Non Fiction Books, Mostly

Economics of Good and Evil by Tomas Sedlacek

2012-03-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you really want to understand some basic economics of why we are in such current problems, see the video below from RSA.

I got this book from my favourite book shop in Toronto. The book shop is Nicholas Hoare. It is at 45 Front Street East. Their web site is here. Whenever I am in the area, I take a look and I always buy a book. That is because there is always a book that I find interesting and I am afraid I would not find it elsewhere in Toronto.

This book is the subtitle of this book is “The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street”. Sedlacek talks about the first business cycle. Egypt’s pharaoh has dream of 7 good years and 7 bad years. He asked Joseph what this means. Joseph said to save gain in good years to use in bad years. Even today we should try to level out the business cycle. Part of the reason we are in such trouble is that we built up debt in good years and we are very overstretched in current bad years.

When you borrow money, you borrow money from your future, not the bank. You borrow from the future via the interest rate charged on a loan. You really borrow energy from the future for today, feeling that you will not need the energy or the money in the future, but that you need it now.

There is a Wikipedia entry for Tomas Sedlacek . There is a great review of this book and Tomas Sedlacek at Czech Centre . According to the blurb on this site “Tomas Sedlacek, leading Czech economist who is considered to be one of the ‘five hot minds in economics’ by the Yale Economic Review”.

Thomas Sedlacek is on Authors@google. He talks about things he mentions in his book. This is a video worthwhile watching. Also he gives a talk about his book at RSA. This is the video to watch to get a good handle on economics for today. This video is just over 20 minutes, but it is all you need to have a greater understanding of what is going on. He makes it very easy to understand.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Sedlacek. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson

2012-03-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

This book is a great one to bring you up to date on Ancient Egyptian history. There is a lot to be updated on. First it was not slaves that built the pyramids. Secondly they have found an ancient city beside the pyramids were the workers lived. Most of it is still intact and their graves undisturbed. So they found lots of tools and carvings. They have a much better idea now how the pyramids were built.

One other interesting thing he talks about it that original sin, underworld of dangers and demons, the final judgment before a great god, the promise of resurrection are all Egyptians concepts that later echoed in and shaped Judeo-Christian traditions.

Toby Wilkinson has his own web site. He mentions the Lost City of the Pyramids as a television show. I found this, at least I think I found what he was referring to at Google Video. This is part 1 and it is some 45 minutes long. Another YouTube video of Building the Great Pyramid by BBC starts here. This is the first of 6 parts, all about 10 minutes long.

There is an interview (in print) of Toby Wilkinson by Daisy Banks at the browser. In this interview, Toby recommends 5 books on Egypt. There is also a profile on Toby Wilkinson at Bloomsbury. There is another interview (in print) at Speakeasy.

There is a great review of this book (and a couple of related books) at the Guardian. And another great one at the Washington Post.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Wilkinson. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2012-03-05T10:44:00.002-08:00

The full name of the book is The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable. How would his ideas affects you personally? Well, he talks about systems and situations being robust or fragile. For example, if you are up to you eyeballs in debt and something happen, it could cause a catastrophe for you.

If you had your finances well managed and you had an emergency fund, your financial state could be robust and if something unexpectedly side swiped you, you could probably handle it and not have a catastrophe on your hands.

If you do not know the origin of the black swan, I will tell you. All Europeans thought swans were always white, because that is all they had seen. When they went to Australia, they found black swans and this was very unexpected.

One tale of unexpected risks comes from a casino example. Casinos spend millions of dollars on gambling risks. However, a casino’s biggest risk can come, not from gambling, but such things as someone wanting to blow up a casino or from a casino not filling the right tax forms.

He also points out that people generally attributes their success from their skills, but attributes their failures to events outside their control or randomness. He also points out that capitalism destroys large companies but socialism does not. Socialist’s governments tend to protect their monster companies and kill off all potential newcomers in the womb.

A nice short video review of this book (less than 2 minutes) is at YouTube. Another short video that discusses both Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan is also on YouTube at Papamedia. There is also a 9 minute video with Taleb at Harvard University talking about social problems . See 40 minute interview by Richard Herring at Wharton.

There is a good review at the Guardian. Giles Foden very much loved the first book Taleb wrote called “Fooled by Randomness, however, he feels this book was rushed and badly written. I must say, I very much enjoyed this book, but then I have not yet read Fooled by Randomness. I probably should.

Another review is by a blogger called Grumpy Old Bookman. This review is quite long, but well worth reading.

I found this a very interesting book and Taleb says many very interesting things. However, he is quite full of himself.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has his own site. This book has an entry on Wikipedia at The Black Swan. There is also an entry for the theory.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Taleb. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Debt by David Graeber

2012-03-02T15:31:00.000-08:00

David Graeber, as an anthropologist understood why and how our ancestors stop free riders. As a socialist, he wants more of it today. In what world is a family collecting welfare into the 4th generation is not a free rider? Can we really afford that all these people never contribute to our society? (And ironically now, if you are temporarily destitute now, you get to live on the streets. What sort of progress is this?)

He talks about how we think that virtual money is new. (Virtual money is when you do not pay for things with physical cash, like paying with credit or debit cards.) But this has very long history and was really the original way people dealt with each other in a market place. We had credit systems, kept tabs, even expense accounts before we had cash.

We seem to assume that billion is money, but this idea come and gone through history. History really has switched between periods when money was billion and when money was virtual or an abstraction.. He talks about the vast majority of Mesopotamia’s cuneiform documents were financial in nature. Things were priced in silver, but apparently silver was not in circulation.

Credit goes back a long way. And money is basically an IOU. Money is a measure of trust in other human beings rather than a measure of value.

Another thing he talks about is how markets sprang up around ancient armies. The rise of states and the rise of markets go together. Rather an interesting connection.

Graeber can also go off on tangents. He says that Cortes was murderous because he owed money to banks, and therefore we should blame his actions on capitalism. However, Jinkis Khan was also a murderous bastard with the same sort of followers Cortes had, but it did not do what he did, conquer, rape and pillage because he owed money to banks.

This is rather a long book, but there are all sorts of interesting things Graeber says about early history and anthropology. It is well worth the time to read.

There is a video of David Graeber being interviewed by Charlie Rose. There is also a later one on David Graeber being interviewed because of this book, debt. See Conversations with Great Minds David Graeber on Debt, The 1st 5000 years.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Graeber. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies

2012-02-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

In this book he looks at various European countries that I disappear. This book is a great read. Davies is a great historian and his books can bring history alive for his readers. His views can also be quite unique. He looks at Polish history through a story on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and talks about USSR through Estonia’s history.

Reading about vanishing countries certainly shows how impermanent our world can be. The most recent country to vanish is the USSR, but it is hardly unique. This book talks about Europe, but there are vanished kingdoms all over the world.

I think that reading such books give you a deeper understanding of history and this book particular gives you a deeper understand of Europe and its people.

There is a great review of this book at Financial Times by Dominic Lieven.

Professor Norman Davies, talks to Toby Clements talks about his new book, Vanished Kingdoms at The Telegraph.

Mel Cooper talks to Professor Norman Davies at Wildwater TV.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Davies. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

2012-02-13T15:39:00.001-08:00

Sam Harris thought that there was a problem that Science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Harris in this book urges us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being. Who can disagree with this as it sounds and is logical.

What I do not like about Sam Harris is that he considers himself on of the new atheist, along with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The problem with both Dawkins and Hitchens is that they have made a religion out of atheism. They both strongly believe that “if you do not think like they do you are wrong” (or stupid, you choice).

I strongly believe in free speech. I have never found anyone else that thinks anything like I do. .So, you could see why I really believe in free Speech. You might also see why I have problems with Dawkins’ and Hitchens’ idea of free speech, which is only free as long people say what they should (according to their ideas).

In ending the book, Harris says that science can have something to say about values (because values relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures). I agree. However, Harris goes on to say that if you have values that do not relate to the well-being of conscious creatures, he is not interested in hearing from you. Your thoughts could be of no possible interest to anyone. (This is again with the – if you do not think like I do, you are wrong.)

There is a lot to agree with in the book. However, I think that we have only just begun to understand our universe. I do not believe that Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are men who know all the answers to God, the Universe and all that.

The Globe and Mail has a Book Review where John Horgan dislikes the idea that science can say anything about morality, but likes the religion bashing stuff.

On YouTube, you can find a lecture by Sam Harris on the ideas in his book. It is a little long at almost 2 hours.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Harris. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

2012-01-23T15:40:00.000-08:00

This book’s full title is The Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence has Declined. Steven Pinker is an extremely engaging writer. He has written several books, I must admit that they are long, but highly readable.

One of the most interesting things Pinker says is about the “Moralizing Gap”. He says that people think that harm that they inflict to be justified and forgettable. However, they think that the harm they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous. This can explain some long standing disputes between peoples.

One of things he talks about is ideology. The really big body counts in history pile up when a large number of people have a motive than seems to transcend selfishness. With ideology, the end is idealistic. But its ideology that have driven many of the worse things that people have ever done to each other. Just think of the pile of deaths attributable to communists.

Another interesting thing is the rise in crime in the 1960’s. A number of people thought the rise in crime in the 1960’s was because of the 1960’s culture. The relaxation of self-control was glorified. Do your own thing. Let it all hang out. The crime rate started to come done in the 1990’s and it is almost back to where it was in the 1950’s.

You can find Steven Pinker on my favourite video site of www.ted.com. You can hear Steven Pinker give a 20 minute speech on the subject of the myth of violence at TED. This is well worthwhile listening to and does not take long.

Not everyone believes him. You can see this at in a column by Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian. She admits to not reading the book, thinking it is too long. She interviews him at Guardian Videos.

However, this is not the only book I have read on this subject. I have read and reviewed Azar Gat, an anthropologist’s book called War in Human Civilization on my site. Gat’s book is not as well known or as popular, but he also is an engaging writer and well worth reading.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Pinker. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Horse, the Wheel and Language by David Anthony

2011-12-26T15:44:00.001-08:00

I love the way this book starts. David Anthony says we should look into a mirror and see not only you but your ancestors. We see not only our own face, but a museum. Although you see your face, it is composed of a collage of features you have inherited from your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.

