Levi

A collection of 3 essays in a really small book. Civil Disobedience by Thoreau is a landmark essay and thoroughly rousing; essentially this is an abolitionist essay written in the period before the Civil War and demanded people to not merely vote with their conscience and be content to merely wait for the majority to agree with them at the ballot-box, but to instead take protestive action, to get themselves thrown in jail if necessary, to throw their bodies upon the machine that will not listen otherwise.

Action, action, action is called for. It's quite rousing and provocative and argues against the supposition that we should always meekly go along with “the law” of a nation, particularly when laws are unjust. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

The second essay, “The Religion of the Future” by Charles Eliot was entirely forgettable. It just reads as merely a list of what he personally wants to see in the future, not insightful as to reality, and most of the predictions have not turned out true at all. First he gives his credentials to impress us and then he makes a bunch of claims about what the religion of the future will be without giving any arguments, and seems to merely trust that we will believe them based on his credentials. Essentially he is making an argument by authority...and the value system of authority is one of the things he claims will no longer be present in the future...he seems to be unaware of the irony.

The third essay, “On Going To Church” by George Bernard Shaw was classic British satirical humor. It's the first time I've seen the unreliable narrator technique used in an essay. He is such a character. At the beginning of the essay you start to form the creeping suspicion that this guy is more interested in going to church for the architecture than for any actually religious reason. Halfway through that is confirmed in hilarious style. By the end of it you discover he's actually a really annoying tourist, going into churches and interrupting penitents and being rude and getting himself kicked out. It's very funny. He has a lot of opinions about ecclesiastical architecture.

Neal Stephenson is one of the few living authors that I actively follow. I saw that this new work was historical fiction, different from the science fiction domain that he normally sticks to, but I hardly cared. Neal Stephenson could write about anything—absolutely anything—and I would be fascinated. His master of setting and character and their intertwining is remarkable and he just has this uncanny way of making everything he writes about so enthralling.

So I dove into this book with luster and I was not disappointed. The main protagonist Aurora is an interesting character, growing up half American and half communist agitator. Her parents emigrate to the Soviet Union when she's 3 or 4, but then they divorce a few years later and she doesn't see her mother for many years. She grows up in grueling poverty surrounded by people who are fanatics for the cause of Leninism before her story takes her back to America to conduct clandestine activities with her father.

The novel as a whole doesn't start with her childhood, however. It actually starts with Aurora as a young woman coming back to Russia after many years, working among other comrades in brutal conditions. His descriptions of the workers hacking away at a wall of ice that's built up under the arm pit of this huge steel furnace is vivid and memorable. The brutal conditions are succinctly shown by them coming upon the body of a man who got caught out in the cold and whose body is frozen solid to the welding machine he was operating. When they try to free the body, it falls down into the furnace, which feels like a foreshadow of evil fates to come.

What comes next is the inevitable thing that all comrades must go through. Everyone has suspicion cast on them at some point; there is a great fear of spies and lots of political machinery is tied up in investigating everyone for being a potential mole or reactionary (read: western, anti-communist) spy.

But when Aurora's turn comes around to be interrogated, there are so many strange things about her peculiar story, that her interrogator is puzzled, and asks many questions. This gives the story a reason for Aurora to explain her life story up till that point, and is a framing story that starts off the novel in a compelling way. For a while the framing story is largely dropped, but towards the end it comes full circle and we get into some brutal scenes bordering on torture porn, albeit probably not unrealistic based on other stories I've heard of the era.

There's several impressive people in Aurora's life during her childhood in the USSR. Probably the most memorable is Veronica, the machine gunner in tall leather boots, with a commanding presence and brutal backstory. As a result, of the other comrades in their little community, Veronica has command of many unsafe situations that bewilder the other comrades. She's larger than life, impressive, and formidable, but her one soft spot is for Aurora. She is a counter-cultural example to Aurora at her most impressionable age of what it could look like to defy gender norms in this era.

An interesting theme that is pointed out a few times throughout the book is that in the 1930s and 40s, the USSR was probably the most progressive place in the world so far as challenging gender roles and letting women have any job they wished. The USSR provided more opportunities for women to break gender norms than America, in many ways. Many of the machine-gunners were woman, for instance. People argued that women were actually more adapt at this kind of warfare, likening it to running a sewing machine.

