books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

A great intellectual history. Beginning in early 20th century Austria, Slobodian explained that neoliberalism was invented (not to free markets, but) to PROTECT MARKETS FROM DEMOCRACY. Specifically from:
- the working class, since voting rights were starting to be extended to non-property owning men in Europe
- colonial subjects, as colonies were beginning to have more autonomy over their economies and natural resources

We focused very closely on Geneva School neoliberals of the Mont Pélerin Society, like von Mises and Hayek, to show that the aim of neoliberalism was to create a new kind of pro-rich imperialism. The closeness of the focus was a bit of a double edged sword, for me. On the one hand, it was super clear and specific. On the other hand, the detailed-ness of it hurt my brain sometimes.

An unabashedly neoliberal (think, Thatcher or Reagan) climate change solutions book that positioned itself as ‘on the left’ (or at least from a think tank aligned with the US Democratic Party)… what in the what?! 🫠

The book was mostly interviews and we platformed:
- multiple market fundamentalists
- a pro-AI guy
- a guy who’s most proud of giving taxpayer dollars to Elon Musk
- a lady who manages billionaires’ investments and wants to privatize public infrastructure to increase their wealth at your expense
- a guy who’s solution to the increased costs of environmental agriculture would reintroduce feudalism
- a pro-IMF lady advocating for IMF loans despite (or because of?) their imperialism

For the rest, this was the book version of ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative.’ There were a few progressive ideas—but they were all limited to culture (again, so neoliberal; its roots in Hayek’s concept of “double government” and his kinda problematic 1920s Austrian nostalgia for the Hapsburg Empire).

Maybe ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ makes sense for other issues (I don’t think so, but okay). But for climate change solutions, every interview emphasized that fiscal policy, economics, and funding was at its core. And yet every progressive interviewee shrugged off the fiscal side with a “well, I’m not an economist” (except Colette Pichon Battle, who made sure to discuss public ownership, though she was invited to discuss identity politics).

Which ceded all the ground of this (the most important?) issue—economics—to the pro-rich, rightwing, and imperialist voices in here.

This book won’t “get it right” because it was too unjust. In a way that I fear its American audience doesn’t readily notice. Yet for non-Americans and especially for the Global South, this book was bleak AF.

There was something especially dark about this book’s neoliberalism. While Thatcher had to argue for TINA (that, “there is no alternative” to privatization), Johnson presented it more like, ‘since there’s no alternative…’ And I don’t think this is merely an Overton Window shift. The idea that there’s no alternative is categorically untrue—and Johnson MUST know that. Most (all?) of the successful climate change solutions in other countries have come from those alternatives (be they socialist or other rightwing options). And yet, those successful countries kept being brought up in the book—so vaguely that it obscured how they’re all direct refutations of the neoliberal ideas in here.

I’m kinda offended we’re calling the policy suggestion in here a ‘green new deal’ (or a blue new deal for Johnson’s own ocean policy focus). The New Deal was about public ownership (with up to 97% public ownership in some sectors)—with a particular focus on the same sectors as climate change solutions, such as energy and transportation infrastructure. Yet, the solutions in here were dominated by neoliberal privatization. Don’t Americans understand that neoliberalism literally supplanted New Deal-style politics to become the Washington Consensus? They’re completely incompatible political projects. I can’t.

I also just don’t think this was a great anthology. Johnson’s interview style was quite shallow, lots of “oh, interesting!” with little pushback. And a few details made me question the book’s editorial integrity. Like, an interview critiquing business interests in media with a footnote by Johnson that said, “Billionaires should fund local news. That would solve so much.” 😶 Or, a Jason Hickel quote slapped onto a section that he would 100% NOT endorse. Very icky overall.

A biracial African American hero meets our Chinese heroine while laying telegraph lines around 19th century China… And I think my enjoyment of this book was negatively impacted by reading this book at the same time as a critique of colonialism, Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

And maybe reading this book at the same time as a critique of colonialism was a bad idea?

What I liked:
👍 the character arcs
👍 immersive Chinese colonial and maritime setting
👍 critiques of Christian missionaries and foreign adoption

What I would’ve disliked anyways:
▪️ the romance plot wasn’t a focal point
▪️ their telegrams were so un-personal that I felt cheated of an epistolary romance

What I blame Walter Rodney for disliking 😅
👎 I couldn’t unsee the imperialism apologia in here

We presented our hero as a “good imperialist.” He felt conflicted about a lot of things—but his role as a colonizer wasn’t one of them. And we critiqued a lot of elements of imperialism—except our hero’s work.

It was really hard to enjoy this story while also reading Rodney quotes like this:
▪️ “Apologists for colonialism are quick to say that the money for [telegraph lines] was provided…”
You know? Plus there was something 🤨 about making our imperialist hero POC (Rodney also emphasized that it wasn’t about the colonist’s “racial origin, but rather in the organized viciousness of the capitalist/colonialist system”).