David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European. This is the Steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. This is important because roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European.

The Steppes of Eurasia go from Eastern Europe to China. These steppes were changed forever by the horse and the covered wagon. Apparently, there was a Secondary Products Revolution that swept Europe in between 3500 and 3000BCE. This revolution included the plow, wool sheep, dairying and the beginning of horse transportation. The secondary products of this this revolution included items like wool, milk and muscular power than be harvested continuously from an animal without killing it.

This SPR is an economic explanation for widespread changes in settlement patterns, economy, rituals and crafts. Much of this has been ascribed by an older generation of archaeologists to Indo-European migrations.

If you like history and anthropology, this is a great book. It also tells us where our language might have originated from and how we got it.

For a preview of this book, see Princeton University Press. Amazon does have surprisingly good book reviews, but you have to scroll almost to the page bottom to find them. For such a review, see Amazon. Another good review is at Dreamflesh. Plus another one at Thinking Out Aloud.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Anthony. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Freedom in the Ancient World by Herbert Muller

2011-12-18T13:09:00.001-08:00

I was attracted to this book by the title. I have read a lot of history, but I never thought of the ancient world having any freedom. However, I guess all movements must start somewhere.

He talks about the Axial Period from 800 to 200 BC. It was in this era, outside of Greece, that there emerged all the basic religious ideas on which man has lived ever since, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Judaism.

He talks about a revolutionary change in mentality in about 6BC, when we start to hear of individuals who were not kings or gods. Such people were Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Leo-Tse Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Home Thales, Salon, Aeschylus, Socrates and Plato.

If you like to read about the ancient world, this is a great book to read to get a different perspective on what was occurring then.

There is a Wikipedia entry for Herbert J. Muller at Muller. For a review of this book, see Professor Carroll Quigley site. Professor Quigley’s main criticism of this book is “Prof. Muller's inability in this work to carry out his special task, the history of human freedom, seems to me to rest on his failure to distinguish between "freedom" (the existence of alternative personal choices in a society) and "liberties" (the existence of a social pattern which permits a man to develop his potentialities).”

This book won a Ralph Waldo Emerson award in 1962. See Wikipedia.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Muller. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh

2011-12-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

This book is about what happened after the Armistice of 1945. It is not a pretty story.

Women, of course, suffered tremendously. The German women were basically raped by everyone. The Russians and French were atrocious. The Americans tried to stop their soldier from raping. The British were somewhat better where they basically tried to use chocolate to get sex.

There was ethnic cleansing of the German peoples by Czech nationalists, and by the people in Poland, Silesia, and East Prussia. There are no Germans today in what was East Prussia. Russia moved eastward their border with Poland and told Poland to move their western border to include previously German lands, which they did. And, they did so with great cruelty to the German peoples in the area they took over.

We sort of know about the harsh treatment of German soldiers by the Russians, but the British and Americans were no far behind them in the appalling treatment of German soldiers after the Armistice. Of course, it is not only German soldiers that died. A lot of women, children and old people died too.

The thing is that we should know our history. Hopefully, by knowing it, we can avoid the same mistakes in the future. This is one very good reason for reading history.

One very good review of this book is at Dialog International. The title of the Telegraph review tells a great deal of the story. Their title is how 3 million Germans died after VE Day. See The Telegraph. Another great article is at Rense.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See MacDonogh. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Civilization by Niall Ferguson

2011-11-22T13:54:00.001-08:00

This book is very readable. However, this is what you can really say about all Niall Ferguson’s books. I know some talk about him as being very right wing. Personally, I do not think that he is so easily cataloged. What he certainly is, is opinionated.

What I liked about this book was him talking about the rise of the West because of 6 killer apps. The killer apps were competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumer society and the work ethic. For a quick review of these points, see the bottom of the Guardian article, linked to below.

Niall Ferguson also thinks that when civilizations fall, it is not a slow decline, but civilizations, basically fall off a cliff. Is the US going to going that way? It is hard to say, but they seem to ignoring parts of the 6 killer apps that made them so powerful in the past. He asks if the threat to Western Civilization is not from others, but the west’s lack of understanding or faith in our own cultural heritage.

With China, it is trying to use some of these killer apps without others. For example, to Niall Ferguson, democracy goes with property rights and China does not want to go that way. He thinks that nationalism might become a problem with China. (He says if religion is the opium of the masses, then nationalism is the cocaine of the middle classes.)

He thinks the problem with Islam is that it could not reconcile itself to scientific progress and that this has been disastrous for them. He also asks if the head scarf is freedom of expression or subjugation of women.

On the Russians, he notes that they could duplicate the atomic bomb, but not blue jeans. He quotes Regis Debray in that there is more power in rock music, videos, blue jeans, fast food, news networks and TV satellites than in the entire Red Army.

For a good review, that also explains the 6 killer apps, see the one in the Guardian. Also, Amazon has some excellent reviews, see Amazon. Look towards the bottom of the page.

On YouTube you can hear a lecture on this book by Niall Ferguson.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Ferguson. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama

2011-11-21T15:02:00.001-08:00

I remember reading a review of this book. One of the comments said why would anyone buy a book by Fukuyama? The commenter went on to say that Fukuyama was totally wrong with his book called The End of History. There is a very good reason for this. Fukuyama is a very interesting writer. I have never been dissatisfied with any book by him. Both the End of History and this book is discussed in a Globe and Mail article.

This particular book is from Pre-human Times to the French Revolution. Fukuyama expects to write a 2nd volume on this subject. I certainly look forward to it.

This book is not only about economics, it is also about history. Like his remark about the Ming Dynasty. He says that it failed to tax citizens adequately to support an army to defend the country against the Manchus.

He also talks about the needs of Democracy. He says it needs a state that is effective and powerful, the rule of law and a government that is accountable. He talks of Afghanistan, which has a weak state and it cannot uphold laws on its territories. He says that Russia has a strong state, it holds democratic elections, but their problem is the rulers are no bound by law. He also says that Singapore has a strong state, the rule of law, but only an attenuated form of democratic accountability.

He talks about why Europe is different. It was only in Europe that the state was not build on top of tribally organized institutions. Apparently Europe exited tribalism via the rule of the Catholic Church. This is very interesting.

Another great review of this book is at PLOS Blogs. To hear a John Hopkins lecture by Francis Fukuyama, go to YouTube.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Fukuyama. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Forge of Empires, Michael Knox Beran

2011-10-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

This book covers the years of 1861 and 1871 and the revolutions of Abraham Lincoln, Tsar Alexander II, and Otto von Bismarck. The subtitle is “Three Revolutionary Statesmen and The World They Made”. What did these men do? Lincoln freed 4 M slaves, Alexander freed 27M serfs and Bismarck swept away an archaic jumble of completing sovereign ties, so many duchies and grand bailiwicks, and secured the prosperity of a region.

Free states like England and US liberated their people’s energies and the institutions of freedom were poised to carry all before them. But there was a countervailing reaction that set in the privileged cases to defend their prerogatives. In Russia, Germany and America, grandees with their backs to the wall meet the challenge of liberty with a philosophy of coercion to protect their power. (Slavery is a system of coercion.)

A couple of methods came with this philosophy. One was paternalism in which the master is a father to the works and looks after them. This is designed to regulate the masses. Another idea was militant nationalism. This is the right of superior people to impose their will on inferior people.

The book also talks about the southern people being Cavaliers. Like the Cavaliers who, in the 17th Century, fought for Charles I in England. Kevin Phillips brings up this point in his book, The Cousins’ Wars. Read an interview with Kevin at PBS.

One thing I learned from this book that I did not know was they Tsar Alexander II send the Russian fleet to US in 1863. He sent the Atlantic fleet to New York and the Pacific fleet to San Francisco Bay. This ended hope of England and France to intervene to help the South.

There is not much online about this book or author, but there is one book review at foreign affairs.

Michael Knox Beran also writes for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. See some of his writings at their site.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Beran. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Going Dutch, Lisa Jardine

2011-09-29T15:54:00.001-07:00

The full name is Going Dutch, How England Plundered Holland’s Glory. Of course, this is not really what happened. It is the Dutch that took over England. However, the Dutch did feel aggrieved by the wealth, power and influence that seeped away from to England at the beginning of the 18th Century.

The Dutch take over, called the Glorious Revolution occurred in 1688, the later part of the 17th Century. History seems to deal with this take over quite softly. The Dutch invasion went remarkably smoothly, with William mounting a propaganda campaign. William’s declaration was a very fine piece of spin. James more or less just sneaked away with his government basically declining to stop the invasion.

The Dutch States General needed the alliance with England. They were afraid that James would make an alliance with France and that France would again attach them. (About a quarter of the Irish Army fighting William at the battle of the Boyne were French Troops.)

However, the main part of this book is devoted, not to history really, but an effort to show that culturally, the English and the Dutch has a lot in common. Jardine tries to show that the Dutch and English share a remarkable amount in terms of outlook, fundamental belief, aspirations and sense of identity.

There is a Wikipedia entry for Lisa Jardine. The Guardian has a rather negative view of this book . I must admit she does go on and on about little culture things. The Independent has a much more positive view of this book .

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Jardine. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Hammer and The Cross, Robert Ferguson

2011-09-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

This book’s full title is The Hammer and The Cross, A New History of the Vikings. There is a good review of this book at The Sunday Times.

The era covered is from the late 8th century when Viking raiders suddenly burst upon the shores of Western Europe and "roughly speaking all the Scandinavian peoples were Heathens" until "roughly the 11th or 12th when "roughly speaking all the Scandinavian peoples thought of themselves as Christians".

The Vikings felt that their culture was under threat and lashed out at the Christians who were threating their culture. The Germans started the trouble with the trying to forcibly convert the Saxon tribes to Christianity. These Saxon tribes were related to the Danish.

Of course the attack on English monastery at Lindisfarne was a complete surprise to the English. They knew who the Vikings were, and they probably had traded with them in the past, but to them this attack was a big shock. But Ferguson tries to bring some understanding to why it happened. Basically, the Vikings were acting like terrorist trying to protect their culture. This is a rather interesting perspective.

