Human Scale

Posted on May 15, 2014 by smellincoffee
Human Scale
© 1980 Kirkpatrick Sale
500 pages      

      Human Scale is an ambitious assault on big business, big government — the very concept of Bigness. Opening with biology, Kirkpatrick Sale first establishes his basic operating principle:  for everything, there is a limit to its size beyond which it cannot grow without being compromised. In its opening third, Human Scale addresses the problems inherent in large, complex systems, then follows that with sections on how society, economy, and politics might function more effectively if scaled down.  On the hefty side itself, Human Scale impresses with its thoroughness; a kindred spirit to E.F. Schumacher’s small is beautiful,  the book has largely stood the test of time in putting forth a case for decentralized politics, appropriate technology,  organic locally grown agriculture, and cities and buildings built to the human scale.  Sale creates a synthesis from topics as varying as demographics and aesthetics.. It is at times dated, at least in its optimistic projections for solar energy efficiency.  On the whole, however, it offers insight into government dysfunction and widespread social problems, along with ways people can work to effect change themselves. It is almost an anarchist how-to, a review of ways people can reclaim their lives against the power of centralization, and its enduring relevance is proven in the multitude of authors still advancing its ideas, a number that includes Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry.

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This week: commerce, trade, and shipping

Posted on May 12, 2014 by smellincoffee
This past week at the library I’ve been mostly reading into commerce and trade, and reviews are posted or will be for all except for Point of Purchase, a “history of how shopping changed America”.  This was a history of American shopping, largely, with some attempt to read meaning into browsing and acquisition;  Consumers’ Republic did that better.  My most recent read was Ninety Percent of Everything, a library book I imagine I’ll end up buying since I dropped it onto a rain-soaked pavement and then splashed coffee onto it for good measure. I wouldn’t mind owning it, as it made for a fantastic read. At least I didn’t overturn an entire glass of milk onto it as in eighth  grade, when I utterly ruined a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls.  I’m not usually this abusive to books, honest.

Currently I’m engrossed in The White War, a history of the Italo-Austrian front of the Great War. It’s quite impressive so far. Next in the Great War books will be one on airplanes or ships, I think, and then I’ll examine the Eastern Front. Those interested in the war may find a recently-created Twitter handle of note; “RealTimeWW1” will be posting ‘news articles’ from the war. Presently the fighting hasn’t broken out yet. There were a couple of WW1 books on NetGalleys I was hoping to read, but I’m told the advanced review copies are reserved for English-types. Alas. (It’s been ages since I read anything from NetGalleys; the last might have well been To End All Wars, on anti-war action in England during the conflict.)

Reviews are  in the works for for Human Scale and Away Down South. 

Books in the “News”
Today’s Econtalk podcast features an interview with Chuck Marohn, author of “Building Strong Towns“.  Considering that I listen to both of their shows weekly, today’s is a special delight. 
The most recent episode of AstronomyCast features an interview with Phil Plait on the topic, “The Universe is Trying to Kill You”. Dr. Plait draws from his book, Death from the Skies. 
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A Splendid Exchange

Posted on May 6, 2014 by smellincoffee
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
© 2009 David Bernstein
496 pages

         

  History oft moves with the caravans and trade fleets, and its journeys along the routes  of the past and present are given a storied account in A Splendid Exchange. Beginning in ancient Sumer and moving forward to the present day, David Bernstein demonstrates how the lust for goods from afar has linked cities and states together, and driven them apart. The narrative corners nearly every corner of the globe, Antarctica excepting, and ripens into a tentative argument for free trade, though its author isn’t too insistent. Bernstein brings a lot to the table; he’s a personable author, sometimes wandering off on side-roads but for never too long, and usually delivering something valuable to the reader as a reward for gamely enduring:  understanding of how air compressors work, for instance, or what is meant by the economic phrase, comparative advantage.  He creates in A Splendid Exchange  a marvelously varied history book, following the tale of  trade through city-states to nation-empires, from the middle east to South America — but as varied as it is, no matter the diversity of goods being traded or fought over, the narrative flows seamlessly aside from a jump in the 20th century.  Those goods range from the exotic to the mundane;  table elements we now take for granted have had far more interesting past lives. Readers may well know that sugar, spice, and all things nice are everything little girls are made of – but they’re also the stuff of world empires and bitter grudges. The importance of trade routes affirms the importance of geography; many of the straits endlessly fought over throughout the book remain heavily in use today, underscoring the relevance of the various trading empires’ rise and fall.  The same trading routes the Dutch and Portuguese  shot their hearts out as cannons attempting to secure are the ones we employ to transport oil, no mere luxury. Our entire global economy is lubricated by trade, which is why Bernstein cautiously presents arguments for freeing it up, with caveats.  A Splendid Exchange strikes me as popular history at its finest; varied but cohesive, fun to read but intelligently argued and obviously relevant to our contemporary experience. 



Related:

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More Work for Mother

Posted on May 5, 2014 by smellincoffee

More Work for Mother: the Ironies of American Housework

© 1985 Ruth Cowan           
288 pages


       Throughout the 20thcentury,  households were transformed by a new abundance of labor-saving devices, from washing machines to toaster ovens, and processed goods that reduced housewives’ workloads, leaving them free to learn trades and professions of their own and fully participate in the modern world.  But in the second decade of the 21st century, American women are just as  chore-taxed as ever, lamenting of the ‘second shift’ that awaits them upon arriving home. Despite the many machines now investing our homes,  most of the work still has to be done by hand, for Parkinson’s Law holds true there as well as anywhere  else: work expands to fill the time available for its completion. In More Work for Mother, author Ruth Cowan demonstrates how gadgets and goods created new work while eliminating others, and argues that women will not be free from drudgery until housework is freed from the realm of ‘femininity’ to the point that men won’t feel emasculated by laundry.

            The devices and goods of the 19thand 20th century – refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves,  convenient bags of flour, even more convenient no-bake cheesecake mixes, even more convenient instant cereal —  did indeed reduce a lot of labor. In fact, for men they reduced virtually all household work.  More Work for Other opens with a history of housework. Although modern readers might  be aware that women’s traditional role was in the home, men’s traditional role was in the home, as well;  prior to industrialism, men didn’t pack a lunch pail and disappear into the country for a day at work. The home and the work of most families were intimately connected,  typically inseparable. Women may have baked bread, but it was men who gathered and ground it;  women may have washed clothes, but men chopped the wood and let children lug in the water.  But while men’s roles in the household largely vanished, women found that work remained constant.  The availability of affordable clothing reduced the need for sewing and repairing, but increased the burden of laundry, and standards of cleanliness climbed as the ability to clean increased. Laundry and scrubbing agents meant that minor stains could no longer be tolerated, necessitating near-daily cleaning regimens.  And those new labor-saving devices were often fragile things, needing frequent cleaning to avoid their works being gummed up.  Additionally, for middle class or wealthier women, the availability of do-it-yourself machines meant that retaining maids and other servants was a sinful waste – never mind that doing it themselves meant more hours of their own time spent doing the labor, regardless of advertisers’ claims of quick ease-of-use.   There  were options that might have truly revolutionized household chores –  commercial kitchens with thrice-daily delivery,  commercial laundries, cooperatives, apartment hotels – but most fell by the wayside, either because of cultural imperatives or because of market forces.  
         Although not as sweeping as Susan Strasser’s Never Done,  what’s lost in extensive narrative is replaced by more serious analysis and an abundance of good points made. Cowan notes, for instance, that the increase of standardized products destroyed easy class differences:  while in the mid-19th century a street urchin and the scion of a wealthy businessman would look as different as night and day just judging from their clothes’ cleanliness, today both could wear the same products, and the fact that vitually all homes have water and heating means that no one is denied the ability to shower every day.  The interior of homes, too, are far closer than they once were; the absence of gadgets and electricity might have once marked a hovel, but these days not even campers will tolerate going without a refrigerator.  Her driving point is that the fact that homes are now filled with gadgets and manufactured articles doesn’t mean that homes are no longer productive; mothers are still ‘producing’ clean bathrooms, fed children,  and presentable clothing. If the labor women perform was priced as though they were in the open market, people would never assume homemaking to be unproductive. Ultimately, Cowan believes women will be freed from drudgery only when we relax fanatic standards regarding cleanliness and the housework that remains is stripped, through cultural or technological means, of its traditionally female association so that men will pitch in more.  If that argument, made in 1985, has lost some of its edge in a 21st century peopled by “Mr.Moms” , most of the work has not.