This early part of her story, during her childhood, is full of confusions and mind-warping ideas about communism, and I can't think of another example I've read that so acutely depicts what growing up in a radicalist type of environment would be like for a child. It's heartbreaking to see little Aurora confused as a girl by all the things denied her in Russia because they're “bourgeoise.” Playing “cowboys and indians” is bourgeoisie. Owning a comfortable chair is bourgeoisie. Having toys or nice clothing is probably bourgeoisie. Religion is bourgeoisie sentiment; traveling across the world to visit your dying mother is bourgeoisie sentiment.

And yet that is exactly what Aurora does when she is 18. She travels all the way to America, eventually meeting her mother in Chicago, but meeting a lot of her mother's anarchist people in the Northwest US first and working on a polo ranch there for a while. After her mother's death (which isn't really a spoiler; this is revealed early on in the novel), she teams up with her father again, joining a cell of communist agitators that are plotting to overthrow the American government in Washington DC for the sake of communist revolution.

My interest in this book doubled when George Patton shows up as our heroine's foil. General George Patton, as depicted by George C. Scott in the 1970 eponymous movie, is one of the more striking, vivid, memorable characters of all history. He was the best tank general the world has perhaps ever seen; historians argue that we may not have won against the Nazis without him.

Patton was as brilliant as he was controversial, enigmatic, romantic, politically incorrect, brash, and in a word: fascinating. One of his beliefs was that he was the reincarnation of Alexander the Great and many other great military leaders from history. His ego was boundless and he also epitomizes some of both the romantic and the toxic forms of masculinity, and yet–it would appear that in times of war, sometimes we need men just such as these in order for democracy to survive. I could write a whole essay about Patton; his story elucidates so much of the inherent conflict that liberal democracies must have with the strongmen that it must employ in order to survive. And unlike so many other strongmen, Patton is much more nuanced than being simply into his own selfish ends...but I must curb my enthusiasm and trim this tangent.

In this story, Patton is showing up earlier in his career before the days of WWII when he is elevated to a command second only to Eisenhower and God. This is pre-war, when he's just a young major, and this casts him in a different light than the movie Patton, showing his chivalrous, anachronistic side as he courts women and shows off in other ways. His role in this story is that he's onto the commies and he's going to root them out, and he provides an excellent foil to Aurora and her father's revolutionary schemes.

Set in pre-war America during the worst of the Depression, this book is an enthralling mixture of clandestine communist operations, scientific discoveries about cosmic rays, violent encounters with anti-communists, and the surprising connections the movement had with Chicago gangsters, post-Spanish War veterans, and–wait for it–polo.

Yes, polo is perhaps the most surprising aspect of the story, which explains the title “Polostan:” many works of historical fiction have been written about communism and leninism, but have you ever encountered one that details the movement's connection with cowboy anarchists in the Northwest United States and this group's affinity for polo?

On the face of it, nothing could be less communist than polo. Playing polo requires you to first, own a specialty breed of small, agile horse, second, train that horse to be okay with mallets swinging by their heads to whack balls around other horses cutting and jostling in close proximity, and thirdly, to invest considerable time and training to ride said horse and whack said mallets. A straightforward sport it is not. Bourgeoisie, much?

The people who played polo on the East Coast were usually high-ranking muckity-muck cavalry officers and, occasionally, their wives. Aurora gets herself associated with these people largely due to her polo expertise and helps them start a woman's club. This is viewed by her father as an act of infiltration and espionage, used to gain military insights useful to the communists as they plot their overthrow of the government in Washington, D.C.

But where did she get her polo expertise in the first place? The story covers this part of time as well, when Aurora travels from the USSR to America as an 18-yr-old in order to meet up with her mother, who is dying of cancer. Her mother is a part of the aforementioned cowboy anarchist's community, and we get to see a little of what that fascinating community is like in Montana and other Northwest states. It's really cool and I wish we spent more time there.

I'm not going to explore any more of how the plot develops because this book just hit the presses and I don't want to spoil anything. I will say that the ending was much more satisfying than I expected it to be. I'm also just impressed by how interesting he made this era, the scientific discoveries being made, and all manner of things that I previously knew nothing about.

