2024 By The Books, Q2
I wait for death with the courage I gained from living. I will not speak falsely and say to you: ‘Do not grieve for me when I go.’ I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my children grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into it. Know that I shall be happy.
(Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Anarchism and Other Essays, Emma Goldman
Everything about this collection feels dated, with the possible exception of the sections on marriage that could be described, in parts at least, as being ahead of their time. The verve with which the claims are presented seems to be inversely proportional to the depth of the underlying arguments. Nothing in Goldman’s writings suggests so much as a sliver of doubt about the veracity of her positions, and so she goes on to denounce bureaucracy, capitalism, organized religion, patriarchy and every other system under the sun. A certain precision as to what precisely she opposes (e.g. what does “wage slavery” mean? Does it include every type of labor contract, or only if pay and work conditions are deemed unsatisfactory? By whom?) would have been helpful, but alas, the essays remain mostly at the level of college leaflets, with the occasional statistics included whenever they support premeditated conclusions.
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
I’m now convinced that Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility (which I read a year or two ago) is either a rip-off or an (unacknowledged) homage to Mitchell’s earlier Cloud Atlas. I liked the original better! I especially admired Mitchell’s literary vision that weaves together six stories spanning several centuries, but was in some ways disappointed that the novel doesn’t feel postmodern (for lack of a better term) enough — advancing chronologically, each narrative ending with a cliffhanger that are then subsequently resolved is too neat for my taste: Is it weird to criticize the book for having its pieces fit together too smoothly? My favorite subplot was Letters from Zedelghem, perhaps owing to my fondness for early 20th century literature.
Exodus, Paul Collier
For a book titled Exodus, Collier’s work spends a surprisingly large chunk — in fact, the vast majority — of pages on the effects of immigration on the receiving society. Skeptics of such migration often cloak their concerns in compassionate clothes, spelling out the supposedly dire consequences of the “brain drain” on those left behind, when their true fears are that of their own country becoming unrecognizable. Collier, as a renowned economist, is acutely aware of the reputational damage that would result from appearing to be xenophobic, but one is left to wonder what his true colors are.
Full disclosure, I used to be a very outspoken advocate for open borders, and philosophically I’m still very sympathetic to that position. What has changed over time is not that I ceased to believe that humans should be able to take control of their own destiny (rather than accept whatever cards the society they were born into has dealt them), but that I’ve become more worried about certain practical aspects of tearing down walls too swiftly. After all, little would be gained if mass migration wiped out the very reasons why people choose to migrate to a specific country (which may be caused by some sort of “populist backlash” rather than the actions of the migrants themselves, but this is irrelevant for present purposes).
Unsurprisingly, then, I disagree with more aspects of Collier’s book than I agree with. For example, his claim that immigration is good for immigrants but hardly for anyone else seems to be contradicting most of the available evidence (e.g.). And let’s not forget that even studies that do find negative effects on the receiving society typically finds those effects to be small, while the positive effects for immigrants are massive — to suggest that those two things might cancel out is intellectually dishonest ( a sin of omission, to be clear, but a sin nonetheless). But I find it more interesting to look at the parts of his argument where I think he has a point. As Collier writes,
“The French are more willing to cooperate with each other and to make transfers to other citizens than are Nigerians, and this supports a range of institutions and norms that have enabled France to become much richer and more equal than Nigeria…From the perspective of cooperation between people, nations are not selfish impediments to global citizenship; they are virtually our only systems for providing public goods.”
Rules and laws do not suffice to sustain the level of trust found in rich, developed societies, who spent a long time building up the social capital that allowed them to prosper (among other things). Consequently, Collier is worried about huge diasporas created by a large influx of migrants from the same region, which make it easier for newcomers to resist “absorption” into the society they migrated to (not to mention the resentment these “parallel societies” can create among the native-born). He therefore advocates a gradualist solution, which would make it harder for marginal migrants to emigrate now. And I’m all for such a gradual approach! But note that “gradual” might still mean a lot more migration than we see today (in fact, this is my preferred solution). “Keyhole solutions”, meant to make it easier for certain types of immigration to occur (e.g. highly skilled immigrants, immigration that denies welfare benefits to new arrivals) do have their problems, but they do seem to be a clear and obvious improvement over the status quo, which makes it hard even for sought-after professionals to move (not an entirely unbiased take, as I currently have the privilege of witnessing US immigration policy in practice).