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Progress so far, and another announcement

Posted on May 2, 2014 by smellincoffee

Four months into my “Great War” yearly theme, I’ve managed to stay true to my intention of reading one book a month on it.  Only two of the books so far have come from my original list,  as I supplemented them with a novel set in the colonial war in Africa and Louisa Thomas’s Conscience.  I made an attempt at Under Fire, but found the translation difficult going. I may try again, as I’ve intended to read the book for years.   In spite of being technically on track, I’m not particularly satisfied with my progress so far because I’ve not covered any serious new territory. There’s still eight months left, though, and my next couple of reads will more sharply focused.

  1. The First World War, John Keegan
  2. La Feu (Under Fire), Henri Barbusse
  3. The Great War in Modern Memory, Paul Fussell
  4. The Great War at Sea, Richard Hough
  5. To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War, ed. Vincent O’Hara et al
  6. Wipers: A Soldier’s Tale from the Great War, Jeff Simmons
  7. Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Max Arthur
  8. The Eastern Front, Norman Stone
  9. Rites of Spring: the Great War  and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins
  10. World War 1 Companion, Mathias Strohn, editor.
  11. Collision of Empires, Prit Buttar
  12. Silent Night,  Stanley Weintraub
+  An Ice Cream War, William Boyd
+ Conscience, Louisa Thomas

I realized recently that I have ten titles, purchased over the last few years, that I’ve not yet read. Since ten is a number that commands respect, I’ve decided to impose a moratorium on myself. No more acquisitions until those ten are read or until they spontaneously combust.

    1. Power, Inc; David Rothkopf
    2. Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
    3. The Vikings, Robert Ferguson
    4. Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman
    5. The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond
    6. Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter Norton
    7. Earth, Richard Fortey
    8. Age of Empathy, Frans de Waal
    9. Galileo’s Finger, Peter Atkins
    10. Star Trek the Fall: Revelation and Dust, David Mack
     I’ll still be patronizing my library, and heavily, I just won’t be buying anything. Technically I have a lot more unread purchased books, but several dozen Trek paperbacks purchased in a box for $10 four years ago doesn’t quite count.  My aim is to clear this to-be-read list in a few months, but considering how many library books  I can distract myself with, I may not accomplish anything other than saving money. Only time will tell! 
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    Conscience

    Posted on April 30, 2014 by smellincoffee

    Conscience: Two Pacifists, Two Soldiers, One Family
    © 2012 Louisa Thomas
    336 pages

    How does a pious young Presbyterian minister become a six-time candidate for the Socialist party? Such is the story of Conscience,  the story of Norman Thomas and his younger brother Evan, who would go to seminary as conventional Presbyterians and emerge radicals whose faith  found truer expression in political idealism than Christian worship. The promised tension between brothers is wholly overstated, as Conscience concerns Norman and Evan’s struggle to find a way to live as authentic Christians in a world of violence and poverty.  Unable to accept religious claims on their face, and deeply unhappy with the response of Christians in general to the problems of the world around them — platitudes and minor alms for the poor, enthusiastic support for the horror of the Great War — both grew further from Christianity and more politically radical as the years wore on.  Although both eventually become ardent pacifists,  to the discomfort of their family  and institutions which bore them,  in each political activism takes different forms. Young Evan’s zeal took hold early,  his high, strident ideals are so resolute he can make no concessions anywhere, and develops something of a martyrdom complex as a conscientious objector. Norman’s own radicalism was slower to ripen; as pastor of a church with a growing family, he sought to effect  change through the political system rather than his brother’s active protests.

