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Mexico and United States by W. Dirk Raat

Monday, January 10, 2011

I am a Canadian, and I must admit, I know little about of Mexico. I think that this book can give anyone a handle on the relationship of Mexico and the United States. Theirs is a complicated relationship and I think it is one that we should all understand. I find little on the internet about Dirk Raat, but I found his book a very enjoyable one to read.

I know Mexicans still think that they were hard done by the American’s who now own what was the North West part of their country. However, I do not have much sympathy for them on this. Do not forget that Spain got that land by conquest not long before it was taken by the Americans. Of course, the Americans also got the land by conquest. However, this does not make the Americans any better or any worse than the Mexicans. Maybe we should consider that in all of this, the original inhabitants of this land were never consulted.

Raat starts of talking about the different attributes of the people on both sides of the US/Mexican border. All people perceive the world from an egocentric or ethnocentric point of view. The Aztec thought of the people outside their center, especially to the north, as “sons of the dogs” or barbarians. They were referring to the people basically in south-western US and northern Mexico.

There was cultural conflict between the Mexicans and the Americans. The American thought of the Mexicans as ignorant, indolent and cowardly. They called the Mexicans greasers and chili peppers. Both the Spanish and the Mexicans found the Americans presumptuous, ambitious and aggressive.

Raat spends time on the background to and the fighting between the Mexicans and the Americans. There was really an undefined border between the new countries of Mexico and America when they gained independence from Spain and England. The land of Mexico that became part of the US was always on the margin of the Spanish Empire and then on the margin of Mexico. Its people were basically neglected by Spain and then Mexico.

This land was sparsely populated and its people traded with the Americans. Mexico centralized its government in 1830’s (from a federalist system). However, it never integrated this area. The frontier was dependent on the Americans for goods, especially manufactured goods. The area basically first became an economic part of the US before it became part of the US. However, another part of this story is also the American ideal of Manifest Destiny.

With the economic ties of US also came Americans and others via America into this region. Another point that has seldom been mentioned is that Santa Anna executed the survivors of the Alamo who surrendered. He also executed Colonel James Fannin and his Army (around 365 men) who surrendered also to Santa Anna. To the Mexicans, Santa Anna was a hero. To the Americans, he was a butcher.

See an article by Dirk Raat on Innovative Ways to Look at New World Historical Geography.

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Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles

Friday, December 27, 2010

I have always found insects fascinating. And, insects make up an incredible amount of the total biomass of the earth. Ants make up about 10% alone and all social insects some 30% of the earth’s biomass. Insects probably have more biomass than any other land animal. A great insects site on the internet is World of Insects.

But, this book is not your normal book on insects. This interesting book is about our reactions and inter-reactions with insects. We probably have relatively little knowledge of the insects of our world. One chapter talks about a plane being used in Louisiana to trap insects in the sky. They found lots of insects 5,000 to 15,000 feet in the sky. We are not talking about insects that normally fly; we are talking about insects that are using the world’s air currents to go to another place.

His chapter on cricket in China is also fascinating. There crickets are looked after and trained to fight. It seems to be a mixture of art and science that is used by cricket fanciers. There is a whole different culture involving crickets. See Cricket Cultural for a history about crickets in China. Also, cricket cages are still sold in China, see Asian Art Mall.

See him on YouTube at Book Review for a short talk on his book or see him at Google for a 45 minute talk on his book.

Hugh Raffles has a wonderful site on this book at Insectopedia. You can find a review of this book at New York Times.

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War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat

Saturday, November 27, 2010

From a women’s point of view, what I found interesting is when he was talking about the hunter-gatherer societies. He talks how there was a disproportionate number of men to women. He does not come out and directly say this, but it would imply these societies practices infanticide on their female children. There was war or raiding going on in these societies and one big reason for this was for men to get wives.

When he talks about why these people go to war, reasons are women, murder and territorial trespass. It would seem that deadly conflict was ever expected amount these societies. “The fear of this restricted people to well-circumscribed home territories and necessitated constant precautions and special protective measures. Killing in fighting was among the main causes or mortality.” (This is quoted from page 35 of my paperback copy).

The other thing I like to note here is that we are becoming less and less violent as we become more civilized. We seem to think that we are naturally violent, but this does not seem to be true. (He talks about the Swiss and the Swedes. Both these people had very violent past, yet they are the most peaceful people today (page 40). Of course, the thing is that when we became more civilized violence became the domain of the rulers. We humans are nothing is not interesting.

