Category: Book Reviews

Americans do not know much about the history of Central Europe, this despite that fact that a majority of Americans have at least some ancestry in the Holy Roman Empire or the lands run by princes of the Empire.

Let me list them – Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Netherlands and even Luxembourg. You can include Spain and Portugal and their empires, since Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was also king of Spain. Pretty much everybody.

I would not recommend most people read this whole book. There is a lot of the one-thing-after-another type of history. But there are some good insights.

For example, the author contrasts the German concept of freedom with that of British (and by extension Americans). The Germans were more corporatism in that they held more to people having rights with their association. Modern progressives with their emphasize on identity and group rights would be at home here. This contrasts with the classical liberalism, that talks about individuals and mobility. The corporatist were not fond of free markets, but they did think a lot about social justice.

Another thing to recall is the multinational, multilingual and multi-ethic character of the Empire. We look back from the nation-state perspective and forget that for much of history the kind of nationalism we know today did not exist. The nobles had loyalty to their prince. It was maybe more like a modern business firm. A person, could – and did – change jobs. The peasants and townspeople were loyal to their own local communities.

The languages they spoke were also local. Linguistic boundaries were soft. As people wandered farther from home, it got harder to understand. Educated people often communicated in Latin. Nationalism is largely a creation of the last few centuries.

In some ways, we may be going back to the future with transnational organizations. The author compares the Empire to the EU. They are very different, but they share some thing in common.

Not feeling well. I have the end of a cold that has migrated to the lungs. Think I will soon be okay, however.  Have to go to work tomorrow at State Dept. Working on the Columbia River Treaty.  Not sure when or even if I will get paid. Life for WAE is uncertain these days.

Otherwise uneventful.

I wrote a quick note about a recently finished book. “Camelot’s End,” by Jon Ward
I voted in my first election in 1976 and was an enthusiastic Carter supporter. I changed my mind by 1980 and voted for Ronald Reagan. This book describes some of the events that changed my mind, and America’s. It both brings back memories and gives context I did not have at the time.
The 1970s were a not pleasant. We had a continuing energy crisis, inflation & stagnation at the same time (stagflation), our foreign policy was in turmoil and Americans were divided. It was like today in the last aspects, but today we have solved the energy crisis and the economy is robust, which makes it much less depressing. Carter took over at a hard time and things did not improve under his leadership. Presidents get too much credit or blame for things that happen on their watch, but processes that started under Carter helped strengthen the economic boom of the 1980s, such as starting deregulating transportation and airlines, the Staggers Act that resuscitated American freight rail and strong anti-inflation actions by the Fed. None of this much helped Carter at the time, however, and he sure had his share of boneheaded economic plans.

The author clearly implies that Kennedy’s challenge cost Carter the election. Not did it demand resources that Carter could have deployed in the general, but Kennedy also called attention to Carter’s shortcomings as a leader. Kennedy just looked better and with the name, the and the media behind him, Kennedy and many others thought he should replace Carter, who was seen as a kind of accidental president. There was certainly the snob appeal at work. Kennedy was rich and to the manor born, as much as anyone can be in America. Carter grew up poorer than machine almost anyone in America can these days. Although his father later became a successful peanut farmer, little Jimmy worked while Teddy played. This kind of hard scrabble rise did not impress Kennedys. Recall their open contempt for LBJ, or their dismissal of Nixon as “having no class.”

The book is not kind to either man. Kennedy is portrayed as a drunken lightweight. Carter is a man who thinks nothing is funny and is always sure he is right. According to the author, both improved after the 1980 defeat. The author speculates that Kennedy did not really want to be president but felt both pressures to do it and entitlement based on his family. After his defeat, he could apply himself to his Senate career. He remained a drunk and philander for years later, but it didn’t matter as much and, in the Senate, he became adept at passing legislation. Carter became perhaps the most active ex-president, working for a variety of causes, including almost eradicating Guinea worm. Carter was not well-liked by other presidents, including Democrats. He never quite overcame his self-righteousness and proclivity to interfere.

