David Sogge (Author of Give And Take)

David Sogge rated a book liked it Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption by Rafia Zakaria	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Sep 27, 2026 12:06PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Sogge rated a book really liked it Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This book is enlightening. Its spotlight on cotton illuminates a larger story of the world’s economy over the past five centuries. It tells how, in many settings, brute force and political power captured land and labour in the service of capital. The ...more
Sep 27, 2026 12:04PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Sogge rated a book liked it Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story by Pascal Bianchini	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In African historical fiction, leftist revolutionaries -- activists, guerrillas and militant intellectuals – are abundant. They range from railway workers of Ousmane Sembène to anti-colonial insurgents of Pepetela to radicalised teachers of Ngũgĩ wa ...more
Sep 27, 2026 01:17AM · like · see review
David Sogge rated a book liked it What is Ancient History? (What is History?) by Walter Scheidel	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Written chiefly for academic historians, this book explains why ‘classics’ , that is, Greek-Roman history and culture, should be de-throned as idealised models against which others are supposed to be understood and evaluated. It shows why there are n ...more
Sep 23, 2026 07:53AM · 1 like · like · see review
David Sogge rated a book it was ok A Life Of Walter Scott: The Laird of Abbotsford by A.N. Wilson (5-Sep-2002) Paperback by A.N. Wilson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Plucked from a streetcorner bookswap shelf, this book would, I hoped, introduce me adequately to the originator of modern historical fiction. But alas, it didn’t meet those hopes. Its shortcomings begin with the misleading title. It is not a “Life of ...more
Sep 18, 2026 01:49AM · like · see review
David Sogge rated a book it was amazing Cousin Pons by Honoré de Balzac	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Deploying a cast of characters drawn from the upper bourgeoisie, the proletariat, petty-bourgeois strata of lawyers, physicians and odd-jobbing cultural workers -- notably Cousin Pons and his bosom pal Schmucke -- Balzac exposes and mocks the worst o ...more
Sep 17, 2026 01:21AM · 1 like · like · see review
David Sogge wants to read The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket by Thomas Frank	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Aug 27, 2026 12:55AM · like
David Sogge rated a book liked it Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline (Politics, History, and Culture) by George Steinmetz	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Led on by its title, sub-title and titles of opening chapters, I’d bought this hefty collection in hopes of getting deeply immersed in the politics of sociology and its uses in managing and interpreting imperialism. But I now feel misled. Most chapte ...more
Aug 20, 2026 05:07AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Sociology and Empire by George Steinmetz. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Sociology and Empire by George Steinmetz <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Sogge rated a book it was ok The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A self-satirizing yet self-indulgent portrait of a successful reactionary, pro-imperial English novelist who, under the influence of opiates and alcohol, hears persecutory voices, about which the British writer Philip Toynbee wrote, in a 1957 review: ...more
Aug 10, 2026 01:22AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Sogge rated a book liked it The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona A. Hathaway	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In Paris on 27 August 1928, representatives of 15 states signed a treaty, the 'Peace Pact' committing their countries to renounce the use of war. For this book's authors, that commitment means that world-historical time should be partitioned in two e ...more
Aug 09, 2026 01:08AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

David Sogge rated a book liked it

Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption
by Rafia Zakaria

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Empire of Cotton: A Global History
by Sven Beckert

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This book is enlightening. Its spotlight on cotton illuminates a larger story of the world’s economy over the past five centuries. It tells how, in many settings, brute force and political power captured land and labour in the service of capital. The ...more

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Revolutionary Movements in Africa by Pascal Bianchini

Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story
by Pascal Bianchini

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In African historical fiction, leftist revolutionaries -- activists, guerrillas and militant intellectuals – are abundant. They range from railway workers of Ousmane Sembène to anti-colonial insurgents of Pepetela to radicalised teachers of Ngũgĩ wa ...more

David Sogge rated a book liked it

What is Ancient History? by Walter Scheidel

What is Ancient History? (What is History?)
by Walter Scheidel

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Written chiefly for academic historians, this book explains why ‘classics’ , that is, Greek-Roman history and culture, should be de-throned as idealised models against which others are supposed to be understood and evaluated.

