Miles Silverstein > Recent Status Updates

Yet again the book’s outdated. Hank’s assessment of the lasting impacts of Afghanistan was oh so wrong. No, they did not drag the world back into conflict upon the American exit — turns out the Taliban are actually perfectly content violently oppressing their constituency only within the confines of their own borders, and don’t really care about what happens elsewhere.
He was wrong in other predictions too.

Eight chapters in and I’m finally getting the US foreign policy crash course that I was too stupid to internalize in high school. Teddy Roosevelt might be number one

Still good. Funny to read a passage so laudatory of Shinzo Abe’s prospective bright future. This book is 12 years old after all.

I’m gonna start reading with intent again. This book is well written. It’s kind of just a refresher of a first year IR lecture, but it’s been five years since my last IR lecture, so maybe a theory-rehash isn’t so bad.

Leaves no stone unturned. Including obvious thinly-veiled fetish content. But if I were to write Cloud Atlas, or really any metafiction intertwining real/fake, story/history, present/past, humor/seriousness, et al, I’d do it like this.

In every moment there lies a lifetime.

This book sucks butt

This is a damn good book

Already rules

I dig this book’s shtick. Also kind of insane that Cambridge United is so often mentioned. I also knew a guy at uni who only supported Cambridge United. He had no allegiance to any prem club — just CUFC down in league two. Swears by it so bad, lives and breathes this poor dogshit team. Bless you, Joe. Not an easy life, I’m sure.

An old flatmate of mine from when I lived in Scotland was a guy from Kent so sharp and properly wicked smart who also was a hopelessly devoted arsenal fan. I miss you, Gabriel.

Okay I lied this got good. Part one done — I saw none of this coming. Reviews I’ve read previously claim that the lengthy flashback which comprises the bulk of pt 2 gets dull fast, but I don’t know. This is a helluva story so far.

Im gonna be honest this is probably really good but my heart’s not in this time around. I got Sherlock fatigue. But I wanna finish this volume so I’m pushing on. Rating may be skewed as a result.

Almost done with the titular novella. Oh man dude. What a fucking master this guy Roth is. And the sheer number of things from my hometown and surrounding areas that get name dropped — it is genuinely like reading Woody Allen riff on the Millburn Diner. Shit yeah man.

Checking back in after I’ve finished the unfortunately underwhelming Kenya chapter. The two West African chapters on Senegal and Sierra Leone were also weak. By contrast, the South Africa chapter was very good, as was the Burundi/Rwanda analysis. Seems he’s got a handle on the East and no dog in the race in the West.

What a cool job this guy worked. That being said I have thoroughly been scared straight about Somalia Sudan and Zimbabwe. Helllll na

Remarkable how similar my experience is so far to Dowden’s account of Uganda in the 70s. Funnily enough he only ever mentions Luganda, except for the fact that close to every word he translates for the reader is Swahili. Maybe the Bantu languages just are that similar. I’ll ask my buddy in Malaba.

He’s finally made it to South Africa! The only places he spoke somewhat highly of were the countryside in Uganda and Harare.

This dude hates Tanzania despite his entire experience with the country being like a week total on awful public transport and Kafkaesque bureaucracy in Dar. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that there are better ways to spend time in that country.

Gripping, obviously, but also kind of the only book I could even think of reading at this point in my life

This is still a good book he’s just way too invested in Plato and I can’t yet decide if his whole Marxism Must Account For Human Nature point is cogent or silly yet

Most coherent and based piece of neoconservatism I have ever read. Remember when the right was intellectual?

Sorry guys been reading this one slowly for like a week now 4got 2 update the masses. Heading back into a Hegel thing reeeeal bad mon