Of course, he talks of the Vikings going to Iceland, Greenland and on to North America. He also talks about their invasions into the British Isles. He talks of the Viking raids into Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. And, lastly about the Vikings that went east, down the rivers to the Black and Caspian Seas to Constantinople.

Hear an interview with Robert Ferguson on this book at YouTube podcast. Part 2 of this podcast is at YouTube podcast. See a short interview with Robert Ferguson on YouTube.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Ferguson. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

This time is Different by Reinhart and Rogoff

2011-08-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

This book’s full title is “This time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”. The authors are Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. See interviews and a review of this book at Princeton University Press. See a better review of this book at Harvard Magazine.

One of the first things that these authors bring up is the trouble with bonds. Their remarks are especially true of government bonds. How governments have ended up buying their bonds debts off, if you could call it that, is by inflation. If you have inflation, the dollars government use to pay off a bond is worth less than the dollars they originally got by selling bonds.

The US debt after WWII was 120% of GDP. How US “paid” off their debt from the 2nd world war was a combination of economic growth and inflation. In the current situation of little economic growth and very little inflation, you got to wonder how the US will bring down their current debt except by some hard decisions on taxes and entitlements.

Interestingly, there are a few countries that never had a central government default. They are Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Thailand and the US. Europe had a lot of serial defaulter governments in the past. And some are like England, which had its last default in the 16th century, haven’t defaulted lately. There were also no defaults of central governments between 2003 and 2008, but this is far from normal.

Countries, institutions and financial instruments have changed over time, but human nature does not. Financial crisis follow a rhythm of boom and bust though the ages. The recent financial crisis that originated in the US and spread across the globe is only the latest manifestation of this pattern.

The think is that highly indebted governments, banks or corporations can merrily roll along for an extended period of time and then bang – confidence collapses, leaders disappear and a crisis hits. The thing is that leverage (thin capital to assets) can be fragile and subject to crisis of confidence.

This book may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It can get quite technical. Most people might be better off hearing the author speak. However, for an academic paper, I found this book written quite clearly. Below, I have listed a few places where you can hear both Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff speak.

See “The Anatomy of Financial Crises: A Global Perspective by Professor Carmen Reinhart” at John Hopkins lecture. See also Carmen Reinhart on Financial Crisis and Fiscal Policy at CATO Institute . See Interview with Kenneth Rogoff on "This time is different" at Jyske Global. Also see Ken Rogoff - Debts, Deficits and Global Financial Stability at INET Economics.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Reinhart and Rogoff. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Great Reflation by Anthony Boeckh

2011-08-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

This book is fine for this type. However, personally, I liked the book “This Time is Different by Reinhart and Rogoff, better. However, Boeckh does make some interesting points.

He first talks about the Kondratieff wave. This is a popular thing to talk about. What I have found is that a lot of people believe in it, but few agree to just where we are on this wave. The basic problem is that we know where we have been, but we do not know where we are.

I think that the best thing that this author points out is that the current reflation going on in the US is an experiment. People thought this sort of action could have save the US from the Great Depression. However, it is all theory. No one has tried it before.

He, like a lot of US analysts, feels that we are still in a secular bear market. This author does not say so, but I know that a lot of analysts feel that there will be one more downswing in the market before we start on the next secular bull market. The author provides a lot of charts going back to 1885 in the US and these are very interesting.

He talks about how prior to 1960’s, lots of stocks were bought for dividends and dividend paying stocks were more prevalent. There were gradual changes to what people thought companies should do and one of the things is that, especially after 1980, companies cut their dividends and did stock repurchases instead. This was meant as a way to provide more value to taxpaying shareholders, who would have increased capital gain. This is because capital gain is taxed less.

Personally, I do not think that this move worked out well for shareholders. I think partly this has to do with the fact that companies got into giving out stock options. Now, it seems that most of the stock repurchasing is to cover the stock options given out. Also, companies tend to repurchases stocks, not at market lows or when their stocks are undervalued. They do not seem to do the repurchasing at at good prices.

I know a lot of people talk about the current bull market in commodities. This is because of the big demand for commodities from China and India. However, Boeckh points out that huge demand increases in commodities does not lead to rising prices in the long term. He says that the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that over long periods of time supply has risen sufficiently to sustain a powerful long term inflation adjusted decline in commodity prices as a whole.

If you think back to what happened about oil prices in the 1970’s when OPEC increased prices greatly, everyone was looking for oil and they found lots of it all over the world.

Another interesting thing he talks about is a long wave in Political Values. I had not heard of this before. He says that politics go from Progressive to Cosmopolitan to Conservative to Parochial. This matches up with an economy going from Expansion to Peak to Decline to Trough. John Sterman wrote a paper on this and it is available at MIT. Paper is called “An Integrated Theory of the Economic Long Wave”.

For a 10 minute radio interview with Boeckh, see FinancialSense.com. Anthony Boeckh (pronounced Beck, by the way) has an investment newsletter at Boeckh Investment Letter.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Boeckh. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

War: The Definitive Visual Guide

2011-08-03T14:37:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is War: The Definitive Visual History, from Bronze-Age Battles to 21st Century Conflict. This is a DK (Dorling Kindersley) book. If you have not had or read any books from DK, you are in for a real treat.

DK books are marvelous books. They are gorgeously illustrated and written clearly and beautifully. If you get the idea that I admire their books, you are very correct. I have bought their books before and have enjoyed them immensely.

This may not be a subject you will enjoy. It certainly shows human’s violent side. However, we should not forget our history. History is full of battles. We should also not forget how destructive we can be. No matter how we feel about the matter, the truth is that campaigns and conflicts that have shaped world history.

I certainly read this book, cover to cover. However, it is just as good as a coffee table book to browse through when you have some spare time.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See DK. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

How Europe is Indebted to the Sikhs? by Bhupinder Singh Holland

2011-07-29T12:57:00.001-07:00

This book is mainly about two things. The Battle of Ieper (Ypres Salient) in WWI and the celebration of Sikhs Martyrs of WWI in Ieper (Ypres) in November 2002.

It is an interesting piece of European History. There were an incredible number of nationalist in the Armies of Britain and France. More than 30 nationalists were represented in the Ypres Salient in the troops that fought there. The British and French had colonies and their armies reflected this fact.

The French army had Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Senegalesians and other West Africans. They also had troops from French Guyana and laborers from Indochina, the Ammanites.

In the British army, first there were the Dominion’s of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The British Indian army would have troops from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Nepal. Other parts of the British Empire sent troops and laborers. These places would include such places as Egypt, the Caribbean, Bermuda, and the Fiji Island. When you think of the Great War, you think about Europeans fighting, but this is simply not true.

The book gives whole chapters towards talking about the Sikhs. It talks about hair, beards and moustaches. It also talks a bit about the philosophy of the Sikhs.

I think that this book might be of great interest in Sikhs tracing their families (i.e. Genealogy). This book has chapters listing the Sikh dead of WWI in both Belgium and France.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Singh. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs

2011-06-03T12:57:00.001-07:00

Jeffrey Sachs has a web site at Columbia. For a partial review of this book, see Marginal Revolution and review by Tyler Cowen. Also, see this book in 79 slides at slideshare.net. And, to get a more complete book review, check out Guardian.

For a lecture by Jeffrey Sachs, see YouTube item under Authors@Google.

Jeffrey Sachs is a rich socialist. I guess he says some interesting things. He talks how well the Nordic socialist states are doing. He sort of thinks other states can copy, but I wonder. I think the main reason that socialism works in the Nordic state is lack of corruption. I think that this is cultural and I doubt if other states can do this. It is not just that the Nordic states have ethnic homogeneity. France has this too and it is far more corrupt.

I first time I really realized the difference between England and France as far as corruption goes was with the Profumo Affair. This happen in 1963, so it was a long time ago; but I was young and not conscience really about such things as corruption. In this affair, the UK Secretary of State for War had an affair with reputed mistress of an alleged Russian spy. Being Canadian, I was horrified, as seemed the UK public. However, the French just seem to shrug their shoulders and say, “it happens”.

I also do not think that we humans do things until we are really forced to. In Canada, we still have the problem that the poor go to poor schools. It is just not the problem of money. It is the problem of having the will to change things.

I do not think he really has solutions for changing our world. The poor in lots of places are getting richer and living better probably not because of rich western socialists, but probably in spite of them. Well, at least he is thinking about things. I, in fact, have faith in mankind. I think that we will figure things out and with the poor getting richer, we will have a bright future.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Sachs. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Smart Swarm by Peter Miller

2011-04-19T15:20:00.001-07:00

This is a really delightful and informative book. It is all about how insects and birds act in groups and how these groups get things done.

A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. There is a study on Swarm Intelligence. See Wikipedia entry at Swarm Intelligence. What they are looking at is collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. It is being applied to the development of robots. When applied to robots 'swarm intelligence' refers to the more general set of algorithms used to control robots. There is another good article on this at Carleton on this subject.

The monstrous Orcs in The Lord of the Rings coordinated their movements as a marauding army by following simple rules of interaction. These rules were developed by the study of a flock of starlings. If you saw this movie you would see how complex action was delivered from very simple rules. The rules were:

Stay close to other Orcs
Don't bump into other Orcs
Head in the same direction as the Orc throng
If you run into any humans - cut them in half with your sword"

On YouTube, you can see a very short animated video talking about swarms and what they can tell us at
YouTube.

There are a couple of quite detailed reviews on this book. One is at Business Pundit and another good one at Mission to Learn called Lessons from the Swarm by Jeff Cobb

Peter Miller is a senior editor at National Geographic. There are a couple of interesting articles here by Peter Miller. See Field Notes on the National Geographic site. There is also an older article on swarms by Peter Miller on the National Geographic site

There is also an interesting video of how Art Colonies work by Deborah Gordon. See YouTube site. This is rather long at just over an hour.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Miller. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Father of Us All by Victor Davis Hanson

2011-04-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

The full title is The Father of Us All – War and History – Ancient and Modern. This book is a series of essays that Victor Hanson wrote on war. He has an entry in Wikipedia. There is a review of sorts on this book at PRODOS Film Study Group.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Sanford University and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. His web site is at Victor Hanson.com and at VDH’s Private Papers.

