Samarkand - Amin Malouf

 A novel built around an imagined life of Omar Khayyam.  

This is the second time I have read this novel, and I found it much less compelling than the first time I read it.  No doubt, partly because of a waning of my interest in the history of Iran and Central Asia, and also the understanding that very few, if any, traces of this world remain.

Basically, though, it is the style of the novel that I can't relate to.  It seems very much a 19th century novel  The style is somewhat formal, the vocabulary a bit recherche.  The characters are also somewhat exaggerated caricatures of types:  the mysterious persian princess, the american man of reason, the conniving eastern potentate, the clear-eyed bon vivant, etc.  The emotional tone of the characters is also to monochromatic and high - love, regret, righteous indignation, all with capital letters.  In sum, it reads too much like a 19th century moral tale.  Also, like a 19th century romantic tale with love pursued and lost, with nostalgic regret.  

Unfortunate, because what Malouf is trying to do is important.  Through his novels, he is trying to portray a Middle East and Islamic world that the West is ignorant of.  He wants to show that there is more to the Middle East than religious fundamentalism, ignorant sectarianism and self-righteous moralizing.  As he shows, there has always been a conflict between narrow-minded religious dogmatism and more enlightened, reasoned, humanistic visions, but the currently dominant fundamentalism was not always the most powerful view.  

La vita di Dante - Alessandro Barbero

Opera piuttosto accademico con troppo di dettagli, ma nonostante interessante.  Ci sono certi aspetti interessanti:

Dante ha iniziato la sua  vita politica come sostenitore dei governi di forma repubblicana come quello di  Firenze, governi fatti di rappresentanti della classe mercantile che formarono consigli.  Ma dopo il suo esilio, sembra che tornasse verso il partito soprattutto aristocratico che preferì i sistemi autocratici con un capo di stato e il potere ereditato. 

 Veramente è straordinario quanto si può sapere sulla vita di Dante, o almeno la parte trascorso a Firenze.  Mi pare inimmaginabile quanti documenti rimangono di quell'epoca ora 700 anni fa.  Credo che sia una caratteristica di quei governi mercantili di, tutto come negli affari, di voler documentare tutto.  E di più. tutti quei documenti sembrano aver stato esaminato, codificato e referenziato dagli storici moderne.  A parte di quei documenti che notano contratti, presti, acquisti e ogni tipo di attività ufficiale, è possibile costruire il cerchio sociale e la  posizione politica di Dante, i suoi amici e nemici.

L'altra cosa che mi sorprende, e anche che mi fa ridere un po', è che, quando consideri gli eventi nella vita di Dante, tanto negativo quanto positivo, diviene evidente che da un lato, la grande opera di Dante è un'opera di vendicazione dove il poeta si vendica de quelli che gli hanno fatto danni, mettendoli nell'Inferno.  E certo, quelli che gli hanno aiutato soprattutto durante il suo esilio, s'incontrano nel Paradiso, o almeno nel Purgatorio.

Era veramente un  uomo a cavallo tra due epoche.  Iniziò la letteratura moderno con il suo uso letterario del volgare, ma nello stesso tempo, rimasse fissato su aspetti del mondo medioevo, ad esempio il concetto della vera nobiltà.  E certo, ebbe un concetto del mondo strettamente circoscritto dalla religione e dalla chiesa cattolica.

The Archipelago: Italy Since 1945 - John Foot

 An excellent, well-written account of Italian politics and society post-war.  Covers the social conflicts between workers/Communist party and Industrialists/Christian Democrats/ex-Fascists through the 40s, 50s and 60s.  Also includes a specific discussion of how the Americans worked to influence the first post-war elections to ensure the Communist party did not win the national elections.  (Both of these preceding points seem to be mostly forgotten by most Italians I speak with, even the educated ones.)  Chronicles the continual ties between governments and the mafia.  Excellent account of the emergence of the Lega, which has been around as a separatists, racist party for decades.  The biggest surprise was the account of Berlusconi and the Berlusconi years.  Berlusconi was basically a Trump without Twitter.  Same use of media to bypass the party system and speak directly to an alienated popular base.  Same subversion of the party system to make it a one man show.  Same view of government as a tool for furthering his business interests and those of his close allies.  Same attempts to change the laws to avoid persecution for his corrupt business dealings.  

