Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

I'm currently reading The Angry Brigade a history of Britain's first urban guerilla group* by Gordon Carr. It's an account of the rise and fall of a group that became known as the Angry Brigade and there non-violent bombing campaign in the early 1970's. And the extremely controversial police operation and trial against its alleged members. It doesn't offer any conclusions either way but does document both the police and the defendants claims and counter claims and substantiates some allegations from both sides when the evidence seems overwhelming. It also goes to great lengths to explain the political outlook of the Angry Brigade and those accused of being members by the police, which is quite an undertaking since it means explaining the rise of the New Left and the turmoil of Western Europe from 1968, including the ideas of the Situatuionists a group famous for impenetrable manifesto's.

One problem is that parts of the book that deal with the nitty gritty of police procedure can be very tedious, and its inability to answer the question of `Who's really telling the truth here?` can be quite frustrating, but its well worth a read if you're interested in the radicalism of the 70's.

*I guess the IRA, UDA, UVF etc. don't count.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

I finished Hiroshima by John Hersey. I saw a recommendation for it by another goon in another thread. The book is an account of six survivors of the destruction of Hiroshima detailing how they dealt with the aftermath, including a German Catholic priest, a mother and her three young children, a Doctor the only Dr at the Red Cross hospital to survive uninjured -not including radiation sickness- and had to treat tens of thousands of patients with the surviving medical team before relief arrived, and a woman who worked in a tin works whom was shuttled from relief stations and hospitals while her leg injury deteriorated.

As you can imagine its pretty bleak, the account graphically describes the horrors and covers everyone of the results of the atomic bombing from flash burns to freak weather conditions. The last chapter covered the survivors lives after the bombing, how they coped and what was the bombs enduring legacy. It was packed with very surprising details about post war Japan. And its a slim read just under 200 hundred pages.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

I've recently finished The Translator by Daoud Hari, a Zahgawan tribesmen from Darfur. Its a memoir about the escalation of the conflict in Western Sudan and its very bloody toll. Daoud's village was attacked and many of his friends and family were killed with the rest fleeing. After the attack Daoud who could speak Zahgawan, Arabic and English became a translator working for aid agencies and media teams to raise awareness of the atrocities being committed in his homeland. Its a very bleak book with an atrocity or a gross injustice in every chapter, even before the war broke out. But despite all that he witnessed Daoud never gave into despair or mindless loathing, he maintains a sort of positive tone and can find bright spots in even the darkest encounters.

In addition to a rather personal story the Daoud takes time to explain life in Sudan from remote tribal villages in the Wadi's to the cities, gives some background on the conflict and Sudan's political turmoil and advocates strongly for peaceful brotherhood. A very interesting read and an excellent guide to a part of the world little understood.

Baka-nin fucked around with this message at 19:55 on May 14, 2015

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

true.spoon posted:

I have just read Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, a book of interviews with people from Belarus who were effected by Chernobyl. The range of voices she portrays is pretty large, she talks with old returnees, regular people, high ranking scientists who worked at nuclear testing facilities, local party members and so on. I recommend it very much, it's a great if harrowing book.
Also, I enjoy the format of interview books a lot in general. Over the years I've read Vremia sekond hend (Second-hand Time, I think no English translation exists but there is a German one) by the same author about the collapse of the USSR, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up by Liao Yiwu where he interviews Chinese people on the low end of the social ladder and Underground by Haruki Murakami about the Sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway.
I found all of them excellent. For example Underground is my favourite Murakami and I was somewhat upset when I heard that they cut some interviews in the translated version. Now I am looking for more, any recommendations (it does not necessarily need to be about depressing things but good luck finding something that isn't)?

Those all sound pretty interesting, even the Haruki one and I'm usually put off by him, I'll keep an eye out for them, thanks.

I recently finished Resistance: A Memoir of occupied France, by Agnes Humbert. Resistance is one of those texts that has dozens of admirers and references to how important and great it is, and yet went out of print decades ago (around 1946). It was only translated into English in 2008 a few years after being reissued in France. Its an account of one of the earliest French resistance cells, a group of Parisian intellectuals whom carry out acts of annoyance like publish Gaulist pamphlets and anti Vichy stickers, but they soon networked with other groups and began more serious work, publishing a newspaper -also called Resistance- helping smuggle RAF airmen out of France, and getting in touch with disaffected French officers whom gave them information and maps of German bases and activities that they passed on to British Intelligence.

However having no previous experience of espionage they were quite amateurish, so much so that the first part of the memoir is Agnes's actually diary that contains day to day accounts of the groups activities for example:

Paris, 15 November 1940
Lat week Boris Vilde appeared in my office, a worried man; he has been expecting two British airmen to arrive any day, and now all of a sudden he's been told to expect five.


