Category Archives: Reviews

Progressive Policies and Climate Change

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This Changes EverythingOn this blog we have tried to understand global warming and resulting climate change, and the social and scientific factors that affect the topic. But as interesting as the science is – and trying to understand the entire Earth as a single system is fascinating – there would be no public interest if not for the economic and ideological implications.

I have looked for a book that addresses the progressive view of climate policy. In This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein clearly believes that global warming is real, predominately caused by humans, and an impending global crisis. She says we deny or ignore the issue “because we fear that letting in the reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.”

I think I’ve found my progressive tome.

Klein immediately draws the ideological battle lines, featuring the Heartland Institute as the capitalist position, whose scientists are “so steeped in fossil fuel dollars that you can practically smell the fumes.” But “deniers” are not just American. Klein notes that Canada, the UK, Western Europe, and Australia also have strong denier activists. Heartland stands in for many ring-wing think-tanks that were created to defend capitalism against socialism and “aggressive Keynesianism” in the 1960s and 1970s.

She notes that “climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change… the best argument progressives have ever had…” This articulates the belief of many that global warming is just the latest excuse to do what progressives always want to do – block free-trade, undermine corporations, invest in public projects, open borders, and (as Klein states) “take back ownership of essential services like energy and water,” to “leave us with both a more habitable climate… and a far more just economy than the one we have right now.” Klein even uses the hot-button phrase “wealth redistribution”. If global warming is indeed threatening civilization, “climate change can be the force – the grand push – that will bring together all of these… movements.” Continue reading →

Capture and Escape in the Golden Age of Piracy

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at the point of a cutlassIf you’re in the mood for some pirate tales but your tastes run to non-fiction, here’s the book for you – At the Point of a Cutlass by Gregory N. Fleming. Fleming presents the story of Philip Ashton, a young New England fisherman who was kidnapped from his boat by pirates in 1723. It was three years before Ashton returned home, and a large part of that time he was marooned, alone, on an uninhabited Caribbean island. Ashton published his story in a memoir which is one of Fleming’s sources.

Fleming rounds out his book with the story of piracy in the era. “The governor on Bermuda, John Hope, would blame the surge in Atlantic piracy on Spanish efforts [to evict other nationalities.] ‘It is no great wonder if they embrace the only thing left them to do… This, my lords, is the reason and source of piracy.'”

Pirates were remarkably democratic for the 18th century. “The captain and quartermaster for a pirate ship were elected by the crew, a practice that stood in stark contrast to the nearly unlimited power of sea captains on naval or merchant ships.” Pirate ships had written articles to govern the ship that each man signed, and each signed crewman got an equal vote. Each pirate got a share of the loot, and the captain got a double-share.

Where a fishing or merchant ship might have less than a dozen sailors, pirate ships would carry fifty or more to have enough hands to attack and seize other vessels. Since many men were needed on a pirate ship, they routinely took captives to fill their ranks. Some signed the articles to join the crew willingly, but many were “forced”, beaten and abused until they signed. Anyone who signed would be executed if the ship was captured by authorities, and any association with pirates might get a man executed.

Ashton refused to sign on the ship that captured him, and his life aboard was difficult. One day he was able to hop into a boat going ashore for water (food and water aboard ship were horrible – no wonder they drank alcohol whenever possible). He hid onshore and was left behind without any tools, weapons, or even shoes. He was almost dead when a Scotsman arrived in a canoe. The Scotsman left his supplies with Ashton and left to go hunting, never to be seen again. But at least Ashton had his supplies, including a knife and a flint to make fire. Eventually he was rescued. Continue reading →

Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

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guns-germs-steel book cvrI posted a two part review of this book in 2011, but was inspired to reread parts of it as I was doing some other reading about history. The book by Jared Diamond won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. It is an excellent book that deserved awards and I decided it deserved a second review.

The Prologue is titled “Yali’s Question, The regionally differing courses of history.” The author explains that New Guineans had tens of thousands of years of history and were still using stone tools when the Europeans showed up with all manner of manufactured goods, including steel axes. New Guineans called all those goods “cargo.” Yali was a New Guinean politician who inquired, “Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?” The Europeans used their superior technology to impose a centralized government and dominate the New Guineans, who they considered to be primitive. Yali’s question is mentioned often in the author’s quest to understand how Europeans and Asians were able to dominate original occupants of many lands, such as Native Americans, despite having no genetic superiority.

Part I gives chilling descriptions of man’s actions against man.  One is about the Maori invading the Chatman Islands 500 miles East of New Zealand.  The Moriori who lived there had originated from the same Polynesian origins, but the Maori developed into highly organized warriors while the Moriori had lived peacefully.  The Maori told the Moriori they were their slaves, and those who resisted were killed and consumed.  The others were kept and killed like sheep.  One Maori explained what happened was “…in accordance with our custom.”   Continue reading →

Killing Patton

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killing patton book cvrThis is another in the series of “Killing” books written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and my wife says this is her favorite book in the series. The subtitle of the book is “The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General.” The book does present some compelling evidence that Patton may have been killed. He did create some powerful enemies, including some in the U.S. military, Stalin, and some Germans.