In the end, it is a pretty hopeless picture, with a cross-party group of elites at all levels of business and government, including the judicial system, that work to protect each other and maintain their positions of power.    

The Myth of Capitalism - Jonathan Tepper

 A book that take down the myth of the American capitalist system as a system of competition and constant renewal.  He outlines how the actual American economy has become both monopolistic and monopsonistic with a small number of companies controlling huge areas of the economy, setting prices, wages and even what suppliers will be paid.  Innovation and new company creation are steadily slowing.  Smaller firms are more and more swallowed up by a few big ones.  The end result is lower wages for everyone, the disappearance of family farms and businesses and higher prices for everyone too.  This is actually the driving force behind growing income inequality:  wages shrink, prices go up, large corporations and big share holders grab more and more of the wealth. 

Since slavery the basic American economic model has been highly exploitative.  Then came colonialism/imperialism on the world stage.  Now they are back consuming their own people to get rich.  

Nothing is done because money runs politics.  Congress works for the wealthy shareholders and corporations by granting monopolies, increasing regulation that makes it harder for small companies to get started and changing laws that benefit large companies and the wealthy.  He underlines the importance of how government advisors and top administrators move back and forth between the private and public sector.  

This problem is particularly important in the U.S.  Canada and Europe are far more stringent in applying anti-trust and anti-monopoly rules.  The U. S. has given up on this.  

This book explains why Google and other large tech companies have been having legal problems and being fined large sums of money in Europe whereas nothing is happening in the U.S.  

Worth rereading for the details,

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

 A reread from long ago.  A portrait of a lost era that quickly disappeared into the maw of commercialization of everything.  Kesey was a strange character - a bit of a prophet with a vision of a society with a freer, more open mind.  It is interesting that his later message was to move beyond acid and the other drugs, to find that open mind state without the drugs.  Of course, this message fell flat.  For most the attraction was the thrill.  

Also, always the same old things:  leader worship, in crowd and out crowd, conformity pressure.  The alternative vision that mirrors the same old same old....

Sadly, ultimately, the whole thing ended rather seedily - hiding from the law, seamy Mexico, in-fighting, even a bit of megalomania and paranoia.  A failed prophecy and a failed prophet.  

The WEIRDEST People in the World - Joseph Henrich

 A potentially fascinating book exploring the psychological and conceptual differences between the Western European psyche and culture and that of the rest of the world, and how this helps explain the rise and dominance of the West.  He looks at all kinds of things - individualism vs. social and familial integration,  social cohesion vs. individual perception and judgement, the locus of causality and guilt, and many others.

One interesting point that he makes is how the Catholic Church revolutionized social relations in the West by forbidding cousin marriage, thereby forcing people to reach out beyond their immediate familial circles to develop a wider web of relations.

Unfortunately, the book delves into the background, research and experiments a bit too deeply and it begins to drag.  I would like to read a version with the main themes and conclusions and a simple summary of the background related to each.  Because of this quality, I couldn't finish the book.

Try again, reading only the beginning and end of each section for the main points and themes.

The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire - Robert Bickers

 An account of the humiliation and exploitation of China in the late 1800s by England and America.

Goes a long way to explaining the current determination of the Chinese government to build a strong system of central control, project a strong presence in the world and to build a system of links and allies, and to remain at the crest of new technology, both civilian and military.  The current leaders have learned their lessons from history...