It shows why there are n ...more

David Sogge rated a book it was ok

A Life Of Walter Scott: The Laird of Abbotsford by A.N. Wilson (5-Sep-2002) Paperback
by A.N. Wilson

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Plucked from a streetcorner bookswap shelf, this book would, I hoped, introduce me adequately to the originator of modern historical fiction. But alas, it didn’t meet those hopes.

Its shortcomings begin with the misleading title. It is not a “Life of ...more

David Sogge rated a book it was amazing

Cousin Pons
by Honoré de Balzac

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Deploying a cast of characters drawn from the upper bourgeoisie, the proletariat, petty-bourgeois strata of lawyers, physicians and odd-jobbing cultural workers -- notably Cousin Pons and his bosom pal Schmucke -- Balzac exposes and mocks the worst o ...more

David Sogge wants to read

The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket
by Thomas Frank

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David Sogge rated a book liked it

Sociology and Empire by George Steinmetz

Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline (Politics, History, and Culture)
by George Steinmetz

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Led on by its title, sub-title and titles of opening chapters, I’d bought this hefty collection in hopes of getting deeply immersed in the politics of sociology and its uses in managing and interpreting imperialism. But I now feel misled. Most chapte ...more

David Sogge rated a book it was ok

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
by Evelyn Waugh

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A self-satirizing yet self-indulgent portrait of a successful reactionary, pro-imperial English novelist who, under the influence of opiates and alcohol, hears persecutory voices, about which the British writer Philip Toynbee wrote, in a 1957 review: ...more

David Sogge rated a book liked it

The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway

The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World
by Oona A. Hathaway

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In Paris on 27 August 1928, representatives of 15 states signed a treaty, the 'Peace Pact' committing their countries to renounce the use of war. For this book's authors, that commitment means that world-historical time should be partitioned in two e In Paris on 27 August 1928, representatives of 15 states signed a treaty, the 'Peace Pact' committing their countries to renounce the use of war. For this book's authors, that commitment means that world-historical time should be partitioned in two epochs: that before the Pact (when “Might made Right”) and that after the Pact (when peace under international law should prevail). Such a monumental law, formulated by a small number of Great Men, has an almost biblical ring to it. But the authors prefer a more sensational, indeed apocalyptical analogy: “the outlawry of war fundamentally altered the balance of power in the world,” just as “an environmental disaster that wipes out all the predators” (p. 341). That is, the 1928 Peace Pact is analogous to the crash of that big asteroid 66 million years ago, with massive extinction of dinosaurs as a result. Sound a bit exaggerated? It did to me.

Unfortunately for the authors’ arguments, and more importantly for millions on the planet, the Peace Pact failed bring peace or to wipe out the predators. Indeed many are still at large, today far more lethally armed than in the 1920s and with fewer qualms about igniting wars between and within states. Last year (2025) saw 65 armed conflicts affecting 35 countries – a quantity not seen since 1946. Evidently, few have any respect for the Peace Pact -- if they have even heard of it. In terms of formal international law, those war-makers are in jeopardy, for they are outlaws. Yet nobody gives a damn. How seriously, then, can we then take the authors’ thesis that the 1928 Pact has made a serious difference?

The book shows problems of method. If historically complex things like armed conflict are explained by single causes, then the very method of explanation is almost certainly incomplete if not wholly fallacious. At least that is what I was taught. Yet the authors’ insistence on the Peace Pact as fundamental and decisive in reducing the risk of war looks suspiciously mono-causal, a sign of weak methods. Could not the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the spectre of mutually assured destruction serve better to explain impediments to war? Or other international accords, also unmentioned in the book, such as the the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, as managed by the OSCE, which has helped keep the peace in Europe and beyond? In any event, an analysis taking multiple factors into account would have been much more convincing.