This feels like one of those books that will stand the test of time and I will return to read again and again. I recommend it without reservation to anyone who wants to learn about a region of history you probably know little about, and enjoys well-crafted characters and plots.

Really, I don't know who shouldn't read this book, except perhaps people who insist on plots moving forward at blinding pace. I suppose the fastest plot it is not. But my interest never flagged for a second, because Stephenson is original, always fascinating, full of a plethora of interesting ideas and insights, and his characters are more real than life itself. I loved this book.

Reading this was like riding a roller coaster. More specifically, I'm thinking of the drop tower, where at first it only goes up, increasing my expectations with how well things are going, and then at some point it abruptly turns around and goes down, down, plummeting to the depths, crashing through the ground and continuing on all the way to China.

Ok, so I'm a little bit salty when a book lets me down.

My father was a philosopher. When he died two years ago, my most interesting task, by far, was taking on the hundreds of books I inherited from him. For a book junkie like me, it was a veritable pleasure.

Most of his books were on philosophy, and I accordingly sorted them out into the various branches of philosophy that he seemed to care for the most: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion, free will vs determinism (and sundry science books that, if you know what you're looking at, actually touch directly on that very philosophical question), and finally, business ethics. Of the final category, I trashed the lot.

There was one interesting book, though, which didn't fit into any of the other categories: “A Question of Values.”

It immediately snagged my attention for a couple reasons. First, it was an advanced reader copy. That's cool, I thought. I guess my dad somehow knew the right person or something to get this copy. I wonder if he was even solicited for input, although I doubt it—his philosophy career never got very far and ethics wasn't his main field of study.

But nevertheless, it looked like an interesting book. “A Question of Values. Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives.”That would be a fascinating topic. If someone could lay out for me a system that shows the different value systems and compare and contrast them and help me form a more coherent value system for myself, that would be really valuable.

If I was able to understand the book, that is. There's the rub. I've read enough philosophy books to know that most of them are ponderous, impenetrable, and tedious. If you haven't read scores of other prerequisite philosophical texts then you won't be able to understand the peculiar ways in which these philosophers use words.

I can't help but rant for a moment. Not only do philosophers like to make up their own words and make up new definitions of existing words, they're also the kind of egocentric full-of-it blowhards who use the most obscure words they can think of for no other purpose than to show off their vocabulary. I remember one philosophy book I read in an ethics class where he used words like “ubiquitous” and “quotidien” in ways where you could have easily used the word “commonplace” and lost nothing in meaning. The deep irony of using an uncommon word for the word “commonplace” was lost on this educated moron.

Anyways! Suffice it to say that knowing all that I know about philosophy literature and that ethics is one of the branches of philosophy, I was both intrigued by this book but reticent. I decided to crack it open and glance at the contents, ready to, at the first intimation of pretense and stupidity, consign it to the trash heap.

So I opened the book. The first thing I looked at was the table of contents. You can usually tell by the titles of the chapters whether we're going to quickly get into some esoteric sh** or not.

Part One: A Question of Values: An Introduction
1. The Initial Question
2. Sorting It Out: Six Ways That We Choose Values
Part Two: Six Basic Types of Value Systems
3. Value Systems Based on Authority
4. Value Systems Based on Logic
5. Value Systems Based on Sense Experience
6. Value Systems Based on Emotion
7. Value Systems Based on Intuition
8. Value Systems Based on “Science”
Part Three: Variations on a Theme
9. The Cross-Fertilization of Values
10. Four Examples: Karl Barth, Albert Einstein, Mohandas Ghandi, Golda Meir
11. Why Values Get So Complicated
Part Four: Using the Framework
12. A Moral Detective Story
13. Values in the Classroom
14. A Personal Note

I thought this looked like a very sensible layout, a logical progression I can easily follow that might guide me to the answers I seek.

I then began reading and noticed it was not the typical philosophical pretentious language. It's really accessible language and a useful topic compared to any other modern philosophy book I've ever read. At this point my expectations where sky-high. I thought this was going to be my favorite philosophy read of the last couple years.

But then some things got to irking me. First, notable absent is any definition of what values are.