I love that this book highlighted problems with imperialism. But I wish our hero’s work had been included in those problems. It felt like we were making him likable for a modern audience, at the expense of a major theme of the book.

This book was a detailed look at exactly how trade and colonization was and continues to be A MASSIVE WEALTH TRANSFER from Africa to Europe (and the US).

A great read. I love a book that says no, colonialism was 100% a bad thing.

I love that Rodney used a Marxist analysis. Marx is more than communism—he was an economist who emphasized distribution, exploitation, and the real world. The perfect framework for colonial economics. But in one section, Rodney situated pre-colonial African economies on a specific interpretation of Marx’s history of European economic development—and this was both Eurocentric and not my favourite interpretation of Marx.

Put VERY simply, there’s a school of Marxist thought that conceives of the stages of economic development as an objective, deterministic, teleological standard. And they use this standard to map Marx’s analysis of heavily industrialized capitalist Western European societies on to countries with a “more primitive” (their words) economic system (usually serfdom in Russia). I don’t love how teleological and deterministic this interpretation is (I think Marx should be read in a more radical and freedom-emphasizing way). And who cares how other economic histories map into to Europe’s? Why are we making Western Europe the standard?

But the rest was perfect!

Minus 100 stars for that POV switch. I’m so disappointed! 😢 I love Holly Black. I love this universe. And, in a way, this was a good story. A twisty plot that completed this duology and tied into the first Cruel Prince trilogy storyline. With interesting characters, lots of whimsy, and fae who physically cannot lie (their dialogue tickles by brain in the best way).

But. BUT—

The first book in the duology was single POV, entirely from our heroine’s POV.

This second book was also single POV, entirely from our hero’s POV.

Not in a ‘same events, different perspective’ way. In a ‘the story kept going and we switched POVs completely’ way.

Sounds fine, right? Nope, I didn’t like it at all. The plot, from the outside, continued on just fine. But how this plot ✨felt✨ for the POV character? Not continuous, at all.

And maybe I’m weird? Because apparently that’s all I care about 😅

For me, it was like everything we built up from her perspective in book one—how our heroine felt about the political intrigue, the start of their romance, her powers, the betrayals—ended up with zero closure. At least, no interior closure.

And then in book two, all from his perspective, it felt like I was dumped into a story with no foundation or build up. None of his emotional build up, anyway. Which made me feel so disconnected from how he was experiencing his POV—and therefore the whole plot itself.

Does that make any sense? Props to Holly Black for being experimental. But she experimented my favourite parts right out of the book 😅

It hurts my heart to give this book 1 star... On one level, this just shows how much of a hypocrite I am. Because a low-angst rom-com historical romance between two Nice People in novella form? Fun.

In full length novel form? Not my thing. Idk! There’s just not enough going on. Their character arcs bore me because they start the book too Good. The romance plot doesn’t squeeze my heart because two blandly perfect people falling for each other—who cares? And low-angst plots don’t have enough drama to keep me entertained (does wishing that this was a love triangle instead make me a bad person? 😆) But that’s not a one star problem—more like a three star (two star, max) problem.

My real issue with the book was its politics.

First, I found our ‘politically radical’ heroine really alienating. I’m a bit of a leftwing nut, I went into politics, and I review books by controversial leftwing figures on here… but I’m not even 1% as politically out of step with my society as this heroine was in her time. She advocated for things like universal suffrage and abolishing the aristocracy—in England. Just after the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic wars.

And yet she felt no mental anguish about how different her political beliefs were from everyone around her?? Can’t relate 😅

Secondly, the spy/mystery plot in here was very COINTELPRO-coded (aka, domestic surveillance, infiltrating advocacy groups, and shutting down political dissent). And yet our heroine helped them?? It made no sense. A) our heroine was just as much of a threat to the Crown as the ‘bad guys’ so the government should’ve gone after her too. And B) the bad guys and our heroine had political beliefs that weren’t *that* different. Why didn’t she feel conflicted about sending her comrades to the gallows?

I wanted better representation for how political progressiveness ::feels::. Even in a rom-com historical.

This is definitely one of those ‘I support women’s rights as well as women’s wrongs’ books. And I freaking LOVED it.

She was the rake and wrote controversial political texts. The Author’s Note said she was inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft. And I’m obsessed.

He was a Scottish widower. Honourable and slightly starchy. But also freaky.

There were four things I really loved about this book in particular:
✨ The isolated + harsh weather setting felt almost gothic
✨ There were some majorly unpopular tropes in here. But of course I loved them because they were MESSY
✨ Our political heroine was 0% twee. I loved how a) authentically first wave feminist she was, and b) how being ‘out of step’ with 1820s British society mentally impacted her as a character
✨ Formatting wise, I loved how our heroine’s backstory came through excerpts from the memoir she was writing. Just the pace at which the backstory trickled in, the slightly different authorial voice of those sections—I was living

Go into this one when you’re craving some angst. I loved our MCs flaws, their mistakes squeezed my heart to bits, and then some their swoony lines made it all better.