Then there’s the matter of issues and episodes selected. Published in 2017, the book acknowledges some major armed conflicts – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – and some minor ones such as Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus 1974, Indonesia’s annexation of West Papua 1963 and of East Timor 1975 and Russia’s takeover of the Crimea 2014. But the book has nothing to say about others, such as Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara 1975; the NATO-led, UN-approved intervention in Libya 2011 (which spawned yet more violence elsewhere in Africa); various anti-communist ‘rollback’ wars, executed mainly by battlefield proxies (Afghanistan from 1979 onward, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua); and interventions in Somalia begun in 1992, which continue up to today. These unmentioned conflicts have two common denominators: first, total contempt for legal prohibitions against war-making, and second (and not coincidentally) their promotion from Washington DC. The US government and others collaborating with it including the UN, somehow keep overlooking the 1928 Pact prohibiting war.

Furthermore, the authors frame the protagonists of wars in peculiar ways. For example, in the case of Vietnam they cast years of Western, mainly US-led war-making as North Vietnamese aggression against the erstwhile republic of south Vietnam.

In these skewed perspectives on history, some cherry-picking is detectable. And the cherries picked suggest a benign view of US disrespect for sovereignty, notably in the post-Pact ‘New World Order’ in which everyone supposedly is held to the same rules as promoted by international bodies ranging from the IMF to the UN to the WTO. Emphasis on the Peace Pact’s formal scope and adherence results in a curious flattening of what in reality are gross asymmetries of coercive power, and thus immunity from prosecution for violations of the law against war. Indeed the superpowers, the USA chief among them, enjoy perpetual get-out-jail-free cards.

To parry the discouraging record of disrespect for the Peace Pact, the authors put forward cases in which perpetrators are sanctioned or non-violently coerced, measures they refer to as “outcasting”. They do demonstrate, often at length and in recondite legal detail, that these measures can have effect. Formal Independence of East Timor is one case in which such juridical-diplomatic pressures did help win respect for sovereignty. Yet as of 2026, the evidence from the cases of Russia, Iran and Afghanistan hardly demonstrate the positive outcomes of outcasting ; indeed its results often look counterproductive.

Meanwhile as bankrolled and armed by its partner-in-crime the USA, and with most countries of the EU acting as accomplices, Israel continues to annex Palestinian territory and bits of southern Lebanon and to bombard Iran.

The book’s heroes, the “internationalists" were in the 1920s riding high against the warmongers. Today however it’s not the warmongers getting dissed. On the contrary, it is major institutions created to settle disputes and promote justice and peace that face pushbacks mounted from Washington DC, which clearly aims to destroy those parts of international law that it dislikes. Once upon a time, Dutch governments proudly boasted about The Netherlands being a citadel of international justice. Such self-adulation is now rarely heard; kowtowing to Washington has priority today. Recently a leading Dutch professor of international relations described the premises of international courts in The Hague as almost empty shells, mere antiquities for sightseers.

Yet this book's key theme, the pursuit of peace, make it relevant, especially in these lawless times. For it is apparent that universal laws, including those prohibiting war, pose lingering threats to leaders like Trump and others such as EC President von der Leyen in Brussels. Given these leaders' hostility to rules that would constrain their death-dealing, there remain good reasons to applaud this book’s championing of measures to outlaw war. ...more

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	Give And Take: What's the Matter with Foreign Aid? 4.31 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2002 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Casus Belli: Cómo los Estados Unidos venden la guerra by Martin Jelsma, Zia Mian, David Sogge (Goodreads Author) 3.18 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mirages de l'aide internationale 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Compassion and Calculation: The Business of Private Foreign Aid (Transnational Institute Series) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1996 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sustainable Peace: Angola's Recovery really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1992	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	KAŞIK VE KEPÇE 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2003	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Report of a review mission, 6-20 May 1989: Programme of Assistance to Displaced Persons, Huila Province, Angola, of the State Secretariat for Social ... Mondlane Foundation, Programme AO/87/010 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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