I read The Black Hand, non-fiction about the Italian secret society and the Italian detectives in NYC trying to stop them. It was interesting getting some background on why Italians were so hated in the 1800s/1900s. I didn’t really care for the book overall, it really tried to be narrative non-fiction but I think it failed, and fell too much into hero worship, but it’s an interesting story. I guess Leo DiCaprio is working on a movie where he’ll play the detective Petrosino.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
A good read on Bell Labs, the industrial lab for the monopoly AT&T, who basically discovered everything to do with telecommunications. Starting with repeaters for telegraphs in the 20’s to transistors, information theory, cell phones, and more. Just boom boom boom one after another. The book goes into the lives of the scientists, mostly how they were of a particular generation of lower to middle class kids with one foot on the farm and the other in science and the structure of Bell Labs, with its mix of basic and applied science.
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Lol there’s no chance those cops were hero’s. That secret society morphed into one of the most pernicious economic problems in American history by the mid 20s… and when it finally died it took the powerful parts of the labor movement with it. I don’t care if they busted a few of the louder thugs doing extortion, it didn’t make any difference. Also knowing what I know about law enforcement at that time those cops were probably working the case on behalf of those guys rivals.
A badge was little more than a rather difficult to obtain business license that was usually distributed as spoils to political supporters by the local political machine.
For sure, the book goes into the elements of cops being crooked back then. It tried to make the case that Petrosino wasn’t like that - a good guy fighting: the Black Hand, city hall, Italy, and innocent Italian-Americans that wanted to keep quiet.
The hero worship line is more about the author making Petrosino some kind of superman - he’s an amazing fighter, has a photographic memory, could never do anything untoward, etc. Led to a lot of eye-rolls.
If you’re too happy after the Trump loss, I just finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. It’ll bring you back down.
Beautifully written. I think it’ll haunt me for a while.
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Yeah… that’s what happens when you’re the one whose version of events gets recorded for posterity. All of that screams cover up to me too. If it looks too good to be true…
Since Carlos Ruiz safon died i re read
Shadow of the wind
The Ángels game
It is sad there won’t be any more novels. Love them so.
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Shadow of the Wind GOAT
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A lot of classic sci-fi has aged extremely badly.
One of the revelations I’ve learned from the IDEOAT podcast is that 13-year-old me was into a whole lot of sci-fi books that I was into were fucking terrible at every level. Snow Crash, good god.
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https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html
Now this is some shit. Been bingeing this all day. An impeccably written account of a woman who got herself admitted into an insane asylum by feigning insanity to uncover what really goes on there and how the patients are treated. Her exposé of the conditions of the patients were collected into this freely available book.
Beyond the main story, I’m also absorbed in the minutia of culture and society through the eyes of a woman who came from means and had to feign poverty to be accepted as insane.
And finally, the author best known by her pen name Nellie Boy was a goddamn BOSS. She helped launch what became the modern era of investigative journalism, convinced her editor to next let her literally travel around the world in under eighty days (she did it in seventy-two, a world record) for about 200 pounds in english bank notes and #gold, then at the tender age of thirty-one married a seventy-three year old owner of an iron company famous for making milk cans and boilers. As soon as he croaked, she thought well why not do for milk cans what I did for reality TV, so in 1904, she led Iron Clad into manufacturing the steel barrel that was the model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in widespread use in the United States today.
I read Helter Skelter over the past few days. I was vaguely aware of the Manson story but JFC. The thing that stood out to me is there are a lot of similarities between his followers and Trump’s followers. Just blind loyalty and believing everything each one says and not questioning it.
As fucking crazy as Manson was, Susie Atkins was probably even more nuts. Oh and one of the followers went to prison for 25 years because she tried to kill Gerald Ford. Walked right up to him with a loaded gun and fired. But there was no bullet in the chamber and by the time she tried to fire it a 2nd time, the SS agent stopped her.
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I thought the book “Wild Swans: Three daughters of China” was a very good read. Would highly recommend, it’s about three generations through the twentieth-century china and thought it was very well written.
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Looks good, thanks - I’ll add it to the list!
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Super Imperialism: The Origin And Fundamentals Of U.S. World Dominance by Michael Hudson
https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdfa
What makes today’s Super Imperialism different from past “private enterprise”
imperialism?
Past studies of imperialism have focused on how corporations invest in other countries, extracting profits and interest. This phenomenon occurs largely via private sector investors and exporters. But today’s novel form of international financial imperialism occurs among governments themselves, and specifically between the U.S. Government and the central banks of nations running balance-of-payments surpluses. The larger their surpluses grow, the more dollars they are obliged to put into U.S.Treasury securities. Hence, the book’s title, Super Imperialism.
I have Snow Crash in my library but haven’t read it, saw it was IDEOAT and thought couldn’t hurt to listen to the episode before reading, listened to the episode, and now have no desire to read it.
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I’m going to put Ender’s Game on blast, too. Loved it as a kid. It’s a bad book with horrible politics.
EDIT: Oh Lord Jesus, I just did a deep dive into Ender’s Game on wikipedia and I discovered that the US Marine Corps has a recommended reading list for officers. It is a cursed thing.
The US Marines have some science fiction they’d like to recommend to you, kids! Can you guess which super pro-fascist young adult sci-fi book might be on this list? Yep, it’s on there. Oh, and also that other one’s on there too. And… Ready Player One? Hoo-rah, just open up that jar and pour in some of the worst sci-fi of all time, this country.
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Finally read Hyperion and it’s sequel, pretty great. As a relatively new father, the wandering jew story literally brought me to tears.
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I just finished Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis and saw he has some sci books that seem to be highly regarded, ever read Mockingbird or The Man Who Fell to Earth?
Afraid not. Have read a lot less sci-fi than I should lately, these seem good.
Discussion in another thread made me think of the novel Jennifer Government by Max Berry. Has anyone read that?