Very detailed history of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. Covers the military, economic, diplomatic, & political aspects of the war in great detail . A great guide to understanding the international politics of the 1980s, & full of surprises. Explores the ways the war connected to other conflicts & events, such as Lebanese hostage taking, terrorist attacks in France, Iran-Contra, the Iranian Revolution, & 1980s energy prices. Depicts the Iranian leadership as at once trying desperately to pursue every means to defeat Iraq (including terrorist attacks against Iraq's arms suppliers), while simultaneously attempting to prolong the war in a cynical effort to consolidate the Islamic Revolution. The cynicism of all the players (including the economic & military supporters of Iran & Iraq) involved is a major theme. The level that the Iran-Iraq war was completely insustained by outside military & economic support was surprising to me. Iraq's war effort especially was completely propped up by lavish loans from the Gulf Monarchies, which, along with Iraq's oil sales, allowed Iraq to purchase 80 billion 1988 dollars worth of weapons. I was also surprised that the cheap energy of the late 80s was engineered by the oil producing Gulf Monarchies with the encouragement of the USA for the purposes of damaging the economies of Iran & the USSR. The book did not answer explicitly the reasoning behind why the world military and economic powers more or less openly supported Iraq, while attempting to isolate Iran (I think the answer is partly that Iran was seen after a certain point as trying to prolong the war, & also more resistant to outside aid with strings attached). This book also has a lot about the internal politics of Iran & Iraq. I was surprised (again) by the fact that Saddam Hussein kept Nixon White House-style recordings of all of his conversations, & that this trove of audio recordings was captured by the Americans to be later used as a major source for Pierre Razoux's magisterial tome. This book is also a good illustration of the balance any regime must make between maintaining a Military that is powerful enough to defeat external threats or internal opponents of the regime, but not so powerful that it can unseat or control the regime. The Appendices & notes at the end are worthwhile & handy. For instance, when I wondered how many armored vehicles were destroyed during the conflict, I could just look in Appendix I. However, I thought the notes coverage of the text was sometimes a little thin. For instance, the part about the child soldiers is controversial, and many of the details are shocking & gruesome beyond belief (e.g. the order for 1 million plastic keys to heaven), so I expected more sources backing it up (on the other hand, no amount of evidence would convince Iranian regime apologists who would take issue with the account). 

The Iran-Iraq War was translated from French, which may explain some of the odd & amusing word choices that crop up throughout this book. e.g.,“cohabitation” for “coalition government”, “authorities” for “government” (or sometimes “military leadership”), & “parallel market” for “black market” (or maybe “gray market”). One of my favorite word usages is “layout”, which is used to mean defenses & deployed forces, or forces deployed for an offensive, for either a front or the entire conflict. Another good one is the use of “precious” used as a modifier describing anything valuable such as “precious oil infrastructure”, “precious military hardware”, & “Precious hard currency reserves”. In some chapters, “precious” appeared on almost every page! 

 Tale of a visitor to a fictional city Ravicka where the language incorporates dance & movements. The city features ancient ruins, secret societies, a peculiar literary culture, a downtown, an insurance district, & serviceable public transit. Sleeping outside (e.g. on a bench) is generally accepted, despite the city experiencing a population drain & many buildings stand empty. The reason for the departure of many of Ravicka's citizens is the mystery that the visiting narrator investigates throughout most of the book. I feel like any number of elements in event factory can be interpreted multiple ways. The yellow light and the choking brown smoke that none of the Ravickians want to talk about remind me of ignoring things we're all choking on as we try get on with our lives. Maybe that's not it at all. Maybe it's about some places and things just not being for everybody, or not every problem having an answer for you to find. Or perhaps Event Factory is about being a tourist at home and abroad. I wish I had Black Futures at hand so I could remember what they said about Event Factory. Seems like a good book to read while on a trip. Kind of reminds me of the Joe Frank episode titled “A Tour of the City”. 

 Incredibly readable history of the first month of World War One. Recounts the battles of the opening month of the Great War in great detail, while also focusing on the characters of the major figures & decision makers. Despite all of the detail, Tuchman manages to keep the pages turning. 

General Joffre is kind of the main character of the chapters about the war in France, similar to how Enguerrand de Coucy was treated as the main character of a Distant Mirror, which at first seems a little odd, considering how little Joffre revealed of his inner workings, especially compared to many other generals and politicians of the time. But perhaps similar to De Coucy (a figure obscure enough, Tuchman noted, that even his likeness was lost to history), Joffres's opacity is what made him an interesting figure to focus on, providing more opportunity for speculation than others who voiced their inner thoughts at the time or memorialized them afterward. 

Tuchman is unsparing in her judgments of all of the generals & politicians she characterizes, especially the German & Russian leadership. There is an incredible description of Czar Nicholas II, calling him an “empty headed autocrat” whose “impression of imperturbability he conveyed was in reality apathy”. 

The pictures included are really great. I find the picture of Czar Nicholas with his elder cousin Grand Duke Nicholas especially striking. Czar Nicholas is having a smoke staring off into space, while his older, taller cousin, who the Czar has just appointed commander-in-chief, is talking at him. The Grand Duke looks serious—is he lecturing? Making small talk? Czar Nicolas is almost certainly not paying attention. I was amused how Joffre looks like Rankin & Bass Santa in all of the photos of him. 

