Many Thoughts on Actual Books

First things first, Hikidashi will be completed this weekend. All the lines outside bubbles made this deceptively easy work take a lot more of my time than I'd anticipated. Moving on...

With the year coming to a close, I've realized how little manga I've actually read this year. That's not to say I'm losing interest in this hobby, but putting all those hours in translating manga doesn't exactly make me want to go and read more manga with my remaining time. For the past few years, I've mostly spent that remaining time on vidya but this year, I've rediscovered my love for reading actual books. So while this is primarily a manga blog, I thought maybe writing down my thoughts on 10 interesting books I've read this year might encourage you to not neglect books without pictures *gasp* as I have for a short while. If you're poor and/or don't have a good library near you, this site is your friend. This is a bit of a long post, so congrats to those who can make it through all my drivel. If you guys find it interesting enough, I may do more in the future.

Also, I'm always open to book recommendations, though mostly of the non-fiction variety, so feel free to name some if you wish.　　

A History of the Byzantine State and Society:

I've read my fair share of history, and with a lot of states, it's the usual rise and decline pattern. The classic model is you have the great founder and expander of the realm, followed by 2nd and 3rd generation rulers who consolidate the new holdings by reforming law, economy, and military. And then from the 4th generation on, all goes to hell with a never-ending string of decadent and grossly incompetent rulers who've been pampered all their lives. If you're lucky, you have a reformer or two that can stave off the inevitable decline for a while. So it feels like most states blow their load right from the get-go, and the remaining two-thirds of their history is just frustrating foreplay. But Byzantium? Whoo boy, this is some sick ride right out of rollercoaster tycoon. BARBARIANS EVERYWHERE. RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES. HOLY WARS. CIVIL WARS UP THE WAZOO. Byzantine history's got everything in spades. If you don't like Byzantine history, I really have to question if you're even interested in history at all. The book switches between chapters of narrative history and analysis of state and society, balancing the drama and academic views nicely. And as a fan of military history, I really enjoyed the section devoted to military expenditure and organization throughout the centuries. None of that pretentious, "Warre is savagery, high culture and trade is the only proper subject for academics." 

And yes, it's listed at 1044 pages, but it's really only 850 if excluding bibliography and endnotes. This may still seem long but you've gotta consider that Treadgold is dealing with over a 1000 years of history so he's constantly pushing forward through topics and not just droning on about a single issue to rack up the page length. So while not intended for the average person, if you're interested in history, read it! Deus vult!

The Invisible Gorilla:

If you've ever taken a psych class at uni, you're probably aware of the famous "invisible gorilla test," but for those of you who haven't heard of it, this book will make for an entertaining and enlightening read, as it shakes every bit of confidence you have about your memory, intuition, and perception. Especially relevant nowadays, with cases like the Michael Brown shooting that have a lot of so-called "witness testimonies." A short pop-science book with a highly readable style. What's not to like?

The Great Cat Massacre:

Sort of an oldie as it's from the early 80s, but good books never go out of style, as they say. Darnton writes a series of essays exploring the mindset of French subjects in the decades leading up to the French Revolution. Despite the impression you might get from the eye-catching title, it's not your usual pop. history full of wacky or overly simplified “facts.” It's a serious cultural history book written by a scholar who treads a delicate balance of targeting both students of history and a wider public. Luckily for the latter, Darnton only touches lightly upon his chosen methodology and its associated strengths/weaknesses so as to not lose the average reader from his interesting findings (and are they ever interesting!). The book is split up into 6 separate topics: fairy tales, a curious incident of a worker’s revolt involving a cat massacre, a resident’s account of his city, an inspector's report on men of letters, Diderot's organization of the Encyclopédie, and the French people reading Rousseau.

The first chapter's all about exploring possible cultural meaning in popular fairy tales through analyzing the social milieu of the time. In Darnton's analysis, Little Red Riding Hood isn't some tale about menstruation, virginity, ego, id, or whatever kind of crap that you might hear from a kid in an English class trying to get a passing grade. Instead, he focuses on why certain elements, like starvation, step-mothers but not step-fathers, or trickery appear time and time again in fairy tales popular in this time period. After explaining how these could have been a logical reflection of the life the average French peasant lived, he then goes on to contrast variants popular in France with those popular in Germany, Italy, and England. Not to give the whole chapter away, but for instance, many variants popular in France feature crass elements and heroes succeeding through craft and cunning, whereas macabre and fantastical elements are far more prevalent among German variants, and the English preferring more wholesome variants. All in all, a fascinating chapter that went a long way in answering some of my questions on why fairy tales are so fucked up, which I’d been pondering more since I scanlated Morohoshi's Sneewittchen (I swear to god, if there’s one more fucking Kraut who tries to point out it’s actually Schneewittchen...).

