Akayoshi’s Contrarian Compendium of Cool Indies
By Mark David Ledbetter
Copyright 2011 Mark David Ledbetter
Published by Mark David Ledbetter on Smashwords
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All rights reserved by the author. Except for quotations, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise. Oh, what the heck! Go ahead.
Table of Contents
Preface to the First Edition (2011)
Eaten By the Japanese, by John Baptist Crasta and Richard Crasta
The Revised Kama Sutra, by Richard Crasta
Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn, by Nell Gavin
The Twenty-Dollar Bill, by Elmore Hammes
Time Will Run Back, Henry Hazlitt
Kafka’s House, by Gabriela Popa
Three Dead Ducks, by Thomas St. Laurent
Déjà vu in a Dream, by Thomas St. Laurent
PART TWO: Everything But Novels
Recollections, by Jim Chambers
The Promise of American Life, by H. D. Croly
Free Trade Doesn’t Work, by Ian Fletcher
A Brief History from the Founding of the City, by Ian Gibbons
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Waiting on a Train, by James McCommons
Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, by Murray Rothbard
Light and Death, by Michael Sabom
Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau
PART THREE: Ledbetter’s Histories
Reviews of America’s Forgotten History: Parts One and Two, by Mark David Ledbetter
Globocop: How America Sold Its Soul and Lost Its Way, by Mark David Ledbetter
Preface to the First Edition (2011)
This compendium was conceived in an insomniac flash of inspiration – or delirium – as was, in fact, “Akayoshi” himself. That appellation, you see, occurred to the producer of Compendium during those same nocturnal musings. It’s a rendering into Japanese of Red Better, itself a mis-rendering of the author’s actual name. Mr. Better, despite his name and appearance, is quite Japanized after thirty some years in Nihon, thus justifying, he hopes, his new tag.
Akayoshi’s Contrarian Compendium of Cool Indies is intended as straightforward publicity for both deserving indie writers that I have encountered since the explosive revolutionary advent of digital self-publishing, and for my own e-books on American history. The digital publishing revolution is a great democratizer. It bypasses the gatekeepers, opens up literary creation to non-professionals, brings in new perspectives and possibilities, just like blogging did for journalistic editorializing. Granted, this democratization is usually for the worse. That’s the way it is when gatekeepers are bypassed, when the masses are unshackled, when writers are “unencumbered” by the restrictions of formal training. But every once in a while, it's for the better. Akayoshi’s tries to find cases of for-the-better, those works that would have sunk into oblivion without the digital publishing possibility, but may find long life and appreciation with it.
Digitally self-published Indie writers are nurtured in a different milieu than publishing house writers and deserve different standards of evaluation. A non-distracting number of keyboard mishaps and typos that would have been caught by publishing houses is not going to lower the rating. Neither will relatively non-distracting structural flaws when those flaws don’t particularly detract from important messages or from enjoyable reading. But an e-book without a e-book-appropriate price certainly will lose some stars. Cheap is good! Right on! Power to the People!
Unlike the history books written by Akayoshi’s alter ego (reviews make up Part Three), the Compendium is non-ideological. All viewpoints deserve a listen. All voices have a valid perspective. I, as a writer of history, certainly do have an ideology. Without that, my histories would be a pointless collection of random incidents from the past. But the Compendium is not intended to be a collection of ideological look-alikes or a justification for my own thinking. We need an ideology to organize our works, certainly. But a strong conviction that I am right, you are wrong! indicates to me a shallow understanding of both human nature and history, not to mention a lack of sympathy. To use personal ideology as a standard for measuring the worth of fellow indies would make the Compendium a pointless collection of self-serving and power-feeding diatribes. I look for art and insight in my selections, not confirmation of my own beliefs.
*Akayoshi’s was partially intended as publicity. Therefore, it was also intended to be free. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Amazon doesn’t allow free unless one goes through complicated stratagems. I don’t particularly mind stratagems, so long as they aren’t unethical, but I am highly allergic to complicated. Thus, until such time as “free” becomes uncomplicated, ACCCI will cost the Kindle minimum of 99 cents.
Look for updates and new reviews in future editions of Compendium. For current selections, please check the Table of Contents above.
Part One: Novels and Memoirs
The novels here are sold primarily on e-book platforms. They all meet the ACCCI (Akayoshi’s Contrarian Compendium of Cool Indies) requirements of quality, economy, and independence from publishing houses. In other words, ACCCI judges them to be as good as what you can get from “real” publishers and a whole lot cheaper (though ACCCI naturally has no control over authors who latter choose to raise prices.) Novels are alphabetized according to author’s last names so as to keep books by the same author together.
Eaten By the Japanese
John Baptist Crasta / Richard Crasta
A War Memoir That Ranks With the Best
Unknown to the author when he wrote it, this book would become not one but two things. First, as intended, it is an unembellished memoir of life as a P.O.W. of the Japanese written by a non-elite Indian from Mangalore. Second, it is an unintended companion to the semi-biographical novel written decades later by his son. The father wrote his book at a time when non-elite Indians simply did not write books. The son, unknowingly emulating his father, wrote a book at a time when non-elite Indians STILL did not write books. Or get them published and recognized, anyway. Still another decade or two passes and the son would find his father's book, handwritten (no typewriters for any but the rich in southern India) on old and yellowed paper, the paper itself a borrowed luxury. The book was written before he was born, and then consigned to storage, where it would languish nearly forgotten for half a century.
