) - this elite migration/integration concept is strongly supported by DNA studies in Asia Minor, where the population, though Turkish and central asian culturally, is basically genetically contiguous with Greece and the Balkans

3) cultures and people can mutate, change, develop without a change of population - innovative influence coming from outside

4) in prehistory and early history, the concept of culturo-linguistic (self-aware?) peoples/tribes/ethnic groups, is a projection of 19th and early 20th century european nationalism onto the past - if you examine the history of invading/migratory groups, you see shifting tribal/cultural identities, depending on circumstances, opportunities and political expediency - a useful tool for modern-day nationalistic politicians, but a complete fiction never-the-less

Too bad about the rest of the book.

The Gallery - John Horne Burns 1947

I came across reference to this book in the NYT.  John Horne Burns was considered an important new postwar writer when this book came out.  He was praised by other well-known american authors at different times (I remember the name of Gore Vidal, for example).  I can see why Gore Vidal and co. would have appreciated his style, as it has some of the hardness and informality of american writing immediately after the war.  Burns also was one of the first american writers to openly bring in homosexuality to his writing (so the article said).  Unfortunately, he was a one book wonder, never producing anything else of note.
I admit I didn't actually read the whole book, which is cut up into a concurrent series of vignettes.  The portrait vignettes I found a bit tedious - my usual impatience with neurotic characters.  The north African vignettes reveal all the prejudice and stereotypes of american and european views on arabs and their culture - interesting from a sociological point of view but not really enjoyable reading.  The vignettes I enjoyed are the ones about the city of Naples itself - they give you a sense of the jumble and vitality of life in the streets of Naples.  These passages reminded me of some of my favourite travel moments, and of why I love Istanbul.

Worth reading for the Naples vignettes.

Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Like his other book, Antifragile:  Things that Gain from Disorder, this book is really too big and too complex to discuss in any kind of succinct way.  There are also far too many good quotes to even start transcribing them.  In fact, there are also too many leads to even note down.  Only thing to do is buy it, get a few highlighters, and then try to not just highlight the whole book...
As I digest his complex web of ideas, I'll try to add more here.

We So Seldom Look on Love - Barbara Goudy

This is an unusual little collection of short stories.    Her writing has the feel of other canadian women short story writers (Alice Munro, Carol Shields)  but the characters and plot lines are very "out there" in many of the stories.   For example:  the young female necrophiliac who works in a funeral home; the two headed man who commits murder by cutting off one of his heads.  There are also some rather gruesome gothic stories, like the one where the child's head is lacerated by an overhead fan.
What strikes me is that Goudy was both willing and able to let her imagination wander into these sometimes extreme, sometimes sordid, always way off centre lives and universes.

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Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe - Norman M. Naimark

A book with some points of interest.  Reviews the ethnic cleansings one would expect:  Armenians, Jews, Soviet deportations from the Caucasus, Yugoslav ethnic conflicts.  He does cover one ethnic cleansing I didn't know about - post WW II expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Notable also are some missing ones - Palestinians, Turkish speaking people from Balkans.

Looks at how ethnic cleansings come about - says pretty much what you would expect.

Some interesting ideas, though...

p. 141 discusses how the effects of the Ottoman conquest wars in the Balkans, and later the intraethnic strife when they withdrew, had little effect on modern Yugoslav conflicts.  He sees these earlier conflicts as significant only because of how they were used by nationalistic politicians and ideologues.  The concept of identity politics as a political tool.

p. 190 "One aspect of ethnic cleansing that links to "high modernism" and the ambitions of the modern state and its leaders is its totalistic quality.  In the European cases examined here, the goal is to remove every member of the targeted nation; very few exceptions to ethnic cleansing are allowed.  In premodern cases of assaults of one people on another, those attacked could give up, change sides, convert, pay tribute, or join the attackers.  Ethnic cleansing, driven by the ideology of integral nationalism and the military and technological power of the modern state, rarely forgives, makes exceptions, or allows people to slip through the cracks."

p. 192 "Ethnic cleansing involves not only the forced deportation of entire nations but the eradication of the memory of their presence.  The physical remnants of the nation are the first to be destroyed.

...

   In addition to levelling churches, houses, and graveyards, ethnic cleansers burn books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries... (RE Tatars and Chechen-Ingush deportations) In neither case was anyone allowed to talk about the fact that the respective peoples had been deported.  It was as if they had vanished into thin air, never really having existed in the first place.