You can find a good book review at BNET. This BNET review is by Michael Neiberg. Another review is at T. Kunikov’s blog. Although with the last one, it would be easier to read if he divided his review into paragraphs. There is also a good review at New Books In History. This review is by Marshall Poe. And, there is another review at Polical Review. This last review is by Keith Stanski.

I found this a great read. The main thing that may turn people off this book is its length. It is a long book. However, I think that the book is worth the effort.

Azar Gat is an interesting commentator. See his views on The Return of Authoritarian Capitalists. This article is in the New York Times.

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Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War by Buchanan

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The full title of this book is Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War - How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World. The book is by Patrick J. Buchanan. Buchanan was a senior adviser to three American Presidents of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Buchanan is a syndicated columnist and founding member of three of American’s public affairs shows of NBC’s The McLaughlin Group and CNN’s The Capital Gang and Crossfire. He is a senior political analyst for MSNBC.

Buchanan has many interesting things to say about the war. As many historians currently seem to be doing, he is looking at WWI and WWII as one war. He calls the world wars the Great Civil War of the West. This is an interesting idea and certainly worth considering.

He talks about how the Eastern Europeans saw Stalin as a bigger threat to them than Hitler. They may have been right. I know when I worked with some Eastern Europeans they certainly express that view. A lot of historians, including Buchanan certainly think that Britain made some bad choices in both world wars. Britain certainly lost its empire because of these wars. Part of the reason was that the US did not support a British Empire. They support the UK in the fighting, but not the British Empire. This has a lot to do with why the British Empire was dismantled following WWII.

There is an entry on Wikipedia for Buchanan at Pat Buchanan. He has his own web site and blog at Patrick J. Buchanan.

You can find Buchanan on YouTube at Buchanan. What I have linked to is part 1 of a 10 part series (1 hour) of Buchanan talking about his book. For a typical book review, see the one at Magistra Mater. There is a review by Adam Kirsch, which completely pans this book and you can find it at The Sun.

I must say that I personally liked the book. I find it thought provoking. You may not agree with his views, but the book is well written. It also makes you think about the two world wars we suffered.

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The Human Web by McNeill & McNeill

Friday, November 5, 2010

The full title of this book is The Human Web, A Bird’s eye view of World History. The Authors are father and son of J. H. McNeill and William H. McNeill. Both these historians are great writers and write history as it should be written (unlike the Times History of the World). Both of these writers have interesting things to say and have interesting view points on history. If you read any of these books, you will not be disappointed.

Thought Eurasia there was a cycle of steppe conquest and native resurgence. Most civilizations governments of Eurasia were at one time descendants of steppe conquerors, either directly or indirectly. It was Chinese armies after 1757 that destroyed the last steppe confederation to challenger an agrarian empire in Eurasia.

They make some other interesting comments on China, which had a market system going back a very long way. They also talk about how the Muslim and Chinese economic enterprises were all management by extended families. The strength of family ties made it difficult or impossible to trust outsiders and this limited the scale of their economic enterprises.

In European societies, the extended family ties were weak and we instead developed stock companies. In European rural areas, people worked in plow teams where members of the team came from different families. If a member of a team did not do their fair share of the work or did not deal honestly with his fellows, then they could be excluded from a plow team the next year, a dire penality. The plow team required mutual trust and cooperation beyond the limits of blood. Could this be why Europeans were prepared to trust one another?

For a book review see www.foreignaffairs.com and at Goliath Business Knowledge.

See an entry for J. R. (John Robert) McNeill on Wikipedia at J. R. McNeill and for William H. McNeill on Wikipedia at William Hardy McNeill.

You can find William H. McNeill on Youtube. William H. McNeill talks about the study of history and how he came to write the Rise of the West at McNeill. See also William H. McNeill and David Christian discuss "Big History" at YouTube. David Christian has written “Maps of Time - An Introduction to Big History”.

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History of the World by Richard Overy

Friday, May 14, 2010

This book’s full title is “The Times” History of the World. I will be reviewing another History of the World type book next. The second one is much, much better than this bland, very politically correct one, with no passion and no enthusiasm for the subject matter. The book is not bad if you want an historical overview and you are not much concerned about details. The book seems to be written by a committee and it shows. It is also curious, that the only book reviews I can find are by book stores.

The introduction in this book is the most interesting part. Richard Overy makes an interesting point of how Greek Culture was diffused, but the Chinese Culture was not. He also talks about how obtaining food only got to be a problem with agriculture and civilization. However, these themes and other in the introduction never seem to be followed up in the book. From what I can gather from the book, this is the only part that was actually written by Richard Overy. The rest seem to be written by others, but it is not clear who wrote what.

