Couple weeks ago Amazon Kindle had the full 6-volume set of Winston Churshill’s The Second World War on sale for NT$300, which I snatched up.
Just started the first book, and in the first 50 pages he’s given me insights into post-WW1 France that will keep me reading. For example, he goes on a bit about France’s relationship with Germany since 1870, that by 1919 the French had gone through 50 years of high tension and a continuously dreaded expectation of German invasion. Churchill asserts that explains a lot of why France was so insistent on punishing Germany at Versaille, and which in turn largely explains their sleepy complacency with respect to keeping abreast of state-of-the-art miltary strategies during the 1920s and 30s.
Anyway, pretty good read so far. I will almost certainly pick up his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples if/when it, too, is discounted by Amazon. Churchill makes hanging out with him very comfortable so far.
Got this book after seeing this podcast. It’s pretty amazing stuff. Really worth listening to this podcast. What if we treated aging as a disease, can we prevent it or slow it down? It appears we can slow it down and even reverse it.
My parents have an early hardcover edition of that in their basement; my mom did some research and determined it’s significant enough to be worth a few hundred dollars (this was a surprise to her; we’ve got a complete Dickens collection printed before whenever edition dates were printed in books, and we thought that would be worth more, but apparently not). I’m not sure if that valuation was before or after the underlining and annotations I believe I may have added to one of the volumes at some point in high school … oops.
Do you use the Kindle daily deals newsletter? It’s a good way to keep tabs on what books are on special. Also kind of dangerous, because I wind up buying books far faster than I could read them.
Good writing, not so great history, great anecdotes though.
On the origin of the War of Jenkin’s Ear between Britain and Spain:
“What did you do?” he was asked. “I commended my soul to God and
my cause to my country”, was the answer put in his mouth by the
Opposition…. Whether it was indeed his own ear or whether he had lost
it in a seaport brawl remains uncertain, but the power of this shriveled
object was immense.
After a pause in the Hundred Years War:
At the Christmas speech, the King said he was at peace, and hoped his subjects and all good Christians would be so. As this was read as calling for war with France, it raised a tremendous cheer.
So, I’ve finally started reading this. I went in with an open mind, but completely expected it to be a piece of crap. Much to my surprise, I’m actually finding it really engaging and fairly enjoyable, even with the two-dimensional characters and inherently boring subject matter (architecture!).
I started reading this after an anarchist (in the traditional sense, not in the “Antifa” sense) writer I respect a lot recently recommended this book on a podcast before coming out as an Ayn Rand fan. This surprised me because she’s more associated with the libertarian right than she is with anarchism. But, that said, I’ve long assumed that anarchism and libertarianism have more in common with than they do in opposition to one another.
I’ll wait until I’m further into the book before commenting on Ayn Rand’s philosophy, as I understand that this book, alongside Atlas Shrugged, are essentially vehicles for her to expound that philosophy.
Which translation if I may ask ?
The Rabassa’s ? I found it quite heavy in the begining but more colorful and it does helps enjoying “the ambiance”. Also whenever he had the choice, he apparently tried to always choose a latin origin word rather than the “germanic” one. It surely must have helped me quite quite quite a lot in the long run…
I would say in some ways, yes. For example, when the aging of vascular and muscular health is reversed, you should see signs of healthier muscle and skin tissue. But if we are talking about wrinkles, I don’t think so.