In Eaten as a memoir, you see the horror of war, without a trace of artifice, through the eyes of one who was there, the writing a simple act of catharsis with no reasonable expectation that anything would come of it. You see the writer as soldier in the British Empire's Indian army arrive at his plush assignment in Singapore, the quick collapse of Singapore to the onrushing Japanese army, the vicissitudes of life doing slave labor for the Japanese war effort, the final Japanese defeat, and his release and return to India. Too bad this memoir was discovered so many years after the event. It deserves to be ranked with the best.
Then, there is Eaten as a companion to the son's book, The Revised Kama Sutra. In Kama, you see the father as a side character in the son's search for meaning, the son catching only those distorted and one-dimensional glimpses of a parent's past that are generally allowed to the child. In Eaten, you see that same father when he himself was a young man, with his alluded-to past made central and explicit. Finally, in the postscript to Eaten, written by the son, you see the son discovering and publishing his father's book so many years after publishing his own. The son, now a father, too, has a new understanding of his own father. Taken together, these two books make a pathos-filled and powerful multi-generational work of art.
As an American and thirty-year resident of Japan, I would qualify some of the son's conclusions on the meaning of his father's work. Japan should apologize for its war crimes!, he says. Well, yes it should. Just like America should apologize for the atomic bombing of civilians, like both America and Britain should apologize for the fire-bombing of civilians. Ain't gonna happen. In fact, I personally find more recognition among the Japanese intelligentsia for Japanese war crimes than I do among the American or English intelligentsia for theirs. The writer is neither American nor English, so this may not be a valid criticism of his thinking. But I just can't let the winners of war off the hook on this point.
Anyway, personal recognition and contrition are probably more important than official apologies. The son points out that Japan is deficient in recognition and contrition compared to Germany. True, but partly that's a reflection of Japan's culture of shame. Such cultures may have different ways of assimilating past sins and making sure they don't happen again. And besides, Japan's recognition and contrition are certainly superior to America and England's. More important than the national apologies, I think, because it leads to recognition and contrition, is giving books such as Eaten By The Japanese a wide audience.
The Revised Kama Sutra
Richard Crasta
Should Be a Recognized Classic
Affected by the Western rationalism and science of his school books, the poor but brilliant Vijay rejects the rigid code of South Indian Catholicism, giving up God, religion, and his dream of becoming a saint. From there, Vijay's story becomes a search for meaning in a godless material world.
To borrow a bit from a perceptive previous review, The Revised Kama Sutra is an exuberant Catcher in the Rye, a South Indian Confederacy of Dunces, spiced with the author's indefatigable love of hilarious word play. Unlike Catcher and C.O.D., though, Kama is auto-biographical (if not, my apologies to the author!).
So far, so good. You might want to read it. But if I add it's a story about obsession with sex (not that Vijay gets much), will you change your mind? Can't be helped. It's the gut-busting hilarity of Vijay's quest to lose his virginity that keeps the story moving.
We are all obsessed. The difference between most of us and Vijay is that we hide away our obsessions or sublimate them under something more suitable for public viewing.
So there it is. That's what the book's about. But good stories usually have something more. A Western reader learns: what Pax Brittania and Pax Americana look like from the other side; about grinding third world poverty seen not through the eyes of Western pity but as a normal everyday reality; how traditional power structures dominate traditional societies despite a veneer of outside Western values (ie, not much chance we're going to make any real societal changes in Afghanistan and Iraq with an army); the way the English language permeates everything, is pursued by everyone, and becomes something new in the process (this last, fascinating to me as a linguist).
The Revised Kama Sutra is not your standard novel by a long shot. For those who want to avoid such things, there are sections in which it is x-rated in content and vocabulary. But, ultimately and thankfully, this story is uplifting and powerful at the end when the author realizes, in spite of himself, there must be something more.
Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn
Nell Gavin
Disciplined, Spare, Evocative, and Occasionally Quite Moving
Threads is one of my great Kindle discoveries. It's not exactly about reincarnation. Rather, it uses reincarnation to expand the possibilities of the story itself and the meaning within the story. Most of Threads centers on the tempestuous relationship between Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII. There's not really that much "jumping around" to other times and places, and what jumping there is, is done with a purpose. My favorite jump was the longest, a chapter about a troop of jongleurs in the 13th c. I'm an amateur historian, but this was a fascinating depiction of a segment of medieval life that was new to me.
Speaking of which, you can also read Threads as historical fiction. Within the confines of making a good story (always job number one), the history is spot on.
I judge from a few (only a few) of the reviews that the first half of this book, for some, is a bit long on speculation and soul-searching, short on action. Fear not. There's more action in the second half.
And oh yeah, the writing is there, too - disciplined, spare, evocative, and occasionally quite moving.
**************
Ok, that’s the review as it appears on Amazon. I was quite disappointed, though, at rereading it. It in no way does justice to Threads. What I vaguely remembered saying is actually not from the review but from a conversation I had with the author on Kindleboards, the place I first went when hawking my own books. Did I think the conversation too personal for a review? I shouldn’t have. It’s better than the review. Here are a few excerpts from that conversation.
MARK: Last night, in Threads, I finished Henry's reign of terror, made necessary by his break from the Catholic Church. Truly a wonderful and, if I can use that word again, evocative description. I've done a bit of reading on the period for my own books. None of them brought the period to life like you have done. In their defense, they weren't writing a novel, but still, most excellent writing on your part. And then you followed it up with Anne's deep and personal speculations on theology, and her own role in the terror. Yeah, I know! You know what you wrote! But I add that in hopes there ARE other people looking in. To them I say, Threads is a really good book! Get it!
NELL: Thank you for your very kind words, Mark! Have you found the point of the book yet? I know you're one for appreciating a point.