I learned a lot that I just didn’t know about Carter and some of what I didn’t know about Kennedy, although his life was better known. I felt some sympathy for Teddy. He was not groomed for the top-job and likely would have been happier farther from the spotlight. He was pushed beyond his abilities, but on the plus side, he responded reasonably well in later life. Carter was a drive man his entire life. He learned to hide his ruthless ambition behind a smile. His flaw, the one that caught up with him in the presidency, was his need to be in complete control.

The book was very entertaining, especially the first half. I listened to the audiobook while driving and it kept my attention.

I voted in my first election in 1976 and was an enthusiastic Carter supporter. I changed my mind by 1980 and voted for Ronald Reagan. This book describes some of the events that changed my mind, and America’s. It both brings back memories and gives context I did not have at the time.

Americans are exceptionally generous and more likely that people in most other places to volunteer. This is something foreigners noticed since the time of Alexis de Tocqueville. It is the special ingredient that allows us to do with less government. The civil society in the USA often takes on tasks left to government elsewhere.

I just finished The Givers: Money, Power & Philanthropy in the New Gilded Age. It was a very thought-provoking book, maybe because I thought a lot about the subject recently as part of my gentleman of leisure job description but also for my whole FS career. Discussion of volunteerism was part of my lecture repertoire. We sponsored speakers and visitor tours on the subject.

The author David Callahan clearly does not share my general cultural/political outlook, but his approach is complete, reasoned and reasonably balanced. I highly recommend it. When reading such a well-reasoned approach that came to different conclusions, I wondered about some of the causes.

All good societies have three components
Let me first state an assumption that I believe, and I think the author would too. All good societies are based on interaction among government, free market enterprise and a strong civil society. The weight of each varies over time and among countries, but I cannot think of a single successful society w/o a reasonably efficient government, a robust market and a vibrant civil society.

One of his themes is that government is underfunded and that many things now done by philanthropy should be done by government. His justification is that government is democratically elected and so represents the will of the people. So far, so good. But I think that he misses two points. First is the problem of agency and second is definition of will of the people.

Problem of agency
The problem of agency is straightforward. The people do not directly run government. They elect politicians who have come through a process that most people do not understand. These politicians do not run the government either. They create systems that appoint leaders of the parts of the government. These leaders also do not run the government. They work with professional employees. All of this is influenced by particular interests and each of the parts (officials, appointees, employees) has their own preferences and interests that may not coincide with those who elected them.

Who are “the people?”
The issue of “will of the people” is a bit more nuanced. We learn in grade school, at least I did, to view the will of the people in strictly political terms. But it is much more than that. A good government gives the people scope to express their will in non-political ways too. There is no such thing at THE people. There is a ever changing mosaic of individuals, whose preferences (will) is never set.

The problem with politically expressed will of the people is that it is usually binary. Somebody wins, and somebody must lose. A plurality (not necessarily even a majority) can vote its will leaving others with nothing. The others left out may be a large number, maybe even a majority. The will of the people expressed in non-political ways can be much more diverse. If I like Coke but you like Pepsi, we can both be accommodated, and we can include the Doctor Pepper drinkers and even those who favor Seven-Up. Nobody needs lose.

Diverse & pluralistic better than one size fits all
Returning to the book’s idea, the author worries that unelected philanthropists are taking the initiative from elected officials. This troubles the author. It does not trouble me. In fact, I think it is likely good for democracy, since it is more diverse and more pluralistic. I share the concern that a few very rich guys can unduly influence government policy, but that circles around to the problem of government.

Democracy more than elections
There is a whole cultural and political ecosystem in any good democracy. A just democracy requires much more than elections. Our Constitution wisely limited the scope of democracy by ensuring both majority rule and minority rights, separation of powers, and then further dispersing power into state and local jurisdictions.  Much of this was not and was not meant to be democratic.  They were designed as stabilizers. The Founders studied history and found that democracies tended to be very short lived, debouching into chaos of tyranny due to instability. They did not specifically mention civil society, but they clearly just assumed its presence and protected it by limiting the scope of government.

