Sam Terry > Recent Status Updates

This Goodreads update is dedicated to the brave mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan

Skipped over a 60-page arts and culture section because I find them the least interesting and I’m eager to read something else. Call it cheating I don’t care.

The second half of this has been much more difficult for me to follow. I don’t have much of a background in economics, so I do find it a little hard to make sense of the all the desperate economic approaches of different leaders and their impacts. I will need to come back and distill things into a more easily digestible format.

Argentina 1912-1955. I think it’s useful to organize the last third of this book by country and just examine how each state developed in the 20th century, but it’s also been hard to keep track of the many developments in each country’s political economy. I probably just need to get through it all and then take a more brief pass to identify the most critical actors and most broadly applicable historical themes.

Can’t accuse Edwin Williamson of a left wing bias but I really appreciate his thorough and thoughtful coverage of the Cuban revolution

Haven’t been able to make much progress the last few weeks. Collapse of the liberal order and rise of nationalism, ISI and industrialization, consequence political and economic crises. Economics is not my strength and I’m a little hungover so I will have to give this section another pass.

Getting into the 20th century now. I am more familiar with this period of Latin American history than with the 1800s, but already I have found this text incredibly illuminating. I can’t wait to learn more about the patterns of domestic social transformation and foreign interference that belay the collapse of the liberal order

The 19th century histories of Argentina and Paraguay were really interesting, but I need to review the section on Mexico’s troubled experience after independence. This section was quite a bit longer than the others because Mexican politics were so unstable, and I don’t think I developed an enduring framework for understanding the period.

Getting into the brief section on the colonial history of Brazil. Forgot my highlighter at home so I want to go back over it. Still have some 22 pages left but so far I would appreciate more elaboration on the nature of the “donatory-captaincies” that governed early Brazil

On why the New World criollo elite did not resist the Spanish imperial authority which checked their power: “Any direct attack on the monarchy ran the risk of bringing down the complex ideological edifice which kept the double colonialism of the Indies from collapsing in bloody chaos.” I love this goddamn book

Really interesting and nuanced perspectives on the role of the Spanish crown in defining the nature of Latin American colonial society. The monarchy is characterized in a much more sympathetic way than I imagined it would be, but maybe the monarchy had better intentions in its colonial ambitions than I’ve been taught

Wrapped up the Theogony. There are some interesting details here and there but as a whole it really drags. The information is obviously organized for an audience that knows most of these stories already, so it was a mistake on my part to try to use this to develop a broad understanding of mythological context for Greek epics.