Archives for "Books":

On "The New Industrial State" on June 8, 2008 in Books , Economics

John Kenneth Galbraith does not fail to amaze me once again with his book "The New Industrial State". After reading "The Affluent Society", Galbraith quickly became one of my favorite economists. Rarely have I seen someone critical of the capitalist system without considering themselves socialist. Many of those critical of capitalist economics are too easily swept away by utopianism and...

Ice T - The Ice Opinion on December 4, 2007 in Books

Just finished reading Ice T's "The Ice Opinion". Interesting book I must say. While I have never been so much a fan of gangster rap, it wasn't until I had watched a few movies with Ice T in it that I began to grow curious as to whether or not his lyrics maintained a sort of social message. A quick...

The Red Balloon on July 11, 2007 in Books

My favorite book as a child. The (almost) silent French film. Pick up a used copy here, read the wiki here, and find the torrent here....

Review of "The Hidden Dimension" by Edward T. Hall on June 13, 2007 in Books

By reading "Beyond Culture" I quickly became a fan of Anthropologist Edward T. Hall. Hall tends to tackle rarely studies aspects of foreign culture (such as concepts of time and space) and presents them in a very intriguing way. In "Hidden Dimension", Hall concentrates more on the intangible than the tangible. Using many animals as an example, Hall identifies a...

Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital" on June 9, 2007 in Books

While waiting for my grandmother at one of her medical appointments, today I finished reading Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital". For those of you who don't know, Mr. de Soto is probably today's most renown and famed latin American economist and a poster boy for Western diplomats and international banking officials (the back of his book features praising...

Review of "On Revolution" by Hannah Arendt on May 16, 2007 in Books

The bulk of this book was quite boring with the exception of the last few chapters. Either ways, it was my opportunity to be introduced into the world of Hannah Arendt, the famous German political scientist. The later chapters of the book were so rich in content that it was well worth reading through the two hundred-or-so pages of...

Review of "The Russian Revolution" by Sheila Fitzpatrick on May 9, 2007 in Books

Fascinated by the talk of the rise of town hall meetings, community organization, and "soviet"-style units of political mobilization in Hannah Arendt's "On Revolution", I picked up a copy of Fitzpatrick's "Russian Revolution", which was not only considered one of the most informative books on the subject (or says the other reviews), but it was also half.com's cheapest. (Jaja....

Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital" on May 9, 2007 in Books

Don't even bother. It's like reading COMPAQ instruction manuals or wikipedia articles on entries such as "RAM" and "bits". I came across this book because one of those socio-technology-slash-Lawrence-Lessig type books kept making reference to it. Boring. With a name like Nicholas Negroponte you'd think the book would be a bit cooler....

Review of "Against the Megamachine" by David Watson on May 3, 2007 in Books

Great book to read right after Fitzpatrick's. While I'm not a fan of essay collections from single authors, the book is a wonderful anarchist account from a social and technological perspective. Watson finished the job that Fitzpatrick started by eliminating much of the technical and final differences between traditional socialism and capitalism. Khrushchev's bashing of the West was not...

"Socialism Without The State" by Evan Luard on April 10, 2007 in Books

Boring. The concept of the book is bad ass, and the author is a respectable figure (any public official willing to write a book on such a specific subject - as opposed to a general, dumbified account of his boring life - gains serious cool points), but the book just doesn't cut it. Sure, the author points out a...

Review of "In the Soviet House of Culture" on April 9, 2007 in Books , Society

I really wish books would be a little more specific with their titles. While I thought that the book would be based on general U.S.S.R. cultural policy towards it's citizens, it turned out to be an account of Soviet cultural imperialism towards the indigenous and ethnic groups living in Siberia. The book does an excellent job at documenting a...

Review of "Primitive Government" by Lucy Mair on March 30, 2007 in Books , Society

I picked up title in a used bookstore in the outskirts of Denver. After finishing "Affluent Society" one morning, I read through this baby that same afternoon and evening. Concentrating solely on African societies effected by colonization, I was quite upset to see that the tribes of the Americas and Asia were not mentioned. Also, the groups mentioned in...

"Life and Death of Nazi Germany" by Roberto Goldston on March 30, 2007 in Books

Yet another read-in-a-day book. Being the second time I had read this book, it wasn't that hard to zip through it while in the waiting room at my grandmother's doctor's office. I purchased this book off of ebay, if I remember correctly. I have a practice of roaming the nonfiction book section for $0.01 books with shipping below $2.00....

"Beyond Culture" Book Review on July 31, 2006 in Books

With a title and book cover that resembles the feel and look portrayed by Autonomedia books such as Temporary Autonomous Movement and others by Bob Black, this title caught my attention as it peeped at me through a stack of aged and tattered books in a run down Anaheim bookshop. With chapter titles such as "The Paradox of Culture," "Hidden...

Additional Quotes from "Temporary Autonomous Zone" on March 19, 2006 in Books

"If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry." p. 19 "Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head" p. 21 "Poetic Terrorism proposes this sabotage of archetypes as the only practical insurrectionary tactic for the present." p. 33...

Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio De Janeiro by Robert Gay on June 10, 2003 in Books

What I learned from this book:-How "Clientel democracy" or "democracy by alliance" works in the shanty towns-How "democracy through bureacracy" works in the shanty towns.-How institutional paternalism can be raped by anti-paternalists. Good book. Get it for $12.50. Link....