Nonfiction

[fleate]

weezo,

I just arrived yesterday, so I don't know what is going on here yet.  I haven't even read all the posts here in non-fiction, so I'm unsure if anything has been suggested in the way of a book for discussion.

Anyone else out there interested in voting on a non-fiction book to read and discuss?

Of course, as I just finished Two year Before the Mast, something along those lines would appeal to me.

("along those lines"---now would that have a nautical origin, or would that refer to lines of print?)

[madupont]

Where are we to vote for poetry? .> I suppose,I should take a look and see if there is a poll, or was it to be in Myth and Ancient Lit.  I heard it distinctly  tossed around that Ted Hughes Metamorphosis by Ovid would be discussed.  Of course, again it is "non-fiction" but it isn't, since it is poetry. A conundrum.

[tjaxon]

tjaxon:

I just have to say I'm in love with that dog.  Is s/he yours?

Actually, Lulu, I think I belong to him. He is quite a bit bigger now, but still a goofy, lovable klutz. Rascal is his name.

[weezo]

Maddie,

I can do a poll for any book board, so if the folks on poetry want a poll, I will go there today and see what books they have suggested. Same with the Myth board.

I need to take down the Fiction poll today, I was going to do it last night, but we had a bad thunderstorm and I had to unplug my modem. I've lost a number of modems to lightening strikes over the years, and although the modems are cheap now, the habit persists.

[Donotremove]

Fleate, have you ever read Joe Coomer's Sailing in a Teaspoon of water: A Man, A Family, and a Vintage Boat?  Right up an armchair sailor's alley (to mix metaphors).  And, if you've got any carpenter in you, his On Building a House By a Pond is a delight, too.  Coomer is one of those "Southern" writers (so called) and his fiction is so well done you have a surge of joy when you find he's come out with another book. "Sailing" and "Pond" are both non fiction.

[fleate]

Donotremove,

I have read neither Sailing nor Pond, but will watch out for them.  Thanks for the tip.

[madupont]

swap you one.
 War, Wine, and Taxes
The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900
John V. C. Nye

To read the entire book description or a sample chapter, please visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8444.html

In War, Wine, and Taxes, John Nye debunks the myth that Britain was a free-trade nation during and after the industrial revolution, by revealing how the British used tariffs--notably on French wine--as a mercantilist tool to politically weaken France and to respond to pressure from local brewers and others. The book reveals that Britain did not transform smoothly from a mercantilist state in the eighteenth century to a bastion of free trade in the late nineteenth.

Cloth | $29.95 / £17.95 | ISBN: 978-0-691-12917-4
 
   

  Princeton University Press                          This message is for Members of Princeton University Press's E-mail List for Political Science and International Relations, Economics, and European History.


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[desdemona222b]

Just wanted to stop in and mention to those of you who have read Remains of the Day (one of my favorite novels) that I purchased Ian Kershaw's Making Friends with Hitler, which is a book about the real English nobleman (the Marquess of Londonderry) who flirted with the Nazis and actually hosted von Ribbentrop at his manor in England.  It's a really good read so far, with an in-depth study as to what the prevailing attitudes toward Hitler were in England at that time and many other interesting topics.  Kershaw is such a great historian - I've always felt that Alan Bullock was at the pinacle of English historians in general and historians of the Nazi period in particular, but at this juncture, Kershaw is starting to outpace even him.

[madupont]

great, desdemona, glad you posted that.   Have you read the Mitfords? I always mean to and then get side-tracked with somebody like Pamela Harriman Churchill (last story I heard was a douzy, about becoming mistress to one of the Rothschilds for an extensive period of time, and then at a banquet, one of the guests --similar to the Remains of the Day-- asks the lady seated next to him if she happens to know who the lucky fellow is? To which she replied, "My husband, I should think. He's right over there..."), our former ambassador to Paris because of Clinton.

I had reason to take a second interest in Remains of the Day when I learned more about the father of the actor playing the visitor from America who is the foil opposite Lord Londonderry. I feel our current government gives us visitors like Oswald Mosey's black-shirts. One the other day called me on the account of the actor's response to Ariel Dorfman, in the forums, it was then that I realized to what degree we have informants by internet, since it is international or foreign interactive computation, who are overly interested in our views on "literature".  For in truth I was rather more interested in the man who was a poet, before, during, and after divorcing the mother of the actor.

I made a list of the archived nytimes.com. book discussions by the month but alas, due to party you alluded to was unable to access any of the discussions that occurred. Still working on it.  I think he's been down for some time. He claimed to have become a book editor? during the review period on Nadine Gordimer's Biography when I called him on not giving due back up on her husband's family in the much touted reference method that the nytimes.com installed.   Her husband fled to South Africa during the European crisis and never saw his homeland again; the majority of his family were wiped out by the Nazis. Huge family across Europe in the arts,publishing,you name it.  I mentioned to donotremove that I was very affronted by the attitude in an e-mail reply from our moderator that there was only one person in the family who was important to him.  This dropped him right in the category of  Tom Friedman and David Brooks on staff as columnists who just remained so slow to catch on what this is all about. Bunch of sell-outs.  Got to go....