Second, when he gets into value systems based on authority, there's much focus on Christianity, not enough in other religions, not any examples of authority used in any realm other than religion even though it is demonstrably used in all arenas of life.

The sections explaining logic and sense experience are tolerably good and I appreciated the reference to David Hume, who is foundational for understanding empiricism and whose school I currently fall into: the way we know anything that we know is based on experience, and nothing else.

Then we get to the chapter on the value of “emotion” and it turns out that what he means by this is “community.” First, I think this entirely ignores other ways that emotion is used in making values, second, I'm not sure I agree that valuing what your community thinks is purely emotional or tribal. It's actually quite logical and a good survival instinct, so I must say I think he completely missed the boat on having a meaningful examination of that one of the values.

Next is the value of intuition, which actually has some great examples (unlike the rest of the book's examples, more on that later). Excellent section. Then there's an explanation of the value of “science” and an exploration of how that is different from actual science, how the true scientific method combines several of the values but usually when people think they are making decisions based on “scientific thinking” it's only one or two parts of the scientific process. So that was worthwhile.

But now I need to talk about the biggest weakness of this book, and that is the case studies—if you can call them that—“examples” may be a better word for it. Overall there's a focus on America which, admittedly, he made it clear from the beginning that he would be focused on America, nevertheless, I would have enjoyed it tremendously more if it were more representative of the world as a whole. But second and more importantly, he consistently picks examples of the most unrelatable people that you can come up with, sometimes even people best described as insane.

How in the world we are supposed to define a meaningful value system based on the weirdest examples of human beings is beyond me. It's not very interesting to study crazy people if we're trying to come up with a value system that is actually one we would want to live by. It doesn't interest me in how insane people make decisions; I want to make them sanely. This bizarre pattern is repeated again and again and made it quite difficult to focus or see his points and continually sabotaged the whole thing, because without good examples, then what are we talking about?

And then there's the part of the book where he encourages the reader, in the vaguest way, to combine different value systems and gives some “examples” of doing this...there is essentially no meaningful framework of how one would do this given at all, and this is perhaps the weirdest part of the book. There needs to be actual takeaways at the end of a book like this, but sadly there are essentially none. Instead it ends on a whimper, delving into specific topics that might interest a narrow crowd at best.

So, I was let down. In the end, what should have been a fascinating and even useful philosophical treatise on the values by which people make decisions turned out to be neither helpful nor comprehensive, not overly logical (to my view at least), and...I wouldn't say a waste of time. Again, some of the chapters on the individual values were moderately useful. But suffice it to say, I will still be on the lookout for a book that can do this topic justice. I hope if someone ever finds one they'll recommend it to me.

I read the first two chapters of The Poppy War in one sitting, and was immediately intrigued. It has a strong start: our heroine is highly motivated to ace these exams as her only ticket to escape being married off to a fishmonger in a backwards town. Her need to not be married to the fishmonger is palpable, visceral, moving. It was impossible not to root for her.

Essentially, this book is the familiar Hero's Journey story, but in the trappings of a fantasy world that has been built not on a Medieval Western kind of setting, but rather a Chinese one.

I could tell that the author's background in historical studies of China has greatly informed their fantasy worldbuilding and I loved it. The fictional history of the world mirrors China's history of being constantly conquered and crapped on by other powers.

I think this highly palatable fantasy YA novel is a great way to convey that kind of history that would help all of us Westerners understand China so much better. One can sense references to the entire history of China from ancient times up through World War II as being condensed into this very simplified history, for one of the subplots of the book is essentially a history lesson. The history that leads up to the events of this story is of immense importance, and learning the sordid details underpinning the propagandized version of the country's official history as taught in schoolrooms is intriguing.

But the history lessons don't steal the show; on the contrary, this is still first and foremost an action story which appeals to the very tropes that are most familiar to us (such as coming from a farming community and going away to the big city to study at a university). I'm a sucker for the trope of a girl from a tiny village showing up at the big university and prevailing against all odds.

But there's a reason, after all, that such tropes are so often employed, and it's that they are narratively powerful. And I have no problems with enjoying a story–such as this one–which implements them with such nuance and power. I loved this book because it was so satisfying and yet original enough that I never got bored.

