AK's Reviews

For easier navigation there are tables of all my read/reviewed Books, Films, and Video Games

Otherwise, you can also browse this section by book, film, and game reviews.

Documentary Review: Lessons from Byzantium

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for , on December 5, 2009 .4 Comments

I finally watched the film Гибель Империи. Византийский урок (Death of an Empire: the Byzantine Lesson), narrated by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, the father-confessor of Vladimir Putin. This film takes a stylized interpretation of the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire – the root cause of which is attributed to mystical factors such as loss of faith […]

Book Review: Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel

This about History, tagged , , , was written by for , on December 3, 2009 .2 Comments

While trawling through my computer archives, I stumbled across this book review of Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” from five years ago. Overall, it’s a great book, better than his follow-up “Collapse”, which is also interesting – especially in the psychological aspects of “collapse”, like creeping normalcy and “landscape amnesia” – but far from […]

Book Review: Ha-Joon Chang – Kicking Away the Ladder

This about Economy, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on October 19, 2009 .6 Comments

Chang, Ha-Joon – Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) Category: economy; history; industrial policy; Rating: 5/5 Summary: Kicking Away the Ladder:How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal Capitalism (Ha-Joon Chang) Much has been said of the smug arrogance, cultural aloofness and end-of-history conceit characterizing the […]

Book Review: Alexander Werth – Moscow War Diary

This about History, tagged , , was written by for , on October 16, 2009 .3 Comments

Review of “Moscow War Diary” (A. Werth) Werth, Alexander – Moscow War Diary (1942) Category: history, Soviet Union, WW2; Rating: 4/5 Soviet Resilience under Fire On 22nd June 1941, the armed columns of Nazi Germany began rolling into Russia, heralding the start of the Great Patriotic War. For Alexander Werth, a correspondent for the British Sunday […]

Book Review: Vaclav Smil – Global Catastrophes and Trends

This about Futurism, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on September 28, 2009 .3 Comments

Smil, Vaclav – Global Catastrophes and Trends (2008) Category: futurism, climate change, geopolitics, catastrophes; Rating: 5/5 Summary: Google Books Vaclav Smil, an energy theorist and language connoisseur, brings his talents to bear on this idiosyncratic, incisive and balanced book on the global future. From the outset, he outlines his skepticism in universal theories of history […]

Book Review: John Scott – Behind the Urals

This about History, tagged , , was written by for , on September 3, 2009 .8 Comments

Scott, John – Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel (1941) Category: history, Soviet Union, Stalin; Rating: 5/5 Fear and Fervor under Stalinist Industrialization The Great Depression of the 1930’s, with its iconic images of well-dressed bourgeoisie in soup lines and gaunt figures with hopeless eyes from the Dust Bowl, challenged the […]

Reconsidering Parshev

This , about Economy, tagged , , , was written by for , on August 4, 2009 .13 Comments

In most Russian bookstores, there is a bookshelf or two dedicated to so-called “patriotic literature” – reappraisals of Stalin against “liberal revisionism”, overviews of Russia’s secret super-weapons, the exploits of its special forces and Russian theo-philosophy. Much of it is (apparent) nonsense, but the economic crisis has forced me to reconsider one particular “patriotic” thesis […]

Book Review: Mark Steyn – America Alone

This about Demographics, tagged , , , , was written by for , on July 17, 2009 .23 Comments

Steyn, Mark – America Alone: The End of the World as we Know It (2006) Category: Islam; Eurabia; humor; Rating: 3/5 Summary: The future belongs to Islam (M. Steyn) It crept up on the West silently. Even as post-historical white Europeans were busy puffing on their weed, hugging trees and chanting Kumbaya in a happy […]

Documentary Review: BBC Global Dimming

This about Futurism, tagged , , was written by for , on June 28, 2009 .1 Comment

Not only is global warming a real and present threat that may yet in conjunction with impending energy shortages doom industrial civilization, it may have even been dangerously underestimated. “What have you been smoking!?,” you might say to me. Get off the doom train and enjoy the Sun. Unfortunately, we might not have much of […]

Book Review: James Kunstler – World Made by Hand

This about Futurism, tagged , , , , was written by for , on April 10, 2009 .4 Comments

“World Made by Hand” by James Howard Kunstler, published in 2008. Rating: 3/5. World Made by Hand is a speculative fiction book about how a sociopolitical collapse may be experienced by small-town Americans. It is of a reasonable length, engaging and generally well-written, although far from a literary masterpiece – not that that is necessarily a […]

Book Review: George Friedman – The Next 100 Years

This about Futurism, tagged , , , was written by for , on February 23, 2009 .7 Comments

The Next 100 Years by George Friedman, published in 2010. Rating: 3/5 George Friedman at Stratfor is one of my favorite analysts on world geopolitics. This is because he tries to look at the world as it is, without the pointless moralizing, neoliberal ideologizing and end-of-history triumphalism that clouds too much American geopolitical thinking. Hence whenever I come […]