With that flippant, matter of fact, almost “devil may care” attitude then, Ferguson determines to take the reader through a grand narrative of the last five hundred years, identifying six “killer apps” that Western civilization adopted to rise to a dominance unmatched in breadth and duration in human history. It is this broad overview, as told in Ferguson’s urgent and quick witted voice, that makes the extended argument so interesting and in an age of multicultural relativism, refreshing.
Contributor post on KSL.com: “Fiction is good for you…”
May 15, 2012 by
In case you missed it, my post on the benefits of reading fiction, and why you should read it, was posted by KSL.com this morning. Click on over to KSL and take a look and, if you like it, please share it. Thanks!
Why I Read Fiction, and Why You Should, Too.
April 26, 2012 by
“If reading is the key to self-mastery, fiction is the master key. […] But fiction demands that you either identify with the characters’ decisions or distance yourself from them, and this has a powerful effect. In doing so you shape your own moral experience. Although it may seem to be far removed from the center of the culture right now, fiction remains the best form of reading — the single best way to achieve all of reading’s goods.”
Short Book Review: “Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism” by John K. Cooley
April 5, 2012 by
Citing the US as a culprit in the quagmire, a significant amount of responsibility is placed on the actions of the Pakistani intelligence services. Controlled by religious ideologues, the Pakistani intelligence services operated nearly autonomously from other Pakistani government branches, and often in opposition to stated policy. [cont…]
Book Review: “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis
April 4, 2012 by
Michael Lewis can tell a story like no other. In fact, even before I finished reading his “The Big Short,” I wanted to work the book into every conversation I had. The story was that interesting and compelling. Anyone who can take the financial crisis of the last few years, find a story in it that centers around subprime mortgages and shorting the market (if you understand what that means and how to do it, you’re more than a step ahead of me and about anyone else I’ve mentioned it to over the last couple weeks), and then make it interesting to the lay reader deserves to be read. [cont…]
Book Review: “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created” by Charles C. Mann
April 3, 2012 by
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” But what happened next?
More than just the discovery of the new world that we call the Americas, Christopher Columbus set off globalization of ecology, trade, biology, and nationality beyond anything that preceded it, argues Charles Mann in “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.” The discovery of America did more than just uncover lands previously unseen or mapped by Europeans. It set adrift the then current order of the entire world. [cont…]
Book Review: “Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order” by Charles Hill
March 20, 2012 by
IIn Hill’s eye, fiction is more than just a story. In literature, we see the great ideas and forces that move history worked out, argued, and recorded. The “international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm,” he argues. “[I]t is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.” Nothing may come closer to a thesis for his opus. [cont…]
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