Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830. Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland (2003)

My injured right arm will keep this review brief. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am planning on reading vol. 2 very soon. Lieberman is a historian of Burma, but has read very widely, not just about the two other sectors of mainland southeast Asia, what eventually became Thailand and Vietnam. He's also conversant with many other historiographies and social sciences. He skillfully and persuasively situates this work against the backdrop of several generations of work on the region. Lieberman is masterful at coralling oodles of details into discernible patterns; he acknowledges exceptions, while still identifying trends. I was sometimes reminded of Weber (which my loyal readers will know is a very great compliment, indeed). Lieberman's theme is the long-term, not linear, but "ratchet-like," integration of economic relations, culture, and power in each of the three zones. He ascribes these integrative trends to multiple factors, including climatic conditions, interstate warfare, Theravada Buddhism (in the cases of Burma and Thailand) and Neo-Confucianism and Chinese models of governance (in Vietnam). In vol. 2, Lieberman casts an even bigger net, arguing that these southeast Asian trends paralleled developments in other parts of Eurasia. I believe that this southeast Asian specialist will add an interesting perspective - and perhaps correctives - to the Eurocentric and Sinocentric authors I'm familiar with.

A List of the Books Read over the Last 11 Years by My Zoom Book Club

You can probably tell we're a fun bunch of guys. * or ** or even *** means excellent. 2/19/15: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century ** 4/2/15: Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy ** 5/14/15: Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature * 7/16/15: Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism 9/1/15: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind ** 10/26/15: Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money 12/14/15: Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind 2/9/16: Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity 4/5/16: Enzo Traverso, Fire & Blood 6/14/16: Robert Putnam, Our Kids ** 9/7/16: Pearson & Hacker, Winner Take All Politics ** 1/22/17: Robert Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect.* 4/2/17: Arlie Hochschild, Strangers in their Own Land 6/5/17: Phil Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown 8/7/17: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies 9/9/17: Peter Singer, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution & Cooperation 12/11/17: David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy 2/26/18: James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism 4/23/18: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History 7/31/18: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 9/25/18: Mary Jo Maynes & Ann Waltner, The Family: A World History + Jonathan Schulz et al’s article “The Origins of WEIRD Psychology” + Perry Anderson’s book review “The Family World System” (a review of Goran Therborn’s Between Sex & Power). 12/17/18: Goran Therborn, Between Sex & Power 2/11/19: Robert Putnam, American Grace ** 5/8/19: Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies 7/28/19: Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent * 10/7/19: Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power ** 12/9/19: Christopher Boehm. 2001. Hierarchy in the Forest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. *** 3/15//20: Carol Gilligan & David Richards, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy’s Future 5/31/20: Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political & Global 8/17/20: Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism 11/9/20: Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home 1/11/21: Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Evolution 4/5/21: Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World 7/22/21: Charles Taylor, A Secular Age 9/26/21: Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 1/9/22: David Graeber & David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity 4/10/22: Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise & Fall of Information Empires * 8/16/22: Tony Wood, Russia w/o Putin: Money, Power & the Myths of the New Cold War 10/30/22: Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein & Olivier Sibony, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. * 1/8/23: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies & the Fate of Liberty * 4/16/23: Joseph Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World *** 7/10/23: James Bridle’s New Dark Age: Technology & the End of the Future 10/22/23: Charles Tilly’s Durable Inequality ** 1/7/24: Paul Tough’s The Inequality Machine 3/31/24: Michael Mann's Sources of Social Power, Vol 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 7/8/24: Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness * 11/24/24: Angela Saini's The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality 1/19/25: Richard Reeves, Of Boys & Men * 4/20/25: Randall Collins, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education & Stratification ** 8/10/25: Mike Davis, Planet of Slums 11/9/25: Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism 1/19/26: Kyle Chayka: Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millenium (2007)