    The piquancy of Conscience is how the brothers came to their respective positions, considering their very conventional background; their family was stolidly middle class and the boys were elevated into the elite Princeton University and its social clubs through their own scholarship.  This was an era of tremendous social and political upheaval, a time in which comfortable politics-as-usual was giving way to demands for action by the populists and progressives.  Louisa Thomas well delivers a sense of the changing spirit of the times, its energy impacting the lives of all who are involved. She draws largely on letters within the family, a feat made easy by merit of her being Norman Thomas’s great-granddaughter. She is thus tender to her subjects, though it would be hard not to be considering their commitment to justice and peace; Norman is especially sympathetic, not being quite so much the puritan,  and torn between old loyalties (to his mentor, Woodrow Wilson, who ran on an anti-war campaign and then locked up people like Evan for protesting when he joined in) and new expressions of old values.   Conscience is thus a fascinating look into the souls of two young men during one of the west’s darkest moments.

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    Why We Buy

    Posted on April 28, 2014 by smellincoffee

    Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
    © 1997, 2008 Paco Underhill
    Simon and Schuster
    320 pages

    No book on marketing, Why We Buy is an introduction to the novel field of retail anthropology. Young Paco Underhill was once an urban studies student assigned to monitor traffic flow down a given street.  Watching pedestrians interact with the shopping displays and vendors lining it, he had an idea; why not watch the shoppers,  and figure out what about  the goods and services on offer attracted them, and what didn’t?  What made certain products fly off the shelf and others not? That idea was the genesis of his now-successful EnviroSell company, a global operation that’s let him study malls and markets in nearly every continent.  In Why We Buy, he shares some of what he’s learned, offering readers a fascinating look into their own behavior as shoppers.


    Why We Buy might as well be titled How We Shop, starting out with an explanation of why its insights may be of value. A store measuring the success a product through sales receipts may be able to say how healthy those sales are, but it can’t explain how they were made in the first place, nor is it aware of the opportunities possibly missed. That’s where Underhill comes in, studying shoppers’ behavior on the floor at length,  using cameras to monitor displays and having paid trackers follow people around in shops noting their every move. It sounds creepy, voyeuristic even, but to Underbill it’s strictly business. In three core sections, Underhill explains how the mechanics of human bodies affects the shopping experience, studies demographics and the shopping experience, and examines the ‘dynamics’ of shopping.  The author’s approach is almost like that of a benevolent zookeeper, watching how humans interact with the environment and then offering suggestions as to how it can changed to make them more comfortable and increase sales.  In a chapter that stresses the importance of hands for shopping, Underhill outlines a better strategy for placing shopping baskets than dumping them all in the front: they would be more effective dispersed throughout the store, to be more available to people who started out intending to pick up an item or two but who see more of interest and don’t pursue it because their hands are full.  Although shopkeepers may not see it as their job to provide conveniences outside their wares — seats in a Victoria’s Secret, for instance —  humans are an adaptive species whose attempts to meet their needs on their own may disrupt the store.  When waiting husbands and boyfriends decided to claim the window sills of a benchless lingerie store as seats to rest, they spooked every shopper who was adverse to the notion of shopping for bras under a panel of male eyes.  The same is true for items attractive only to children which are placed on top shelves; wouldn’t you know it but children have figured out how to stack and climb? So much for the integrity of displays when boxes are tugged out to provide a boost!

    Although the information and insights presented here are no doubt valuable to retailers who want to improve their business environment (the book is quoted even in Planning the Modern Public Library) ,  that information is entertaining in its own right. We’re a species very much interested in ourselves, and our behavior while shopping is just as respectable as our behavior within a city, in a war, or on a date. I saw myself in more than a few of the observations here, like the overwhelming majority of shoppers who approach a phone and pick it up, not seriously expecting a dial tone but listening intently anyway.  Underhill doesn’t seem himself as a marketer, but as an anthropologist, and his anecdotes — as funny as they are — only illustrate statistical data.  When he moves away from the data his credibility sharply diminishes; at one point he refers to the reader ‘knowing’ that grocery stores put staples on the perimeter so that shoppers will be distracted by other goods on the way to them, then uses this to write about products being used as bait for other products. The problem there is that milk and other fresh produce are kept in the back because they’re highly perishable and need to be close to the loading bays; there’s more to business management than marketing. The book’s greatest weakness is a chapter on e-commerce in which Underhill defends his claim in the original book that electronic shopping isn’t that big a deal. It’s understandable that Underhill would have little to offer on the subject, as his methods don’t apply. But to say that online businesses play a minor role or haven’t yet devised a means of efficient delivery. in an age where services like Amazon Prime are forcing even big-box stores to shutter up, is fantastically erronous.  He would have been better served conceding the point instead of standing by the indefensible.  Following the dotcom burst in 1997, scoffing at internet retailing is well and good, but in 2007?  That chapter aside, the book is great fun and offers a look at  how commerce will continue to be increasingly dominated by women and aging boomers. 

