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 […]

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 […]