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This installment is a little short on links as such — it’s a busy time and I just haven’t come across that much on the internet lately. But I did manage to complete a few real books.
I recently joined Arnold Kling in a Zoom discussion of Patricia Crone’s Preindustrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. The book is an overview of the economic, political, and cultural aspects of premodern civilizations around the world.
As someone who has read a lot of cross-cultural and historical material over the years, little was new to me. But I was pleased to find so much reviewed in a single source and found some of her examples and comparisons illuminating. One thing Crone especially emphasizes is how much the difficulties of travel and communication shaped the ancient and medieval world.
Kling has a written review of Crone’s book here.
During our conversation, I recommend Human Societies [corrected link 2/29] by Gerhard Lenski, Patrick Nolan, and Jean Lenski. It’s an even broader overview that compares agrarian civilizations with hunter-gatherer bands, horticultural tribes, and modern societies. I wish I had mentioned that since it’s written as a textbook, the newer editions have insane three-figure textbook pricing. The link above is to an affordable older edition.
(One reason I always mention Jean Lenksi when she isn’t listed as author on more recent editions is that including her name in the search terms gets you the older ones.)
If I was in charge of the sociology curriculum, something like Human Societies would be required in all introductory courses. I frequently lament that many sociologists don’t know much about different types of society, being mostly focused on the hot-button issues of their own. They’re more currentthingologists.
Another book I read this month was the Nanjung Ilgi: War Diary of Admiral Yi Sun Sin. There’s not a lot of glory to be had in Korean military history, but Yi Sun Sin is one of history’s top admirals, and Koreans consider him one of the country’s unimpeachable heroes.
I’ve struggled finding English translations of the book for a reasonable price, and only managed to get a copy through an interlibrary loan. The link above is to the WorldCat entry if you wish to do the same.
The book is the diary Admiral Yi kept during the Imjin War of 1592-1598, when Japan invaded Korea for the first time. It is a real diary, not something like Caesar’s writing on the Gallic Wars that was meant for public consumption. As such there’s not much narrative or attempt to explain the big picture of the war. And as one might expect from a good soldier, Admiral Yi doesn’t dwell overmuch on his own accomplishments.
His most famous feat, the Battle of Meongyang, involved him using tide and topography to defeat a force ten times larger than his own. They’ve made a movie or two focused on the battle, but in the diary it's less than a page and a half, with a matter-of-fact remark that his flagship went into the enemy alone and had to sink a few of them before his timid captains took heart and joined in.
The main value of the book for me is the window into the life of someone from a very different society and culture. This includes little tidbits like the amount of time the admirals spent in their ship’s archery pavilions or that Yi put a lot of stock in divining. One bit that stuck out to me as a modern Westerner: Yi’s filial piety is such that he cannot forgive himself for missing his mother’s birthday while saving his country from invasion — yet when informed that his wife is on her deathbed, he remarks that events are so momentous he shouldn’t let himself worry about personal matters.
There’s also good sense of the chaos and fog of war multiplied by the lack of modern communication, with the admiral weighing conflicting rumors and reports about the fate of this town or that. At one point a Japanese army turns out to have been Korean peasants rioting — or maybe not.
A major part of the diary is Yi’s grievances against his fellow elite as feckless, corrupt, incompetent, and short-sighted. Early on you realize that “What a disgrace!” is something like his catchphrase for describing admirals and officials. It seems character was a disadvantage in court politics, as Yi winds up imprisoned about two-thirds of the way through the diary.
I also revisited James D. Rice’s Tales from the Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America. I’d listened to it on audiobook before but got the text so I could take some notes for my next Collective Violence in American History episode. So yes, you’ll be hearing more about this bloody upheaval soon.
Speaking of podcasts…
I was pleased to see that Dan Carlin put out a new Hardcore History: Addendum episode dealing with the Holocaust. In case you missed it, his last installment of the regular series was on the Viking Age and replacement of Norse belief with Christianity.
Carlin’s an old favorite, but lately on my work commutes I’ve been listening to the Ask Chuck Dixon podcast on Youtube, where the veteran comic writer — co-creator of the Batman villain Bane — talks about comics, books, films, and his own career. I enjoy his industry stories and thoughts on writing, as well as the stream of interesting book and movie recommendations. If I ever get the time for more leisure reading, I’ve got a long list to work through.
I also continue to be impressed with Youtuber Preston Jacobs’s fan-fiction version of The Winds of Winter. The idea is that since George R.R. Martin seems increasingly unlikely to finish his Song of Ice and Fire series, the hardcore fans might as well finish it themselves — beginning with the installment that’s been in the works for over a decade now. Jacobs creates chapter outlines, crowdsources the writing, and puts together the best of the submitted chapters or chapter fragments. The results so far are much better than I would have expected from this method.
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Substacks cited above: