Welcome to our second reading list of 2024! We’re well into winter, suitably annoyed, and ready to sit down with a good book.
I think you’ll find this month’s reading list to be a great cross-section of politics and history. Enjoy!
Emily A. Austin – Living for Pleasure
Austin is a philosophy professor at Wake Forest who delivers a practical guide to living life as an Epicurean philosopher.
As readers might imagine, I maintain a healthy skepticism toward ‘pop philosophy’. But Austin does it about as well as one can. She balances clear discussion of philosophical ideas with more practical tips for everyday life. It no doubt helps her project that Epicurus and the Epicureans sought to do the same!
Austin covers an impressive range of topics in such a brief book. She covers hedonistic philosophy, Epicurean tranquility, friendship, the world of work, dinner parties, science and religion, and even navigating pandemics.
It’s an impressive list. And the Epicurean ties it together by providing us with ways to avoid mental angush and anxiety. I’d recommend.
Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon – Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850
I featured a book by Haldon last month. Here, Haldon and Brubaker review Byzantine history during the iconoclast era. Iconoclasm arose in part as a response to the crises of the 7th century. How could the Byzantines explain their apparent loss of God’s favor?
The book clocks it at 800 pages to cover just over a century, allowing Brubaker and Haldon to explore that history to its fullest. According to the authors, prior historians overstated the iconoclast era as a fervent religious movement and quick transformer of imperial norms and institutions. They stress, instead, continuity.
They interpret iconoclasm as a movement centered on the person of the emperor and his navigation of the difficulties of 8th century politics and society. Iconoclasm allowed the emperor to centralize authority, consolidating his authority over the Byzantine rump state and creating new levers of power that would gel into the theme system by the early 9th century.
It all arose from the apocalyptic environment of the 7th century, which some (including myself) would argue ended the Roman Empire. For Brubaker and Haldon, iconoclasm was a key component of the Byzantine navigation of the transition from the empire of late antiquity to the medieval empire.
It’s a well argued and informative book. I did take issue with some of their interpretations of evidence, particularly their insistence that the themes began in the 9th century. Sure, we’re well past the days where we could attribute the themes to Heraclius in the 7th century. But I do think something worth calling ‘themes’ probably existed by the 8th century. That said, this book teaches a lot about Byzantine history during a time with relatively few reliable sources.
Paul Buhle – Marxism in the United States
Buhle wrote this history of U.S. Marxism in 1987, but he updated it most recently in 2013. He tells a history stretching from German-American immigrants of the 19th century to the New Left movements of the 1960s. He traces Marxism as it waxes and wanes, adapting itself well or poorly to the times.
Considering the ambitiousness of this project, Buhle reaches impressive depth. He ties it together by noting the repeated failure of U.S. Marxism to adapt effectively to social and cultural circumstances. German immigrants read and discussed theory, but failed to build alliances with the native born. Leninists and Stalinists remained too rigid and anti-democratic for the popular movements of their day. And the New Left came off as impatient, inexperienced, and out of touch with working people.
However, Buhle tells the good as well as the bad. He points to the Eugene Debs era of the Socialist Party of America as one in which the left synthesized Marxism with U.S. traditions.
In the end, Buhle thinks Marxism stands out as a useful tool for explaining the broad social forces of the 19th through early 21st centuries. But he thinks, quite rightly in my view, that activist groups remain stuck in ineffective utopianism. Like many others, however, Buhle failed to see the developments that happened right after his 2013 edition – namely the Bernie Sanders campaign and the rebuilding of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Most of us failed to see that, though.
Martin Cohen – Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies
Cohen adds another entry to the ‘For Dummies…’ series, and this one fits into the general type. He gives a brief overview of critical thinking – what it is, how to do it – for people new to the field or its practice (e.g., reading historical or scientific texts with a skeptical eye, making speeches, et al.).
With these constraints in mind, the book works well enough. Cohen introduces the reader to argumentation, rhetoric, critical reading and writing, and so on. He does it in a way that allows the reader to begin from any point in the book. And he packs in many useful tips for a book of its size.
However, I have to emphasize that this is strictly a book for beginners. It’s not a contribution to the scholarly study of critical thinking. Nor does it align to the scholarly literature particularly well. And so, I think it’s fine for beginners to use this text for a basic orientation. But readers looking for more information about critical thinking should probably consult an introductory college textbook.
George Orwell – 1984/Sandra Newman – Julia
Sandra Newman recently published a rewritten version of Orwell’s 1984. Her story focuses on Julia, the love interest of the main character in the original. So, I read Orwell and Newman together!
Most readers probably encountered 1984 at some point. Certainly I have. But I enjoyed revisiting it. Oceania’s exaggerated propaganda really strikes the readers on the second (or nth) time around. The first page was so silly that I had to re-read it several times. On the whole, I still think the book raises enough issues about totalitarianism, class, and language to make it worthwhile.
And then we have Newman. She tells a story in the same fictional universe during the same time period. But she tells it from the perspective of a young woman and her life in a totalitarian regime.
I don’t want to dish any major spoilers. But I’ll say that Newman deeply enriches Orwell’s story and fictional universe. She does so using materials and ideas that Orwell couldn’t access at the time of his writing. For instance, she incorporates insights from regimes such as those in China, North Korea, and Cambodia that simply didn’t exist when Orwell was writing.
I’d recommend reading Newman. But check in with Orwell first. The books are best read together.
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