I’ve read a few books in the past few months. It’s been awhile since I did a good book post, so why not today?
The first book I read was Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier, one of my favorite authors. This book is about what hold society together and what drives those “outliers” who refuse to play by the generally-acknowledged rules, ranging from petty thieves to the freedom fighters that fought for American independence. Obviously, that’s a wide gamut of views to cover, but Schneier does a very good job of it, categorizing motivations and talking about all the different ways that systems can fail.
If you are familiar with Schneier’s work, there won’t be anything too earth-shattering in here. Instead, it’s more of a formal collection of what he has expressed for more than a decade now: a rational, scientific, game-theory approach to terrorism and other risks that leaves out the emotion and political grandstanding that leads to things like the TSA and removing our shoes at the airport. It’s a very good read that summarizes his views well.
The next book I read, on the suggestion of my friend Sam, was The Long Emergency by James Kunstler. Some books make you feel uplifted after reading them, and some books make you feel so depressed that all you want to do is curl into a ball and die. This book falls into the latter category: it’s essentially a treatise on the coming (or already here) peak oil disaster and how humanity and civilization as we know it is truly, thoroughly, and unavoidably screwed. We’re done. It’s over man. He goes into great detail about what will happen to various parts of the country (the Southwest will return to being a barren wasteland, parts of the Northeast may eke out an Amish-like living), and also tells us why renewable energy and technological solutions to peak oil are, well, nothing more than snake oil.
I have to admit that I don’t share Kunstler’s pessimism, although frankly, if you accept the axiom that peak oil will happen soon if it hasn’t happened already, his arguments are pretty well-supported. I do think, or rather hope, that the current short-sightedness in this country, as well as the rest of the world, will be temporary when the effects of peak oil become even more pronounced. On the other hand, I spend eleven years in the legislature, and I have firsthand experience about how well our elected leaders actually approach reality and its problems. If we expect to continue our current standard of living as oil supplies dwindle, we’re going to need massive investments in nuclear (if only to tide us over in the short- to medium term), renewables, and closing the carbon loop: creating fossil fuels from CO2 in the atmosphere. Kunstler thinks we are too far gone to implement these solutions at this point. I hope we aren’t. If you share his negativity, or else if you just want to hear a polemicist that is quite unlike anything you will hear in the traditional media, he has a blog here (be warned, the title of the blog is NSFW, but it pretty much fits his worldview).
The book I read most recently, indeed finishing today, was Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan. As you may be able to guess, it is about the Paris Peace Conference that concluded World War I. It’s a very detailed look at how the Big Four (the United States, Britain, France, and to a lesser extent, Italy) shaped the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa as they bartered and traded the spoils of war and dictated terms to the losers. As we all know, the actions at this conference set the stage for the next, and more devastating, World War: sometimes the participants acted with sublime flippancy as they decided the fates of nations and nationalities. There was Wilson, the idealist with his Fourteen Points, Clemenceau, who only cared about keeping Germany down so that she would not be able to attack France yet again (clearly, twenty-odd years proved this to be a failure), and Lloyd George, worried about keeping Britain’s empire strong in the face of increasing nationalism and calls for independence and self-governance.
If you like history, this book is engrossing. Every country gets their chapter, from the Kurds in the Middle East that nobody wanted to protect, to Shantung in China that was given to the Japanese, to the ultimate disposal of the territories that made up the Central Powers. Flawed men (they were mostly men at that time), ignoring their own principles at times, decided the fate of the world. Or, in other words, the status quo.
I’m not sure what to read next. Perhaps continue reading Harry Potter? I’ve read the first three books so far. Perhaps it is time for something to lighten the mood after what I’ve read lately.