I read this book several years ago, but recent reading and discussions about the origins and changes in capitalism and my current class on Wealth and Power since 1945 led me to think it was time for a rereading. The book strikes a nice balance between historical description and narration, on the one hand, and theoretical explanation and argument, on the other. I learned a lot in both regards. For reasons that might have been explained more fully, the authors build their account around seven geographic-cultural regions in Eurasia, studying their interactions in several phases, as well as trade within regions and interactions with areas outside the seven, above all the Americas starting in 1492. At the broadest level, Findlay and O'Rourke argue that "geopolitical frameworks" created by conquest and power - the Islamic expansion, Genghis Khan, the Europeans after 1492, the British Royal Navy from the 18th century - establish the basic conditions for trade, until the tensions of a given framework lead to its revision or overthrow. Trade contributes to economic growth by facilitating an ever finer division of labor (Smithian growth) but also by providing incentives for technological innovation (Solowian growth). Findlay and O'Rourke employ traditional economic concepts such as comparative advantage and factor market effects (Heckscher-Ohlin), but also are comfortable describing the Islamic World during its golden age (700-1100) and Europe as an instance of center-periphery relations. Half a millenium later the tables were turned. For Findlay and O'Rourke, dependence is neither necessarily global nor irreversible. The authors have read very widely in economic and political history and they are not inclined to force the messiness of the real world into a Procrustean bed of any single theory. At the same time, their interest in "middle-range" theories is very fruitful and persuasive. For example, when they address the question of the relationship between British colonies and the industrial revolution, they give Eric Williams' argument in Capitalism and Slavery a respectful hearing, before, however, making the case that the connection had less to do with the profits generated by imperialism and more to do with supply- and demand-side elasticities. Without the "ghost acres" European powers gained in the Americas, key inputs in manufacturing such as cotton would have quickly become prohibitively expensive; without an imperial market, the flood of textiles produced by the new machines and factories would have pushed the price too far down. When it comes to the question Why Europe, and not China?, Findlay and O'Rourke evaluate several plausible explanations in what they insist much be a multi-causal explanation. As for Why England?, they reject the "neo-Whig" explanation of Douglass North and others that the Glorious Revolution gave Englishmen more secure property rights. Rather, they cautiously suggest that it was England's global power - itself due in part to the Glorious Revolution's establishment of Parliamentary supremacy and hence the British state's ability to borrow far more money than its European rivals - which created the aforementioned elastic global factor and product markets. In the coming years, I am sure, I will again be dipping into this instructive and stimulating book.

Aaron Friedberg, Getting China Wrong (2022)

Will Pyle alerted me to an article by Friedberg, which then led me to this book. It's a well argued book that effectively makes the case that the US's policy of "engaging" with China from the 1990s to 2010s - by facilitating trade and investment, smoothing the path to China's membership in the WTO, encouraging China to join international treaties and organizations, etc. - was based on fundamental misconceptions about China's ruling party and was bound to fail. It was also an understable policy, at least initially - since Woodrow Wilson, the US had aspired to remake the world in its own image; the triumph in the Cold War made it seem like markets and democracy were unstoppable trends. However, Friedberg suggests that the Chinese Communist Party's goals are to maintain its power and to restore China to a central place in East Asia and, ultimately, the world. In the 1980s and 1990s China seemed to be willing to fit itself into the Western "rules-based international order" merely because it was weak and wanted to benefit from opening up to the outside world, without allowing its hold on power to slip. The Leninist CCP has all along been driven both by ambition and anxiety about its own security. After 9/11 and China's accession to the WTO, the Communist leadership assessed that they would have a 20-year window in which the US would be distracted and China would have a chance to reset the balance of power, at least in East Asia. With the 2008 global financial crisis and the apparent dawn of a once-in-a-lifetime technological revolution in the 2010s, China under Xi accelerated its timetable and began to reveal its now global ambitions more openly. Friedberg lays out a path to "get China right:" basically, democratic states should partially disengage from China economically and steel themselves for a decades-long competition along many fronts. In other words, something roughly akin to a Cold War 2.0.

Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing A Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019)

I've found my identity - I'm a digital minimalist (though perhaps with Luddite inclinations)! Newport wants to navigate a path between rigid Luddism, on the one hand, and equally blind acquiescence, on the other. He urges us to think carefully about what we value in life and then to ask several questions of any given piece of digital technology: does it serve these values? is it the best way to serve those values? how can we configure our use of the technology to minimize the harms and maximize the benefits. Newport's stance on digital technology is very close to my own, but he helped me justify my positions more explicitly. For example, in a fascinating discussion of the Amish, he explains that they don't reject technology per se, but approach it very intentionally, exploring its effects on their values and ways of life. This intentionality, according to Newport, amounts to a kind of autonomy, which the Amish value. I probably don't approach digital technology this deliberately, but I do think I value the autonomy of saying no. Newport suggests that each of us start with a 30-day declutter, in which we abstain from optional digital technology. After this cleansing, we should consciously evaluate with technologies we choose to reincorporate. I am considering doing the same, for example with my cycling through websites each day, a cycling that too often ends with youtube. Newport makes interesting comments about strenuous, "high value" leisure, drawing on Aristotle, Thoreau, and others.

Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better (2025)

For several years now, I have been wracking my brains to understand why more of my students don't seem to be very engaged - why are there so few who evince genuine curiosity, passion to learn and debate about the world? I talk about this with my colleagues; this year I started asking some of the curious students at my school what their explanations are. It's an issue that's often on my mind. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I found this book sitting on my coffee table - Stacy had come across it and ordered it for herself. The book turned out to be very interesting, and I plan to recommend it widely. My own explanation of student disengagement had revolved around two things: the pressure to achieve academically, which has only grown over the last 30 or 40 years and which I thought might be crowding out genuine interest; and - of course - the phones. This book isn't mainly concerned with the causes of the crisis (they do provide quantitative evidence of a disengagement crisis), but when they do they focus on the increased pressure to achieve. They see phones and tech, not as a cause, but as a response to previously existing disengagement. The book is engagingly written, fluently combining often-moving stories of individual teens, quantitative data, and relevant psychological and neuroscientific studies, which they explain quite well. Anderson and Winthrop helpfully distinguish between three kinds of disengagement: passenger mode (in which half of all students may be!); resister mode; and - surprisingly - achiever mode (in which praise and grades are the only motivators). Their ideal, by contrast, is explorer mode, in which students are driven by intrinsic motivation, are agents in their own learning, and are resilient, i.e. can handle setbacks. I appreciated many of the pieces of advice the authors give and hope to incorporate it in my teaching (and perhaps parenting, as well). There are some small bones I want to pick, though. The authors regularly emphasize the importance of teachers trying to engage students and make the material relevant to their lives and interests. But how can one do this with a class of 25 or 30 different students? And I wonder (frankly) how many students really have passionate interests? (In the book, almost all disengaged students had some deep passion, which seemed to me to be unrealistic.) Maybe I just don't know my students well enough....More fundamentally, isn't it possible to make things interesting without appealing to what students already care about? Obviously, some bridge has to be built to what they know, but.... Relatedly, Anderson and Winthrop repeatedly downplay the importance of knowledge transmission and elevate the importance of skills, learning how to learn, and what they call "transcendent thinking" - i.e. more abstract or reflective thinking, stepping away from the given to ask about causes and alternatives. They cite the progressive guru Paulo Freire admiringly. But somehow transcendent thinking only requires the time and space to daydream. (I'm being a little unfair.) Here's where E.D. Hirsch's emphasis on mastering knowledge can come in. Transcendent thinking requires more than just the chance to daydream (the brain's default or mindwandering mode), but the material to daydream with - i.e. knowledge, schemas, etc. The combination of new material and the option to pause and daydream/ruminate/reflect is precisely what Maryann Wolf (Reader Come Home) identifies as the secret to reading's transformative power. It's a mark of the quality of The Disengaged Teen that it so often won me over, even when some of its progressive tendencies rankled.

Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture (2024)

I read this book for my book club. I came to it with high hopes - the topic is an important one, Chayka writes for the New Yorker about social media, and I had enjoyed one of his pieces I'd read. Alas, the book was something of a disappointment. Chayka almost never delves deeply into a question, his reading and thinking seem suprisingly shallow. For example, he talks about the importance of cultivating "taste," but then has little to say about what this means, about the presumably extensive discussions of it. Next he laments that elite critics and curators no longer point us in the right direction - but he doesn't stop to weigh the losses and gains of elite guidance, or to say how that guidance and one's own cultivation of taste coexist. Compared to other journalists writing about our present digital moment - Chris Hayes, Nicholas Carr, Jenny Odell - Chayka seems dull and insipid.