Evenings Getting Shorter - Time to Choose a New Bookclub Book

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

905 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

What history? If it's about Romans that's a definite no from me. I've just finished reading 'The Iliad' and Robin Lane Fox's 'The Classical World', so I'm sick of Greeks and Romans.

Might I suggest a variation on a theme...

cookiemonster wrote:

905 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

What history? If it's about Romans that's a definite no from me. I've just finished reading 'The Iliad' and Robin Lane Fox's 'The Classical World', so I'm sick of Greeks and Romans.

Might I suggest a variation on a theme...

Surely?

Nice to see you think outside the box Cookie, or was it all allegations that socialism is full of Satanists and child-eaters?

905 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

What history? If it's about Romans that's a definite no from me. I've just finished reading 'The Iliad' and Robin Lane Fox's 'The Classical World', so I'm sick of Greeks and Romans.

In answer to your earlier post, I had posted a short biography link wrongly, its not working and I can't find the source. I think it said he was actually pushed out of the World Bank, because of disagreements.

I just found this critique of Stiglitz that might interest you - an Open Letter from a former IMF colleague.http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/p.willetts/PIE-DOCS/STIG-ROG.HTM

Whole I don't agree with its wholehearted defence of the IMF, I do agree that Stiglitz's recipe of print more money in heavily indebted economies just wouldn't work and would lead to inflation. Perhaps that's not what he is saying though: is it more that certain investment needs to be made even if it means printing more money?

Any other ideas for a good book ? I'm a bit gloomed out after Collapse and the last two - I could do with something more constructive rather than another critique of life as we live it.

Well it's not likely that anything we'll be reading anything from Perle, Kahn or something written by Herbert London, so we may as well stick with what will be chosen.

cookiemonster wrote:

Well it's not likely that anything we'll be reading anything from Perle, Kahn or something written by Herbert London, so we may as well stick with what will be chosen.

I would love to read something by Perle - the other two I'm not familiar with.

cactus flower wrote:

Any other ideas for a good book ? I'm a bit gloomed out after Collapse and the last two - I could do with something more constructive rather than another critique of life as we live it.

Patten is quite cheery, ah no. Well, he'snot too bad. Shirin Ebadi's 'Iran Awakening' was what I had in mind, it seems some that some people have far too rosy a picture of Iran and should see what it's like from the inside. But it's very gloomy. I've always wanted to have a crack at John Gray (wiki), but he's too pessimistic for words.

Perhaps a history would be best, one of those ones on salt or potatoes. I might suggest John Carey's 'What Good are the Arts?' which is an interesting and provocative critique of some things people take for granted about their culture.

Oo's Perle?

cactus flower wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Well it's not likely that anything we'll be reading anything from Perle, Kahn or something written by Herbert London, so we may as well stick with what will be chosen.

I would love to read something by Perle - the other two I'm not familiar with.

Ever seen Dr. Strangelove?

No. Is there a cultural snobbery glass ceiling I have to break through here?

**** cookie posted above
**** 905 posted next

There's a book called Simplexity? Look at the lovely website he has ...

http://www.simplexitybook.com/

905 wrote:

No. Is there a cultural snobbery glass ceiling I have to break through here?

I wouldn't have thought so.

Auditor #9 wrote:

**** cookie posted above
**** 905 posted next

There's a book called Simplexity? Look at the lovely website he has ...

http://www.simplexitybook.com/

heh, kahn was a systems theorist.

Gray sounds well worth a read, but perhaps not upbeat...

Cookie - any book you think would get us thinking?

Anyone want to read about evolution?

Irish History?


or Perle - what did he write?

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

Rubicon, Persian Fire, The Classical World, Imperium, Fatherland and Pompeii would all be fantastic reads.

Or we could confirm Cookie's suspicions by reading

Isn't that only a few pages long? I was always under the impression that it was an essay type thing.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

Rubicon, Persian Fire, The Classical World, Imperium, Fatherland and Pompeii would all be fantastic reads.

905 is worn out with the Romans and Greeks, but I'm not. I could read one of these myself.

What about "How the West Won" - military history?

cactus flower wrote:

Or we could confirm Cookie's suspicions by reading

What's the point? It's discredited rubbish.

905 wrote:

Isn't that only a few pages long? I was always under the impression that it was an essay type thing.

Small, but perfectly formed

cactus flower wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is everyone ready to move on in a week or two to a new book?

Is it time for history? Ard Taoiseach has been very patient.

Rubicon, Persian Fire, The Classical World, Imperium, Fatherland and Pompeii would all be fantastic reads.

905 is worn out with the Romans and Greeks, but I'm not. I could read one of these myself.

What about "How the West Won" - military history?

Persian Fire is all about how the West was won. It's a fascinating recount of the cataclysmic events which safeguarded Greek civilisation and thereby protected the germ of democracy from the fumigating hordes of Persian warriors so that it could be transmitted around the world.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Or we could confirm Cookie's suspicions by reading

What's the point? It's discredited rubbish.

Have you read it, Ard-Taoiseach? I haven't read it for years. You could dismember it with incisive analytical counterpolemic.

I could handle the Persians and I don't exactly have a veto here. Or do I...

While not immediately taken with the idea of a fiction set back then, I was a fan of Nicholas Guild's 'The Assyrian', so it might be an idea I could adjust to.

cactus flower wrote:

Have you read it, Ard-Taoiseach? I haven't read it for years. You could dismember it with incisive analytical counterpolemic.

I don't need to dismember it, the total failure of its application in any country be it the USSR, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and, coming soon, Venezuela makes the case for me. Communism is a cul-de-sac of an ideology while free market capitalism allied to liberal democracy is the highway to heaven.