Thomas Paine (1774)
An enjoyable rant against British royalty.
Author: Jelte
Flags o’ the World: colour histogram
Ocean of Life
Callum Roberts (2013)
This book will be disappointing to anyone who has worked through Callum Robert’s spectacular The Unnatural History of the Sea. Ocean of Life, in contrast, is poorly structured, repetitive, and lacking in scientific detail and rigour throughout.
The Kaiser’s Holocaust
David Olusoga and Casper W Erichsen (2010)
The Pylons
The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages
Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.
The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning’s danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.
This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.
An Islet in a Lake on an Island in a Lake on an Isle in an Ocean
Hell & Damnation: optimise your chances with this handy matrix
Ishi in Two Worlds
Theodora Kroeber (1961)
Stone Age Economics
Marshall Sahlins (1974)
“The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated.†– Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics.
One quickly comes to suspect a double entendre underlies Marshall Sahlins’ title, ‘Stone Age Economics’. Yes, his collection of six essays tackle fascinating aspects of Economic Systems in Stone Age (and other ‘primitive’) societies. But more deeply, Sahlins’ title belies a criticism of modern-day economics as a discipline. He holds that Economics, as practised by today’s card-carrying academic economists, is unable to adequately account for material flow of goods outside of the domain of Western Culture. Economics is primitive and underdeveloped – it is ‘still in the Stone Age’. Continue reading Stone Age Economics
The Energy of Nations
Jeremy Leggett (2013)
Lots of people believe that climate change is real. Many still believe that peak oil is real, even with today’s obfuscating fanfare around the extraction of unconventional oil and -gas. Jeremy Leggett takes a ‘risk approach’ to these twin threats. Most of all, though, his book provides an insightful look into what’s happening behind the scenes in climate- and energy lobbying. Highly recommended.