The book begins with a description of Private First Class Robert W. Holmund, an explosives expert in Patton’s army. Private Holmund and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to attack a heavily fortified and mostly underground fortification called Fort Driant. The bombing and artillery strikes that preceded the assault have had no effect on the Wehrmacht fighters who have remained safe within the fort’s fifteen-food thick walls and hidden forest pillboxes. Machine guns that the soldiers have named “Hitler’s Zipper” because of the high-speed ripping sound as it fires twelve hundred rounds a minute open up on the attackers as their advance stalls at the barbed wire around the fort. The machine guns are joined by rifle fire, mortars, and artillery. The Americans eventually disengage and crawl back to safety. Eighteen have been killed or wounded. And that’s just the start.

The soldiers try again a few days later, and this time they make it through the barbed wire to again be faced with precision fire from everything the Germans have. The survivors are forced to hastily dig foxholes to escape the barrage. The medics race from foxhole to foxhole to tend to the wounded until they are killed. The soldiers find a way into to the tunnels and battle the Germans underground. The survivors withdraw to the foxholes and the Germans mount a counterattack. There are only four of Holmlund’s squad left alive by the time a sniper’s bullet fells him. The descriptions of the combat are vivid.

The book intersperses descriptions of Patton and the speeches he gave his troops to prepare them for war with descriptions of the war. He said, for example, “Americans despise cowards.” “Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” I wondered whether the parents of Private Holmlund wished he had been a little less brave. Continue reading →

Slavery in America: The Half Has Never Been Told

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half has never been toldEdward E. Baptist has written a book about slavery in America. It may seem surprising, but despite being much-studied, slavery and the Civil War that ended it are still controversial.

Baptist wants to present the “beating heart” of slavery. He uses many sources. Notarized sales records and “certificates of character” provided a lot of data on slaves. During the Great Depression, WPA historians were paid to collect personal histories from freed slaves. Baptist “draws on thousands of personal narratives” and often uses evocative language. Slaves as a group were “this trussed-up giant, stretched out on the rack of America’s torture zone;” a particular slave who “survived six weeks of marching in shackles… was thin, made of knots of starved, scarred muscle, draped in rags.”

Baptist states that Americans have a “sanitized” understanding of slavery and the Civil War that “insist[s] that the purpose of the war had been to defend [the South’s] political rights against an oppressive state… that slavery had been benign and that ‘states rights’ had been the cause of the Civil War.” Baptist writes that the “enslavers” insistence on extending slavery into the American West,” where they “pushed too hard,” was the final straw so that, “at last, whites came to take up arms against each other.”

Through the 1800s a profession of entrepreneurial slave traders came to dominate over small, local slave-trading. Slaves were taken farther away from their homes and families than ever before. The price of slaves tracked the price of cotton, and cotton production was increased through torture, especially whipping. Slavery was not dwindling away on its own, as some of the Founding Fathers had hoped and predicted. It was an important part of America’s economy. Cotton was vital to the industrial revolution and slavery helped America become an economic power. Continue reading →

Dropshot: The United States Plan for War with the Soviet Union in 1957

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dropshot book coverThis book, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, is startling. The U.S. military had determined in the mid to late 1940s that the only way the United States and its allies could combat an expected massive Soviet military assault in Europe as the Cold War progressed was with a full-scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Some military planners believed that the attack should be “preemptive or preventive,” and that the bombers carrying nuclear weapons should be unleashed on Soviet cities and military installations before the Soviets launched what U.S. military planners believed to be the inevitable World War III. Dropshot was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff led by General Omar Bradley in 1949 with the authority and knowledge of President Harry Truman. The plan listed the date for the outbreak of World War III as January 1, 1957, although that date was arbitrarily selected for planning purposes. The 330 page book is not written for any other purpose but to describe the complex plans to prepare the United States for Armageddon. It educates but does not entertain.

The Editor writes in the Prologue, “Dropshot was promulgated in three volumes of green-colored paper late in 1949. It became public property in 1977 through the United States’ Freedom of Information Act and may now be purchased at the National Archives for fifteen cents a page. This incongruous fact belittles its importance, for at the time nothing could have been more secret.” The editor continues, “Was it folly to make Dropshot public? I have thought extensively about this point, and I am bound to conclude it was folly to release this document. It should have been burned, buried, or preserved in some secret vault, for it cannot endear America to Russia. As will be seen, not only was Dropshot the blueprint for the atomization of Russia, but it provided for occupation by American armies of that vast continent.”“Why, therefore, was Dropshot made public? The Joint Chiefs were not required by law to declassify it?…The question, therefore, becomes a tantalizing one in which several conjectures are possible. The first is that there was no point in keeping it a secret because the Russians already knew about it. This is conceivable; Dropshot was hatched at a time of considerable Soviet intelligence activity…Stalin frequently in 1948 did refer to American war plans, and his representative at the United Nation, Andrei Vishinsky, did allege that America was planning atomic war against Russia over Berlin.” “Is it possible Dropshot was some gigantic blind, that it was created to hide some other relevant plan?” Continue reading →