MARK: Point, huh? Ok, I'm pretty sure it's hidden in this passage, which I read this morning. It stopped me cold. Had to go back and reread several times, and then just put the book, uh, Kindle, down for a while. Actually, I kind of hesitate to rewrite it here. The depth of meaning is sublime, but I'm not sure how apparent that will be without having the story up to this scene as context. But I'll put it up. Hope you don't mind; hope others can catch the meaning and depth from this brief sample; hope there ARE some others! Anne is speaking:
…These past indiscretions did not even matter to Henry. He had chosen Jane for her wide child-bearing hips and for her family's reputation for whelping litters and legions of dim-witted, pasty-faced infants.
I await a scolding and a reminder that my thoughts are uncharitable and cruel, but my mentor is withholding comment.
"Did you not hear what I just thought about Jane and the dim-witted infants? Did you not hear me loathing and despising her?" I am defiantly braced for sharp words, and would rather hear them a hundred-fold, than make my thoughts more charitable.
The Voice says only this, and says it gently: "I only heard you weeping in despair."
(End of passage)
MARK: I want to bow my head and say here, Amen, as this strikes me as something like a prayer.
NELL: Mark, kudos to you. There are some passages in the book that I was particularly fond of, and you picked one of them.
MARK (a bit later): The Point! Nell, somewhere in the book, I should have marked it, you said something that reminded me of a line from the movie called Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. David Bowie is a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. At the end of the movie, the tables are turned. He visits one of his former captors, now in prison. The former captor is confused about what has happened, why the roles are reversed. David explains.
“You are the victim of people who believe they are right, just like I was once the victim of you, when you believed you were right.”
We are all victims. I would even take the movie one step further. We are not actually victims of the beliefs of others but of our own beliefs. We have to forgive the other because our beliefs are not the fault of the other but of ourselves. That’s my own thinking, but I suspect it is close to yours. Anyway, the Point: Only when we have forgiven the other can we be released from this world of beliefs. So you could say that the point of your books is forgiveness. Or you could say it is release.
That’s my take. Whatever the point, it’s a great story with some great medieval history, for anyone interested in that aspect (I am). In case anyone else happens by this rather private exchange of views, Threads is wonderful book. Even a potentially life-changing book.
NELL: Yay! You even added a word I hadn't thought to add myself, but it's correct: release. I always love it when someone reads it and gets it. Thank you so much! I truly, truly appreciate it.
*You can find the entire conversation, or you can check out Kindleboards itself, at:
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,29631.0.html
The Twenty Dollar Bill
Elmore Hammes
Judge Not
Ever think about following a twenty dollar bill on its journeys? Here’s your chance. The bill passes from hand to hand. With every new hand, we meet a new person. With every pass of the bill, we see a single incident from two points of view. What do we learn? Judge not... because you can't really know the other, no matter how confident you are in your own judgments (and we are all oh so confident, aren't we?). That little understanding is the dawn of wisdom.
Halfway through I began to wonder how Hammes was going to bring this story home. Bills circulate for years but stories have to end. Suffice to say, he brought it home very nicely. A series of short stories becomes a single story.
Time Will Run Back
Henry Hazlitt
The Economics of Freedom
"Human nature, chief, seems to be a little more stubborn than Marx and Engels supposed."
The year is 2100. It's been a hundred and fifty some years since the Russian conquest and the establishment of the Soviet Socialist Republic of the World. The new dictator, a non-dictatorial type who achieved his position accidentally through a fortuitous set of circumstances, is grappling with the dual problems of 1) how to brighten the dreary fear-driven existence of the proletariat, and 2) why the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has not withered away as, according to Marx, it was supposed to do.
The Dictator and his top aide (quoted above on human nature) embark on a series of reforms and in the process rediscover money and free market economics.
In the 1950s, the stark reality of the true face of communism was staring down the free world. This seems to have spawned a brief era of un-Utopias: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World. There was one more: Time Will Run Back. I discovered this because it's always high on the "this reader also bought" list for people who purchased my own history books. So I bought it.
As literature, it's nowhere in the same league as Orwell, but it was never intended to be. As Orwell did, this book recreates a world where we are compelled by the state to "be good," with all the horrible consequences. But it is something else: a tutorial on how the Hidden Hand works, how the economy, like ecology, finds the most efficient solutions only when, paradoxically, there is no higher authority making the decisions.
Henry Hazlitt is always a great explicator of the economics of freedom. He is here, too.
The Proviso
Moriah Jovan
A Story Like None You’ve Ever Read
Imagine this: Ayn Rand teams with Gore Vidal to recreate in Kansas City the old TV drama Dallas. The cast of semi-lapsed Mormons consider themselves demi-gods in the Randian mold, but the author doesn't let them get away with that. Okay, Moriah Jovan is not Ayn Rand (or Gore Vidal) but she knows a thing or two that Rand didn't. Though maybe not her intention, it takes Moriah only three words to puncture Ayn's moral philosophy.
"I'm," Eilis choked, "damaged."
"Everyone is damaged."
The reason we need both art (like this novel) and political systems (dealt with in this novel) is because we are all damaged. To misquote James Madison, who garners a mention or two in Proviso, "If men were angels, we wouldn't need art or political systems." But we are damaged, so we need both.
There are lots of messages in Proviso but I think the ultimate may be this: no matter what messages you happen to believe in, love your children with all your heart and things will work out - for you and the world. Whether you're libertarian (like both the author and this reviewer) or something else.
Obligatory negatives? Okay, this is chick lit - very liberated chick lit, with lots of long sex scenes, not exactly my scene. I read the first, kind of skimmed the next couple, and just skipped to the end of the rest, making a long book that much shorter. And there were times, I admit, when the Rand-world game the characters play was, as one character said, nauseating. The surprising saving grace, the one that kept me going to the two-thirds mark (after which you are hooked) is that the Randian wannabes pay the price later on, as they should if this story intends to portray real people.