For instance, there's the nuance that she comes from a household that was an inn and had all of these opium addicts passing through. She escapes this backdrop to go on to the military university, but as she discovers who she is, there are passages about becoming as addicted to praise as opium addicts are to opium. These passages were particularly striking to me. I felt like she was reading my mail, like she understood me on the inside, and that was the moment when I realized this book was of greater depth than being merely fun.

And the book is fun. Our heroine accidentally unlocks powers that are dangerous, a trope I never get tired of when implemented well. There's this fight where she's about to explode in fire at someone, which feels like an analogy for an experience I've had many times.

You also have a bit of the “descent into madness” plot employed in this book. There's a really cool part about meditating for days without food until you start to hallucinate the gods...very cool idea.

Also, when the professor you start studying under lets you know that oh yeah, by the way, the last few students I had went insane or were expelled. (lol!)

I love her teacher Jiang. He's idiosyncratic, eccentric, sometimes even juvenile. I'm a sucker for the master who defies all expectations.

But (spoilers) I was really disappointed with him disappearing halfway through the book. Kind of lame after having the build-up to him being this awesome teacher. And ultimately I wish he had actually taught her a bit more before the story ended, but that's ok.

But at the same time it did seem that him not being there was indicative of the kind of story being told...this wasn't a story about a student who heeded her master's warnings...it's the kind of story about a student who's so besotted with revenge that she throws caution to the wind.

And then there's a huge twist to the direction of the story halfway through, and it jarred me, but I came accustomed to it. Essentially, the story becomes a hellscape as a war develops between their nation and a neighboring one, which gets the upper hand. Only after reading the book did I learn that the main plot of the book is based on the events of the Rape of Nanking, which was a horrific event in history where the Japanese decimated a great Chinese city during WWII. It was not fun to read about and one can't help but feel sad and a bit depressed at the atrocities, but after all, this is more realistic than most fantasy books with wars in them. This is something about history, about life itself to reconcile ourselves to: very, very bad atrocities happened. Are happening. Will happen. And we have to go on with living hopefully despite that knowledge, and not sweep it under the rug. I think many people will dislike the book for that sole reason, but as for me, I never fault a book for deviating from what makes a satisfying story if it's for the purpose of portraying uncomfortable real truths that need to be faced. I felt sad, but not disappointed; never that–for I don't read to escape, but to be elevated.

With that said, I did enjoy the rage- and fire-fueled revenge angle that it went down and that kind of fit the plot–with all the trauma that someone goes through with an event like the Rape of Nanking, how could one not go that direction? At least it's very understandable.

I'm looking forward to any other future books this author writes, as she seems to be very adept at weaving satisfying plot, historical backdrop, worldbuilding, nuance, and emotional depth/insight all into a dizzying cocktail. And this was just her debut novel. I look forward to reading the rest of this trilogy and to reading Yellowface and Babel, other novels she has written in the years since Poppy War.

One interesting side note to leave you with. There's a part that references trigrams and 64 gods; this is a reference to traditional Taoist concepts that go back to ancient China.

The most ancient text written in Chinese that we have is the I Ching, or Book of Changes. And basically this wisdom book is the foundation of Taoist thought and philosophy, and the foundation of ancient Chinese society. They used this wisdom book for divination: you ask a question, then generate a random number from 1-64, then look up that section in the book and see what it says and how it could apply to the question you asked.

Here's my review on the I Ching if you're interested:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3712978363

This was a really good book. It started with making the case for why elimonating hurry is a spiritual discipline because after all can you imagine Jesus ever hurrying? It makes the case that we should read the gospels in a new light, not just ethical or theological, but read them as a biography, read them through asking the question how can I adopt a lifestyle more like Jesus so I can get the results he got? And it unpacks the verse about the paradox of the light yoke to explain how Jesus actually intended for us to do that.

Then a lot of the book goes through the different ways in which the modern life is all about hurry and stress and business and lust and materialism. This part wasn't bad but it wasn't great either to be honest because of course I already know all that. For me it was preaching to the choir. Nonetheless there was some great facts in there.

The last part has a really awesome list of practical suggestions to put this into action. Loved it.

This book is changing how I'm living and it has spurred so many conversations. It's one of very few books that I would actually recommend to almost anyone.