Skin in the game
So, let’s think about the scope of philanthropy. When people make decisions individually or in voluntary groups, they are expressing the will of the people as relates to the things they care enough about to invest their own time and money. These decisions are made collectively but decentralized and distributed. People can have a plurality of preferences. They need not choose the one and fight over which one that will be, as would be with collective political decisions. Most decisions should be left out of the political arena, not in spite of democracy but for the sake of a just democracy.

Patrons have long supported the arts
The author worries about the arts and that funding for the arts will be the scope of private patrons. I immediately thought about the history of arts and literature. Art was usually done by private patrons. But almost before I could make my mental counter argument, the author addressed it. He talked about the Medici and the great art of the renaissance. I respect that he addressed it, but I remained unconvinced of the problem. I would go back to the problem of agency.

If government is the primary patron of the arts, decisions are not made by the people by rather by bureaucrats. I don’t have a problem with most art funding coming from private donors. Leonardo, Michelangelo & Mozart might have preferred to get government grants, but they did great work w/o them.

I know artists tend to bridle when I say this, but the artist is not the only one who makes the art or should decide what to make.  A good editor can make a great author and a discerning patron can improve art.  And the tension between patron and artist may be useful.  We have documented evident of Michelangelo’s conflicts with various patrons. He did not produce what he wanted to do w/o them. Maybe it was not as good, but maybe better.  An artist who just satisfies himself with his own expression may be speaking only to himself.

His last big concern was “accountability.” Big donors are accountable to nobody. I thought about what it means to be accountable. Maybe accountability is not a great thing. Accountability implies that someone judges and may substitute his judgement for ours. It also implies that we know “the good.” Accountably is great for accountants and most places where procedures are clear, and results agreed. In a dynamic and creative environment, the innovators cannot be accountable based on the former criteria or on the judgement of the established experts.

Donors are accountable to the dynamics of the system and to the marketplace of ideas. They need not and should not be accountable to any “authority”, except in the sense of obeying general laws.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I listened to the audiobook as I drove down to the farms and back and as I walked around with my I-pod. I found the author very thoughtful and though provoking, as I wrote above. I have not included all, or even most of what he said. Buy the book. It is worth it.

It is time for moderates to take back America from the hysterics and the screamers. We should judge policies by their usefulness, not by who advocates for them. I have seen studies showing that the same policies will be judged good or bad by partisans depending on their purported provenance. How about we just mix and match so that it gets hard to tell who had the “original” idea.
The good news is the raging moderates have been working on ideas on how to address some of the intractable problems of poverty and maybe more important the challenge of human dignity and I heard about three new books about work, money and human dignity.
The first speaker was Isabel Sawhill discussing her book “The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation” (Yale University Press, 2018). I heard her earlier at Brookings. She started the same way by saying that she was shocked by the Trump victory and wanted to know why, so she got out of Washington to try to find out. He book is about the working class/poorer workers, which she defines as people w/o a college degree and earning less than the median income. These folks make up 38% of the workforce. Only about half of them are white, so we really cannot refer to them as the white working class.
Sawhill sees the need to combine what she calls “red state” values with “blue state” policies. The red state value she thinks is necessary is the commitment to hard work and personal responsibility. I understand that some liberals might object to this being called a red state value. Sawhill is herself a liberal. Liberals indeed believe in these things too, but often fear the touting them would lead to “blaming the victims.” This deprives the forgotten Americans of their agency.
Focus groups that Sawhill organized focus groups and found that the forgotten Americans feel under appreciated. They worked hard, often served our country and showed loyalty to their jobs but found little reciprocity. They are cynical about government, especially the federal government.
The “blue state” policy Sawhill advocates is a type of income support through the tax system. The people she talked to were not worried about getting jobs. The economy is working very well now to provide jobs to all who want them. But they are worried about not making enough money. Sawhill wants to boost take home pay by giving a tax credit to offset the payroll tax for the lowest third of workers. She wants to pay for this by upping the inheritance tax. If this is not possible politically, she would go with a carbon tax or VAT tax, anything that does not tax work, the way a payroll tax does.
Sawhill also advocates universal national service. This could be military service or other sorts of public service. The purpose is to mix the population and give young people some time to “find themselves.” I think this would be a good thing, especially for boys. Many kids are not mature enough to go to college when they are 18 and could make bad choices about careers. Better give them a “gap year”. The draft in the 1950s worked this way and of course so did the general service in World War II. She adds a permutation in that families could be encouraged to host a kid, much like we do with exchange students. There is much more to prosperity than just having money.
Oren Cass who wrote “The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America” (Encounter Books, 2018) emphasized the social and spiritual value of work. Work matters for a lot more than just money. In fact, giving people money w/o them doing something to earn it is corrupting to them and society.
He said that the idea that consumption is the key part of the equation is backward. In fact, production, making a good or providing a service is the more important part. He made a kind of radical statement that economic growth is more an emergent phenomenon that comes from good social and cultural conditions. He understands that this is a hard sell for policymakers, but says that employment is good and meaningful jobs, those that let people maintain their dignity, is more important than faster economic growth. Making is often better than having.