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    The Age of Revolution

    Posted on April 25, 2014 by smellincoffee

    History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Age of Revolution
    © 1955 Sir Winston Churchill
    332 pages





    The third volume in Winston Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking Peoples” begins with the most dramatic assumption of power in modern English history.  In the age of religious warfare, the Protestant-majority Parliament deposed its Catholic king, James II, and invited William of Orange and his wife Anne (an English princess) to take the throne. The ‘glorious revolution’ opens The Age of Revolution, an age which ended the long epoch of history-as-made-by-the-king and ushered in the modern dominance of parliaments, congresses, and diets.

    The revolutions which felled kings in England, America, and France anchor the book, with countless European wars occupying the chapters between. Although the wars of religion are fading,  state politics causes conflicts aplenty on its own, like the wars of French and Spanish succession, and the seemingly near-constant Anglo-French wars in the Netherlands. The wars leapt continents, as the Seven Years War in Europe became the French and Indian War in North America. The greatest conflict, of course, was the series of Napoelonic wars, which end the book. Throughout this long century (the book spans 127 years),  the English king plays an increasingly smaller role; the ‘glorious revolution’ isn’t the last time Parliament simply chooses to appoint its next king, and the Hanoverian succession of Georges that continues today  demonstrated that de facto sovereignty lay with Parliament, not the king.

    Churchhill is a moderate historian, and its coverage of the American War of Independence is as genteel and even-sided as one might expect from a half-American author shared the rigors of World War II at the side of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of whom he said, “It’s fun to be in the same decade with you.”  The conservative Churchhill is likewise careful when recording the bitter battles between Tories and Whigs, the then-dominant political parties; neither side is favored. (The long view of history aides objectivity; I doubt Churchill is so fair in his narrative of World War 2!) This is narrative history, a grand story driven by personalities like the the handsome, brilliant, dashing, gallant, honorable, endlessly clever Duke of Marlborough.  Also known as John Churchill, or Sir Winston’s great-great(etc)-grandfather, the attention given to him shows that  this isn’t quite ‘objective’ history, but what’s the point of having famous ancestors if you can’t brag about their exploits defending the Netherlands against dictators from the east?  Given his own history in World War 2, little wonder he identified with the Duke’s so strongly. The French revolution gives us a villain in Napoleon, and towering heroes in the form of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson to slay the Corsican dragon.

    All told, The Age of Revolution is quite an enjoyable survey of this period’s history, of medieval kingdoms maturing into modern states, despite being largely about the wills of titanic characters and the wars they fought.

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    Waterloo

    Posted on April 20, 2014 by smellincoffee

    Waterloo
    © 1990 Bernard Cornwell
    378 pages

    Although Napoleon Bonaparte came from Corsican royalty, his upbringing evidently lacked manners, else he would know it is most uncouth to interrupt a ball with a massive invasion. After years of brutal fighting in Portugal and Spain, Richard Sharpe thought he had seen the end of war. The imprisoned emperor’s armies were defeated while he languished in Elba– and yet, like a horror movie villain, he sprang back to life as soon as the peace was settled, resuming his role as Emperor and resurrecting his grand army. So much for the allies’ little dance party. Richard Sharpe couldn’t be happier to march off to war and leave the frippery of the ballroom floor behind — well, provided his adulterous wife returned the fortune she stole from him when she ran off with a charming cavalryman.  So the peace is ended, and the conflict begins anew — but this time there are no grand campaigns, only Napoleon’s furious drive toward Brussels to capture the allied high command, and the Duke of Wellington’s hurried hope to to find ground firm enough to make a stand against Napoleon’s army and utter lack of tack. Both meet on the plains outside of Waterloo, where Richard Sharpe will lay eyes on the man he’s fought for so many years, and make history yet again.

