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Despite the Satanic incidents promised here, like Huysman's other book À rebours it really is largely just hanging out with some dude and his bros and listening to their crackpot obsessions in 19th century Paris. The humor of the contrasts between the demonic bits and the ordinariness of life is deliberate and had me laughing out loud several times

Excellent writing and organization on a fascinating (now unfashionable) subject. Makes one want to travel the Nile from source to sea themselves, and it's humbling to know that unadvisable as that is today, it was vastly more dangerous to the men and women who braved that trek 150 years ago. Really astonishing Moorehead manages to put so much into a mere 300 pages, yet I never felt like anything was hurried over.

The most literate 'fat man gets into shenanigans (tragi)comedy' since Shakespeare's Henry IV. Still, there is no equivalent literary character in all history as Ignatius Reilly due to his modern subject matter, especially him seeing himself as a man out of time in a timeless city like New Orleans no less. Clearly I need to meet more people from there instead of from New York.

Type of book you spend a good solid 10 minutes pacing around your room thinking about after finishing it.

I liked it when he talked about Thucydides, Carl von Clausewitz, reading newspapers from the 1850s, the Civil War, New Orleans, the guy who thought Native Americans were Chinese people, and Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper.

This retroactively increased by respect for Zola's Germinal which I highly recommend to anyone who read this. I think you somewhat get the wrong impression of Orwell by just reading his fiction, it's clear from this and Homage to Catalonia he was a master nonfiction writer. Part II of this is underrated, it articulated very clearly a few things that before I had only vague feelings about.

I know it's hard to care about an utterly defunct empire, but the total lack of detail about Austria-Hungary in this book is unaccountable. Still, I admit the chapters on the pursuit of the Goeben and Battle of Tannenberg are some of the finest I've ever read. I know it's long enough, but it's a great pity Tuchman did not go all the way to December 1914.

I finished the first story thinking: "well, he certainly is amusing", and the last: "well, Chekhov is the greatest short story writer of all time". I suppose such things are still possible.

I do wish the new edition covers were less boring as there are some much more subtly fascinating and explosive things in here than what Dawkins's initial impression in the 2000s led me to expect. Even the title itself can be read on multiple levels. I started this is a stop-gap while waiting for another book to arrive but am sufficiently tickled so far.

I read just two chapters of this and already had my understanding of the gospels and Iesous as a historical figure not just altered but turn inside out and upside down and I'm not even in 1800s yet. It's a lot more theological than I was expecting but as I understand it it was never supposed to be a plain exposition of historical methodology or hobnobbing with archeologists.

I went in prepared to be surprised but I was still positively surprised. Only thing that really dates this is the obvious vogue for “the Death of the Author (PBUH)”, which Calvino both props and mocks. Favorite incipit was “Looks down in the gathering shadow”, mainly because how pulpy and Berlin Alexanderplatz-adjacent it is. This is the second author I’ve now read called “Italo”.

Probably one of the few literary works in existence where accounting practices constitute a prominent plot-point. It’s a good thing these Triestines hadn’t heard of GAAP or IFRS.

Call him Parnellus Rex because his confidence, daring, and a certain disdainful hauteur that brought him so much success with the Irish and English were the same qualities that would bring his literally fatal downfall. It’s also my personal headcannon that Joyce opposed the Catholic church mainly because it turned against Parnell in his moment of need. Knowing Parnell does provide good context with Joyce.

Even today it's still almost inconceivable how a book could start with some family drama in provincial 19th-century Austria and end with some 70 million corpses + 1. The book itself contains details of some historical events I've never encountered before, not even in Evans, though it could have done with less detail about astrologers, but hey it was the 70s.

Got a cat?

Still a pretty eye-opening book. There’s a lot that can be said about its accuracy or interpretations. Some things are quite obvious now, like how the world can easily be divided into those who make demands of themselves and those who don’t, but many points are rather more subtle, like on the formation of nation-states. Worth it just to read Ortega burst the cult of youth, which has gotten exponentially worse since.