He talks how the Greeks had rules for war, they had truces and they had plays on the insanity of war, but still they went on fighting with each other. Thucydides says that wars were fought for reasons of honour, self-interest, fear, anger and pride. Others have said we fight over ideas, perceptions, fear, honour and grievances. Today, we want to give different reasons for war. However, if we were really honest with ourselves I think we would come to the same conclusions that wars today are fought for the same sort of reasons.

There are a lot of people today that think that war has changed. It has appeared to change because we fight differently. However, there is no good evidence that people had changed at all. We like to think that we are more peace loving. We have lots of people pushing conflict resolution. But have we really changed? Are humans today really different?

The Greeks felt that some wars were good and some were bad. For example, the Persian wars were good because the Greeks were fighting for their freedom. The Peloponnesian war was bad because Greeks were fighting Greeks. Today we tend to think that all wars are bad, but is this right?

There is an hour video on YouTube called Conversations with History. This is an interview with See Victor Hanson. There is also a video with Victor Hanson talking about this book. See Book TV for a short version. For a long version at Book TV.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Hanson. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown

2011-03-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

The way communism was to work was people received what they needed and contributed what they could. Problem with this is that it does not work. Why would you work when you saw that others did not, but got the same things as you did? I remember one Russian worker at the fall of communism say, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”. See an entry on Wikipedia on Russian Jokes .

Our North American Indians practiced such a policy of people contributing what they can and getting back what they need. However, these were small groups of people and they deeply depended on each other to survive. If not everyone contributed then the group would not survive. They also need to take care of members of the group so the group would survive.

Brown starts off with philosophical beginnings of the communist creed and traces communism to its down fall. I think that it fell because not everyone wants the same thing. That seemed to be the philosophy of communism that everyone got the same things. Of course, this is not what really happened; the leaders and the elite lived much better than the masses. A lot of people wanted to escape. This seemed to be the reason for the downfall of communism.

There were lots of good reasons people had to try and improve the lot of the common man. Karl Marx said a lot of interesting things. I think in the west that we ignore a lot of the stuff he said to our philosophical detriment. He was thinking of a better future of the lot of the common man. He was wrong in how to better the lot of the common man, but that does not take away the fact that he said interesting things and was a great thinker. There is a biography on Karl Max on Wikipedia . There is another great article on him at The History Guide under Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History.

For a good book review, see The Telegraph . You can see part of a lecture by Archie Brown about this book on Book TV and another short interview at YouTube.
There is a lot of interesting videos on YouTube about the fall of communism. See YouTube. This is about the Fall of Communism – 1991 giving news as it happens. There are 6 parts to this newscast. Also, there is a YouTube documentary on the Soviet loss of control over Eastern Europe. See YouTube. There is also a documentary on the Ceausescu execution in 1989 on YouTube.

This may be a long book at over 700 pages, but it is an easy and enjoyable read. We are so lucky nowadays because not only can we read books available, but we can also see lectures by our authors on the internet and see lots of information on the internet about any subject we can to read about.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Brown. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

2011-03-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

The full title of this book is Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the rich teach their kids about money – that the poor and middle class do not. Also, Sharon L. Lechter was involved in writing this book.

This is the second time I have read this book. It is quite interesting. Although, I have not bought and sold real estate to make money, I have spent time building up the assets side of my balance sheet. The other thing I like about this book is when he talks about a house being a liability not an asset. I do believe this. There are good reasons to buy a house, but buying it and considering it an asset is not a good idea. Houses costs lots of money and are a cash drain.

I have not always paid myself first as this book suggests (and other people do to). Live has it ups and downs and this is not always possible. During my working life, I worked for a company that was bought out (and I lost my job) and company that went bankrupt (and I lost my job). I have also worked for companies that downsized and most of the time I was ok, but it was touch and go for a while. I also had my husband die and leave me with a small child to look after. At the worst of times, I may not have saved money, but I always did my best to live within my means.

The other thing I liked about this book was Robert talking about risk. He says you do not avoid it, what you do is manage it. I was never terrified of losing money in an investment. I did that, but I was always somewhat cautious and never lost a lot on one investment.

Another thing I like about Robert’s book is that he says you should work to learn, not work for money. Money can only motivate you so far. In my working life, I took on new jobs because I thought I would learn from the experience and I did. I never regretted this. Although, I must admit that sometimes it was scary to take on a job that had not previously existed, there were benefits. The main benefit being is that you can write you own job description.

There is an interview, in 5 parts, of Robert Kiyosaki interviewed by Philippe Matthews. See
Interview Part 1 , Interview Part 2 and
Interview Part 3 . Once you start with the first interview on youtube, the others should show in the right side bar.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Kiyosaki. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Next Decade by George Friedman

2011-03-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

This is an absolutely fascinating book. I know a lot about history and I think that this helps to understand some of the issues this author brings up.

If you want to get a good idea of what the future world might look like, this is a very good place to begin to look at the issues. However, this book is very much written from an American viewpoint. It is also written from an old British idea of the best sort of world for the British Empire is a world were the countries in each area have a balance of power. Of course, the way George Friedman writes is that this is the best idea also for the American Empire. That is it is best that the countries in each area have a balance of power.

Let’s face it, China will rise and be a force to be reckon with in the future, I by no means feel that America is doomed in any way. China (and India) produced a large part of the world’s GDP until quite recently. It is not surprising that both these countries would rise up again. However, I think that what the Americans have going for them is the ability to change and innovate.

For a good review of this book, see SFGate. There is another excellent review at Word Press. Also, see an interview on YouTube.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Friedman. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Why The West Rules by Ian Morris

2011-03-02T14:02:00.001-08:00

The full name of the book is Why The West Rules - For Now, The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. If you want a great book that clearly explains social development of the West and the East. This is the book to get. As a study of the past, it is absolutely great. However, when Ian Morris tries to look into the future, his writing falls completely apart as he does such a poor job of it.

What Morris calls the West is the Middle East and Europe. What he calls the East is China. The West started to develop around 12,000 BCE, but then it was interrupted by the Younger Drayas. This is because the world got very cold. The theory is that the North American current got shut down because of an influx of fresh water came from the Great Lakes Area of Canada into what is now the St. Lawrence River. The theory states that this water had been held back by ice that suddenly broke. After 10,000 BCE, the West started to develop again.

Why did development start in the West? The main reason is that cereals come from wild grasses. And, there are 56 possible wild grasses, of which 32 grew in the wild in S.W. Asia and the Mediterranean basin. (Cereals are things like wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum etc.) Looking at the rest of the world, East Asia had 6, Central America 5, Africa, south of the Sahara 4, North America 2 and Western Europe 2 of these grasses.

The next item is the number of animals that could be domesticated. There are 14 animals that man has domesticated. Of these animals, 7 came from the Middle East and some of these are the most common ones of sheep, goat, cow and pig. East Asia had 5, South America had 1 and North America, Australia, and Africa had none.

So, the West got started in developing around 10,000 BCE and China around 8,000 BCE. The West had the lead until the Roman Empire fell around 550 CE. Then China lead in social development until around 1750 when it was over taken by North Western Europe. (Although I know, some people think that China started to decline before 1750 and because of this North Western Europe was ahead before this time.)

There other interesting thing is social development in the West. Except for the Roman Empire time, the most socially developed area was the Middle East until around 1400. It is around 1400 that the Europe started to develop ahead of the Middle East. By 1900, social development was advancing not only in North West Europe, but also on the North East coast of North America. By the year 2000, America had pulled ahead of the rest of the world.

If you want to know what is meant by social development, this book will explain it in detail. He gives his web site where he explains social development even further. See Ian Morris. See the biography of Ian Morris. See an interview video with Ian Morris. For a book review, see McClelland site.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Morris. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

On God by Norman Mailer

2011-03-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

In my youth, I read books by Mailer, but I have not read anything by him recently, until I came across this one. He has been criticized for not having a complete philosophy, but I would have to tell you, neither do I. This is the only “God: book I have read. The others do not appeal to me. I have flipped through others, but I must say, I like Norman Mailer. I like reading people who have interesting things to say. I like people who get you thinking about things.

I am not a religious person and I do not go to church or pray on a regular basis. But, who has not prayed when troubles are piling upon them? I am not an atheist; I do not think I am agnostic. However, beyond that, it gets pretty unclear. What I do know is that I have relatives in the US Bible belt and they are very nice people. They are also more tolerant of other people ideas and believes that either Christopher Higgins or Richard Dawkins.

Norman Mailer is always interesting to read. So, if you want to read a book on God that it interesting and thought provoking, this would be a good choice.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Mailer. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Alps by Andrew Beattie

2011-02-26T10:37:00.001-08:00

I was looking for a history of Switzerland and found this book. My mother’s family was English and there are an incredible number of books on English history and on England. My father’s family is Swiss and books on Switzerland, I find, are few and far between.

This book is divided into four sections of Landscape, History, Imagination, Visitors. The thing that struck me about this book was the Visitors section. Mostly the “visitors” were British and most were from the 19th and 20th century. The British visitors certainly thought very little of the Swiss. They mostly loved to go to Switzerland because the fine scenery and part of the “scenery” was the Swiss who were looked upon as rubes or country bumpkins.

This book talks a bit about history. However, it is the History of the Alps, rather than just about Switzerland that I wanted. However, what I was particularly looking for was the development of Switzerland as a democratic nation. I figured that democracy must be bred into me with an English mother and a Swiss father. I do know how democracy got going in England, but this book is silent on what I would have thought to be a very important subject.

I do know that my family left Switzerland in the late 1800’s because financial difficulties and want to start a new life in Canada. They were also part of a small protestant group called Evangelical Association. Although, I must admit that some members of the family, especially, a son from my Grand grandfather’s first wife said they were Lutheran.

It is interesting that when Beattie has a very short section on actual history, he spends time on talking about William Tell. You might remember the main part of the story when Tell shoots an apple off the head of his son. The whole point to this section to tell us why it is all a fiction and this episode never happened.

All the sites that talk about this book give the same blurb. “The Alps are Europe's highest mountain range: their broad arc stretches right across the center of the continent, encompassing a wide range of traditions and cultures. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where early pioneers of tourism, mountaineering, and scientific research, along with the enduring legacies of historical regimes from the Romans to the Nazis, have all left their mark.”

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Beattie. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Mexico and the United States by W. Dirk Raat

2011-01-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Raat. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles

2010-12-17T15:14:00.001-08:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Raffles. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat

2010-11-27T16:01:00.000-08:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Gat. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Buchanan

2010-11-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Buchanan. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

The Human Web by McNeill & McNeill

2010-11-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

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”.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See McNeill. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

History of the World by Richard Overy

2010-11-01T14:36:00.001-07:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Overy. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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Water by Steven Solomon

2010-11-01T14:08:00.001-07:00

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.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Solomon. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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IOU by John Lanchester

2010-11-01T14:07:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone, and No One Can Pay. Do not take me the wrong way. I think that John Lanchester says some interesting things. However, let’s not mistake him for someone who knows what he is talking about when it comes to finance. The one thing I found most interesting is the change in title between UK’s market and North American’s market.

The UK’s market’s name was IOU: How Capitalism Broke Itself. I am in Canada, and they probably did not change the title for us. We do not matter that much. The change in title is for the US market and it is as I have shown, IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay. I personally wonder about the title, especially when talking about subprime mortgages. I thought that the whole point about subprime mortgages is that the mortgagor can not pay.

One of my biggest beef about this book is that Lanchester confuses investing and gambling, and also about taking risks and gambling. Sure, you can use the stock market to gamble. You can gamble within a lot of human activities, but investing is not gambling. Placing bets is gambling. Why do I feel this way? Because what I do is investing. I buy shares in real companies that supply goods or services that people want or need to buy. This is what I believe is investing.

However, if you buy stock of a company of which you know nothing about in the hopes that you will make capital gains, I believe that is gambling. There is also a whole lot of gray areas between what I do and those that place bets on stocks. I think that those that buy things they have no understanding of are really gambling and they are just kidding themselves if thing otherwise.

Do I take risks in buying stocks? Of course I do. But we take all sorts of risks, all the time that hardly qualifies as gambling. Crossing the street is taking a risk. Putting money in something “safe” like a bank account is also “taking a risk”. Maybe this is not as risky as investing, but still a risk. In fact, putting money under your mattress is also taking a risk.

John Lancaster talks about the recent boom and bust. However, this has been going on forever. I have been investing since the 70’s and the stock market has not been tame all along until now. Believe, as I have been invested all this time. There have been lots of booms and busts. I believe this is called the business cycle. No matter what we want, we do not seem capable of taming the business Cycle.

I think that taming the business cycle is a big socialist fantasy. Anyone who has tried to seems to just get rid of the booms. The busts always seem to come around. Economic decline seems to be to be one bust after another. I you read history as I do, booms and busts have been around a very long time. Before the industrial revolution and we were all working on the land, there were good years and bad years - booms and busts. I remember as a child reading a bible story about Egypt where someone said that they would have 7 good years followed by 7 bands years. The idea was to save in the good years to help them through the bad years.

This is no different from what we should do now. When times are good, we should save for future bad times. We do not need to go to extremes, but we do need to put something aside for the future. We should not exhaust all we get and expect good times to last forever. I think that is why the busts are so hard for some people. The have created no reserves. Both the government and people need to act more sensibly. Then, perhaps, the bad times will not be so hard.

There is a Wikipedia page about John Lanchester, see Wikipedia. If you want a regular time book review, see Globe and Mail. See John Lanchester on YouTube.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Lanchester. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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Superfusion by Zachary Karabell

2010-11-01T14:05:00.001-07:00

Chimerica was first coined by Niall Ferguson (one of my favorite authors). He was first to remark on the closeness of US & China’s economies. Our problem (i.e. the rest of the world’s problem) is how USA and China will deal with this. What no one seems to mention is that these countries can destroy themselves and their economies by going to war.

Before WWI, Germany’s and France’s economies where heavily integrated and it certainly did not stop them from war. Mankind has shown himself to be, at times, highly destructive, no matter what the costs. Will China’s rise in power without war? I certainly hope so.

I think that the economic rise of Asia and parts of South American is great. We in the West are rich. Yes, we have problems, and yes, we have poor. However, this has nothing to do with the economic rise of the rest of the world. We have problems in spite of our wealth. This is because it takes more than money to solve human problems.

The full title of this book is Superfusion: How China and America became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It. Karabell talks about how States try to control commerce for their own benefit. America is no different. They believed passionately in free trade and open markets because in the 20th Century it has served them well. However, the very success of open markets has now undermined America’s power. Karabell talks about how America now faces a new challenge. (See page 292.)

Can America adjust to a world of greater affluence in which it is one of several important pillars? They seem unsure of how to deal with this. But the USA has muddled their way through lots of other problems. There is a quote of “Gods protects fools, drunks and the United States of America”. There are lots of debates on who said this and the exact wording, but you probably have heard of versions of this before. Another quote I like is my Winston Churchill, who said, “America always does the right thing after it exhausts all other possibilities”.

We think of America being heavily involved in the 2 WW’s. However, they did not start them; they just finished them. Yes, the Americans can be aggressive at times, but they do have a short attention span. I think that as long as China doesn’t do anything over stupid, we will get through the rise of China just fine. The Chinese can be overly sensitive and defensive, but I do not think that they are stupid.

In 1946, America ended British supremacy and the British Empire. Britain had asked USA for an interest-free loan of $5B, repayable over a 50 year period. The British were certain that their friend and ally would say yes without so much as a question. Astonishingly, the Americans said no. In the end, America loaned Britain $3.7B at 2% interest. Britain had to terminate any tariffs and duties that privileged its colonies. It had to also abide by the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 and make the dollar the reference point for global exchange rates rather than the English pound. (See page 302.)

Will China do this same sort of thing to America? Who knows? However, we are sometimes treated better by our enemies than our friends. See a book review at National Committee on United States and China Relations.

See and hear Zachary Karabell talk about this subject on Carnegie Council’s website. This is a long video of some 60 minutes. You can also see excerpts on YouTube. Is Chimerica coming to an end? See a blog by Niall Ferguson at Chimerica is Heading for Divorce.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Karabell. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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Forces of Fortune by Vali Nasr

2010-11-01T14:04:00.001-07:00

I know the West complaints a lot about the poverty we have. We, supposedly, have people who do not have enough money to buy food; hence, we have food banks. But these same people probably also have a big screen TV at home. What we really lack is the will to use our money better. We do have money. We spend incredible amounts on Welfare and such even though we have little to show for it.

We still have poor. We have families in the fourth generation on Welfare. Nothing has changed for these families. They are still poor, or still behave poor. However, on a whole world scale, even our poorest are far better off that most of the rest of the world. We should not put up any objections to the rest of the world getting a better living standard. They are not taking anything away from us.

Our world is very unequal when it comes to living standards. So, I think it is great that India, China, and South America are now using capitalism and mercantilism to improve their people’s lots in life. I know that it is probably politically incorrect to mention it, but we had the rise of the bourgeoisie before democracy. It was the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle classes and then the rise of democracy, (with Individual Freedoms and the Rule of Law). We in the West do not know our history.

The West has been very unsuccessful in trying to impose democracy on peoples and countries. This has not worked at all. It seems to mainly lead to corruption and things like election fraud. This author is not the only one to point this out. See books by Paul Collier of Bottom Billion and Wars, Guns and Votes, that I have also reviewed.

This brings us back to the Middle East, the Muslims and this book. We have been unable to impose democracy in this area also. What this author thinks we should do is support the rise of the middle class in the Arab world and things will turn out better for them and for us. The full title of this book is Forces of Fortune - the rise of the new Muslim middle class and what it will mean for our world.

Vali Reza Nasr is an Iranian-American academic and scholar, as well as Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. He is on Wikipedia. For a book review see Council for Foreign Relations website. See also National public Radio for an interview. See him on YouTube.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Nasr. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins

2010-11-01T14:03:00.001-07:00

I always mean to do more book reviews. I read every morning and I read such wonderful books. Despite my good intentions, lots of time goes by before I think of reviewing a book I have read. The above book, I have just finished and it was wonderful. The full title is The Lost History of Christianity, The Thousand – Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia – and How it Died.

I know that it is fashionable to think of Islam as the “peaceful” religion. We pretend either that the Middle East was never Christian or that the Muslims never did anything to force their religion on the people they conquered there. We barely even acknowledge that they were conquerors. To say the Arabs conquered the Middle East, we might have to imply that there was violence involved with their take over this area.

Also, European Christians certainly did not help the Middle Eastern Christians. European Christians were mostly Catholic until fairly recently and they mostly thought the Middle Eastern Christian were heretics or worse. Perhaps if the Crusaders had not attacked Byzantium, it might not have fallen to the Turks. Perhaps, the most shocking thing of all is that the Middle Eastern Churches did survive and they are still alive today.

The Christians survived fairly well until the 12 century. The main prosecutions of Christians (and Jews) really got off the ground in the 12th century. Non-Muslims were totally wiped out in North Africa in this century. In the following centuries, there were times when Christians could live well in the Middle East and times when they could not. It varied a lot across the Middle East, depending on the time and place. The last big push in the Middle East to get rid of Christian populations was in the early 20th Century.

This is not to say that the Arabs were the worst conquerors of the Middle East. The Mongols invasions were probably more destructive. The invasion by Tamerlane was no picnic either. If you go back to bible, there was always a lot of violence and invasions in this area. In the 14th Century, the Middle East suffered because of the Black Death, Little Ice Age and war. The population dropped dramatically and this certainly did not help the Christian populations.

So, what Middle Eastern churches have survived? The main Christian churches were the Nestorians, the Jacobite (or Syrian Orthodox) and connecting Maronites, and Coptics. To find out more on the Nestorians, see The Unofficial Website of The Nestorian Church/, or the Nestorian Pages. This church does not seem to have its own website. This church is also called the Syrian Church of the East or Chaldean Catholic Church. This church is currently called Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East and is based on USA.

For the Jacobites, see their official site at Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, or Jacobite Syrian Church. The Syrian Church has lots of churches in North American. There are also churches in India, Europe and UAE. For information on the Coptic Church see Coptic Church.net or Coptic Church in Egypt.

Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. To see him on YouTube, see Philip Jenkins by Fora TV. To see a reviews of this book, see book review by J. Peter Pham or book review by Derek Leman.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Jenkins. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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Not With a Bang But a Whimper, Theodore Dalrymple

2010-11-01T14:02:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Not With a Bang But A Whimper, The Politics and Culture of Decline. I have written about Theodore Dalrymple before. He writes a column for the London Spectator. See Spectator.co.uk .
He also writes for the City Journal. See City Journal.

Most of his books are a collection of essays he has written. This book is no different. What I want to talk about today is one of his essays, called The Roads to Serfdom. In this essay, he talks about the people of Britain looking back on WWII as the best time of their lives. The war provided them with a powerful existential meaning and purpose. People wanted this mood to continue into the peace time.

They wanted to use the dedication of the population, centrally controlled by the government to defeat things like want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. This was from the Beverage Report and it was supported by such intellectuals as George Orwell. The thing they wanted was socialism. Against this spirit of collectivism, Hayek wrote his famous book called “The Road to Serfdom”. Hayek though that the road led to totalitarianism.

Dalrymple thinks he was wrong in this. What it led them to, was a total change in the British Culture. Moral passion shifted from the individual to the state. For example, it is a city council’s duty to keep the streets clean, not the individual’s. So people become litter bugs.

The British, before their socialistic experiment were independent and self-reliant. They believed in individual initiative, responsibility and tolerance. They had a very high tolerance to eccentricity that has just evaporated. For people on welfare, they call the day their welfare cheque arrives their payday, just as if they actually earned it.

People of Britain are left with very little to decide for themselves. They are taken care of by the government from cradle to grave. The only decisions they get to make concern shopping and sex. The people are infantilized with nothing much to hope or strive for and nothing much to fear or lose. Britain is now a people of the government, for the government and by the government.

To make a comment closer to home, I remember when workfare was introduced into Ontario. There were protests by welfare people and socialistic groups. They felt that the people on welfare should not be turned into “wage slaves”. But, what about me? I have worked all my life and I have save my money for a rainy day. These people seem to believe that they have a right to any money I have.

What about the thousand and thousands of people, here in Ontario, who actually do work for a living. They expect working people to continue to support them. I do not think the protestors had any clue how much the average working person was shocked at their attitude. The protestors expected to contribute nothing to society. So, you can see that I have some sympathy for the feelings Dalrymple expresses in this essay.

To see a review of this book, see book review. Theodore Dalrymple is a pen name. His real name is Anthony Daniels. He is in Wikipedia, see Anthony Daniels . He is also on YouTube, see Theodore Dalrymple in Buitenhof for an interview.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Dalrymple. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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The Return of History, Robert Kagan

2010-11-01T14:01:00.001-07:00

I want to get back to the stuff I love besides investing. The other thing is reading. I read a lot of great books and this one is no exception. This is not the first book I read by Robert Kagan. I read his of Paradise and Power also. His books are small, but he packs a lot into them. The full title of this book is The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

As a Canadian, I do not have the instinctive dislike of American as some of my follow citizens do, especially those living in places like Toronto, where I live. I do not mind that the US wants to make the world safe for their way of life. Because in doing so, they also make places like Canada possible. If the Chinese or Russians make the world safe for their way of life, I see not place for a country like Canada.

The Canadian way of life is somewhere between the American and the European. We are sort of capitalistic and sort of socialistic. We tend to muddle our way through things. However, Canada is a great place to life and a great country to raise kids in. I have always been grateful that I was born in a place like Canada, as there are so many awful places in the world that people are born into.

Now back to Robert Kagan and his book. The title of this book is because of Francis Fukuyama’s book called The End of History and the Last Man. In this book, which Frank wrote after the fall of the Berlin wall, he felt that the world would move towards liberal democracies politically. It is obvious now that this did not happen. There are a number of large states that are autocratic. Historically, this is a throw back to the nineteenth century, when in Europe you had mainly autocratic states, and very few liberal democracies, like US and Britain. He thinks that liberal democracies may well win in the end, but it could be a long and tough road.

Robert Kagan talks about China and Russia. He talks about the fact the most Russians and Chinese seem quite happy with their autocratic government. The Russians especially seem very happy with Putin. They seem to feel that as a democracy that they were shoved around by the West and now, with Putin in power, that can be a great power again.

He also talks about radical Islam. He does not believe that the radicals will be winners in the future. He certainly concedes that they can do a lot of damage, especially since they dream of destroying a great American city. However, what they really want is to take the world and their people back to the 7th century. He feels that even a lot of the most ardent Moslems do not want this and therefore, the radical cannot win.

The last thing Robert Kagan talks about is that the democracies should, and may well be forced to, band together if they want to survive and thrive in the current and future world. He thinks that the worlds governments will not all be liberal democracies in anytime that will help the current liberal democratic societies.

This book is well worth the price and the time it takes to read it. Robert Kagan is in Wikipedia, see Robert Kagan . He is also on YouTube, see After Words for an interview.

On my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Kagan. Also, this book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews.

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Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple

2010-11-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

I spend my mornings reading. I read a lot of interesting books and I would like to share some of them. None of my books are on the best sellers list, or very rarely on this list. They are all non-fiction. Also, since the Canadian Banks have reported their 2009 results, I will be updating my spreadsheets and reviewing them over the next few days. I follow 4 of the big 5 Canadian Banks.

Now back to Theodore Dalrymple. Theodore is a British doctor who was working in a British inter-city hospital and prison when he wrote the essays in this book. He also writes a column for the London Spectator. See Spectator.co.uk. He also writes for the City Journal. See City Journal. Most of his books are a collection of essays he has written.

This book has stories of women and men trapped in destructive behaviors and environments. It is a look at the underclass life in Britain and the stories are not pretty. The story I want to talk about is the first essay called “The Knife Went In”. This story is about men in prison who are there for killing another person with a knife. However, they take no responsibility for their actions.

He first talks about a murderer who thought he was unlucky and that was why he was in prison for murder. It was not his fault, but the fault of the victim who was stabbed. If he had not been where he was at the time of the murder, the murder would not have happened. It was the murderer who was the victim in all of this. The stabbing is described as “The knife went in.” He really was not at fault. It was all due to circumstances beyond his control.

In this essay, he first talks about it being a mistake to believe that all men want to be free. He says on the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many people want none of it. The men he meets in prison, he says think of themselves as putty in the hands of fate. They do not believe that their choices or actions have any bearing on what happens to them.

With the men he talks to in prison, they feel that it is not their fault that they are in prison for such things as robbery. He says that they echo the police who increasing blame theft on the owners of property for failing to take proper precautions to protect their property. Like one man who stole from churches, because they were easy pickings. It was not his fault, the fault lies in the fact that the churches are poorly secured and easy to break into.

This is not the only book of Theodore Dalrymple’s that I have read. I find him an extremely interesting to read. He has very different opinions on what is wrong with our society and I am sure not everyone likes him for his opinions. But I always find his books interesting and entertaining. Why else would I read him?

Theodore Dalrymple is a pen name. He used this name to disguise whom he was talking about. His real name is Anthony Daniels. He is in Wikipedia, see Anthony Daniels . He is also on YouTube, see Theodore Dalrymple in Buitenhof for an interview. He also gave a speech in New York at the Harvard Club. See Theodore Dalrymple - Our Culture, What's Left of It - June 2005 .

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Dalrymple.

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False Economy, Alan Beattie

2010-11-01T13:58:00.001-07:00

I should first remark on the title. As far as I can see, it was just chosen to get attention. I can see no other reason for it. For books on the economy to sell nowadays, it seems that they must be given a title that has a negative connotation about the economy or about capitalism.

This book is a bit of a history of money, markets and finance. However, there are better books on these subjects. If you want to learn anything about these subjects, you would be better off reading such recent books as the Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. In fact, any book by Niall Ferguson would be a great choice. Ferguson is a much better informed writer and he writes much better books.

However, one thing that Alan Beattie does point out that we would do well to remember is that it is not just Anglo-Saxon or Jewish people who do well in finance. It seems through out history that minorities in many societies have created thriving business communities. Minorities that have done well include many different ethnic groups and different religious groups. It is often the restrictions place on minorities that seem to account for this more than anything else does.

He also talks about theories of agriculture and slavery. He states that when land is plentiful, plantation owners would not be able to sit on their verandas and drink mint juleps if it had not been for slavery. If the laborers had been free, they would have simply left to start their own farms.

If you are like me and have already read everything that Niall Ferguson had written, then you might want to read this book. Alan Beattie does have a slightly different perspective on things. But, if you are limited in the books you can read, for what ever reason, then I would definitely suggest you read Niall Ferguson instead of this author. I have reviewed on my site Niall Ferguson’s latest book, Ascent of Money.

Alan Beattie has an essay on development at World Bank. There is a review of this book at Financial Times . He is also on You Tube.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at Book Reviews. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Beattie.

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Lords of Finance, Liaquat Ahamed

2010-11-01T13:56:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Lords of Finance, The Bankers who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed. This is yet another book on the causes and cures of the Great Depression. This book is very readable and it shows you another aspect of the events around the Great Depression that are not usually discussed.

If you think that the people who are trying to resolve our current crisis know what they are doing, think again. If they are still arguing about the causes and cures of the Great Depression, how can anyone think that it is clear what should be done today. Although, as with any past economic crisis, the problems must be addressed by politicians and bankers in order for the economies involved to move on.

There have been a number of books about the Great Depression and Roosevelt. Conrad Black wrote a book about how Roosevelt saved capitalism. What ever else you might think about Conrad Black, he is a terrific writer. Of course, others have written about how Roosevelt prolonged the recession. The two main legacies from Roosevelt are the Glass-Steagall Act and the farm support policies. People still debate their merits; and passed and current helpfulness today.

In this book, Ahamed takes a different approach and concentrates on what would be Federal Reserve bankers today. He talks about mainly about Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The book is great history, if nothing else.

One of the things he brings up is the relationship between Germany and France prior to the 2nd World War. France really did not suffer in the Great Depression and Germany was in great economic turmoil from the end of the 1st World War. France was determined to get reparations from Germany because of the 1st World War. There were many Germans who begged France to help Germany recover economically, but France ignored all their pleas. The Germans felt if there was no help coming for them, then there would be some sort of revolution in Germany with bad results. How right they were.

There is a review of this book at New York Times. See an article by Ahmed at Blogs and Stories. Also, see some questions and answers at The New Yorker. To see an interview with Ahmed, see YouTube.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Ahmed.

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Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

2010-11-01T13:55:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell had also written two other books that I have read called The Tipping Point and the Outliers. His books are very easy reads and you always learn something. Usually, we find out something very interesting about us humans.

One thing you might find interesting is Chapter 6, The Delicate Art of Mind Reading. It gives the science behind the new TV show, Lie to Me. He talks about Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman classifying facial expressions. They also talk about what all these expression mean. These are facial expressions that cross all racial and ethnic groups. There are times when people can be very good at picking up on facial expressions and time when they are not. It is basically when we are under stress, when our adrenalin is flowing that we can be particularly bad at this. So, you can learn to be cautious about the time when you can be bad about picking up on facial expressions. Another interesting thing is that you can also learn to be better at picking up on facial expressions.

This book is also about decision making. Sometimes we are better off going with our gut instincts or our unconscious mind than putting a lot of effort into thinking about what we want or want to do. It is ironic that we are better off doing a lot of thinking about the small decisions than with the big decisions. The small things may be buying kitchen accessories. The big things may be buying furniture or deciding where to live.

Malcolm Gladwell also points out that often what people say they want and what they actually want can be very different. When people at a speed dating session were asked what they wanted in a date and asked to fill out a questionnaire on this, they had no problems in filling it out. However, who they really turned out to like was very different that what they said. Speed dating can work because people can tell very quickly if they like a person or not.

He also talks about the Pepsi challenge. Apparently, if people take a sip of a drink, they like the sweeter one. This is why Pepsi wins the Pepsi challenge. Pepsi is sweeter than Coke. The problem is people will have a different opinion about the drinks of Pepsi and Coke if they drink a whole can. This is why the new coke, which was sweeter than regular coke, failed so badly.

You can find reviews on this book on Wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org You can see a discussion on this book and its topic at homerdixon.com. There is another review at about.com.

Malcolm Gladwell has his own site at www.gladwell.com. On this site, he talks about his three books of The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink. Also on this site, he has his New Yorker magazine articles, his Blog, and his biography. Wikipedia has an article on him at en.wikipedia.org and he is at TED at www.ted.com. He is also on YouTube.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See gladwell2.

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Wars, Guns and Votes by Paul Collier

2010-11-01T13:54:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Wars, Guns, and Votes - Democracy in Dangerous Places. Collier had also written another book that I have read called The Bottom Billion. I also wrote a review of the book, the Bottom Billion.

One of the things Paul Collier talks about is that in places that are very poor and violent, having the international community or the US come in and force a vote solves nothing. The place will still be poor and violent. Well, duh! I would have thought that being a Brit, Paul Collier would know, at least some of British history and not assume places will be fixed with a free vote.

I can understand where the Americans are coming from. They had their revolution, elected their own government, and thought they had found freedom and democracy for themselves. They did not realize what else they had. Britain had the concept of the rights and responsibilities of their citizen, and more important had concept of the rule of law. The British system was not perfect, but it by and large, functioned well. This is why, when they got what we consider democracy, where all citizens had the right to vote, things went smoothly.

Now, in the Americans, the 13 colonies already had such things as the rule of law. They also had experience voting, as there were local voted-in governments. Now, when they kicked out their British rulers, they had no problems. They did not realize what a debt their owned their British forefathers, for without individual rights and responsibilities, and the rule of law, I cannot see how just voting will give anyone decent government. This is, of course, what Paul Collier found out by studying what happen in poor violent countries that got a vote. They did not get decent government. They did not get problems solved.

As with the other book of Paul Collier’s, this book is a very easy read. He does a lot of research and presents the research and possible solutions in a manner this is easy to understand. He talks about more than just democracy and voting. If you want to read a regular review, see timesonline.co.uk. If you want to see his book from an economic perspective, see oxonomics. Paul Collier is also on www.ted.com. If you do a search for Paul Collier, you will find him. He is also very easy to listen to.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Wars, Guns, Votes by Paul Collier.

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Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2010-11-01T13:53:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Outliers, The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell had also written another book that I have read called The Tipping Point. I am currently reading his book called Blink. His books are very easy reads and you always learn something.

One of the most interesting subjects that he talks about is what he calls the 10,000 hour rule. What it is, is that to get really good at anything, you must spend 10,000 hours on it. This would be approximately 8 hours a day, every day for about 3 ½ years.

The first person he talks about his Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, which was one of the critical players in the computer revolution. He started at the University of Michigan in 1971 and came across their new Computer Center. He started at this university when computer terminals and time-sharing systems came in. The University of Michigan’s new Computer Center had the latest. The center was open 24 hours a day and he lived near the center and spent a lot of his time there. The center gave out fixed amount of time on their computers, but then some of the kids figured out how to get unlimited amount of time on the systems. This was how he got to spend a phenomenal amount of time programming.

In this chapter, he also talks about the Beatles. They got invited to Hamburg. In Hamburg, you did not just play for one hour sessions; you had to play for eight hours. The played at a club seven nights a week and they played almost non-stop until after midnight. On their first trip, they played 106 nights for five or more hours. By the time of their success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1200 times.

If you do not know who Bill Joy is, you will certainly know who Bill Gates is. He went to a private school called Lakeside. There was a Mothers’ club that raised money to put in a computer terminal. It had a direct time-sharing link to a mainframe in downtown Seattle. Bill Gates got to do real-time programming as an eighth grader in 1968. When the Mothers’ Club ran out of money to pay for the kids computer club’s programming, they got an offer to test out a company’s software programs in exchange for free programming time.

All these people may have been very brilliant, but they also got opportunities to put in huge amount of time at the things for which they got famous. They got opportunities and they took advantage of their opportunities. There is, of course, much more to this book. For book reviews, see the New York Times review at www.nytimes.com/ and www.nytimes.com/. Also, see a Social Capital blog at socialcapital.wordpress.com.

Malcolm Gladwell has his own site at www.gladwell.com. On this site, he talks about his three books of The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink. Also on this site, he has his New Yorker magazine articles, his Blog, and his biography. Wikipedia has an article on him at en.wikipedia.org and he is at TED at www.ted.com. He is also on YouTube.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See www.spbrunner.com/books.html.

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Panic by Michael Lewis

2010-11-01T13:50:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Panic, The Story of Modern Financial Insanity. In this book, Michael Lewis talks about the financial panic from 1987 to the current one. So this is all about the most recent insane market gyrations. This book is not really written my Michael Lewis; in fact, it is collection of articles published at the time of the recent panics that include 1987 stock market crash; the Russian default (including the failure of Long-Term Capital Management Hedge Fund); the Asian currency crisis; the Internet stock bubble and the latest subprime debacle.

It is a fairly light read and it is interesting because you can read what people were saying at the time of the financial problems. The down fall of this is that there is no historical perspective to help with our current financial difficulties. It might be helpful for people who had never been in a financial panic before. And, as it said, this book is a light read.

The most interesting thing that Michael Lewis says is that “The man on the street, for the first time, acted on the same foolish principles that have guided the behavior of sophisticated Wall Street traders for the past few decades.” To read more about Michael Lewis, see Michael_Lewis_(author) in wikipedia. I read this book recently and I did understand more about the financial panics he was talking about, but this is not the best book to read about financial panics.

To really understand what financial panics are all about, you might be better off reading a classic like “Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. See a review of this at www.buzzle.com.

My other book reviews are on my site at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my site is information on where to find this book on Amazon.com. See Panic by Michael Lewis.

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The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

2010-11-01T13:49:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is The Ascent of Money, a Financial History of the World. If you want to understand the world of financial, this is an excellent book to read. This is a great basic book on finance that is clear and easy to follow. I also enjoy reading books by Niall Ferguson as he always has something interesting to say.

I will point you to some typical book reviews later, but first I want to mention a few things in this book. One of thing he talks about is that while inflation is monetary phenomenon, hyperinflation is always a political phenomenon. Another point he makes is that stock markets are mirrors of the human psyche. He points out the idea of stocks for the long term has only worked in the western world, and this is not true of other places. For instance, stock for the long term would have been a losing proposition in say, South America.

I know that the left hates this man. This is probably because he makes such clear, reasonable augments supporting what he says. This is unlike writers like Christopher Higgins and Richard Dawkins, which the left loves. The reason I do not like readings these lefties is that their basic point seems always to revolve around ‘If you do not think like I do, you are stupid’. I read this beautifully illustrated book on evolution by Dawkins. What I remember about this book was his deep implacable hatred for Bush and the religious right. I thought I would be reading a beautifully illustrated book on evolution, obviously not.

Niall Ferguson has his own web site at www.niallferguson.org/ and there is an entry for him at Wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson. As always, you should read anything in Wikipedia with a critical eye. This site will not allow anything to stand that is not politically correct. This article either has a bland description of his work or is critical. Niall Ferguson is not politically correct. Robert Fulford has written a number of articles about Niall Ferguson and they are available at www.robertfulford.com/NiallFerguson1.html. There are also videos with him at google and youtube.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.

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Risk by Dan Gardner

2010-11-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

The full title of this book is Risk, The Science and Politics of Fear. It is a very interesting book. We are, in the Western World at least, the longest living, the wealthiest and we live in the safest or most peaceful societies in human history, and yet we are more fearful than past generations. Dan Gardner worries about how our fearfulness will affect our children.

In Canadian surveys, it has been found that half the population thinks that a risk-free world is possible. Also, the majority of the population thinks that our government should completely protect them from risk in their daily lives. No one, or no government, or no government agency can guarantee zero risk. Things can be made safer, but zero risk is impossible. I find it absolutely irrational that people expect to live risk free.

One of the things Dan Gardner talks about, of which I found interesting, is that of surveys of basic cultural world views. Anthropology wise, we can be slotted into one of four world views. These world views are individualist, egalitarian, hierarchist, and communitarian. Dan Gardner also mentions that there is a strong correlation between risk perception and world views.

