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Ian Johnston translation

Some dialogues intersect heavily with major Chinese thinkers. Curious how people on opposite ends of the world reached the same conclusions, make me think of noosphere. The best example is butterfly/ sleeping philosopher (Zhuangzi) vs sleeping philosopher/not-sleeping philosopher (Socrates)
Also curious intersection about being humble and open to learning - Confucius/Socrates
And one more intersection with Mengzhi

Went through 2 volumes of 4 and I can already tell that it won’t be worth it. Everything noteworthy has happened in BC period, Livy already shows signs of serious stagnation of Rome, Tacitus demonstrates increasing ugliness and decadence. Worth reading only in case of deep academic interest, good book anyway though. Otherwise better spend time on something worthy

Juno wife of Jove actually

…temple of Juno, not ordinary goddess but Jehovah own sister and wife…

Very interesting book

Author is insufferable douchebag

For it is history, and history alone, which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.

One should never therefore voluntarily choose the former, for it makes reformation a matter of great difficulty and danger; but we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can without hurt to ourselves gain a clear view of the best course to pursue. It is this which forces us to consider that the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.

For it is history, and history alone, which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.

One should never therefore voluntarily choose the former, for it makes reformation a matter of great difficulty and danger; but we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can without hurt to ourselves gain a clear view of the best course to pursue. It is this which forces us to consider that the knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life.

There are two roads to reformation for mankind—one through misfortunes of their own, the other through those of others: the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful.

Can I finish this by 2027?

This book is at most 10% about East India Company, everything else is just Indian history of that period, mostly recited from another author.

So far mostly about Mughals, very little about East India company itself. Too many Indian names and words, not very understandable, I expected the
book to be more about the EIC.

There is a chapter about year 1848 and revolutions in all of Central Europe which curiously avoids even the slightest mention of Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto which was published that same year. Author goes to great lengths to describe minute details of revolutions but there is not a single word about such important text of that time.

Interesting book, but it bothers me that author keeps using word Russia to describe Eastern European lands literally thousand years before Russia came into being. It is strange that Professor of Central European history at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies(according to Wikipedia) doesn’t know that the land he talks about was called Rus’ and not Russia.

Democracy is the least bad of the deviations

43 of 173

2:09 of 10:55

This is soooo tedious

Switched to English version because Russian translation doesn’t make sense. Usually it is vice versa, but in this case English is much better.

Too verbose and redundantly detailed, didn’t like immediately, may be later

The ideas in the first part are very interesting and help to better understand current reality, on par with Burnout Society. There is too much of belligerent language and militarized slang which is a bit uncomfortable to read, given the subject discussed. Second part(more “practical”) started very poorly, it is immediately clear that author has never been a part of corporate world and lives in theoretical realm.