Okay maybe it's three books, and one of them is in two different formats (book and graphic novel). But four does sound more impressive, and I need to keep my stats up.
"I will say that it’s nicely positioned between the “capitalism made us rich, so everything is great, and people just need to realize that” camp and the “capitalism is a monster eating the world, kill it with pitchforks and fire” camp. So if you find yourself in a similar space, you’ll probably enjoy the book."
This is a wide enough space I suspect two people can wander in it and not meet, nonetheless I've added Lindsey to my feed to peruse. Thanks for that, and the other reviews.
If the Bronze Age could collapse was caused in large part by earthquakes and environmental factors, how does that align with the civilizational complexity theory? Did the complexity just cause the collapse to spread?
My read is that the earthquakes and environmental factors were the shocks, but the complexity created fragility with respect to those shocks. In the same way that a clay mug might be undamaged by an earthquake, but your fancy china doesn't survive.
"Westad paints the history well, particularly the horrors of the Battle of the Somme, which opens the book. But by making an explicit comparison with 1914 and the period immediately before WWI, he runs a real risk of overfitting the data."
Whereas Dreher is writing a book comparing us to Weimar Germany a (painful) generation later. I don't know if those are compatible or not, but neither is a good place to be. Must every calm herald a storm? Probably not, but we're quick to call recent trends new realities and not recognize that settled matters can quickly become unsettled.
"I will say that it’s nicely positioned between the “capitalism made us rich, so everything is great, and people just need to realize that” camp and the “capitalism is a monster eating the world, kill it with pitchforks and fire” camp. So if you find yourself in a similar space, you’ll probably enjoy the book."
This is a wide enough space I suspect two people can wander in it and not meet, nonetheless I've added Lindsey to my feed to peruse. Thanks for that, and the other reviews.
Yeah it's a big space, but I think Lindsey has positioned himself on a particularly scenic overlook.
If the Bronze Age could collapse was caused in large part by earthquakes and environmental factors, how does that align with the civilizational complexity theory? Did the complexity just cause the collapse to spread?
My read is that the earthquakes and environmental factors were the shocks, but the complexity created fragility with respect to those shocks. In the same way that a clay mug might be undamaged by an earthquake, but your fancy china doesn't survive.
"Westad paints the history well, particularly the horrors of the Battle of the Somme, which opens the book. But by making an explicit comparison with 1914 and the period immediately before WWI, he runs a real risk of overfitting the data."
Whereas Dreher is writing a book comparing us to Weimar Germany a (painful) generation later. I don't know if those are compatible or not, but neither is a good place to be. Must every calm herald a storm? Probably not, but we're quick to call recent trends new realities and not recognize that settled matters can quickly become unsettled.