On Pandemics - David Walther-Toews

 A book about the current Covid Virus "pandemic" and how we ended up here.  Lightly written, easy read book with some wit.  There is an undercurrent of mockery or poking fun throughout the book for several reasons.  First, because scientists have been warning about the next pandemic for over a decade now and no one in positions of power was listening.  Second, many of the factors leading to modern pandemics are related to over-exploitation and destruction of natural environments, another problem that scientists have been warning us about for decades without much success.  Third, third world poverty, another much discussed but short on action problem, also encourages the kind  of human-animal interactions that lead to viruses jumping species.  Fourth, this cycle of viruses jumping species is an old cycle, repeated many times throughout history, often resulting from new modes of interaction between humans and the natural environment.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire - Kurt Andersen

 A great analysis of the roots of the current crazy political, social and ideological climate in the U. S., tracing it all the way back to the founding of the colony in Virginia as a 10 year long gold rush scam designed to attract immigrant suckers.  

The introduction alone is full of astonishing facts about beliefs and mental habits of Americans at large - left my mouth hanging.  One that sticks - by the author's estimation, at best 1/3 of Americans live in a rational, fact-based universe...

The chapters dealing with the 19th and 20th centuries are the most interesting in terms of explaining key moments on the road to the current state of society and critical thinking.  Too many things to discuss...

Worth a reread, especially the second half.

Twice a Stranger - Bruce Clark

Subtitled:  How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey.

An excellent account of this whole historical episode.  It gives the background and the historical information in detail, but not too much.  It also includes many personal reminiscences of the experience from older people on both sides of the divide, as well as acute observations from the author made during his travels in both countries.
The end result is a complex picture of a complex set of experiences which tends to counter the more absolute mythology around the expulsions and the events leading up to them. 

One interesting passage can be found on pp. 193 - 195, recounting the political moves of the CHP around the opposition that was critical of the government's corruption and inefficiency in dealing with the population exchange.  In the end, the leaders of the opposition were accused of being disloyal and imprisoned and eventually executed during the aftermath of the Kurdish uprising shortly after the population exchange.  The press was also so suppressed.  The ruling party even maintained they had aborted an assassination attempt on Atatürk   This is, of course, the identical playbook that Erdoğan has used - the Ergenkon case, as well as the whole Fetah Gülen story.  Various aspects of the Turkish managing of the population exchange make it clear that this collusion between the ruling party and the big business elite is built into the DNA of the Turkish Republic.  In a way, it is a continuation of the relationship between the Sultan and the non-Muslim elites of the late Ottoman Empire - a favoured business elite with special rapport with the government and which is allowed to enrich itself in exchange for money and favours...   As usual, nations have a very hard time changing their political DNA;  they just swap round the power brokers and the business elite groups.

Richmond Now and Then: An Anecdotal History - Nick Fonda

A collection of well-written articles on the history and people of the Richmond, Quebec area.  Covers earliest time up to recent days.  Worth browsing through again.

Our Game - John LeCarre

An excellent book.  This one based on the unsettled situation post fall of USSR in the Caucasus mountains.  A great portrait of Russia and Moscow at the time.

Le Chagrin et la pitié - Marcel Ophuls

   Un film sur la France sous l'occupation.  Un film très controversé à sa sortie dans les années '60.   Il paraît que la France a la mythologie qu'en général elle n'a pas trop collaborée avec les Nazis au cours de cette occupation, tandis qu'il semble que la vérité est tout à fait l'opposée.  La collaboration était la politique officielle du gouvernement de Vichy.  Au commencement des hostilités,  le film donne les sens d'une élite française complètement démodée et hors de contact avec la réalité de la situation - perdue dans des illusions d'héroisme et gloire.

   Plein de personnages fascinants, surtout les anciens membres de la Résistance qui s'y sont mis au début du conflit.  Il y a aussi un noble très intéressant qui raconte franchement sa guerre en tant que membre de la Brigade Charlemagne, une brigade française qui faisait partie du Waffen S.S.   Quand on voit tous ces personnages, toutes ces expériences et perspectives diverses, c'est un miracle que la France n'est pas tombée dans un désordre social absolu après la guerre.  C'est peut-être l'accomplissement le plus important de De Gaulle à la fin.

   L'autre chose qui fait rire c'est les cigarettes.  Tout le monde est tout le temps en train de fumer....

