Review: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

From The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Once upon a time, the story goes, we were hunter-gatherers, living in a prolonged state of childlike innocence, in tiny bands. These bands were egalitarian; they could be for the very reason that they were so small. It was only after the ‘Agricultural Revolution’, and then still more the rise of cities, that this happy condition came to an end, ushering in ‘civilization’ and ‘the state’ — which also meant the appearance of written literature, science and philosophy, but at the same time, almost everything bad in human life: patriarchy, standing armies, mass executions and annoying bureaucrats demanding that we spend much of our lives filling in forms."

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The subtitle of this huge work is "A New History of Humanity" and as the name implies, Graeber and Wengrow range over the whole planet and tens of thousands of years. In the process they challenge the almost universal assumptions of humanity's social evolution. No one will be able to write another "big history" book without addressing the questions raised here.

TIL: History is Never Static

I grew up thinking World War II was the "good war" and the Vietnam War was the "bad war." And the Korean War was something in between, on the slide from good to bad. Later, the Gulf War was another good war ("By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all," President George H.W. Bush exulted.) at least until it all went to hell in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those two wars are too recent for us to have settled on a stable mythology yet. But World War II's myths have been cemented in place for a long time. Woe be to anyone who dares interfere with our national myths. Maybe that's changing.

Review: Twilight of Democracy

From Twilight of Democracy, by Anne Applebaum:

That moment has passed. Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year’s Eve party. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been there. In fact, about half the people who were at that party would no longer speak to the other half. The estrangements are political, not personal. Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide, one that runs through not only what used to be the Polish right but also the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French right, the Italian right, and, with some differences, the British right and the American right, too."

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This is Anne Applebaum's personal account of the decline of Western liberal democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.

Review: Unworthy Republic

From Unworthy Republic, by Claudio Sant:

"Indians," like Jews, Gypsies, slaves, and "free negroes," wrote the Georgia Journal in 1825, were "a kind of citizens of an inferior order." What was to be done with them? By the 1830s, the expression "the Indian question" was circulating widely in the United States."
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The answer to the question posed by Georgia whites in 1825, was voluntary self-deportation, forced expulsion, or not necessarily as a last resort, extermination.

Review: Harlem Shuffle

From Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead:

His cousin Freddie brought him on the heist one hot night in early June. Ray Carney was having one of his run-around days—uptown, downtown, zipping across the city. Keeping the machine humming. First up was Radio Row, to unload the final three consoles, two RCAs and a Magnavox, and pick up the TV he left."
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It's a heist novel. It's a character study of a man halfway between legitimate businessman and small-time crook. It's a study of a society that makes it hard to tell the difference.

Review: Interior Chinatown

From Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu:

Ever since you were a boy, you've dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy. You are not Kung Fu Guy. You are currently Background Oriental Male, but you've been practicing. Maybe tomorrow will be the day."
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Is it a screenplay? Is it a memoir? Is it a comedy? Is it a satire? Is it an indictment of Hollywood and American racism? Yes to all.

Review: Tokyo Ueno Station

From Tokyo Ueno Station, by Yu Miri:

There’s that sound again. That sound— I hear it. But I don’t know if it’s in my ears or in my mind. I don’t know if it’s inside me or outside. I don’t know when it was or who it was either. Is that important? Was it? Who was it?"
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The reason the narrator is having trouble locating the source of the sound is because he's a ghost.

Review: How the Word is Passed

From How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith:

The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories."
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If you didn't learn this in school, it's not because it didn't happen. It's not because it wasn't important. It's because the people who wrote the history in this country didn't want you to learn this, to the point where even today's teachers don't know what they aren't teaching.

Paved A Way: Shingle Mountain

Amazon There's a pattern that runs through Collin Yarbrough's book. The neighborhoods he reports on all suffered from infrastructure development. The tools used against the neighborhoods were sometimes simple neglect, sometimes they were explicitly targeted. The end result was almost always the same: discrimination, disinvestment, deterioration. The patterns of racism continue to the present day. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at Shingle Mountain.

Paved A Way: Fair Park

Amazon Unlike Tenth Street and Little Mexico, I felt I had a good understanding of the history of Fair Park in Dallas. Collin Yarbrough fills in the details. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastructure development cut a path of destruction through south Dallas.

Paved A Way: Tenth Street

Amazon I don't think I ever heard the terms the Black Bottom, Tenth Street, or the Heights before reading "Paved A Way." Or, the only Heights I heard of were Richardson Heights and Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights." But here I'm talking Oak Cliff, or south Dallas, and a neighborhood decimated by the construction of I-35. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastructure development cut a path of destruction through south Dallas.