I also recommend the section on remittances, which is not without flaws but thought-provoking and an aspect that most other books on the topic choose not to discuss much.
Gambling on Development, Stephan Dercon
A major strength of this book is that it shies away from offering a grand theory of development and accepts the messy reality on the ground as a basic fact that theoretical work must contend with. Consequently, Dercon refuses to offer a set of policy prescriptions to “fix” poor countries, and I applaud the intellectual humility of such an approach. The downside, of course, is that he remains rather vague as to the perennial question of what is to be done. He suggests the notion of an “elite bargain”, i.e. leading figures in the country agreeing that development is indeed what they plan to achieve (and not, as it has often happened, try to capture the state to advance their own nefarious interests). But exactly how do we get there? How do we convince a predatory ruling class that it should focus on economic growth for the masses? Maybe there is no great answer to this, and we need to accept that there’s only so much that can be done, but I wish he had dwelled on that question a little longer.
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
If true crime stories are your thing, this is as good as they get. Meticulously researched, shocking in its senseless brutality, yet oddly detached — the most disturbing aspect of this book is the sense that some people may just be “born to kill”, willing to extinguish lives for the most insignificant of personal gains. Personally, I think it’s the description of life in the rural Midwest ca 1955 that continues to make this book relevant to a modern audience.
James Baldwin, David Leeming
Arguably it is a bad idea to read the biography of an author without ever having read any of his actual works. As a consequence, I didn’t get as drawn into Leeming’s colorful portrait of Baldwin as much as I otherwise might have. No doubt there are aspects of Baldwin’s personality and the causes he fought for that command respect, even admiration — such as rejecting the then-popular idea that Black liberation would be achieved through Marxism or Islam(ism), which alienated him from his peers — but he no doubt had his darker sides as well. I will probably read Go Tell It On The Mountain at some point, and it remains to be seen whether being read in on his upbringing and humble beginnings will make me see his work in a different light.
The Path to Power, Robert Caro
I hesitated for the longest time whether I should commit to Caro’s biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. On the plus side, a non-negligible number of people whose opinions I value have heaped praise on the project. But it’s also a four-volume tome (I hear another sequel is anxiously awaited), totalling several thousand pages dealing with every conceivable character flaw of one US president whom you may or may not care about a great deal. Should I really be devoting more time to American politics than I already do, in a world where every book I read comes at the expense of another? And what are the odds I’d get sucked into reading the whole series after finishing the first volume?
The Path to Power describes LBJ’s early years, his upbringing in the harsh Texas hill country, and his absolute, unmitigated thirst for power that is already showing during his childhood. (In one telling episode, he tampered with the ballots for the election of Schulsprecher — a mostly irrelevant position without power or prestige –, lied about it and doubled down on his lies when caught red-handed.) Johnson was perfectly happy to do whatever it took — no matter how embarrassing for himself or detrimental to his own health — to achieve his goals, and had those goals been loftier, we might look up to him for inspiration today. Yet intentionally or not, the portrait of LBJ that Caro develops over many, many pages is as unflattering as it gets, and should have everyone — including, nay, especially those who admire his Great Society politics — wonder how a man of his character managed to get into the White House. It also serves as a useful counterbalance to the popular narrative of how we’re living in an era where politics is more dishonest and rotten than ever. Indeed, corruption seems to have been so endemic that it was regarded simply as a fact of political life (one of Johnson’s early, unsuccessful electoral campaigns failed because his entourage announced too early the number of votes he had received, allowing the incumbent to produce enough ballots to regain the lead).
Will I read the other sequelae after this? Most likely, no. Caro is a skilled narrator and has unearthed countless fascinating details about LBJ and his surroundings, but I don’t believe there is much more to be gained from digging deeper.