A hierarchist is someone who believes that people should have defined places in society and respect authority. An egalitarian is someone who believes in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life. An individualist is someone who believes the answer to problems is more freedom that is, you let people determine their own choices and things will come right. A communitarian is someone who believes in placing the interests of the community above the interests of the individual.

I have some of the characteristics of a communitarian in that I believe that people should live up to their social and civic responsibilities and should not merely focus on what they are entitled to, however, I must admit that I am individualist at heart as I believe that people are responsible for what they do and for their own lives. I also certainly believe in individual freedom. However, I also feel that there must be some balance between the rights of communities and the rights of individuals.

Dan Gardner has his own site at www.dangardner.ca/. For a review of this book, see www.speakers.ca/gardner_dan.aspxl. At the web site http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9600 you will find information on Mary Douglas who is an anthropologist involved in world view and risk perception.

My other book reviews are on my site at books. Also on my site is information on where to find this book on Amazon.com. See Risk by Dan Gardner.

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Stocks for the Long Run, Jeremy J. Siegel

2010-11-01T13:46:00.001-07:00

The 4th edition of this book is at http://www.amazon.com/Stocks-Long-Run-Jeremy-Siegel/dp/007149470, on Amazon. (I had read the 2nd edition.) Jeremy Siegel has his own site at http://www.jeremysiegel.com/. See http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/product/isbn/9780071494700/bkm/true, for a review of his book. Siegel has articles on the internet at http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/StockPrices.html.

Even though the book is American and it deals with the US, it can also apply to us here in Canada. I, of course, started investing in stocks long before I had read this book. I also invest for the long run and I have done very well. As near as I can figures, I have made, since I started investing in the 70’s an average annual return of 10.3%.

I am basically 100% invested in stocks, 100% of the time. The one main problem with this is that when good investment opportunities come along, I have no available cash for investing. Take the current situation. The fall in the TSX has presented lots of very good buying opportunities and I can take advantage of few.

However, even with the above problem, over the long term, being investing 100% in stocks has been very good for me and I have made good long term returns. The problem with holding back some cash for good investments is that you never know when these opportunities will come. Look at the bear market we had in 2000, 2001. A stock market crash had been predicted for sometime. Alan Greenspan made his “irrational exuberance remark in December 1996. If I had put money aside, it would have earned little money for over 4 years or more.

So in closing, I should say there is not really good answer about whether or not too keep money in reserves for good opportunities. I did not do this so I really have no idea on how it would have affected my returns. In any event, this is an excellent book to read.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at books. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Stocks for the Long Run.

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The Age of Turbulence, by Alan Greenspan

2010-11-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

The sub-title of this book is “Adventures in a New World”. This is a surprisingly readable book. I highly recommend it. Considering some of the past statements made by Alan Greenspan, I found it rather shocking that he can write an interesting and readable book. You should read this book as you might learn, in an entertaining and enjoyable way, something about economic matters. You will certainly learn a bit more about a man, no matter what you may think about him, that has had a big impact on the US economy and therefore on our Canadian economy.

Reading about Alan and reading reviews on this book, there seems to be too groups of people, those who love him and those who hate him. Those who hate him blame him for the current asset bubble crisis in the US and anything else wrong with the US economy.

So there are huge arguments on what he may or may have done for the US economy. You can take sides, or do as I do and just believe that no one knows what they are talking about when it comes to the economy. What I can see is that, whatever else you might think of Bush, he has certainly been bad for the US economy. The Social Security is still not properly funded. The federal debt is way out of control and it was only made worse by Bush.

We in Canada are in a much better position. We have the CPP under control. Our federal debt is under control. I never like Jean Chretien, however, you have to admit that between him and Paul Martin, our economy was put into great shape. I was so disappointed in Paul Martin as he made an awful Prime Minister. I was looking forward to him being Prime Minister, but it did not turn out as I had imagined. I guess he spent so much time and effort into getting the job, he did not know what to do when he got it.

Wikipedia, of course, has a section on Alan Greenspan. See book review in the NY Times at www.nytimes.com. There is some discussion of him at The Nation at www.thenation.com. You can see a book review on Amazon at www.amazon.com. For some of the book being read, go to www.audible.com.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See The Age of Turbulence.

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Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas L. Friedman

2010-11-01T13:43:00.001-07:00

The full title of this book is Hot, Flat, and Crowded - Why We Need A Green Revolution – And How It Can Renew America. I read Friedman because he always says interesting things. The US and indeed the world, is in deep shit, environmentally.

However, I am Canadian and as most Canadians do and what our Country does, is muddle through things. We will muddle through this environment thing. Canada never goes to extremes that the US does and we are generally quite happy about that. This book is available on Amazon; see the panel to the right side.

If you want to read a typical review on this book, see www.thomaslfriedman.com or see www.wired.com/culture. or see www.guardian.co.uk. To read an excerpt from this book, see www.nytimes.com. Thomas Friedmand has his own site at www.thomaslfriedman.com/.

Treating pollution as an externality is dangerous. Past Civilizations fell because they destroyed their environment. One quote I love in this book is on page 259. “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth. If you learn nothing else from this book besides this, you will do very well.

The other very interesting thing he quotes is Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider. He asks, “Can democracy survive complexity?” on page 406. “It is so difficult. It is multi-scale, multidisciplinary, with large certainty in some areas and small certainty in others. It is irreversible and reversible and we won’t know how we did until it is over. We will only know forty years later. That is why climate complexity is a challenger to democracy.”

An interesting suggestion is that since the price of oil is so high and it is therefore pushing innovation, we should keep the price of oil high. If it comes down, we should have a tax that automatically comes in and keep the price high. That is if oil is $100 a barrel, and it does to $90, we should have $10 a barrel tax.

All in all, this is very good book about a current and complex problem.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Hot, Flat and Crowded.

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Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

2010-11-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

Although, I must admit that I always tended to get only fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy in my weekly shopping. About the only prepackaged stuff I got was some cereal, and this was usually things like a package of oatmeal. I had a kid, so I had to also get some boxed cereal and some pop.

It is interesting how such books as thus one come out just when thinks are changing. This summer, in my local area, we have a farmer’s market opening one day a week. Also, just in the past year, we have a small bakery opened. The bread is wonderful. They list the ingredients for the bread, and it is only 5 items and I understand what all are. Unlike the awful bread, we were subjects to just 10 years ago (and still in the shops) which have a list of ingredients as long as your arm. I had no idea what most of the ingredients were.

When I had a cottage, I got local meat, and the local cattle were grass fed. The steaks were the best I have ever had. I do not know how the pigs and chickens were fed, but the chops and chickens I got were great also. The local place I went for meat was called an abattoir. This is just a French word for slaughterhouse and I do not know why it was called that. It would seem that such small local slaughterhouses are illegal in the US. That is too bad. I heard nothing locally about anyone having any problems with this slaughterhouse. This was a small community, and everyone knows everything that happens. If there had ever been a problem, I would have heard. I guess that sometimes it helps to be behind the US in things as having the privilege of a local slaughterhouse.

Michael Pollan has his own site at http://www.michaelpollan.com/. He also has a blog at http://pollan.blogs.nytimes.com/ and is on the Berkeley web site at journalism.berkeley.edu. You can find his book reviewed at Amazon.com if you go to /www.amazon.com. There is also an review of his commandments of eating at www.seriouseats.com.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at www.spbrunner.com/books2.html. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See Omnivore's Dilemma.

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The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier

2010-11-01T13:39:00.001-07:00

The full title is “The Bottom Billion Why The Poorest Countries Are Failing And What Can Be Done About It.” This is a very interesting book about the poorest people on earth and what the Western World can do for them. It does not give practical advice for individuals, but it does give practical things governments and aid agencies that give out aid can do.

What I like about Paul Collier’s book is that he looks at various things that have been done to help poor people and poor countries and then tries to analyses these things to see if they actually work or not. I like that he advocates practical things that seem to work. He talks about some standard solutions that do not work and solutions that do work.

I think that this is a very important book on world poverty. It is filled with statistics and common sense. He tries to come up with workable practical solutions. What I did not like about Jeffery Sach’s book on the End of Poverty, is that he comes up with grand schemes to help the poor. We have had grand schemes before, and they have not worked.

For a book review on Amazon see www.amazon.com. For book review at Oxford Press, see www.oup.com and at Financial Times see www.ft.com.

He is also on www.ted.com, a wonderful site of speakers on all sorts of ideas. He is at www.ted.com/index.php/talks.

This book review and other books I have reviewed are on my website at books. Also on my website is how to find this book on Amazon if you care to purchase it. See the Bottom Billion.

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Giving, by Bill Clinton

2010-11-01T13:38:00.001-07:00

Giving - how each of us can change the world - is a great book. It is a very easy read. It inspired me to start lending money via Kiva.org. On this website, you can loan small amounts of money to people all over the world. It finally seems that I was actually helping someone. All the money I have given to charity seems to have disappeared down a black hole, never to be seen again, never to actually do any good for anyone.

Now if you are a capitalist, as I would judge anyone who invests is, Kiva is the perfect investment for the future. Here you seem to be investing in people who want to be capitalists. If we want to keep the wealth we now have, I feel we must do something to spread around some wealth. Charity never seems to help. I have been giving to charity since I started to work in the late ‘60s. This is something like 40 years ago. I cannot point to any improvement in anyone’s life or any improvement for the poor of Toronto, where I live. In fact, we seem to have a lot more poor in Toronto now than there was 40 years ago.

Getting one great idea from a book is fantastic. What else can I say? If you believe in liberty, freedom and capitalism, then investing in potential capitalists in poor counties may be a very good investment indeed.

This micro-credit site is at http://www.kiva.org/. Bill Clinton’s site is at http://giving.clintonfoundation.org/. The book is on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Giving-How-Each-Change-World/dp/0307266745.

On the web, you can find both positive and negative reviews of this book. There are a lot of negative reviews. However, I read books all the time, often having 3 or 4 on the go at one time. I read mostly non-fiction (history, economics etc) and some sci-fi. Most of the negative reviews feel that the book is too filled with feel-good stories when there is so much misery around the world. Sorry, but I still feel that if a book gives you one great idea, it is worth it.