The eponymous second chapter is all about why a bunch of journeymen treated like galley-slaves decided to revolt against their oppressors by engaging in some good ol' cat-killing. I'm not sure why Darnton assumes that the modern day reader would find this act so horrifically baffling. While I'd personally never harm an animal unless in self-defense, I thought the hilarity of the massacre was immediately evident. Nevertheless, the hilarity of the cruel joke turns out to be multi-layered so his thorough analyses was very much welcome. Plus, I now finally know how (or at least, a possible explanation) the bizarre German word "Katzenmusik" came about.

The chapter on Diderot's Encyclopédie can be a little dense, but quite rewarding once you get through it. Darnton gives you a good explanation on why Denis Diderot's Tree of Knowledge, while superficially similar to that of Francis Bacon's, was profoundly different and what we can infer about the mindset of French intellectuals from those differences. As for the final chapter on the French people reading Rousseau, you get a good sense of just how foreign the world we call the past is, when activities that you take for granted like reading have such profound differences between then and now.

I found the middle two chapters rather dull, but if a book’s going to have some dull bits, it's fortunate that they come in the middle, since the strong start and finish will leave a more than favourable lasting-impression.

China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty:

Part of the "History of Imperial China" series, it's got the usual pros and cons of the other books in the series. The pro is that it offers a thorough survey, ranging from administration, economy, religion, culture, military, etc. It also gives you a good view into the kinds of revisionist or post-revisionist views popular with current academics.

The con is, admittedly a rather unfair complaint, is that as a survey that assumes some level of familiarity with Chinese history from the reader, it can confuse or fail to be "gripping" enough for newcomers to Chinese history. The problem is rooted in the dismissal of narrative history by most modern-day historians. They feel that narrative history leans too heavily on the "Great Man theory" of history and thus too simplistic and skewed. While I'm no strong-believer on the Great Man theory, you have to admit it makes for an exciting read. Of course, the academic may scoff at this, as his grant and funding doesn't come from how "entertaining" he is to the public, but rather his ability to come up with new interpretations and make his stamp on academia. This is sadly why I think most people don't give a shit about history. Your average person isn't just gonna think to himself one day, "Hey, I'd love to learn about the state and society of 9th century Byzantium!" But tell him how about how much of a fucking badass Basil the Macedonian was and he may go on to read more about the rest of Byzantine history. With Chinese history, you have a fair number of these academia-focused books tackling the society, religion, and economy of imperial China but a complete dearth of books about interesting figures aimed at a more general audience. Xiang Yu? Wu Qi? Who the fuck are they? At least with European history, there's already a huge library dealing with guys like Richard the Lionhearted, Hernan Cortes, or Gustavus Adolphus and their exploits which can potentially draw in new fans.

Take for example the An Lushan rebellion during Tang-China. China's Cosmopolitan Empire is so focused on talking about how the society actually worked instead of the dramatis personae that the reader will only learn that some guy called An Lushan started a rebellion and failed. Ah, what a shame! A missed opportunity to tell the tragic love of Yang Guifei or the heroic defense of Yongqiu and Suiyang by Zhang Xun. This is why I so enjoyed the A History of Byzantine State and Society. Although it doesn't exactly go pop. history-level of narrative history, it does make an effort to tell an interesting narrative while balanced by more academic discussions such as financial expenditure or the rise and decline of iconoclasm.

Then again, I can imagine even if a historian would want to write that sort of narrative history, the publisher may point out there's absolutely no money in that so he should stick to the already established demographic: students of history. Hmm, sort of reminds me of the current anime industry's cyclical repression of appealing to a wider demographic...