The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
It remains a bit of a mystery to me why this book has become a classic, but that is probably because it’s a mistake to read it in isolation. Is it because it is one of the first “modern” treatises on political philosophy, representing the most thorough break with the classical tradition of providing elaborate justifications for the actions of the ruling class? The usual (and incorrect — going out on a limb here) reading of Machiavelli is of him espousing the view that “the end always justifies the means”, or, worse still, that exercising power is a noble act in and of itself, and to the extent that cruelty is required for such exercise, rulers should embrace it? My sense is that Machiavelli was much more of a regional thinker, not concerned with abstract ideals but with navigating the muddied waters of Renaissance Florence. My sense is that he would have been skeptical about attempts to “export” his theories to other contexts, but that may mean little else than that his oeuvre has, in fact, transcended him. Okay to skip, since his thought has been absorbed in later work.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
This may not be world-class literature, but it is a well-written and skillfully crafted book nonetheless. Smith’s fictionalized, at times tragicomic account of her own upbringing has some beautiful, gut-wrenching passages, and it is hard not to sympathize with her father’s naivete, his amicability and good intentions as well as his utter inability to reign in on destructive forces (most importantly, his alcoholism). One of the most charming vignettes revolved around a coffee ritual: Despite the undeniable poverty the family finds itself in, the children are sometimes allowed to have a cup of coffee, none of which they will actually drink (since it is too bitter for them). But as their mother explains, this little act of irrationality — or rather, defiance — consisting in purposefully wasting a small amount of their painfully acquired savings, can be viewed as a declaration of their basic humanity: They do not live just to survive, subjecting every action to the unforgiving math of destitution.
What is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger
I’m quite shocked by how little I retain from listening to this. Very smart people have sung its praises (it’s been credited, among other things, with inspiring Watson, Crick and Franklin in their discovery of DNA), but I can’t say that I took much away from it. The main essay is very short and has been stretched (in the Audible version at least) by tacking on a bunch of lecture notes at the end.
Why We Fight , Christopher Blattman
The first thing to understand about why conflicts escalate into violence is why they usually don’t, given ample opportunity. We all agree that it’s peace that’s “unnatural”, not war, correct?. Why trade with your neighboring tribe when you might just raid their camp at night and take their belongings for free? Contrary to public opinion on the topic, he sees wars less as an outburst of emotions, i.e. our animal nature getting the better of us, but situations where leaders consider war to be in their best interest. Hence, ending war isn’t just about letting cooler heads prevail, but ensuring that incentives for already rational (in the technical sense) individuals favor peace.
Sadly, much as I agree with the broad outlines of this framework, I can’t remember any substantial insights that I got from Blattman’s book (in fairness, my memory may be to blame). Most of the arguments were cast in terms of rather simplistic game-theoretic models supposed to demonstrate that rationality getting in the way of fights — people, armies and nations assessing their chances of success and concluding that the odds are often stacked against their attacks. Some interesting anecdotes, and maybe a good starting point for folks of a certain persuasion, but otherwise a minor work.
Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker
A self-styled “sleep diplomat”, Walker is an academic who, has mostly left academia (in the original sense of the word) behind, using his faculty position largely as a gateway for well-paid consulting gigs. Indeed, the entirety of Why We Sleep reads like an increasingly desperate plea for tech companies with too much money to spare to bring him on as a consultant (at one point, he literally writes that he would love to be hired by Google as a “scientific sleep advisor”). As for the content, well. For somebody who professes to be a world-leading expert on sleep, his interpretation of the scientific literature on the effect of longer sleep on health is so sloppy and one-sided that I worry about him misrepresenting the evidence even for aspects of the book that I find plausible. Case in point: He seems to believe that there is such a thing as a “sleep debt”, which one acquires as soon as one sleeps less than eight hours (or thereabouts) during even a single night, and that can never, ever be paid off — ours bodies will forever continue to pay the price of going to bed too late (or getting up to early). He regularly presents observational studies as providing causal evidence for the benefits of longer sleep, and generally seems to bet heavily on the gullibility of his readers.
Don’t get me wrong, he does make a couple of valuable points that, while not necessarily original, are lost in the public discourse, and he deserves credit for surfacing them. Our inability or unwillingness to combat “drowsy driving”, for instance — which doesn’t even get a fraction of the attention devoted to drunk driving, yet is arguably contributes just as much, if not more, to fatal car accidents — is a topic he rightly belabors, as are smaller but nevertheless important matters such as forcing teenagers to attend classes while their circadian clock yearns for sleep. These points can’t make up for everything else that is terrible about this book, but of course that doesn’t make them any less relevant.