The last third of the story, things get really interesting as threads are brought together. We also begin to realize this isn't actually a Rand-Vidal collaboration at all. It's Moriah Jovan, a typical modern/traditional mid-western girl with a knack for story-telling, who likes cheeseburgers, oldish rock, hanging out online, and partying. You get the cheeseburgers etc and a whole slew of more eclectic interests like portrait painting, classical music and literature, gourmet cooking, landscape gardening, theology, and of course small doses of political/economic philosophy. Jovan inserts little bits of Americana that more liberal writers, more cynically inclined towards America, might miss. For example, check out who's baking cherry pies and waiting tables at the Whittaker Inn on Friday nights. Makes you proud to be an American.
Jovan joins Rand in writing that rare novel - an unabashedly libertarian one; and Vidal in getting us into the backrooms of real life politics. Great story, five stars.
2184
Martin Parish
It’s Not What You Think
Up to about the 80% marker on my Kindle, this was an exciting page-turner. Not exactly great literature, but a fun read. The characters and especially the world of 2184 are well developed, insuring that you enter the story and want to find out what's going to happen next, even if you can pretty much see where it's all leading
Thing is, you are wrong. You can't see where it's all leading.
There is a fundamental moral dilemma driving the story and the hero. Doing the right thing will require courage. We want the hero to muster the courage and believe the author will give it to him in the end.
But then something happens. Courage is given a new look. It might be something different than what we thought. Because the author understands that, the story soars and inspires.
This book is more than an exciting page-turner. It's a book worth reading.
Kafka’s House
Gabriela Popa
1984? I Lived It
Kafka's House will not knock you out at the beginning. The story moves slowly in this short novel, at a 10-year old girl's pace. Through the girl, you live a life of poverty in 1968 Romania. But there's no self-pity. She's no different than anyone else. Everyone is poor, and all have Big Brother watching in the background.
Until Russia invades Czechoslovakia.
Romania goes on alert and Big Brother comes out of the background. The tentacles of absolute state power slither across everything, strangling the dreams of children and twisting the dreams of adults into something sinister.
Three Dead Ducks
T. St. Laurent
Artist of Life
In Japan they say, Otoko wa tsurai (It's tough being a man). In France, Vive la difference! (Long live the difference!)
That's what this story is about. Those are not exactly PC themes but this is not a PC writer. He strikes me more as an artist of life (as well as being a real-life artist) who writes what he's learned from life, not what he's absorbed from the arbiters of correctness.
A fascinating side theme (intentional or not) is this: the day-to-day reality of being an artist. Michelangelo had to earn a living by doing what other people wanted him to do, just like St. Laurent. In fact, that necessity is what keeps this lively, funny story moving so well. Expressing your art within such confines might sound anathema to some modern day artists who fashion their "work" too important to be limited by crass financial considerations or the vulgar desires of philistines. But a true artist, and especially an Artist of Life, whose pallet is much broader than clay or canvas, should be able to produce true art, even within those confines. This is actually just a story about an artist doing that.
Just one negative. The little caveman vignette near the beginning didn't work for me. I mean, I get the point but it was just too long for that particular point. I already knew from what preceded the vignette, and also from the author's other novelette up on Kindle (Déjà vu In a Dream), that this is a guy worth reading. So I kept going and was glad I did.
If the vignette works for you, fine. If not, just skip it. The rest of the story works perfectly without it.
Déjà vu In a Dream
T. St. Laurent
A Great Indie Discovery
Okay, so you probably shouldn't do like me and read this on a train or you'll risk looking the fool. At least not on a Tokyo train, where lots of faces are in close proximity. I started smiling broadly on the first page and never really stopped until the end.
The underplayed humor comes from nailing the human condition (which is pretty funny, after all) but doing it with no showing off or literary pyrotechnics, just well-polished writing and choice of phrase. Not to overload this book with a comparison, but, with a change in time and circumstances, this could be a story of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Speaking of change in time and circumstances - well, circumstances, anyway - Déjà Vu continuously reminds me of another story set within a Catholic school upbringing: The Revised Kama Sutra. Deja takes place in post-war New Hampshire and Kama in post-war Bangalore in Southern India. It's hard to imagine two settings so different. But kids are kids (and Catholic schools are Catholic schools) and the stories have a lot in common, not least of which, they are both deep, touching, and funny, and both are written from first-hand experience.
The above is the review I was playing with in my mind as I read through the first half. You see, I'm always on the lookout for fellow indie writers taking advantage of the digital self-publishing opportunity. When I find a great one, I tend to imagine my review as I read. In truth, though, I stopped smiling about half way through. At the two-thirds point, I'm off the train and sitting in a coffee shop. The story has deepened and darkened. I was riveted, even more than before, but no longer smiling.
Riveted, and a bit worried. Was the author going to be able to fulfill the promise of the first half? Would he become the man I thought him to be or the man the little voice of vengeance wanted him to be?
The book ends with a dream. It turns out the whole story is just background for a dream dreamt many years later. It's a remarkable dream. To analyze it, we need to know the background. Thankfully, the author himself doesn't engage in dream analysis. He just gives us everything we need to know and leaves the rest to us. His own analysis doesn't go much beyond "wow!" (that's exactly what he says). Forgoing the obligatory analysis, to me, is a sign that he has this story under control, realizes exactly what the reader needs and what he doesn't.
Kind of weird to do two books in one review, but I can't help looking at Déjà Vu in a Dream in conjunction with The Revised Kama Sutra. The authors certainly don't know each other, or the other's book. But as reader, I guess it's my prerogative to connect the two stories. Hope neither author minds.
Start with this one. It's shorter, and dirt cheap. If you agree with my tastes in literature, I recommend you move on to The Revised Kama Sutra by Richard Crasta (also with Kindle-friendly pricing). Or, as I intend to do right now, you could move on to Three Dead Ducks, the other story up on Kindle by Déjà Vu's author.
Part Two: Everything but Novels
Slightly different requirements are in play here. Along with indies, classics from the past available at no or extremely low cost are also included. True, writers from centuries ago can hardly be called indies. But, like indies, they are suddenly available now to the masses thanks to the Kindle opportunity. There are even some regular books here published by regular publishers. Akayoshi makes no excuse for allowing these to slip past the Compendium gatekeepers other than to point out that said gatekeepers are both lackadaisical and not enamored of rules. High prices on “regular” books will, naturally, drop the number of stars.
Recollections
Jim Chambers
Refresher Course In Our Childhoods
Recollections is a nice, friendly, unpretentious ride through the 50s told by someone who has been there, one of the original boomers. Obviously, he has sharpened his memory with extensive research (I mean no one can remember all of that!). The author says it's not a memoir. Only half right. He wisely inserts quite a few of the events from his own life, memoir style, but in the service of a larger goal: depicting a particular world and giving it a personal feel. He sticks to what he knows first hand, his experience of the era. So the book does not cover the totality of 50s America, nor does it reflect everyone's experience. But it does reflect the experience of quite a few of us. For those who grew up in the new suburbs of post-war America, this will be a refresher course in their own life. For those who came later, it might be a window on that world. Good work Jim!
The Promise of American Life
H. D. Croly
An Old Classic. Promise Fulfilled?
The stars are not for agreement. In fact, H. D. Croly argues from the opposite pole of the Great American Debate as myself. The stars are because he does such a good job of it (other than the long-winded first chapter). Five stars for a deep and revealing understanding of American history, the American character, and individual American politicians - especially Lincoln. Minus a star for occasional windiness. Croly also got my attention by framing the debate exactly as I do, and then framing the entirety of American political history, like I do, in terms of the debate.
For example, from the get-go, Croly establishes the opposing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson as the fundamental philosophical split in America and traces the dispute up to the present. Of course, his present is a perfect century earlier than our own, but even now the game is still the same even as party names and ideological labels have changed with some regularity. Now we might name the split progressivism vs. libertarianism.
I also give Croly fairly high marks for maintaining a generosity of spirit and understanding for the "other side." Such generosity is unusual in the best of times, so even "fairly high" is fairly rare. His generosity doesn't quite extend to the principal figure representing the other side, though. His skillful demolition of Jefferson's personal qualities is merely skillful, not generous. In the case of Jefferson, anyway, Croly can't help seeing philosophical differences expressed through personality deficiencies.
Croly's excellent explication of the frontier culture of the "Western Democracy" would be worth the price of the book, if it had a price (free on Kindle, as of this writing). "Western Democracy" added an aggressively militaristic attitude to Jeffersonianism, a contradiction that infects both modern neo-conservatism and modern liberalism alike.
This book was great inspiration to Theodore Roosevelt, the imperialist progressive who opened the gates to big government and Pax Americana. Croly's name may be forgotten but his ideas, with the help of T. R. and others from that pivotal generation, are the underpinning for our modern world. Has America's Promise been fulfilled? Some would argue yes, I would say it's barely holding on as Croly’s descendents drown us in debt and militarism.
Free Trade Doesn’t Work
Ian Fletcher
Averages Out To Three Stars
Five stars for the writing. Three stars for the ideas. One star for the Kindle price.
EDIT. Make that 4 stars! I see the Kindle price has been halved.
The writing, rhetoric, and clarity of explanation are great. The book's purpose is to make a case for an idea rather than to show off the writer's brain; it respects all points of view, thus limiting ridicule and attack on "the other side"; it honestly acknowledges the accomplishments of the other side; it explicates difficult ideas clearly and simply; it brings to light obscure but important bits of intellectual history; it is mostly grounded in the real world. All this makes it a joy to read. Five stars.
But, as a small L libertarian, I have a problem with the ideas. The book implicitly supports Pax Americana, with its foreign wars, its military-industrial complex, and the inescapable truth that "leading the world" is leading to our financial collapse. The book quietly recognizes with one short line a reality that most protectionist tomes ignore: that the last two decades of free trade have been an astounding success for the world. 500 million people have risen out of poverty - arguably the greatest accomplishment in human history - with two billion more expected to rise in the next two decades. This is not something to just dismiss out of hand simply because the writer believes his own rich country hasn't sufficiently benefited. As I tell my students, a strong case can be made for Pax Americana and I never penalize them for trying to make it (thus many do, as does the author of this book). But I believe an even stronger case can be made for dismantling Pax Americana while preserving devotion to free trade.
And, I have a problem with solutions. The author acknowledges that protectionism is actually bad a great deal of the time, but assures us he is advocating only "smart" protectionism. He has forgotten his own wonderful metaphor: proposing protectionist legislation is like throwing a banana into a monkey cage. You just simply aren't going to get smart legislation, even if we could all figure out and then agree on what that was. We're not getting it in a democracy, anyway. In a democracy (which we all want to keep, right?) you get a hopeless hodgepodge of legislation driven by domestic politics, lobbyists, and powerful corporations. A generous (because I like the writing style so much) three stars for ideas and solutions.
And 16 dollars for an e-book??? Outrageous. Maybe the author (or his publisher) is trying to get us used to the higher prices that we will pay for things in his kind of world. So, though I really want this book, I'm waiting for a 50% reduction in price. That's right. My review, sadly, is based on the long sample that they at least allowed, rather than the entire book. One star for the Kindle price.
