Hendrik Strauss > Recent Status Updates

I dislike Winkler's writing immensely, and I dislike even more that despite writing a brain in the vat politics history, he is occasionally giving interesting enough analyses of subjects I haven't encountered before, that I keep going.

My new hobby horse. Not as important as other projects, but very much a central piece of history exemplifying, as the most obvious dimension, the interaction of the confessional age with real power politiques. Münkler being a Professor of Political Science is used to primarily analytical, even if often genealogical, exposition, and therefore I am amazed of how engagingly he narrates the events.

Beckert is making an interesting argument:
As the so called marginal revolution sought to establishe economics as a law based quantitive science divorced from the social sciences in institutions at the turn of the 19th century, it created a vacuum of asking how this economic structure came to be. Filled subsequently by "scientific" racism and antisemitism.

Not that it isn't a sort of tautology and as such is any surprise, but dang! The slavers were a menace. Violent, greedy, entitled fucks.
Nice overview, but incomplete. This older «middle ground» scholarship lacks integration of economics on a structural history axis, particularly the early history of US economy in the north as a sort of hinterland of Caribbean and South US plantation slavery. Slavery was no adjunct.

Due to its scope inevitably a bit brief on most topics, but nonetheless an essential sketch of the development of capitalist relations economically, and socially with a particular view to interactions with different political institutions. The global scale is also much appreciated and doesn't feel forced.

Almost eery with how many of zizeks takes on diverse topics of poltics I agree, whether in this book or other media

First Zizek book. Despite giving off vibes of an essay collection it feels like a more linearly argued, but less funny version of his interviews and speeches. The structure has limits and the style, if it is right to call it that, still feels like a big tangent with no meta narration of how the structure is going to be like. Content vise so far quite interesting if not something to write poems about

I did grow up agnostic (in my case culturally situated in Lutheranism), but I have asked some friends of Christian family background and apparently no one else was aware too that in all the four canonical gospels and in Paul there is talk about brothers of Jesus, one potentially named James

Beckerts thesis is about how instrumental the plantage slavery system was to what he is calling «The great connecting» of the world economy and European ascent in it. Going so far as to call the non carribic America's the hinterland of the, mostly sugar, plantations in the islands.

I have a good feeling about this. There is a need for a different more complex paradigm than the disease model but the popular scientific literature has been pretty silent on it. Here we have a philosopher, and hence someone who knows how to make arguments weighing pro and con, making the case.

Fun little overview of different conceptions of history. In the 40 minute lectures staloff is able to slightly scratch beneath the surface of the matter introduced. In its content it is both about philosophy of history(grand conceptions of the nature of history) and about the methodology of scientific practice in the field of history.

Pretty sick lecture script. Cassirer doesn't stop at plato, but goes on to Plotinus, Augustine and Renaissance platonists before turning to Aristotle. Ofc it's a bit of a kantian bend, but if Cassirer is right a lot of kant was already inchoate in Plato

Been searching for a general economic history overview for a while now, and this recently published book my dad happened to read, at least from the indicators I can gauge before reading it, perfectly hits the mark.

"One could argue that the end of the liberal era as the advent of a new paradigm of militarized liberalism, later to be called neoliberalism, developed precisely as a response to the growth of mass democracy"

Queen Victoria seems like a total nutter. Obsessed with her dead husband to unhealthy proportions. Carrying a plastic replica of his, sleeping with his night gown, even believing her new lover was carrying prince Alberts spirit. As a private person that's fine, but hardly a self singing elegy to monarchy. That and her preferring Disraeli over Gladstone, which may be worst out of those above.

So far it has been an excellent book and afai can tell, a fair one. Rovans Catholic convert bias seems to creep in a little bit when talking about Frederick II. It was noticeable how much vitriol he poured, denying any trace of humanistic intentions (he outlawed torture 3 days into his reign), calling him "that nihilist", while praising the Catholic habsburgs of the same time immensely for their sense of humanity.

The last quarter of the book started out great so far, emotionally the most ambivalent character states yet, some stakes, and less meandering talk by over bread socialites

The last quarter of the book turns out to be engaging again so far

Shapiro is super knowledgeable. He is pulling data graphs, knowledge of law and what I would consider a solid moral intuition together into a pretty good course on the state of American democracy in the year 2019.
Lots of country wide trend analyses, broader institutional developments across the globe, some case studies (South Africa, Palestine, China in Africa), and a revealing look at US foreign and domestic policy

I want to abort mission very badly. So much soap opera. Even though there is the overarching plan, and I am admiring it, most of the book after the initial imprisonment feels like a long list of trivialities one after another. In conclusion I am trapped - I can't say, I won't finish, because I do want to have a fair and thorough sense of the whole, but it is a lot of effort without much intermittent reward.

Positively surprised me. Of course this is just detailing a fraction of what happened, just a couple of family dynasties who were foremost in profiting from Nazi expropriations of jewish people, forced labor and the war economy. Still, despite hearing and reading some set phrases to that extend before, I was not aware how deeply personal and capitalist the Nazi regime time was. This book makes it tangible.

Not finding it indispensable so far, though it has some sensible points: It stresses the complexity of the nervous system, points out the inevitability of tradeoffs in model building and warns of being too certain of analogies. But overall so far this pragmatist kantian empirical realist chimera may be useful in its warnings, yet is not really treading new ground in epistemology or metaphysics.

Feels overly typologized

Feeling more contemporary recently. Just found out the audio version I have is severely abridged. This gives me a half-stroke and I can't decide if it is counterbalanced or just made worse by the fact that I am really enjoying it so far.

History of the holy Roman empire is wild. The German emperors tend to want to assert dominance in Italy to underline their legal status as emperor, meanwhile often neglecting affairs in the northalpine territories. According to rovan this was elemental in Germany not developing a centralized nationhood. The conflict just intensifies when the pope asserts more claims over the emperors administrative elite(clerus).

While at first confounding me, it makes sense that Stach did not start with this book. During his mid twenties Kafka seems to have found his own peculiar way of articulation, radically personalizing his whole experience.
Still glad to have read it first. Stach illuminates both the earlier life of Kafka as well as the social life of Prague around the turn of century equally profoundly and entertainingly. Modernity 101

Allitt is a great teacher. Strikes the right balance between dates, free hand storytelling, quoting primary sources and quoting other historians. The man is also giving a ton of tourism tips for the ppl inclined to visit industrial sites in britain