Last was “The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward” by Stanley Litow (Wiley, 2018). He went through a useful history or what we would call progressivism, except that he was mostly talking about private enterprise. Macy’s pioneered health insurance for employees, for example, and American Express established a pension system in 1875. They did these things w/o the pressure of government action or the force of unions. Of course, he also talked about the nasty aspects of private enterprise. But the point he was making is that it was interactions between government, business and society that created and distributed wealth.
The firms that gave these benefits did not do this from a sense of charity, but rather a combination of what we would today call corporate social responsibility or enlightened self-interest. It helped the get and keep the best employees.
Anyway, I have the book “The Forgotten Americans”. Not sure if I will buy the others. I have literally a stack of books that I have been trying to push through.
The idea of the dignity of work and the new economy is a special interest of mine lately. I thought a lot about this – and still do – as a gentleman of leisure. In some ways I am part of the “gig economy” in that I work for State Department sometimes. In other ways, I am part of the non-profit, since I am on two non-profit boards. In part I am in the giving sector, since I contribute to non-profits. In part I am self-employed, since I run my forestry enterprise, but on bolstering all of this is a guaranteed base income, which is the key to security. I think this will be more like people in the future. We will need to find our own way and create our own lives. This is very exciting but also scary. I was, and sometimes still am, afraid that I would default into sleeping late and just watching bad TV. But it took me decades to develop the skills to be my own boss.
Hard to work for a tyrant like that.

A few book notes, before the memory fades.
I notice that my books seem to cluster, i.e. there is overlap and synergy among them. No doubt some comes from my own interest and choices, but I think some of this is an artifact of memory. One book makes something salient and then I more easily see it in others, maybe even see what is not there.
Well, since this is a journey in my mind, don’t have to resolve this. Used to be a problem in graduate school, since I would know stuff but not be able to tease out the sources, but now it is just all mine, so if you quote me on it you are working my memory and need to check the original if you want the author’s.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

It started off very strong but then petered out. The first theme was the government requires lots of expertise and that civil servants are generally hard-working people with significant knowledge & commitment is true, IMO. I am both biased and informed by my own background on this. From there, however, he extrapolates too far about government’s role. IMO, government plays a role that only it can play in creating conditions for prosperity but cannot not itself create prosperity. There is big nuance here that I think he did not property address.

A good example of an important government role is in research. He mentions ARPA-E and DARPA, and all the things they gave us, like the Internet and fracking. This is correct but not complete. It is undoubtedly true w/o DARPA there would be no Internet, but it is also true that w/o American private firms and civil society the seed of Internet would have been sterile. Anyway, worth reading the book.

“Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain
This is a great book but a little eclectic. Her main idea is that we have become too in love with extroverts, being out there, groups activities and “brainstorming,” and that we need more introspection and contemplation. I agree.

I also agree with her that the popular idea of introvert is pejorative (you have to come out of your shell) and that being an introvert is not something that needs to be cured and it does not mean that you are not engaged in the word. I come of as introvert of the Myers-Briggs (INTP for those who know the test), but I love public speaking, for example. I just also like to be alone sometimes.

The eclectic part comes from her discussions of the character ethic, systems theories and various sciences. All of this interesting and she probably read many of the same books I did, since I recognize the ideas, but I think it was a little off topic.