    The grand finale to Sharpe’s series and the Napoleonic wars, Waterloo must be one of the best-known-of battles in western history.  Although many preceding Sharpe stories have rivaled this in spectacle — the man has charged a fair few forts, both in India and in the Iberian Peninsula —  Waterloo is easily the largest.  The ranks of both armies swell, not just with thousands of ground-pounding infantry and artillery, but a full host of colorful cavalrymen.  Officially attached to a Dutch unit with an aristocratic idiot for a commander, and suspended from duty for refusing to serve incompetent orders, Sharpe spends the battle moving from frantic scene to frantic scene, at one point standing with his own old regiment, the South Essex, against the mighty French horde. Cavalry charges in all their glory strike again and again, but as usual Cornwell is careful to create not only the show of war, but its awful, grisly consequences; one man is left to a fate so obscene that I felt sorry for him despite his loathsome character.  Even though Sergeant Harper is no longer in the service, he and Sharpe spend the entire battle palling around raising hell, seeing  Sharpe’s old regiments (including his very first, the 33rd Regiment of Foot) and running into a few old comrades. Cornwell is excellent in the usual categories; dialogue between Sharpe and Harper is fast and witty, and the characters stand out even from the lushly detailed background the author gives them, rich as it is with the sight of fog rolling over the hills or the thick smell of horse manure filling a valley floor. It’s the usual Sharpe fun, but added to a far larger and grander battle; Cornwell always writes spellbinding battle scenes, but here the effect is magnified by the sheer scale of the forces involved. Waterloo is thus a good end to a fantastic series. Those who’ve never marched with Sharpe will be pleased to note that Cornwell adds in a little background information, in no doubt anticipating that the simple title will draw in more readers than the usual Sharpe devotees.

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    The Yellowhammer War

    Posted on April 18, 2014 by smellincoffee

    The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama
    © 2013 ed. Kenneth Noe
    University of Alabama press
    320 pages

    First home of the Confederacy’s government, and site of some of its final battles, Alabama’s involvement in the Civil War was intense from the beginning– and given its diverse geology, loyalties were mixed from the Union-sympathizing hill folk to the secessionist plantation owners living in the coastal plains. The Yellowhammer War collects articles from southern historians that delve into how Alabamians experienced the war’s strife and Reconstruction’s havoc. Most are domestic, with only two pieces centered on combat. The detail throughout is considerable, and well-documented, making it an absolute  boon to students of Alabaman history.  It is valuable, too, in presenting so many thoughtful voices, working from the letters from a diverse set of southerners.
    An opening section examines the motives of the most stereotypical secessionist – the elite lawyer-plantation master – but the articles which follow give repeated attention to the role of women in supporting the rebellion, and the waxing and waning of support for the Confederacy among the poor laborers. Reconstruction, often ignored, is given special attention here, and the author opines that compared to the experience of other defeated nations by the victors, the south’s treatment was comparatively mild – not a trace of ethnic cleansing followed, for instance. (Still-grumpy southerners will no doubt appreciate the basis for comparison: “Well, it wasn’t as bad as an ethnic cleansing…”)  Especially of interest are essays examining the roots of white Republicans in the postwar period, and a history of the Freedman’s Bureau, which attempted to convert ex-slaves into citizens of the republic with mixed results. What all of the essays convey is a sense that Alabamians played no simple role in the story of the Confederacy;   loyalties were mixed, and even some ardent secessionists did not believe themselves to be leaving the Union voluntarily  Students of southern history, and especially Alabamians, will find this a treasure. 
     Related:
    Alabama: the History of a Deep South State, Wayne Flynt
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