Randall Parker

This is an excellent book

Reviewed: 10-09-22

Ridley spans across many topics, weaving together evolution of species with evolution of technologies. He explains that the famous inventors of history were often succeeding by making many incremental improvements on top of many incremental improvements of others. Patents can slow that process by preventing the combination of ideas of multiple people. He explains the growing regulatory forces that slow innovation, costing all of us in many ways.

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Defense of Westmoreland comes up short

Reviewed: 07-31-20

The Vietnam War was not in the US national interest. What it would take to prevail was much more than US strategists expected. Daddis is correct to argue that much was not Westmoreland's fault.

However, I've read many other books on Vietnam and am aware of officers who fought in that war who learned more, came up with better ideas than Westmoreland did, and whose lessons were too often not learned up the chain of command. Read, for example, About Face by David Hackworth. Or Silence Was A Weapon by Stuart Herrington.

Both David Hackworth and Lewis Sorley point to training problems that led to many more casualties than necessary. Hackworth compensated with his own troops by specializing his men and training them in their specialties. This drastically cut casualties.

Westmoreland made the training problem worse by having drafties spend only 12 months in Vietnam. The casualties were much higher among recent arrivals. They could have been kept in Vietnam longer with extensive training in their first months in country as a way to cut casualties. Ticket punching officers rotating through commands kept the officers too inexperienced as well, again getting more people killed as a result.

I could go on. But again my point: Westie could have performed far better than he did. You have to read other books on the war to judge this one and to judge Westmoreland.

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Excellent read about how leading Romans thought

Reviewed: 07-11-20

The author notices much about some of the leading figures in ancient Rome and how they viewed morality, government, slavery, the Greeks and much else.

They are, in their moral reasoning, quite distant from us in some ways but less do in others. I am surprised that the stoics were anti-slavery and I wonder how much so. What did Marcus Aurelius think about slavery? How much were Roman stoics a society set off from other Romans? I want to know more about this.

The contrast of Cicero's honest letters to his close friend Atticus versus his letters to others makes me how well we know the inner thoughts of many other ancients.

A thought provoking book that left me wanting to know more about the topics covered.

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Learn what the worst sort of fighting is like

Reviewed: 07-01-20

I am glad I didn't have to fight in the Pacific Island campaigns in WWII. EB Sledge does and Sledgehammer, as he was called, does not hold back in his descriptions. He does not glorify war, though he was incredibly proud of his fellow US Marines.

People today have had lives so soft that they find successively smaller things to complain about. It would be good if people could know what is far worse. what great adversity, great suffering, great trials and sacrifice look like. Read this book and you'll get an idea.

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Captures the rapid changes in many dimensions

Reviewed: 06-28-20

The Founding Fathers died unhappy with what they created. The gentry lost control to a rapidly growing populace that paid them no respect and that eschewed their advice and guidance. The populace went populist in a big way, accelerated by cheap land to the west, immigration and migrations within the country.

The book tells both the story of the break with Britain and the break of the populace with the leadership and ideals of the revolutionaries. It explains a great loss of layers of status and a popular rejection of deference and the undermining of support for indentured servitude and the beginning of the rejection of slavery, with the first antislavery society founded in Philadelphia in 1775.

Great book. I highly recommend.

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The US revolutionary war was baked in by 1775

Reviewed: 04-18-20

This book 1774 and also 1775 by Kevin Phillips demonstrate that the US revolution was determined to happen before the year 1776 started. An overemphasis on 1776 in American national mythology causes people to be ignorant of the many reasons why the colonies were becoming more distrustful of their imperial Masters and more willing to believe that they could govern themselves just fine. To a very large extent they already were self governing and had many of their own governing institutions.

1775 is the stronger book. But this is a quicker read or listen and is a useful build-up to 1775.

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12 people found this helpful

Pursuing great quality insurance service

Reviewed: 01-19-20

Across the multiverse Tom Stranger tries to provide the best quality of insurance against interdimensional invasions. The insurance is expensive but worth it. Tom aims to get top customer service ratings as he battles an unethical competitor. Beware of Nebraska call centers. They can be even worse than you expect.

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Read non-elite experiences to better understand

Reviewed: 01-05-20

Worth reading to understand the Vietnam War and war in general.

I've been reading books on Vietnam by front line people who fought there because they'll tell you stuff that you won't find in books by journalists, high level officers justifying their decisions, or professional historians heavily reliant on official documents. Brief episodes described by a grunt (soldiers who deploy into the field) will give you insights you won't get any other way.

I say this as someone who has also read Bright Shining Lie and other high profile award-winning books on Vietnam. This book is useful for understanding how error-prone the lieutenants and higher level officers were in Vietnam and how much poor training and leadership got people killed and just how random and unHollywood the deaths were.

So I'm saying read or listen to the book. Do the same for another dozen first hand experiences books on Vietnam. e.g. Ed Denny's Hornet 33 which has shocking events past the point where you think the dangerous parts are all over with. It will strip away mythology about the military and war.

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Excellent survey of Near East history

Reviewed: 12-24-19

The book places various ancient stories you have heard (eg the Epic Of Gilgamesh) into a wider context. It providers a good starter text if you want to understand a large stretch of history where agriculture first emerged. I think I need to listen to it again but with look-ups into mentioned names and places.

We are lucky that some writing in the period was done using somewhat durable clay tablets in the cuneiform lands and did this for millennia.

I did not know that the Pelleset that were one of the Sea Peoples rampaging around the Mediterranean around 1200 BC or so are the origin of the later label of Palestine. But yes.

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Great overview of the history of the Enlightenment

Reviewed: 12-23-19

I especially liked the last few chapters on Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau. It was helpful to get sketches on how they thought. Rousseau comes off looking worse, not good at dealing with other people and seeing imagined conspiracies.

Hume seems impressive. He tried to reason about many questions and yet his personality was congenial. It was interesting to see how much Hume in particular needed to hide part of his beliefs on religion. Also, Adam Smith built on Hume's thinking.

Gottlieb does a good job of trying to explain what were positive effects of the Enlightenment thinkers. They tried to be more reasonable and this attempt was important, even if they didn't figure out all that much. It was their attitude that we should try to think more rather than just accept traditional beliefs that was one of their biggest contributions.

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3 people found this helpful