“How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life” by Scott Scott Adams

This is the book I would write if I was writing an advice book. I felt a real kindred spirit and attitude. At least that is how I see myself when I am flattering myself – practical, optimistic insouciant, adaptive, “lucky” and a seeker of patterns.

Lucky, which I put in quotes above, is how I would fit it together. You don’t have to be smart if you are lucky, but luck is distributed randomly. Some people get more good breaks than others, but a wise strategy is not to count on that, but rather position yourself so that good luck can “find” you. And when something happens, you have to be ready to move. You can make bad luck into good or the reverse by how you react and adapt.

This leads to the need to look for patterns, think in systems. There is a system to everything. If you can find the key factors and use them, you will be “lucky” more often.
You need to be insouciant and optimistic, since you will fail a lot on your way to success. If you let that stop you, you will not get very far. He did not quote the USMC, but I think it fits here “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.”

He has an interesting formulation, which I agree but did not think of myself. Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners. Look to the process and you can be adaptive. In fact goals and systems will often overlap, but the system is more flexible. At this part I thought of the Stephen Covey habit, “Start with the end in mind.”

One of the collateral joys of my time in São Paulo was walking around the city.   It was a long walk from my hotel to the consulate, around an hour and fifteen minutes each way.  It had “segments” and I kind of thought of it each day with the journey motif, and I will remember it fondly.  I will also remember the association of various features of the walk with particular facts and thought, since I usually listened to audio books.  There as a lot of time walking and I listen at 2x speed, so I got through a few books.  The device has a mechanism that cuts the spaces between the words, so it is not just sped up and made difficult to understand.

Before I forget too much, I thought it might be a good idea to get down a few ideas from books. I am not trying to do book reviews here, but rather a couple of memorable ideas from each.

Let me start with Guardians of the Grail: A Life of Diplomacy on the Edge .   I did write a short review that I posted on Amazon.  My old colleague Chris Datta wrote this book about his experiences in Africa. Look at the Amazon review.  Suffice to say here that it is an exciting book, narrated by the author.

The book that gave me the most food for thought was Who We Are and How We Got Here ,a discussion of recent developments in tracing human movements and interactions around the world through the study of DNA.  Some of the new evidence comports well with earlier historical predilections; most do not.

ALL ideas of race and nationality are silly in the context of deep time or even more than a few generations.  This is the main take-away for me.  The races, and ethnic groups of the past are no longer with us.  They were ephemeral mixes.  We like to trace our ancestry to people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, but we are mistaken to do so.
The example that I liked to think of is comparing cake, to bread to beer.  All these things share major ingredients, but they are put together in different ways producing different products.  And they are reconstituted with each creation.  The beer could not “trace its ancestry” to beers of a century ago with any more justification than could the cake or the bread.  All of them are merely the current manifestation of the ingredients.

Brought back to the DNA, ALL history is the common heritage of humanity.  We can take credit and must learn from the mistakes of any people anywhere.  Reading the book into deep history, I looked in vain for “my people” as distinct from others.  Rather I learned that “my people” include the ancestors of Europeans, Africans, Native Americans, Asian, well – everybody.  So “my” people built the great cathedrals of Europe, the pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, the Great Wall of China and the walls of Zimbabwe.  Unfortunately, they also rode with Genghis Khan, sacked Rome, destroyed the library at Alexandria and engaged in endemic war against neighbors.  “My” people were on both sides of all the conflicts. They were the conquerors and the conquered, the builders and the busters, the scholars and the burners of books.  History belongs to everyone living today and we can all learn.

I also listened to She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity  along a similar theme.  It was interesting but much more personalized.  I was less enamored, but recognize that I likely would have appreciated it more had I not been listening so close to the, IMO, much more masterful work on similar subjects.

Along similar lines is  The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life .  This was a probably a great book, but I was ready to listen to a different sort after “Who we are”.   The main take-away for me was that the “tree of life” metaphor is seriously flawed the fact that we have a tree in mind when thinking of genetics leads us to faulty understanding.  The title is well chosen. The tree of life is not a tree at all, not even a bush.  It is more like a glob, with ostensible branches going both up, down, all around.