So it not surprising that most of the group including Agnes were eventually caught, the rest of the memoir concerns her time in prison (in France) her groups trial, her processing in various German labour camps, and finally her role in liberated Germany after being freed from the camps. In addition to the vast wealth of knowledge about life in this period in both France and Germany, Agnes maintains an irreverent almost comedic tone that kept me wanting to read more. Sadly given the nature of events covered there are many scenes of shocking brutality and incompetence, and not all of them by Germans. Indeed Agnes stressed in her accounts that many Germans found themselves victims of the Nazi regime and that France had contained a willing audience for Petain's collaboration.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

CestMoi posted:

I've spent today reading First as Tragedy Then As Farce by noted terrible cinema forum poster Slavoj Zizek and it's actually really good but what are more good things that are similar preferably of a similar ;evel of accessibiloty but I will read more difficult stuff if you say it is good.

If you'd like more Zizek an interesting and accessible read is his correspondence with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova a member of Pussy Riot while she's in a labour camp after being sentenced for their performance in an Orthodox church. Having to tailor his words as a response to another human being helps prevent him from devolving into more philosophical navel gazing. And reveals the very interesting and very sad state of the Russian prison system. Its called Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

A friend of mine lent me his kindle and one of the books I've read so far is Anne Franks Diary, like most people I already knew the basic contents given its popularity and how it came to be written, but it was still a very surprising read. Despite many of her entries being rather mundane or optimistic, it really hammers home the brutal tragedy of the Holocaust. In one passage that really got to me involved an off the cuff remark about cremation. And what makes it all the more depressing is that WWII was being won and Anne knew it, she broke up her recounting of life in the safe house with her joy on hearing the gradual downfall of the Axis from the assassination attempt on Hitler to the D-day invasion. Format wise its a lot like Agnes Humbert's Resistance though that at least had a happier resolution.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Junkie Disease posted:

1776. I knew little about the revolutionary war i had to do it.
Good evenhanded presentation on brittish and revolutionary forces. Washington wasn't a good tactiction. Everyone in 1776 is infected with a virus with unending hyporbolie on any subject. Everything is the greatest/worst
thing to happen to mankind.
^Seconded this, I just finished this book a month ago, it was very interesting and managed to stay above the taking of sides and propagandising which characterise most histories of this period.

Gertrude Perkins posted:

Crossposting from the What Did You Just Finish? thread:


I really wanna read his more recent stuff, too. Something about his style really gels with me.

Thanks for the crosspost this looks really interesting to me.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

I recently finished Dude Where's my Country? by Michael Moore. Written in 2003 just after the invasion of Iraq, its a very interesting look back at a some recent history and he makes some very shocking revelations, including senior Democrats telling him they'd written off the 2004 elections. I think it demonstrates Moore at his best and his worst, theres jokes that aren't funny and distracting, the clever ideas that get a bit overused, the clash between his idealism and what he sees as pragmatism. Still its short and most of his points and allegations are backed up with plenty of citations. Worth a read if your memories abit hazy about the early 2000's.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Gertrude Perkins posted:

Here's another frustrating and troubling politics book I read last weekend. It's becoming a theme with me.


It's available as an eBook for pay-what-you-want, and it's definitely worth your time.

Thanks for the info it was pretty interesting.

I've read quite a bit of non fiction lately, mainly the Revolutions series by Verso books. Its a collection of speeches and essays by a number of famous and not so famous Revolutionaries from various ideologies and events. There introduced by admirers usually Slavoj Zizek (ugh) but also others like Hugo Chavez for Simon Bolivar, and Jean Paul Aristide for Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution. Its pretty interesting and worth getting a hold of if you're curious about the "Great Men and one Woman" and the event in question. The introductions and footnotes give further information and are willing to be critical of their chosen subject.

In addition I read Suck it Wonder Woman! By Olivia Munn, a woman I had never heard of, despite this I found it a pretty enjoyable autobiography, even if here tone and commentary could get a little grating after a while. She really had some disgusting run ins in Hollywood. And I do mean disgusting, there's a lot of stains and poor table manners in these anecdotes.

Oh and I also picked up a biography on Kim Jong Il called Exit Emperor Kim Jong Il by John H. Cha and K.J. Sohn. Its a biography that relies heavily on the notes and interviews of defectors who had personal connections with the Kim family, mainly Hwang Jang-Yop the highest profile defector from North Korea. He's the one who came up with the Juche ideology, though he claimed Kim Jong Il made generous alteration to it before it became public policy.

It's very interesting, and covers a lot of ground from Kim Yura's (his birth name) birth in the Soviet Union to his days as a student and apprentice politician, to his rise to prominence through film and novel production and his rise to power as his fathers heir and eventual successor, to the decline of the nineties. Every statement or prediction is backed up with a lengthy excerpt from either an official North Korean source or an account from an high profile defector.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

ExecuDork posted:


Skimming this thread I haven't seen many examples of books people didn't like - it's mostly positive recommendations around here (with some exceptions). I posted a negative review to my blog, for War: A Crime Against Humanity by Roberto Vivo. Short version: get a better editor, dude.

For me I don't really feel like talking about stuff that I didn't really enjoy, also I think much of the appeal of non fiction works is the subject so its easier to forgive things like bland language or the odd tangent.