But enough petty complaints. If you are already interested in Chinese history and want to learn the sort of revisionist views trending with current academics, this book's great. As a guy who was only aware of the traditional view of the Tang dynasty, that is to say, "Look how glorious everything is! Oh wait, here comes the An Lushan rebellion. Welp, show's over. Go home, folks," I was completely caught by surprise at the monumental changes in society that laid the foundation for the Song dynasty. Decline of the old entrenched blue-bloods, rise of the South and a meritocratic ethos. Lewis is right. In many ways, the latter half is just as, if not more, interesting as the lustre of the first half when it comes to Tang history. It's like being told barbarians sacked Rome in 476 and ended the Roman empire, only to later find out Rome, which wasn't even the capital at the time, was never sacked in 476, and there's like, another 1000 years of more Roman history.

The Great Rebalancing:

First things first, I've never taken a business or economics class in my life so I'm rather clueless in this area. But as I've been reading more articles about economic history, I realized I should at least read up on a couple economy books to familiarize myself. Fortunately, I think I've chosen a very good book to get started. An easily accessible book about the state of the global economy today by an economist who doesn't get caught up in baffling jargon or political agendas . Using clear examples and a step-by-step explanation of the balance between savings and trade, he states why a lot of typical arguments like, "Oh, the laziness of the PIGS countries of Europe are ruining the Euro," or "China's gonna take over the global economy with their stupendously high trade surplus and GDP" you often hear in the news is flat-out wrong. Centering around the idea of trade imbalances, he states why the US, European, and Asian economies are all in for a rude awakening. Why China's economy is on the brink of a recession like Brazil and Japan before it, why the US dollar being used as a global currency is economically detrimental to the US, and why the trade surplus nations are just as responsible for the Euro's troubles as the trade deficit nations, are just some of the major arguments in the book. Again, I'm no student of economics so I'm hardly qualified to judge how sound his arguments are, but at least he writes clearly and doesn't stray into topics outside his field of expertise such as sociology or global politics to make inane theories that could never be tested. Pettis also runs a blog so google that if you like this book.

Lost Colony:

An absolutely charming "I-can't-believe-it's-not-historical-fiction!" account of the Sino-Dutch war, THIS is how you do popular history. Not by spouting gross exaggerations, sloppy fact-checking, and inane theories as you'd find in How the Irish Saved Civilization or Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. You might be thinking, "Sino-Dutch war? Is this some fedora-tier trash meant only for historical hipsters?" No, it's a riveting story about the badass Chinese pirate Koxinga taking on some equally badass Dutch of the VOC over the possession of Taiwan during the fall of the Ming Empire and the Dutch golden age. Pirates, dramatic personalities, and battles in exotic settings makes this a page-turner you can just breeze right through like it's Harry Potter. Makes me wish for a Hollywood adaptation, really. The author also adds a healthy dosage of scholarly discussion about the military revolution in Europe as opposed to Asia, so it doesn't end up feeling totally like fluff history. Recommended highly for everyone.

Jesus Interrupted:

I'm not a religious person, but I admit I am fascinated by the Christian Church as an institution and it's enormous influence on human history. And despite the Bible's importance in history, I am woefully ignorant regarding its contents so I thought I'd try to correct some of that and came across this. Now the book's sub-title, Revealing the hidden contradictions in the Bible and why we don't know about them, might give you some second-thoughts on whether it'll be chock full of circlejerking atheist arguments like "The Bible said π = 3, haha! Checkmate. Atheists: 1. Christians: 0." Fortunately, it's nothing of the sort and the book is in, no way, an attempt to debunk Christianity. It's an introduction to critical theories yielded by New Testament scholars about the Bible if we treat it like any other piece of historical document. Topics covered include: Who really wrote it? What were the underlying intents in each gospel's author(s) and the inclusion/exclusion of stories? What do we really know about Jesus and what he tried to do?

Particularly interesting are the so-called inconsistencies in the gospels. Most of them are trivial, but the ones talked about at length are those that lend to profoundly different interpretations, so you'd lose the underlying messages by thinking it's like the case of blind men touching an elephant and trying to consolidate all the differing points. On the whole, the arguments make a lot of sense since early Christianity is hardly the same thing as modern-day Christianity. Like all other religions, Christianity too underwent doctrinal evolution. Although Ehrman says the information presented are widely-accepted views and taught in most seminary schools, the theories he agrees with are bound to get the most attention in his own book so it's probably best to follow up by reading what other respected scholars have to say on the subject. Then again, that applies for just about any non-fiction book.

Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution:

There's a trend among modern historians to counter the traditional Euro-centric view of history by trying to push back the great divergence between the West and the East as late as possible, or by talking about how much the East impacted the West. While it's true that modern-day numerals originate from India, gunpowder from China, or that Alhazen's treatise on optics was highly influential to European scholars, none of it really addresses the question of why didn't other civilizations build on their respective scientific progress while Europe alone did in the 17th century? This book answers this question without fear of being political incorrect by examining the fundamental differences in the education system and its ability to breed an ethos of scientific curiosity in the civilizations of Europe, Islam, India, and China. Huff does this by using the telescope as a case-study. Invented at the start of the 17th century, it was spread to the Islamic world, India, and China all in a matter of a few decades. In each of these civilizations, there were Westerners who talked of its significance yet the scientific response by all of them were deficient. I particularly found the Chinese response most interesting. There, you have an empire that actually conducted objective tests on whose astronomical methods were superior. The Jesuit scholars won and the Chinese officials conceded that the European techniques were indeed more accurate. But the response? Stiff resistance by the majority despite an enthusiastic minority. Even the Kangxi emperor, one of the greatest monarchs ever and well-noted for his intellectual curiosity, dismissed any idea of reforming education to incorporate Western classics. This conservative mindset is best crystallized in the quote by the Chinese Confucian scholar Yang Guangxian:

It is better to have no good astronomy than to have Westerners in China. If there is no good astronomy, this is no worse than the Han situation when astronomers did not know the principle of apposition between the sun and the moon and consequently claimed that the solar eclipses often appeared on the last days of the month; still the Han dynasty enjoyed dignity and prosperity that lasted for four hundred years.

The second half of the book provides a good overview of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, discussing new discoveries in anatomy, microbiology, atmospheric pressure, electricity, and magnetism. After reading this book, I have a new-found respect for the absolutely based as fuck European scientists bringing modernity to the world so we can now all sit on our asses and browse the internet.

War in Human Civilization:

Us history nerds have already long been inured by the popular public notion that history is useless. But while a subset of history nerds interested in art, cultural, or religious history (fascinating in their own right) could at least affect an air of "high culture," the smaller subset interested in military history is denied that same refuge. I don't think it's a reach to say that this "unhealthy interest" in war is, at best, misunderstood, or at worst, seen as juvenile, in the way a 5 year old boy makes his T-rex figure massacre a platoon of G.I. Joes. Although there are indeed people purely interested in war because of Top-Gun fantasies or romantic notions of knights and legionaries decked in shiny armour, there are probably just as many who see war's glory as moonshine and yet still wish to learn more about it. I can't speak for all members in this latter group, but my primary interest in war stems from its transformative, rather than destructive, influence on human history. As such, Azar Gat's extremely comprehensive book on this aspect of war is the very crystallization of why I have this "unhealthy interest," as my dad would say. Upon reading it, you’ll realize exactly why war should be studied and not brushed aside to make room for "high-culture," whatever that may mean for each generation and culture throughout the ages.

The book is roughly divided into 3 parts: 1) Warfare in pre-history, 2) Warfare in the age of agricultural civilizations, and 3) Warfare in the modern industrialized age. In part 1, Gat starts off by discussing how our innate violent tendencies can be traced not just to Neolithic or Paleolithic times, but likely further up in time if aggressive practices shown in other primates is any indication. This game of "let's kick the can Rousseau's ideas," seems to be a popular pastime among academics in recent decades, with Steven Pinker being its most famous player today, having written both, The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of our Nature. So if you've read his works, the facts presented will be standard stuff. If you haven't, you’re in for a good ride. After establishing the history of violence, Gat addresses why violence has been so long-lived in human nature through application of evolutionary psychology theories. He seems to be quite an avid supporter of evolutionary psychology, so your enjoyment of this section is really up to your opinion on whether or not this field is "hot and exciting" or just "hot-air" (I personally lean towards the former).

While some authors might call it a day at this point, Gat really gets down to work in part 2 as he talks about the transformation of tribal raids to state warfare with standing armies. You could say that this part is essentially a retelling of Tilly’s competition-centric idea that "War made the State, and the State made War," but Gat’s ideas are much wider in scope and far more nuanced, as he incorporates many other factors such as ethnicism, economy type, non-sedentary polities (pastoral nomads, namely), or tactical power-balance of troops (whether dominated by infantry or cavalry).