Bernanos seems like a writer out of time. I can't place if he writes like someone more modern or more ancient than when he actually wrote, but with a few misgivings I can say he definitely offers a unique reading experience. Pages and pages of vague discussion on vague topics, followed by a few pages of truly explosive literary passages that somehow defy cliché, that's how I would describe what I've read

Rereading this after a new years is a revelation, as one develops not unlike Dedalus through the years. Things totally unnoticed before attain new significance, and previously remembered moments are seen in a new light. I remembered almost nothing of the last chapter before because it was swallowed up completely by the ending. The first chapter is still a fine piece of work and should be read by possibly everyone.

Not everything here is worth reading, but a good deal is. His Emancipation in the West Indies essay is very underrated, it being a history lesson in the Carlyle mode. His Fugitive Slave Law speech is a searing damnation of the memory of Daniel Webster who supported it; if he voted against it he might be well-known today, but few Americans now could tell you who he was, and Emerson would be well pleased with that

Absolutely the most compelling bio I've read since the first volume of William Manchester's one on Churchill. Interesting how that was by an American writing about an English stateman, while this was written by a South-African Anglo writing about an American statesman. Another case I suppose of the semi-outsider's perspective unintuitively proving to be more valuable than native ones

I feel Emerson was profoundly right when he called mystics just limited poets. They may have glimpsed at truth here and there, but made the mistake of putting their associations into too rigid and solid a cage, whereas the metaphors of poets are always in flux. There is little surprise then that Emerson found the Unitarianism of his youth far too limited and closed-off for a formidable mind like his.

Interestingly enough, I just finished Emerson's essay and poem on Heroism a few days before:

The hero is not fed on sweets
Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails.

Hamilton the man deserves the hype, but this bio is a little too partisan for my taste in the second half. I know it was deliberately written to be, but I wish it were not so, as it has other great qualities. The constant side-swipes at everyone not a Federalist start to come off as petty, so too does the constant running commentary justifying this or that. I think Hamilton's actions can speak well for themselves.

Really surprised at how dark this book is and how it’s almost the opposite of a Dickens novel. Everything’s painted in bright and colorful shades at first until the shadows gradually lengthen to make a canvas of an inescapable blackness. And because everything’s so subtle in this book, the drama is ironically heightened. To say James just writes for pompous aristocrats is to grossly misrepresent his talent.

While not the most artistic, this is the most delightful thing I've read by Mann. It's a slightly picaresque tale of a young man/chameleon's adventures in a turn of the century Europe, a more civilized (and perhaps over-civilized) time from when it was written. I was quite surprised at just how positive a mindset Krull maintains through luck and tragedy, while Mann it seemed had an inherently tragic disposition

Some of the densest pages I've ever read that somehow managed not to be a textbook. You need to be willing to get into the weeds of the minutae and politics of the era, and a large part of this book is basically an account of British political history from 1876 to 1910, which is fair enough. I know there's 0 appetite for it, but I think an enormously interesting TV series could be made about this era and Stanley

Not even done with it yet but this is immensely, immensely interesting and exceeded my already high expectations. Every few pages I've had to go "huh, I've never considered it like that before", or realized something was infinitely more nuanced than I believed. And all this about someone who did not have the megalomania of a Himmler or charisma of a Heydrich, but was still fascinating in his own (banal) way

Very underrated. Knowing Hugo, I actually WANTED to read the book for the nonfiction passages about the Channel Islands I knew would be in there, and you can imagine my joy in seeing that no less than the first 50 pages were just pure exposition in a way only Hugo could do. Surely I am getting to the level where I can say I would re-read Notre-Dame de Paris for the architecture passages.

Borges would have loved this. Indeed it's hard to imagine that Clarke was not influenced by him a little. I admit that I was fooled by my memory in thinking this was some YA novel about magicians--it's more of a literary experiment and character examination about what would happen if magicians appeared in early 19th century England. All your bros the Lords Wellington, Castlereagh, and Byron are here for example.

Very glad I started this basically on a whim. It's not just one of the best biographies I've read but one of the best books I've read in general. Manchester does an excellent job sketching the changing psychologies and moralities of the times from the Victorians to the early 30's. Interesting that despite all WSC accomplished by 1932, had he died then he would have never merited such an immense bio written on him