Paved A Way: Little Mexico

Amazon For decades, I've known about the El Fenix restaurant on the north side of Woodall Rodgers Freeway in downtown Dallas. To me, it always seemed like a bad location for a restaurant, cut off from downtown as it was. I shamefully admit that, until reading Collin Yarbough's book, I wasn't even aware of Dallas's "Little Mexico." Now I know why El Fenix was built where it was. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastructure development destroyed "El Barrio."

Paved A Way: Deep Ellum

Amazon In past installments of this book report, we've seen how Central Expressway cut through the African-American community of North Dallas, or Freedman's Town, in the 1940s. But before it was Central Expressway, a 1912 Dallas master plan called for a Central Boulevard. And before that, it was the Central Track, or the Houston and Texas Central Railway, which was laid on the eastern edge of downtown Dallas and up through North Dallas and beyond. Dallas's huge cotton market needed workers, lots of manual labor, which attracted a large African-American community along the tracks, creating what came to be called Deep Ellum. But what infrastructure creates, it also destroys. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastructure development both built and then destroyed Deep Ellum.

Paved A Way: Freedman's Cemetery

Amazon I first became aware of Freedman's Cemetery in the early 1990s when the project to expand Central Expressway uncovered a cemetery in its path. Did that stop them? Of course not. But it did delay them for several years while they dug up bodies and reinterred them elsewhere. RIP? Not in Dallas. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastructure development finds a way to harm you, even if you're dead.

Paved A Way: Boulevards and Parks

Amazon On a national scale, Dallas is only average in terms of providing residents with access to parks. But the goal has been on the minds of Dallas city officials for more than a century. In 1910, the city brought landscape architect George Kessler to Dallas. The journey from George Kessler's vision to today's reality hasn't been a smooth path. I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, we look at how infrastucture development finds a way to target Black and poor communities.

Paved A Way: Redlining

Amazon I don't know when I became aware of the notion of "redlining." High school maybe. I do know that I learned it was a racial injustice. And I thought it was a thing of the past, like segregation. Or was it? I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Today, Yarbrough introduces us to redlining and its long-term impact in Dallas.

Paved A Way: The Battle of Village Creek

Amazon If you have studied the history of Richardson, Texas, you have probably come across this marker in McKamy Spring Park in Brick Row: The Yoiuane tribe of the Caddo group of Indians lived here as early as 1690 to 1840. They hunted buffalo and deer on the prairie. They used McKamy Spring as a watering place. It was from these friendly Tejas Indians that Texas got her name. McKamy Spring Historical Marker Something about that statement should trigger a question in your mind. What happened in 1840 that caused these friendly Tejas Indians to leave the area? I doubt that it was something like "There's a job opportunity in Oklahoma too good to pass up." I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. Yarbrough doesn't discuss Richardson or McKamy Spring, but he has the answer to my question anyway. And, no, it had nothing to do with the local job market.

Paved A Way: Extermination as Government Policy

Amazon Who is the worst villain in history? Hitler, right? And what makes him the worst villain? Genocide, right? The word was even coined for him. Where does Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar rank on the list? Top ten? Top hundred? Or so far down the list that your first reaction is "Who is Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar?" I'm reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city is Dallas, Texas. I'm blogging as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. It fills us in on Mirabeau B. Lamar.

Paved A Way: "Dallas Doesn't Give a Damn About its History"

Amazon I've begun reading "Paved A Way: Infrastructure, Policy and Racism in an American City" by Collin Yarbrough. The city referenced in the title is Dallas, Texas. Instead of reading it all the way through and then writing a short review (my usual practice), I've decided to blog as I go, using whatever parts of the book catch my attention. A good place to start is with this quote in the opening chapter: Robert Lee Thornton, Dallas’s former mayor, once said, "Dallas doesn’t give a damn about its history; it only cares about the future." Paved A Way

Review: The Ministry for the Future

From The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson:

Everything was tan and beige and a brilliant, unbearable white. Ordinary town in Uttar Pradesh, 6 AM. He looked at his phone: 38 degrees. In Fahrenheit that was— he tapped— 103 degrees. Humidity about 35 percent. The combination was the thing. A few years ago it would have been among the hottest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded. Now just a Wednesday morning.
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This is speculative fiction from the near future, when the world can no longer ignore global warming. Lots of things touched on here, from science to economics to government to terrorism, sometimes dramatized, sometimes just straight talk.