EDIT: I have just downloaded the entire book, now that it has been reduced to a Kindle friendly price. I'll read it all, if changes are warranted, I will edit the body of the review.
COMMENT 1, by I.D.H.
It is irrational to lower one's estimation of a book because of the price of the electronic version of the book - over which the author has no control.
COMMENT 2, by J.H.
It appears that the one reviewer who rated this book three stars happens to be the same reviewer who merely read a sample- because he didn't want to pay for it. I wonder if he were to read the whole book if he would then have considered it worthy of the price and given more stars.
Perhaps Amazon should add a qualifier for those who would rate a book: "Only those who actually read the book may provide a rating, not those who read a sample."
COMMENT 3, by myself
Ivend and John, I have to admit, I agree with you both. In my defense, though...
For starters, I calculated the effect of my three-star rating on the average. There are enough five and four-star reviews of Ian Fletcher's book that my three-star has negligible effect.
In the second place, I doubt he will ever again get such an excellent review as mine from a free-trader. It's easy to praise a book you agree with. How many people give such praise as I have to people they disagree with? Notice that I praised not only the writing and research but also the unusual personal qualities of the writer. I mean, I really like this guy, not only for the excellent way in which he frames his argument, but for the fact that he is able to do it with open-mindedness and a generosity of spirit towards those with different beliefs. I.e., he writes without ego. That, friends, is the ultimate compliment. I doubt if Ian minds my review, even with the three stars.
And finally, the Kindle price really is outrageous! My little crime of three-staring a book I've only read part of is much less, I think, than the publisher's crime of charging 16 dollars for an ebook.
CORRECTION! I just went back and checked. The Kindle price has been halved! I have just ordered the entire book. I don't believe it is possible to edit the number of stars. So, I have already gone back and said in the review that it should be four stars. After reading the whole thing, I'll edit the content of the review if changes are warranted.
*Since this “correction” was written, a 2011 edition has come out. The price has been raised again, not to its previous exorbitant heights, but beyond a reasonable Kindle-friendly range.
A Brief History from the Founding of the City
Brian Gibbons
Through the Eyes of a Roman
This is an elegant easy-to-read translation of a classic work of Roman history written by Eutropius around 370 AD. The book calls itself a history of Rome but it's actually a history of Rome's rulers from the mythical founding in 753 BC up until the time the author is writing.
The book is a nice review for someone like myself, who has a slightly deeper than average but quite patchy knowledge of Roman history. It's fascinating to see Roman history through the eyes of a true Roman, rather than through the eyes of modern interpreters. Eutropius has a knack for getting to the essence of the ruler in short pithy phrases, a necessity if he's going to outline the full 1,100 years in a hundred pages. My favorite example of brevity might be this. He said of one emperor's reign:
Aemilianus was of very obscure birth and ruled even more obscurely.
That's it. Nothing more to say about poor ol' Aemilianus. Note also, in the phrase "obscure birth," the Roman concern with lineage. This is an example of the little details that you get from someone who was actually there.
For me, the most interesting parts were the Punic Wars and also the events and personalities during the era when the Republic became an Empire: Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Augustus. Once the Empire is firmly in place, the personality of the emperor becomes all-important. Some were diligent and sincere, though invariably flawed. Many were incredibly degraded. Maybe it's only because a long history is compressed into a few pages, but civil wars and border wars, some of unbelievable ferocity, are incessant, making me wonder if this was really Pax Romana.
Anyway, this is a great translation and an exciting read for anyone interested in Roman history.
The First American: The Suppressed Story of the People Who Discovered the New World
Christopher Hardaker
40,000, maybe. 100,000, no.
(EDIT: This was my first Amazon review, I think, and maybe I was a bit harsh. I should mention some of the good. You see in the fascinating story this book covers the turf battles between “objective” scientists, and also that fact scientists are just as likely as the rest of us to be bound by previous beliefs and reluctant to challenge the norm. You also get lots of fascinating archeology. All that makes the book good, but not necessarily right. Still, there’s no way I can raise a fifteen dollar e-book to four stars! END EDIT.)
12,000 years ago becomes 40,000. That becomes 250,000. Now one reviewer is proposing a million.
12 certainly. Maybe 40. But if it's much over that we are probably not talking about Homo Sapiens. There are three fields of enquiry that, taken together, point to a sudden "big bang" in evolution that occurred in East Africa in a small group of hominids about 50-60 thousand years ago. Those first modern humans quickly proceeded to dominate the world and, we may assume, wipe out in one way or another the other branches of humanity, who were apparently no match for them.
The three fields are archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. What's fascinating is that all three arrived independently at roughly the same time and place for a hypothetical big bang. Of the three, linguistics is the most speculative. So speculative, in fact, that without corroborating evidence from the other two, it is close to worthless. (Most linguists haven’t considered the corroborating evidence and have in fact considered it worthless, though that may be changing.) Linguistics is my field so I'll give a quick overview.
Linguists can reconstruct "proto-languages" by tracing back divergent but similar strings of grammar and vocabulary to a hypothetical parent language. For example, if we had no record of Latin, we could probably reconstruct a fairly accurate version (which would be called Proto-Romance) by tracing back the probable lines of development from French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. That has actually been done for Germanic languages, giving us Proto-German. Tracing back Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Proto-German, Proto-Celtic, and other languages, linguists have come up with Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken roughly in the Black Sea area about 8,000 years ago. There is no controversy about the existence of Proto-IE.