Though neither applied to the last book I worked through, The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire by Piers Brendon. It covers the American Revolution all the way up to the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control. Its very long and a very, very grim subject to cover. Basically anyone who bleats about British Imperialism was nicer, or more benign than the foreign varieties, is either lying or just doesn't know what their talking about*. However despite this, Brendon manages to squeeze in plenty of anecdotes, usually of Colonial incompetence. Virtually every major and most minor territories that came under crown control, details living conditions, the attitudes and customs of the population (where available) the activities of the colonial administrators, some of whom seem to have been insane. Living in Britain I found this book to be quite an eye opener, Britain's Imperial history is really discussed in great detail, the key dates and the size of the world map coloured pink is known and a few negative episodes hang over it, like the Concentration camps in South Africa and the famine in Ireland. But details are very sketchy in the mainstream.


*Well, unless they're referring to :godwin: the Nazi's or the Japanese, the latter's conduct in Asia is also examined heavily.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Yesterday I read through Steve Cohen's re-released booklet That's Funny you don't look anti-Semitic: An anti racist analysis of left anti-Semitism originally written in 1984. It's an examination of the rather murky anti-Semitic attitudes of British Socialists past and present, though it does compare these to other historical examples from the Soviet Union, Austria and Germany, and you can find examples of statements and attitudes displayed in it elsewhere, and very easily at that. I was familiar with anti Israeli groups occasionally crossing lines, and the odd unreconstructed anti-semite in the labour movement of the past but, this was an eye opening read.

Steve exposure and criticism is quite damning, as an active participant in Jewish culture and socialist he's up to date and all the jargon associated with both groups and has a talent for cutting it into plain speak. I also found it a very interesting and brief history of the Jewish community, and in particular the General Labour Bund and organisation I'd previously only knew from its enemies both Bolsheviks and Zionist groups. Sections of the book make for pretty ugly reading.

https://libcom.org/library/that%CA%B9s-funny-you-don%CA%B9t-look-anti%E2%80%90semitic-steve-cohen

Baka-nin fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Mar 26, 2016

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Going from memory Gang Leader for a day, was pretty controversial in sociology circles, they recommended reading it to see how it's possible to embed yourself within a chosen sample population and subculture. But also warned that it was an example of how getting too close actually causes a lot of problems for your research. This reminds me though of a similar work. The Warriors by Sol Yurick is a novel about teenage gangs in New York, but my copy came with an essay by Sol about the novel and its eventual film adaptation. In addition to giving some behind the scenes dirt and explaining the Xenophon connection Sol goes onto explain his background working with teenage gang members as a social worker in the 60's (technically the Warriors was set in the future). It's really interesting stuff and him being a social worker meant that he was kept at arms length but also acquired a lot of knowledge of their subculture. Its worth a read, especially if you liked the film and the PS2 game. Though I warn you the novel is a lot darker than the film where the Warriors are a group plucky delinquents just trying to make it in this crazy world.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

ExecuDork posted:



I am a big fan of both the movie and the PS2 game, a fandom driven mostly by a wine-soaked weekend playing the game and then watching the movie with a friend, years ago. I didn't realize it was based on a full-length novel. Thanks for the recommendation! Even if it is for fiction in the non-fiction thread. :)

Well actually I'm not recommending the novel, even though it left quite an impression on me, my recommendation is of the essay that was in my edition (its not in all of them, this was a special re-release, and I don't know if its available separately)I said that if you like the film you'll probably like the essay because a big chunk of it is dedicated to the Hollywood machine and an analysis of what the changes to the script actually mean, and how poorly the film reflected reality.

Also a strong word of caution, the actual novel is very, very different from the film, for starters their called the Dominators and are all about fifteen, with Junior being about twelve and they do very nasty things that couldn't get away with filming. there's a gang rape of a fifteen year old girl by the Gang and an attempted rape of a nurse that ends in robbery and assault Its a realistic depiction of gang culture in 60's New York, there are no rumbles with twenty something's in outlandish gear, when they fight its a group of juveniles with switchblades and I'm pretty sure at one point they murder a random guy for disrespecting them.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

A week or so ago I finished A Just Defiance: The Bombmakers, the Insurgents and a Legendary Treason Trial by Peter Harris. I initially thought it was about the Rivonia trail of Nelson Mandela when I picked it up, but its about another trial of members of the ANC's military wing in 1987. Peter Harris was one of their defence lawyers and the trial ended up becoming a test case for defence of anti Apartheid activities. The four accused openly admitted they were guilty of the charges but refused to cooperate because they believed themselves to prisoners of war.

The case would drag on through the courts and eventually link into the exposure of police hit squads. Its a recounting of how the South African police and courts system worked under the Apartheid regime but is easy to follow and explains most of the legal jargon. In addition the book details the counter insurgency operations of the SADF and the extensive intelligence and military operations the ANC MK carried out. It also contains biographical sketches of all six men of the MK cell (two were killed before the trial) and their families. It contains very interesting details and accounts of life in the townships, the waves of repression, the general racism, the poverty and what motivates a young man to leave his home and spend years in camps learning how to assassinate and plant bombs. The narrative is broken up with a point by point recounting of a special police operation against one of Harris's clients.

I won't lie this was one of those books I had on the shelf for months, but once I took the plunge and started reading I couldn't put it down, finished it in two days.

  • Locked thread