You know what I didn’t expect?

How un-radical this book was 😆

This book, originally published in 1916, was downright quaint. I thought I was going to be all like ‘look at me, I’m so rebellious, I’m reading Lenin’ lol nope

He argued that capitalism incentivizes certain business behaviours, sounding the alarm bells that:
▪️ companies buy their direct competitors (a trend towards monopolies),
▪️ businesses become ‘combines’ (buy up stuff to vertically integrate or to diversify),
▪️ finance and shareholders were becoming a thing, 
▪️ European companies invest capital into colonies expecting to get back more than they give (then reinvest that capital into further monopolizing and further ‘combining’), and 
▪️ these now-large companies/investors pressure governments to use taxpayer dollars for imperial arrangements that benefit themselves

Aka, a totally normal description of late 19th century and pre-WWI economics that—and I cannot stress this enough 😭—even the most rightwing pro-capitalist person would agree with Lenin on.

But his “we can fix it!” can-do attitude snapped me out of my cynicism. And his links between capitalism and modern imperialism were good primer for books I read after this one. Namely, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (Imperialism is the title of its second of three volumes) and Globalists by Quinn Slobodian (about the imperial origins of neoliberalism).

So… bad news. The origins of totalitarianism are already here. And Arendt would say it has little to do with a certain 🍊 trying to be a dictator in this 1951 book.

Because for Arendt (a Jewish German philosopher who survived the concentration camps), totalitarianism is a social milieu. Not something imposed on society by a totalitarian leader.

This social milieu involves:
▪️ a culture of loneliness
▪️ erosion of the distinction between true and false /reality and fiction
▪️turbulence + a nation of superhumans

A lot’s been said about the presence of the first two in our society. So when Arendt explains, for hundreds of pages, EXACTLY HOW loneliness is “the essence of totalitarian government” and how the “ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi… but people for whom the diction between fact and fiction… no longer exist.”

Umm, yeah. F-ing Terrifying.

What I think we’ve grappled with less—yet is no less present in our culture—is the superhuman part. This is the part of our culture that looks at inhumane treatment, detentions, homelessness, neoliberal “soft” imperialism, or genocide; shrugs its shoulders and says “it’s bad, but what can you do?” 🤷🏻‍♀️

Because underneath the shrug is someone who doesn’t feel ‘merely human’ anymore. The badness doesn’t make them panic because their group/race/nation will be fine (maybe?). Even if (or especially if) it’s their own government doing it.

It’s this ‘seeing but looking away’ / ‘worried but self-soothing’ that Arendt spends the most time on. The early 20th century European social and psychological response to exploitation, colonial massacres by Western governments, discrimination against post-WWI European refugees, racist scapegoat pile-ons…

Which rhymed SO MUCH with how our culture currently responds to wealth inequality, exploitation in the developing world, genocide in Gaza, mass incarceration, migrant detention, etc.

Scarily accurate. Yet oddly empowering. Because we can impact culture, right?

A note on reading this: Hannah Arendt has a very specific philosophy writing style: she always puts her thesis statements, topic sentences, and definitions at the end (of the chapter, section, or literally the entire book). I think she wants the arguments to speak for themselves and she’d rather you feel her argument in your bones than fill your mind with abstract generalizations. Admirable—but frustrating. My advice: go into an Arendt book with spoilers. Read a summary, watch a lecture on YouTube (I watched a six-part lecture series by Theory&Philosophy), and if you ever have a “where are we going with this Arendt?!” moment while reading, flip to the end of the section and read the last paragraph—that’s your answer.

Is it weird that I found this book thoroughly meh, yet I would still recommend it?

Here’s what I liked—that this book explained how:
✨ poverty actively benefits the people who aren’t poor
✨ the US government gives WAY MORE in subsidies and benefits to the rich than it does to the poor
✨ super simple and uncontroversial changes to tax law would drastically reduce poverty

But ultimately, this book was both unbearably moderate and argumentatively weak:
▪️ it felt like a sermon. For a vague, secular liberal moralism whose ontology we left unexplored. And with me, not only was our author preaching to the choir; but I’ve also read way better sermons (stuff by Rev. William Barber II—who was quoted in this book—comes to mind)
▪️ the liberal individualism was liberal individualism-ing a bit too hard, for me
▪️ Desmond really shied away from taking a radical stance (like how he said he didn’t want to address the possible Marxism in his arguments) which introduced a wishy-washyness that I could’ve done without
▪️major arguments directly contradicted each other (like one section arguing that poverty benefits the rich, another section arguing that poverty benefits no one)

But his heart was in the right place? I can’t fault the overall message of this book: poverty sucks and it’s so easy to fix that it makes you want to cry.

No shade at all—if you want a vibes-only refutation of inequality, this would be my # 1 recommendation.