What this book shares with “Who We Are”, or at least the thought that both provoked in me, was to see the great commonality in all things.  Just as races and ethnic groups are just ephemeral combination and recombination of common material, as permanent as tears in the rain.  The same goes for whole species.  Impermanence is the rule, even as we look for permanence in theory.

The new idea is that species boundaries are very fluid.  MOST of what makes up our bodies results from colonization from something very different.  We are more like federations than a clear species. There ae implications here for biotechnology, evolution and just how we understand life.

Many “primitive” organisms common swap characteristics. It is one the traits that allows them to adapt so rapidly and calls into question about what “belongs” to each species.
The President Is Missing was written by former president Bill Clinton.  It is a kind of political thriller. The hero is the president Bill Clinton might have imagined he would have been.  I bought it because I was looking for some insights that I thought a real president might add to a book of fiction.  There were none. It is a decent book. Like a few Clinton speeches, it goes on a bit too long.  I would recommend the book, but maybe listen at 2x speed as I did.
Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America describes exactly the kinds of journeys I would like to make myself.  It is entertaining and generally optimistic about the virtue & challenges of ordinary American people.  It is mostly a series of vignettes. You could start or stop at almost any point in the book and not notice the difference.  That was the strength and the weakness of the book.  James Fallows usually writes articles and has done that here too in his book.

A great narrative of progress was The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World .  I have read other books by Simon Winchester.  What I most enjoy about his books is his facility with beautiful language, but this is also a really good story.

I never finished my history PhD, and never even started a dissertation, but I did think about a subject. I was interested in a big history topic – why did the Greeks or Romans not have an industrial revolution?  Since those long-ago college days, I have come across many ideas.  I used to think that the Greeks and Romans had all the technologies needed, but I was wrong.  They lacked intellectual technologies.  Invented within only the last 500 years were intellectual technologies like calculus, statistics, various sorts of engineering, actual scientific methods, among other things like functions (mostly) free markets. To this list I must now add the concept and ability to apply precision, w/o which true mass production is not possible.   Thanks to this book, I have added to my list of preconditions for modern life.
Ironically, my younger and more ignorant self could have written that dissertation that is now beyond me because I learned too much.

Speaking of being ignorant, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself  covers lots of the heuristics and cognitive shortcuts that we all use, allow us not to think things through and sometimes lead us astray.  There was little in the book that I had not heard before, but that is because I have been studying persuasion and bounded decision making for many years.  Even with that, it was useful and interesting for me to hear it again.  I understand that I am not as smart as I like to think, and I need to hear these things again lest I forget.  I recommend it generally.

A similar repackaging of good ideas is Influencer: The Power to Change Anything . There was nothing there that I did not know, but it is good to hear it again and keep it in mind when you are working in businesses like I used to (sometimes still) do.

Energy: A Human History is not the kind of book you should consume as an audio book.  It is well-written and very informative, but it is the kind of book you should probably read and maybe underline some parts.  It is maybe also better as a companion to a course on energy history, or maybe just history of industrialization.  I liked some of the ways the author uses language. It is a bit archaic, but elegant.  For example, he uses phrases like “… is prodigal of energy.”

Factfulness – A really great book from so many angles.

It is full of good news, or at least better news than most of us think. We have a bias toward thinking bad news is more common and we underestimate progress. A few generations ago, even the richest countries were poorer than the poorest countries are today. Violence is dropping. More girls are in school. Most people are vaccinated against deadly diseases. The list goes on.

Throughout the book, the author gives mini-tests multiple choice. He has been giving these tests at his talks, often to high-level audiences. There are usually three choices. Random chance would mean that 33% would get the answers right. But real performance is usually well below that and always with a negative bias.

Rosling identifies a couple reasons for the negative bias. Journalists report on problems. News consumers start to think the problems are normal. And activists want to scare people or at least to move them to action, so they emphasize dangers and urgency.
I recommend this book very highly.

Han Rosling was a very reasonable man and we need to be more reasonable. Life is better than we think most of the time and we can make more progress if we know to build on it.