As much as I enjoyed this section, two minor things did annoy me (neither of which undermines Gat's main points). One was his claim that state-formation occurred the latest for Norway among Scandinavian polities, not Sweden. I was immediately taken aback by this, since all the material I've read indicates it was the Norwegians who first took to overseas raiding, signaling the start of the Viking Age. In fact, it was Norway's early accumulation of wealth via raiding that most likely explains why the so-called "first king of Norway" Harald Fairhair precedes both Denmark and Sweden’s first kings, Gorm the Old and Eric the Victorious. And before any Dane or Swede gets mad at me, when I say “the first king”, I mean the first king with some sort of reliable historical evidence.

The second minor annoyance is his discussion of Japanese state-formation and evolution seems quite shallow because he completely omits any mention of the early polities of the Korean peninsula. When the early Japanese polities received higher cultural learnings from the continent, they usually weren't getting a raw, unadulterated form of it, they were getting it in a form filtered by cultural attitudes of the middlemen, such as Goguryeo or Baekje, which explains how an art historian can find links from Scythia in the Pontic-Caspian steppe all the way to Honshu in Japanese artifacts.

I assume this is largely due to the lack of easily available academic literature regarding Korean history written in English, but it’s a real missed opportunity. For instance, Gat theorizes on specific conditions that inhibit or induce feudalism to explain why feudalism-proper really only emerged in Europe and Japan. He then applies them to compare Japan's transition into feudalism in the 12th century to the decline of feudalism from the Zhou to Qin dynasties. Although this isn't a bad comparison by any means, I think it’d be far more effective to do a comparative case study between Goryeo-Korea and Heian-Japan to explain why the military-led coups that affected both these states with similar geography during the 12th century (1170 for Goryeo, 1185 for Japan) led one to transition into feudalism while the other to have its scholar-officials reassert themselves again. Like I said, a missed opportunity indeed.

The last part dealing with warfare from the gunpowder age and on is also quite insightful, as he focuses mainly on how things like gunpowder, square-rigged ships, and new fortifications changed or failed to change the balance of warfare. A good overview and counter-argument to Roberts/Parker's military revolution theory is given here. If you're already well-versed in the debate concerning the military revolution of early modern Europe, you'll probably find the discussion of decreasing warfare in the industrialized age far more interesting. The issues covered in that section deal with how types of government (autocratic or liberal), economy (protectionist or free-trade), and society (traditional or modern) affect their approaches to war and how effective said approaches can be. And as expected for a post-9/11 book about war, the very last topic deals with the rise of unconventional warfare. The only disappointing point about this last part is the complete lack of discussion about the quality vs. quantity debate. I think most military-focused books covering WW2 and the Cold War would definitely give its 2 cents on the issue so it is rather surprising that Gat has not done so. It is something that more people need to be aware of, lest more monstrosities like the F-35 are built.

But overall, War in Human Civilization is a great read that I’d recommend over and over. Don’t mind the page length, that just means the fun lasts longer!

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody:

Like British dry humour? Like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Read this book and fall in love. Interest in history not necessary.

The Son Also Rises:

No, this isn't Hemingway. This is a study in socioeconomic mobility across 150~200 years in various countries throughout the world. Now if that sounds boring to you, think again, because it's actually all about the nature vs. nurture debate. And if Clark's interpretation on the over-representation of nobility in high-paying, well-respected fields like medicine, law, or government and the surprisingly similar persistence rates (how fast the "over-performers" regress to the mean) across generations and cultures is as sound as he claims, then it's another nail in the nurture coffin. Even if you're an ardent believer in the biological equality of all humans and don't want to touch the debate concerning heritability of IQ even with a 10-foot pole... It might be worth doing some reading, so you're more of an educated skeptic and not a guy going, "LALALA, I can't hear you!"

A warning beforehand that as interesting as the book's conclusions are, this is more of scientific paper and less of what an average person considers a "book," so the prose may be dull and repetitive. Rewarding if you can get through it though.

Well, that's it for now. I was sort of wondering whether or not to talk about Kubota Masashi's Military Revolution in Japan, but I think this post has gone on more than long enough. Maybe next time.