But fringe linguists try to take it farther. They take Proto-IE and other Proto-Languages of the world and trace them back to a Proto-Proto ancestor. And then trace those back to a Proto-Proto-Proto until they arrive at their hypothetical original language from which all others have branched off through dispersal and the natural processes of language change. The first split, they believe, occurred in East Africa very roughly 50 to 100 thousand years ago. One part of the split went south and evolved into all the sub-Saharan languages. The other went north and evolved into everything else.
Taken by itself, there is no reason to believe any of that, as there is no actual evidence, just reconstructions by ivory-tower linguists. Many archeologists, though, also point to a sudden blossoming of culture at roughly the same time and place. A sudden evolutionary jump in language proficiency at that time and place would certainly explain the cultural blossoming.
And then, in the 1990s, geneticists, again working completely independently, proposed a genetic trail that leads back to East Africa 50-60,000 years ago, from which all modern humans are descended. They propose the identical initial split that linguists-on-the-fringe propose, followed by thousands of subsequent splits resulting from migration and changes over time.
Where the geneticists differ, though, is in their incredible specificity. I don't know how they can confidently make the following claims, but they do: The original group of modern humans from which we are all descended consisted of only several thousand members in the area of modern Eritrea and Ethiopia 50 or 60 thousand years ago. Several hundred went north or across the Red Sea and became everyone to the north; the rest went south and became everyone to the south. Once they started moving, they colonized the entire world fairly quickly. Hugging the coastline around India and into Asia, they were already in Australia within several thousand years. Surprisingly, they reached Europe rather late. The Ice Age and the Neanderthals were tough customers. (A Neanderthal woman, they project, could have flattened ex-Governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a wrestling match.)
If this is true, modern humans in the Americas 40,000 years ago is theoretically possible. (Though in fact, both genetic and linguistic evidence indicate something more in the range of ten or fifteen thousand years ago). But anyone much older than 40,000 must have been a more primitive humanoid line without the sophisticated command of language we moderns have. A line which disappeared after the arrival of "us."
COMMENT 1 by Christopher Hardaker
I found the review helpful, too. My wish list would also include the thesis:
"A sudden "big bang" in evolution that occurred in East Africa in a small group of hominids about 50-60 thousand years ago. Those first modern humans quickly proceeded to dominate the world and, we may assume, wipe out in one way or another the other branches of humanity who were apparently no match for them."
I wish it were that easy. A fresh start. Knowing when sapiens sapiens "began." The problems come with associated milestones about what that all means behaviorally. In this view, the human greatness begins at the onset of the last ice age and only when they arrived in Eurasia. [Looks like they arrived in India about 75k (Google).] Large holes have been knocked into this old provincial attitude.
Many of the index artifacts/tech that once defined the Upper Paleolithic are now turning out to have a much deeper legacy. It is what the final section of the book was all about. Biologically, it seems Hss goes back about 200,000 years. Technologically the situation is much more frightening to those arguing for a 40-50k big bang. Blade tech is going back 500k+; bifaces (an evolved form of the handaxe) are going back to about 300k. Navigation in the Mediterranean is at least 130k; at Flores Island, the early horizons of 800k+, indicate boats at least that old. It is blowing the mind of all those who put a lot of salt on Hss, who up until a decade ago, was the sole inventor of all blade and bifacial thinning tech, and navigation. If navigation implies group efforts, then language is implied. It might be that the true cutoff point between who was us and who was them is Homo Erectus versus all who followed. A true milestone will come when we can establish who could have kids with whom.
COMMENT 2, by myself:
Chris! Belated good day to you.
I happened to look in here and find a thoughtful response from the author himself!
I make no claims to absolute knowledge. But I do have some devotion to both the linguistic and genetic evidence for pre-history. As explained in my review, the linguistic evidence, taken by itself, is nothing but ivory-tower speculation, without an ounce of hard evidence. But now, in this new century, hard evidence from a surprising source has independently backed up linguistic theorizing. The linguistic and genetic evidence both provide a road map that leads straight back to East Africa.
Chris, you say, “Many of the index artifacts/tech that once defined the Upper Paleolithic are now turning out to have a much deeper legacy.”
No doubt. But the debatable linguistic evidence and the rock solid genetic evidence still give us a road map and all roads lead to Eritrea/Ethiopia quite a bit less than “that much deeper legacy.” Linguists debate the linguistic evidence and archeologists debate the archeological evidence. But, as far as I can tell, all involved geneticists confirm the genetic road map. There’s no debate, even from those who started off in “opposition.” The evidence is simply too compelling. For example, there was a Chinese team that really wanted Homo Erectus to be the Original Human, and China, therefore, the original home. They analyzed genetic evidence from 10,000 Chinese from all over the country. The disappointing result was expressed thus: “We tried. We really did. But we came from Africa.”
Any archeological evidence that places the origin of the modern human outside of East Africa sixty some thousand years ago must somehow account for the genetic evidence, and that may be impossible. Anyone producing artifacts outside those parameters may have been humanoid but they weren’t likely human. They are still a fascinating part of Earth’s story, but they aren’t “us.” Just my opinion. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but, again, convincing has to account for the genetic and linguistic evidence.
Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Surprise! Lyrical Prophets of Free Markets and Globalization
You can take some large chunks out of context and suddenly find ol' Karl singing hymns of praise to the wonderfulness of capitalism and globalization. Marx recognized, much more so than his blindered followers, the incredible creative power of free market economics. I have never heard of any of his followers using the soaring descriptions of capitalism and globalization that Marx uses. For that matter, he even outdoes any free marketer I've ever read. Marx waxes poetic about the great destructive and creative power of capitalism, destructive of traditional oppressive social structures, creative of great mechanisms for spreading both wealth and culture far beyond borders of traditional nation states.