The Uses and Abuses of History - Margaret MacMillan

  In spite of the title, a fairly light read looking at the way history is used by politicians and radicals to further their ends.  She outlines some interesting historical myths used in recent history to justify some horrendous actions - Serbia, post-Vichy France - as well as instances where governments have refused to listen to historical experts with specialized knowledge of countries - U.S. policy in the Middle East, especially Iraq. 
  She also discusses the issues around current governments acknowledging responsibility and apologizing for actions done in the past in different times with different values.  There are two sides to this coin.
   Worth a read, but if you are a thinking consumer of the news and history, not much new here.

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible - Peter Pomerantsev

  A very interesting book about how the modern Russian mafia state works, and how Russia has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putin.  What makes this book interesting is who's stories the author tells.  This is not an analytical book, a theoretical book, nor a look at well-known key figures.  The author tells the stories of regular, everyday people that he meets in the course of his ten years of working for Russian media. (His difference as a reporter is that he actually grew up in London but kept up his Russian with his dissident parents who had moved there.)
   Some salient points:
   The historical progression goes something like this:  The fall of the Soviet Union leads to the rise of two groups; mega-entrepreneurs who quickly become very rich, and a well-organized criminal mafia with roots in the Gulag system.  This leads to chaos.  The rise of Putin follows, and he uses the KGB structure to rein in/destroy/subsume the independent criminal mafia.  Putin uses his new KGB mafia alliance to destroy or rein in the mega-entrepreneur class.  Slowly the mega-entrepreneurs transfer their wealth to London and leave the country.  Huge amounts of money are extorted, profitable business are taken over, whole areas of the economy are taken over, and the resulting spoils are distributed amongst Putin's underlings.  Slowly the mega-entrepreneurs transfer their wealth to London and leave the country.  The government/mafia inserts itself into most of the economy.
    It becomes clear in the book that Putin controls all levers of power in the country - government, military, criminal organizations, media, the courts, the economy.  It would seem the only crack in the structure is when Putin is no longer, but the result will probably resemble a civil war amongst various underlings to capture the top position - which won't help the country at all; in fact, make everything worse.

   Like China, it would be very interesting to study this phenomenon of countries where revolutionaries have tried to destroy the organically rooted culture and replace it with an entirely new imposed ideologically based culture.  These types of radical breaks do something strange to the society.  It would be interesting to look at this from a sociological point of view.  I wonder if there are parallels to be made with various personal psychological issues and pathologies...

The Time of Mute Swans - Ece Temelkuran

A novel set in Ankara during the late 70's, early 80's, when there was almost open warfare between left and right.  Told from the perspective of a young boy whose family lives in a gecekondu, and a girl living in a middle-class left-leaning family.   It looks at several things:  1) the general tenor and feeling of the time  2) the awkward relationship between the poor working class and the leftist intellectuals  3) generational differences in perspective on life, politics (and other things)  4)  some of the violence perpetrated by rightist groups   5) The lack of understanding between various groups within the society, and the resulting backstabbing 6) corruption amongst both the military and the political class
Overall, the adults in the book do not show well, being obsessed with their own agendas and concerns, as seen by the little people looking on.

In spite of these themes, it presents a very touching and human perspective on the various main characters in the book.

As an aside, Temelkuran is a persona non grata currently in Erdoğan's Turkey. 

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

A novel recounting the life of an upstanding Igbo man in his society just before the collapse of the traditional social structure.  In latter part of the book it also looks at the confrontation of traditional Igbo society and values with European colonizers in Niger during the very early years of the 20th century.
The story is told completely from Okonkwo's perspective.  Achebe develops a detailed picture of the society, its values, its structures and how different groups relate. Okonkwo, as a successful member, stands behind the values and norms of his society and strives to maintain a high socia position.  Part western style tragedy, things fall apart for him partially because of bad luck, partially because of his own unbending character.  And finally, because of European colonization and its effects - loss of status, loss of tribal strength and social cohesion.  Unlike the other theme I was thinking about, those who live between two cultural worlds, Okonkwo refuses to engage with that foreign system of values.  (I suppose, given that Achebe studied in Europe and is using essentially a western literature structure,  he would be the one living between two cultures....)