In Persuasion Nation - George Saunders

A collection of short stories by the author of "Civil War Land in Bad Decline".
Saunders has apparently been called the new Vonnegut, which I didn't see at all in "Civil War..." - yes, a social satirist, but with a more gothic, less whimsical tone. In this book, "In Persuasion Nation"  I can now see why he has been called a new Vonnegut.  In this book, he has the same biting social satire as his previous book and Vonnegut's work too.  But in this book, there is something of the madhouse, absurdist, surreal elements of Vonnegut's work.  Saunders is funny, absurd - you laugh, but it is still a darker laughter than with  Vonnegut.
This book by Saunders focuses on a narrow aspect of American society - the culture of television, advertising, materialism corporate America.  A few of the stories have some different themes, but most of the book is absurdist extensions of American consumer culture.

Quote from an imaginary text, "Taskbook for the New Nation"
They will attempt to insinuate themselves into the very fabric of our emotional lives, demanding the dissolution of the distinction between beloved and enemy, friend and foe, neighbour and stranger.  The will, citing equality, deny our right to make critical moral distinctions.  Crying peace, they will deny our right to defend, in whatever manner most expedient, the beloved.  Under the guise of impariality, they will demand we disavow all notions of tradition, family, friends, tribe, and even nation.  But we are animals, forced to look blankly upon the rich variety of life, disallowed the privilege of making moral distinctions, dead to love, forbidden from preferring this to that?


From the story, "Brad Carrigan, American"
- after three corpses in the backyard had explained the complex shifting allegiances and economic forces between three tribal groups, which ultimately ended with their death and the extinction of one tribe...
"Wow," says Brad.  " That's so complicated."
"Not that complicated," says the corpse who died fending off blows.  
"It might seem complicated, if the person trying to understand it had lived in total plenty all of his life, ignoring the rest of the world," says the corpse missing an arm...
"I agree," says the corpse who died fending off blows.  "We know all about his country.  I know who Casey Stengel was.  I can quote at length from Thomas Paine."
"Who?" says Brad.

Waiting for the Barbarians - J. M. Coetzee

This book is an absolute must read.  Coetzee is a very interesting and subtle thinker and writer.  It is easy to see his writing in the context of his roots as a white man growing up in South Africa through the apartheid era.  But there is a lot more to him than that.  The apartheid experience may have been the catalyst to his thinking and world view but his reach extends far beyond that specific situation.  Coetzee is fundamentally a deep moral thinker, and a writer who explores the deep social structures, power relations and driving forces in modern western civilization.  
You can read him as an exploration of good and evil in the modern world.  You can read him as an exploration of empire, corporate culture and bureaucratic power structures and their effect of human relations and society' moral sense.  You can read him as an explorations of the clash or conflict between the modern western society's world view/values and other older cultures built on entirely different premises.  You can read him as an exploration of western social power structures and relations.  You can read him as an exploration of the dynamics of Empire  (and thus a history of the modern Western world).

The narrator's failed quest to truly understand the difference of the Other in the people that surround him is intriguing, and also quite possibly a critical look at the liberal left of Europe and North America.  There is a wonderful passage to the effect that he, the narrator, represents the face of Empire when times are good; the sadistic army officer, the face of Empire when times are bad.  Two faces, but the same Empire, the same dynamic, the same power structure.

A complex book worth rereading several times.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

This is a novel that is technically classified as science fiction, probably mostly because it takes place in the future.  I think it is actually more in the genre of social cataclysm/catastrophy - in the family of Surreal 3000, The Giver, 1984, the Hunger Games, etc.
He does a wonderful job of creating a world where global warming, agribusiness, energy shortage, religious fundamentalism, racism, famine and genetically modified disease have all worked to cause the collapse of society as we know it.  I suppose what makes it a bit "science fiction" is the role of genetically modified people, and rampant genetic tinkering.  The author also develops some very interesting ideas around how the society would find the energy to accomplish what little technology is still usable.  There is also the concept of the reduction of living beings, including humans,  to a calorie source to accomplish work  - how many calories in vs. how many calories out.

The basic underlying plot is american big agribusiness vs. humanism.


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Cosmicomiche: vecchie et nuove - Italo Calvino

A great book by that most quirky of authors, Italo Calvino.  Social observations, philosophical ramblings, witty observations, all in the context of the Precambrian period.  The narrator is a fish newly emerged onto land, who describes, analyses and speculates on his relatives and the other early earth-based life forms he encounters.
A very enjoyable, thoughtful read.  An interesting take on the parable concept, though it isn't written in parable style.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

An interesting read for anyone who is an introvert who hasn't figured out what it's all about yet.  A good look at the current cultural stereotypes around the most valued personality types.  The book also does a good job of highlighting the strengths and value of introverted personalities, mostly in the work place.