I must admit, that I find that you get little from books that are so politically correct at all times. Perhaps more people might read history if more history book writers were more passionate about what they write. I do not mind ready history from points of view different from my own. I in fact often enjoy such books. However, I find the politically correct movement writers too insipid, too boring and very annoying and it makes for bad history. In other words, such books suck.

I note that that has a section on the Jewish Diaspora that occurred from 70AD to 1800 AD. However, he fails to mention that in the 12 century there were more Jews living in the Middle East than in Europe. Might the problem be that he might have to explore what might have happen to these people? I am sorry that I am so negative on this book.

I note this author has a nice write up in at Wikipedia. (This is another place that can be boringly politically correct.) Richard Overy is considered to be a WWII historian. He is on YouTube at talking about the Poles in 1939. He is also on YouTube talking about bombing in the WWII at The effects of WWII air-raids.

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The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham

Thursday, September 30, 2010

This is the classic book written by that most famous of investors, Benjamin Graham. He is known for his value investing methods that were very successful and very popular.

If you are interested in buying his book, click on the book below to get it at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.

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Water by Steven Solomon

Friday, May 14, 2010

The full title of this book is Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. This is a great book for anyone concerned with our environment. We never seem to value water. We seem to feel it should be free. Unfortunately, humans place little value on what is free. To state that we abuse our water, fresh or otherwise, is to grossly underestimate the harm we are doing.

I do have on quibble with this book Solomon may understand water and our history with it, but he does not have the same understanding of history. For example, he states that the Islamic Middle East made math discoveries. However, the Islamic Middle East got their math from the Greeks, the Indians and even ancient Egypt. Our “Arabic” numerals came from India. Our Greek knowledge was preserved and transmitted to Europe by Christians in the Middle East. Europe did not recognize the Christians of the Middle East as Christians as they were not Catholic. However, this is way off topic.

Steven Solomon does make an interesting observation about sub-Saharan Africa. Although there was some impressive civilization there that developed around the Niger River, and the headwaters of the Senegal and Gambia Rivers, there just was not the development that occurred in Europe, Asia or the Americas. He talks about how these civilizations were isolated behind barriers of large deserts and the impenetrable ocean that limited their ability to engage with other societies. This could well explain the lack of development in Africa that occurs elsewhere.

One interesting thing he talks about is how the West is currently endowed with a water resource advantage. In most of the Western world, there is generally modest population pressure and a moist, temperate environment, making the West an overall water power. This did not help initiate civilization in our moist temperate areas, but it is now an advantage. As we, all know, civilization started in the relatively dry areas that were river valleys. These areas depended on irrigation systems and now seem to be all in trouble with having enough water.

Our civilization seems to have advanced so much over the last hundred years. So is it now surprising to find that electricity generation has not? I mean that we generate electricity using water in the same old ways. We create steam to move turbines to generate electricity or we use rushing water (i.e. dams or waterfalls) to turn turbines to generate electricity. I know we are trying to do this differently, that is use windmills (actually an old idea) or use the sun, but we have not made that much progress yet.

I knew about the huge water aquifer in the Midwest of the United States. I did not know that Saudi Arabia also has one that they are tapping. The one in Saudi Arabia is much further below the surface at ¼ mile deep. The one thing that is the same as in America, they are taking out far too much water for this to last long. Libya also has a big aquifer called Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. And guess what, Libya is intent on taking as much as they can from it and damn the future also.

Also, I knew about the destruction of the Aral Sea by the Russians. However, I had not heard of Lake Chad’s destruction. I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This city is on a big lake, Lake Ontario, where we get all our drinking water. People always seem to feel that you can not destroy large bodies of water. The problem, of course, is that you can. All the people living a round this lake have acted in the last 30 years to clean up the lake as it got quite polluted. However, to this day, when there is a big storm in Toronto, we still put raw sewage into Lake Ontario. We have not separated our storm sewers from our other sewer system and a big storm will overload our plants that clean the water that is to be put back into the lake. We are no better than anyone else is.

Steven Solomon has his own web page at Waterblog. There is also a site talking about Steven Solomon devoted to the Global Water Crisis. There is an interesting review of this book at WaterWired. There is a book review at the Los Angeles Times.

He is a speaker on Carnegie Council’s website. See videos for Steven Solomon under Resources at Carnegie Council. The video on this site is about 1 hour long. However, it is not very interesting. Steven just reads from prepared notes. However, there are lots of great interviews on this site, so you might want to check it out even if you do not listen to Steven Solomon.

If you are interested in buying his book, click on the book below to get it at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.

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