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Books we're reading this month
The Palestinian People: A History by Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S Migdal (Harvard University Press, 2003)
Examining the population of Palestine from their roots in the Ottoman Empire to the present intifada, the authors present a complex and sometimes frustratingly broad sketch of the region. Often willing participants in their own disasters, the Palestinian people are shown as more than just victims, although they certainly have been brutally used by Westerners, Zionists, and other Arab states. Overall, the book is well-recommended for those seeking to understand what being a Palestinian means and where they come from.
--Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org> |
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (W W Norton, 1997)
Yet another in a long line produced by non-historians exasperated at how historians have failed to make a science out of history. This time, geography (which dictates the availability of animals and plants suitable for domestication) is said to determine how modern and successful local tribes can eventually become. Karl Marx thought ownership of the means of production determined that. H G Wells figured it had to be the availability of appropriate ideas. All are guilty of presupposing that a history exists prior to anyone writing about it. Good historians know it doesn't, and rightfully dismiss the central points of such books as these. Nonetheless, Diamond's middle chapters offer engaging reading about how germs colonized us for their own agenda, and have been at least as successful as we have at re-ordering the world to their satisfaction.
--Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org> |
The Cash Nexus: Money and power in the modern world, 1700 - 2000 by Niall Ferguson (Basic Books, 2001)
Central banks of the western nations were invented primarily to quickly raise the money needed to finance wars. Parliaments (and Congresses) were invented to gain the acquiescence of the people in the enforced extraction of taxes from their income for those wars. Money was invented primarily to allow the war-making elite better monitoring of the people's incomes, and easier extraction of it for their warring purposes. Money, in the form of cash, has worked marvelously. Since 1495 till now-a period of over 500 years during which money entwined in life-there has not been a single 25-year period free of major state-to-state war. This is a spiritually debilitating book to read. It's probably right on the money though.
--Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org> |
The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins (Bankers Research Institute, originally published in 1958, this issue 1993).
An astonishingly well-researched examination of the founding of the US Federal Reserve, that country's central bank. Also, a useful consideration of what money is, what purposes it serves, and who is in a position (and how) to manipulate it to serve their own interests. Readers will be surprised, perhaps, to learn that American money, unlike Canadian and most everyone else's, is in fact privately owned and operated. It's true!
--Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org> |
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