The Curtain - Milan Kundera

A collection of essays focused on the history and nature of the novel as an art form.  An interesting look at his personal list of significant novelists who advanced or shifted the form and nature of the novel - interesting possible reading list.  His develops a rather loose idea of how the novel is the form that closest reflects our modern sensibilities.

Several themes besides.
Some interesting reflections on the path of young artists in general vs. that of older, mature artists.  Also, how the image or understanding of an older artist's work can be deformed by judgements of later generations who bring a different era, a different set of judgemental values, a different historical perspective to some aspect of the older artist's life or work. (Think Gunter Grass, of late.)  (This is a recurring current problem, with our generation judging past history, events and figures based on today's social values and politically correct ideology.  Interestingly, we live in a period of both great moral relativism and yet cannot understand the idea of "different times, different values" - I suspect it hinges more on transgression of moral values, moral issues I particularly hold dear...)

Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City - Borden W. Painter, Jr.

Interesting look at how Mussolini changed the face of Rome and established from nothing many of the communities and suburbs that surround the historical city.  As you wander around central Rome, you don't realize how much of Mussolini's Rome you wander through.  Part of his presence is actually an absence, especially around many of the central historical monuments.  In these areas, he cleared away many encroaching houses and structures to make the historical architecture more visible, more present.  Many of the the longer, wide open boulevards in central Rome are also his work.  Scattered through much of the city just outside the old historical centre are more modern buildings, usually apartments - most of these date from this time and Mussolini's plans to both rebuild and increase the population of the city.   This would be true of much of the Ostiense area, significant parts of Testaccio and also the whole area south of the old Trastevere neighbourhood along Via Trastevere.  The Ostiense train station is also his work (Hitler arrived there for his visit prewar).  

The neighbourhood I would like to visit is the EUR neighbourhood - while there are other satellite towns that are wholly the creation of Mussolini's vision, this is the one most easily accessible from central Rome - next visit.

The book also contains a fair bit of the history of Fascism in Italy, but it is easy to skip these bits if you are already familiar with it.  Includes some photos, but reading in combination with Google Maps and photos is better.

Interestingly, one neighbourhood that seems to have been hardly touched is the old Trastevere neighbourhood - which may mean it stands as a record of what a fair bit of Rome looked like outside the historical centre.

There is also the theme of politics, dictatorship and how they use architecture as a means of self-aggrandizement and myth making.  There is also the element of social control:  many of the areas that were razed were poorer areas that tended to be communist or socialist.  These "undesirable" populations were relocated to areas far from the city centre where they were easier to control, also making it harder for them to both get to their work, and also to have a political presence in the central city.  (Untouched is the theme of enrichment through redevelopment of a Fascist insider business circle....)  (All of this reminds me of Erdoğan and his work in Istanbul...)

A History of Modern Italy - Anthony L. Cardoza

Italy from late 1700's to 2016.  Nice concise account of unification and the formation of the Italian State.  You get a sense of who the people are whose names are on so many streets in Italian towns.  (Basically, important figures in the struggle for unification.)
Yet another example of a state that can't seem to escape its historical political culture.  So many conflicting interests - regional competition; state vs. church; competition for dominance within a specific region; district or town; winner take all approach with accompanying corruption and crime; corrupt elites in all areas of leadership who mainly look out for themselves.  Been like this for 1000 years, and no one can seem to change it.  Politicians serious about change are always chased out in the end.  The wealthy and powerful elite doesn't seem to have modified their greed and grasping ways since the heyday of 19th century capitalism.
One thing that leaves me angry is how the current populist parties like the Northern League, etc. can dare to suggest that Italy's problems are the result of immigration!  In fact, they are self-created and self-perpetuated, and have been decades, centuries even, in the making.