[desdemona222b]

No, haven't read much on the English aristocracy (in modern times) at all, although I am an English history buff and could tell you all about Warwick the Kingmaker, the Angevins, Leicester, etc. 

[madupont]

My goodness, lulu said more or less the very same thing.

[desdemona222b]

The decline of the aristocracy in the 20th century is an interesting topic, particularly in England.  Kershaw goes into great detail about the wealth they enjoyed at the turn of the century.  After the WWI, the decline began, but they were still ridiculously wealthy.  Not only did they have the most incredible estates imaginable, they also made huge profits from the industrial revolution.  The Marquess of Londonderry had two estates, one in Ireland, the other in England, that were over 20K acres EACH, and then his wife brought him several more including a huge estate in Wales.  Another thing I thought was interesting is the fact that Kershaw referred to one of the aristocrats he mentioned as a magnate.  I've never seen the term "magnate" used in the context of modern times, since historically they were individuals with such vast estates that they could call up their own armies and were in a sense the rulers of their domains quite indepently from the royal family.

[madupont]

desdemona  re:#248

"they also made huge profits from the industrial revolution". That kind of goes along with, "Another thing I thought was interesting is the fact that Kershaw referred to one of the aristocrats he mentioned as a magnate.  I've never seen the term "magnate" used in the context of modern times.

Americans generally referred to these "Industrial magnates" as in, "He was an industrial magnate".

Of course, we are really seeing it today as an enlargement of rights for corporations. Locally for instance, I was just told that the consensus of opinion, in a Republican predominance within the state-community, is that "residents"  are getting a lower electric rate at the expense of local corporations (you may ask who decided this because it wasn't voted upon, I have had no announcement in the mail or e-mail from my state's legislature)so, the local corporates   are taking it back again and the residents will have to adjust their budget upward to include an increase.  This is of course the promise that was made by the Bush administration via Cheney's energy conference "In the Beginning...", so the favor most insistently will be collected upon while they still have the opportunity and anything like a change of administration take place.

Back to the past,though. I always found that reading the novels of D.H. Lawrence in their progression was definitely quite a bit more than the tensions between the main characters as his characters derived from some gradual history covering an era in each one of the novels; and you had a quite nervous but worthwhile look at each phase of the historical development of modern England.  Then when you want more, you pick up with Thomas Hardy who does much the same thing although more dourly; in some cases Hardy covers areas of place and time prior to Lawrence and he wishes to be rather romantic about it if he wasn't so depressed by it all.   

Hardy's, Tess of the D'urbervilles exemplifies the transition to the Industrial Revolution, because you find the heroine involved in the estate harvest, a way of life that brought into existence small villages of peasants who worked an estate although they were not in domestic employment in the household of the gentry.  In order for investment in the new "mechanized" production  of industry, it was necessary to clear land and, although one might have thought that this development would employ quite an amount of people who had been working the land for the roof over their head, some rations  -- you'll notice it immediately begins to sound like "a company town", although it had been in effect  among "villeins" who were not even vassals at this point in time -- it ended up with people wandering around the countryside "homeless as tinkers", looking for work, or trying to find their way to London.  Which then throws you smack dab into Charles Dickens.

D.H. Lawrence indicates the effects upon a somewhat later date, in his novel, Women in Love, which has a friendship between someone awfully like Lawrence himself and one of those "magnates" of industry and their relationships to two young women.  This presented some insight into who was who in literature(and dare I say it, "Philosophy") at this period.  In fact it piqued my curiousity so much that I began cross-referencing his characters and reading their works because they were a fabulously affected bunch of real writers who partied together for the weekend at Lady Ottoline Morrell's; and, of course, the upside of finding out how Lawrence managed to rub shoulders with Bloomsbury, as T.S. Eliot arrives and is sometimes quite snubbed although he will go to work at Faber & Faber eventually instead of a bank, is learning novel by novel from among the bunch of them, what they were saying about each other.  They left an interesting literary record of their times.    Sometimes, it is outright a reminiscience  that seems familiar to the conduct around the forums.

I'm pretty sure that I took the course in British literature in the late Sixties and did a British History course for the same period, from Thomas Hardy, Gissing,etc., the Women's Suffragette movment  forming an alliance with Labour,  into the impending outbreak of WW 1 and how Bloomsbury reacted,Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, in particular; but I learned more about them at the end of the Eighties because there was a good collection of all the inter-related Bloomsbury circle at the local borough library in Princeton that I accidentally discovered by hiding in the stacks one day.  I just read right through the summer after that. Students aren't in town, it is much too hot. I'd walk down the shady backstreet (Hamilton) to Witherspoon and carry another pile of books home from the stacks. I had a perfect reading spot at ground level on a raised area where the windows went from that -- about a yard wide window ledge(probably meant for plants)-- and up to the ceiling of the room. If, at first, I had just plunked my books there behind the headboard of my bed, which had a built in book-shelf anyway, I soon just stepped from the bed and up on to this window area  and sat there reading in the afternoon light.

Which reminds me, I ought to be doing some of that now.

[elportenito1]

madupont:

"Of course, we are really seeing it today as an enlargement of rights for corporations."



"Free speech? Not while we're on sheep's back
Date: August 23 2007


David Marr

No price is too high to pay to protect the Aussie woolgrower. With marked contempt for the effect it would have on freewheeling public debate, Peter Costello has introduced a little bill to clobber campaigners against the bloody business of mulesing sheep. But not only them: his strategy will snare anyone calling for customer boycotts.

So if you're asking Australians not to buy lipstick tested on caged rabbits, rugs woven by Pakistani slaves or suits made with mulesed wool, then pray your boycott calls don't succeed, for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is about to be given the power to sue you out of the water if they do.

Gagging public debate with such threats has been an old ambition of the Howard Government.

Not that Canberra talks in such terms. Introducing the Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2007 last week, Costello reaffirmed his Government's "commitment to stand up for small business against thuggery and intimidation. It is vital, both for our economy and our way of life."

But Costello's bill is designed to protect businesses of any size - all the way up to BHP Billiton - not by outlawing intimidation, but by punishing persuasion.

Hurt a business simply by arguing that it's ethically repugnant to buy its products and the commission will be able to step in and sue to recover the company's lost profits. It's quite a service.

No free-speech defence is immediately available. You won't be able to go to court to plead the pros and cons of open-range chooks or gentler methods than mulesing to save sheep from fly strike.

The new law will catch lone campaigners, community groups, NGOs, lobby groups and even the media - anyone whose campaign for what the law calls a "secondary boycott" actually hits the mark and causes financial pain.

"Secondary boycotts can have a significant impact on our economy," Costello told Parliament. "They disrupt trade, they reduce output and they inhibit competition. It is important that we provide a strong disincentive for those people who would target, intimidate and bully small business by applying a secondary boycott to that business."

Costello put the proposal back on the table in February this year as the big-business woolgrowers of Australia faced a $10 million debacle. Their efforts to sue the mighty American star-backed anti-mulesing lobby People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were coming badly unstuck. The Treasurer was signalling that next time the ACCC would pick up the tab.

And the effect on free speech? None at all, Costello assured journalists in February.

"Martina Navratilova and Pink will still be able to attack Australian wool as they do, ignorantly … There is no law that is going to stop ignorant commentary, but there will be a law which will allow the ACCC to stand up for Australian farmers where they suffer from a boycott."

That the woolgrowers' case collapsed largely because they couldn't prove PETA had done them any financial harm didn't deter the Treasurer. And perhaps the legal advisers for Navratilova and Pink might caution their clients before travelling to Australia if their anti-mulesing efforts ever prove successful…

The growers walked away from the PETA case in July - though they have still to settle with the penniless Animal Liberation NSW - and Costello produced the legislation a few weeks later. Labor is considering its position on the bill. The Greens' Bob Brown sees it as a direct attack on free speech: "They've found a mechanism for curbing debate they don't like."

The commission doesn't give the impression it's hot to trot once the bill becomes law. The commission has never used the power it already has to prosecute groups who agitate for customer boycotts. That section of the Trade Practices Act has been largely dormant - not least because the fines are small by the ACCC's standards: up to $500,000 for individuals and $750,000 for companies.

But the financial pain to be inflicted by Costello's amendments will theoretically be endless - as much as a business can prove it has lost because of a customer boycott. And only two kinds of campaigns are exempted: those "substantially related" to environmental protection or consumer protection. Everything else is caught.

Graeme McEwen, chairman of the 90-member Barristers Animal Welfare Panel of the Victorian Bar, says: "The bill will unquestionably curtail free speech for indigenous groups, women's rights groups, and plainly animal welfare groups, which are the particular target of the bill. Why would such a public interest body wish to face the ACCC with all the power and financial clout of the state in a costly proceeding in the Federal Court?"

The Melbourne barristers are considering a High Court appeal to test the new law. The tug of war between secondary boycotts and rights of free speech was settled in the US by the Supreme Court 25 years ago, observed McEwen. "They decided in favour of free speech."

[elportenito1]

Australia is not the USA, and Ned Kelly wasn't exactly Abraham Lincoln, You know.