But, intellectually bound as he was to class struggle, Marx didn't know what to do with his understanding. He expected the working class to be a monolithic entity that would finally bring down capitalism in an apocalyptic spasm of violence. Instead, you have the children of the working class rising to the middle and managerial class in large numbers, an aspect of the dynamism he didn't predict.
Unlike Marx, his followers breathe not a word about the creative potential of capitalism. They throw out the good of Marx's thinking and keep the bad. I.e., they accept Marx's misunderstanding of human nature and human economic systems, and they accept his reliance on violence and authoritarianism.
If, instead, we throw out the bad and keep the good, Karl Marx surprisingly becomes the first and greatest lyrical prophet of free markets and globalization.
Waiting On a Train
James McCommons
We’re Third World and Don’t Even Know It
America once had the best system of rail travel in the world. Not the best at the time but the best of any time, better than anything now in Europe or Japan. It's all forgotten. When I visit family in the States, a rental car or a long pick-up at the airport always has to be arranged. Third World. But most Americans don't even know it is Third World. They just figure that's the way it has to be. The freedom, convenience, and sheer pleasure of ready access to the rails for all your needs is what most Japanese and many Europeans grow up with, what most Americans once knew, and what modern Americans can't even conceptualize.
Anyone over 80 years old reading this? You know what an interurban is. Your kids, though, have never heard the word. It's not even in most dictionaries, anymore. Certainly a huge part of America's Forgotten History. Interurbans were the new dual-purpose electric trains of the early 20th century. Cheap, clean, and comfortable, they were street cars in the city but morphed into high speed trains between cities.
Every Midwestern town with more than a few thousand people was connected to the system, as were all cities and many towns on both coasts. In the Midwest, you could get from anywhere to anywhere over the entire immense area. Too young, old, drunk, or blind to drive? No problem. The interurban is coming. The wait was usually short. Once you're onboard, you could admire the scenery or read a book. If it was rush hour, many even had short order cooks. You could have eggs, pancakes, coffee etc. on your way to work.
Interurbans weren't killed because the automobile was more economical. Think about it. How could it be? The system was killed by government support for the automobile, especially "the subsidy." IE, so-called free infrastructure. Interurbans were mostly private. No taxes. In fact, they PAID taxes instead of sucking up taxes. They built their own infrastructure.
And they weren't killed because spaces are too wide and destinations too far. Destinations now are too far because that's the only way you can organize society when cars are at the center of transportation. Once upon a time, jobs, schools, shopping, churches, and recreation were all nearby for most people. You didn't have to burn a quart of gas to buy a quart of milk.
Here in Tokyo, the rails rule. They're not just for commuters, or the poor, they're for everyone. No such thing as soccer moms in Japan. Japanese moms are emancipated from car-pooling and everyone is emancipated from traffic jams, oceanic parking lots, and daily destinations scattered to the four winds. And emancipated from the expensive need to support a couple of cars in order to live a normal life. Maybe the need for a car is why, despite the theoretically lower cost of living, it's tougher to be poor in America than in many other advanced countries.
Waiting on a Train is a bit weak on the reasons for the collapse of the American system, and a bit unrealistic about how to recreate it. In other words, it doesn’t really get into the details mentioned in this diatribe-disguised-as-review. But it does something possibly more important for the general populace. It reintroduces Americans to the romance of the rails, even our pathetic third world rails.
Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
Murray Rothbard
It Didn’t Start With Adam Smith
When an economist writes history, you are going to get something much different than when a historian writes history. For regular historians, economics is a poorly understood sideshow at best. Unlike Rothbard, they'll skip consideration of the economists themselves and their ideas.
In other words, you will never have heard of 95% of the historical figures in this book, important as they were to the birthing of the modern world, nor will you have heard of the wars of ideas they fought. Certain major factors moving big events of history will not be there because the historians simply haven't noticed.
For example...
We all know about the Black Death. But a free market economist studying the era quickly makes a connection missed (so far as I know) by standard historians. Standard historians tell us about how the bubonic plague affected the economy but generally miss how the economy affected the plague. Rothbard doesn't miss it. 13th and 14th century kings, challenging the power of Rome and in need of money to finance their new structures of centralized state power, taxed and regulated the burgeoning commerce that had been bringing Europe out of the Dark Ages. In so doing, they sent the economy spiraling back into a new dark age of poverty, poor sanitation, and ill health that made the plague just that much more virulent when it hit.
Rothbard is not a proponent of the "Great Men" school of economic thought that has a few giants like Smith, Marx, Keynes etc. doing all the heavy lifting. He sees the conscious study of economics as somewhat unusual in history and the advancement of economic understanding as slow and incremental. Actually, advancement is not always the right word. Rothbard makes the point that there have been and still are many wrong turnings that have set progress back.
In this astounding book, you will get a look at: the laissez faire philosophy of Chinese Taoists, Plato vs. Aristotle, the laissez faire underpinnings of Roman Law, Thomas Aquinas, the exceptional and important free market discoveries of the Catholic Scholastics during the Middle Ages, their struggle to come to grips with and finally dismantle the notion that usury is a sin, the struggle between liberal-minded Scholastics (especially Jesuits) and authoritarian Protestants (which presages and develops into the modern intellectual debate between freedom and authority in politics and economics), mercantilism vs. freedom during the English Civil War, Cantillon and Turgot, and finally the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith, one of the Great Men who doesn't fare as well under Rothbard's analysis as one might expect.
(Note: This review was for Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, Volume One of a two volume series. The two volumes have since been combined into a single volume: Austrian Perspective on Economic History.)
Light and Death
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-27 show above.)