Worthy Unfinished Books ... May 2023
The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem
By Mathew Hollis
… a brilliant book that I may finish. I simply ended up disliking T.S. Eliot and his mentor Ezra Pound so much that I had to move on. In hindsight, given the great puzzle that is his poem and Hollis’ writing gifts, I should not have stopped. Having taught both, very likely I will finish.
Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World
By Malcolm Harris
… an outrageous rant that exhausted me by its midpoint. An angry Marxist wants to locate all our modern ills at the feet of the Leland Stanford and all that follows. It is filled with good stuff and his case is fun to think about (native genocide … The Octopus … eugenics … science-based racism … military industrial complex … Silicon Valley libertarians) and he creates a Palo Alto model of rampant NorCal germ free exploitation that touches quite a few bases … great cover!
The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World
By Edward Shawcross
… a “did this really happen” story well told and not too long. Ten years ago I would have Finished this book. The reading became a true battle between a great story and the other options stacked on my bedside table. It is still there …
A Story of a Life
By Konstantin Paustovsky
… a memoir written as a novel, the Ukrainian masterpiece survived Stalin and has reemerged to serious universal acclaim. It is beautiful. It is long. I WILL finish it, but it may take a twist of fate to slow things down enough to make it my only task for a week or two. It might be the best book I have not finished …
Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945
By Richard Overy
… this is a classic case of suffering from too much reading on the same subject. In this case it is World War Two, a subject that began to obsess me from a very young age. This recent and, I hope, temporary saturation saddens me. Particularly in the case of Overy’s book which is the new gold standard on the subject. Long, elegant, immensely detailed but anecdotal, Overy’s thesis of the two world wars being manifestations of contagious imperialism is terrific. I did get over 400 pages into it. Worth buying it for even half of that.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
By Daniel Immerwahr
… this is not just another revisionist take on American History. Maybe you know all about “the splendid little war” of 1898, the resultant occupation of the Philippines, the almost two dozen incursions into Central American countries or the “annexation” of Hawaii. My bet, however, is that whatever you know will be forever rewritten by this history friendly and utterly original angle on the American empire. I came close to finishing it, but 20 years of teaching American history has shortened by attention span on the subject.
Plague Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History
By Kyle Harper
… this is a case of bad timing only. It is long and a bit of a science background helps, but this is a mind warping book. A little like what Einstein did to Newton, Harper’s work does to conventional historical narratives. Unfortunately, I had just finished Harper’s brilliant (and shorter) Fate of Rome (see my review) and historian fatigue set in about halfway through this extraordinary tome.