A major revelation to me is how much the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the Great War was on the personal initiative of Admiral Souchon, commander of the German Mediterranean naval Squadron. Tuchman made it sound like he was the only one who had the idea that bringing his ships the Goeben & Breslau, to the Turks would bring them into the war. I also didn't realize that the series of raids on Russia's Black Sea coast which marked the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war was also Souchon's own initiative. 

Action packed dystopian suburban teen adventure with lots of mystery & unexplained weird (but probably not supernatural) stuff. As someone who has never watched The Warriors, I have the feeling that I am not fully qualified to review this book. That said, the different kids gangs that seemed to be based on professions or institutions of our world (e.g. the police, the old folks home, the bank, & the record store) kind of reminded me of a similar idea in J.G. Ballard's Hello America (e.g. “the Trophy Wives”). The whole plot also makes me think of Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, in which she invites us to imagine the middle ages as a world that was to a large extent run by teenagers. A story set in the dark ages surrounded by the ruins of modern society further cements this book's connection between Ballard & Tuchman in my mind. I probably shouldn't have picked up a “vol. 1” book that came out so recently. I can't wait for the next one! 

 Fun comic about the genesis & early struggles of Motorhead. Also includes bits about Lemmy's early band the Rockin Vicars (who, if I remember correctly, toured in Yugoslavia), & also Hawkwind. Lemmy would still probably be a legend (in my mind anyway) if all he ever did was play bass for Hawkwind during their best & most chaotic period. I never knew that Lemmy tried to release an album on Stiff Records. I kind of wish the book had covered the Wendy O Williams collaboration, since it sounds like there was some drama going on then. This book is more suited to the bathroom than the dinner table. Makes me want to listen to a lot of Motorhead. 

 Anthology of comics covering 18 different American Cult groups. I learned about cults I'd never heard of, learned institutions I take for granted are actually cults (or cult-based), & gained new perspectives on cults I already knew something about. The Jonestown comic by Carey & Freiheit was especially interesting. I never knew that Jonestown may have been located where it was because of a development scheme partly cooked up by the Guyanese Government, & that Jonestown was near the site of another Cult's attempt to colonize the area, which also ended in a mass suicide. The hugest revelation to me was the evidence that the Jonestown “mass suicide” may have been a mass execution. On a side note, the use of the phrase “drinking the Kool-aid” to mean whatever it means in American English stopped making any sense to me once I learned that it came from the Jonestown Kool-aid. I don't think I've ever heard the phrase used to indicate someone is being forced to drink the poison. Any of these cults probably could each have their own comic books about them. I definitely could have read more about any of them, except maybe the Manson Family. I feel like I've heard enough about them. I especially liked the comics that were from the perspectives of the people who joined or grew up in a cult, so that means I should probably check out Jesse Lambert's & Lonnie Mann's memoirs. 

 A page-turning hard-science novel in the tradition of Clarke or Asimov. Overall a good read. Technological and scientific concepts are combined with adventure, to minimize the amounts of character development and philosophy needed to propel the story thereby saving precious weight and cubic volume. The use of consumer tested off-the-shelf stock characters allowed the book to be constructed with maximum reliability and functionality built-in, & enabling this book to be read with maximum efficiency. The main issue that I have with Project Hail Mary is its enthusiasm for authoritarianism. I understand the narrative & conceptual need for a dictator (in the ancient Roman Republican sense of the term, perhaps), but I got the feeling that we were supposed to cheer Stratt's various displays of power. I'm not sure how else I was supposed to read the copyright court scene, which also seemed kind of outside the logic of the character; if Stratt was too important to bother with niceties & legalities, why was she bothering to show up to a court room herself (along with intimidating soldiers) to snot at a judge and some lawyers? If she could draft all of the greatest minds in the world for her project, why not conscript some lawyers to obstruct & delay proceedings for the duration of the crisis? I also wasn't sure if Stratt's view of history is supposed to be persuasive or to indicate someone whose study of history ended with undergraduate history courses & Stephen Pinker or Jared Diamond books. History is full of societies where people were just not spending that much of their time foraging or growing their food. Maybe I'm stuck on this point because I found her attempts at justification at the end of her narrative to be so insufferable. 

 Even though it pretty much picks up right where Authority leaves off, Acceptance was a little bit hard for me to get into. I think this is because I don't feel like Annihilation needed a sequel. I liked Authority, & where it took us in the Southern Reach just fine, but it didn't feel that necessary. It would be as if J.G. Ballard wrote a Crash Trilogy, or if the Wachowskis made 3 sequels to the Matrix. I think Hunger Games is a pretty close comparison, in that the 1st book was good & ended conclusively, then the 2nd book kind of rehashed the 1st one, while setting the stage for the 3rd book, which then had a big action packed conclusion to the big story. I thought it worked pretty well for Hunger Games, which had working for it straightforward action & teen drama, & the interesting premise. For me a big part of the appeal of Annihilation was the exploration of a big, weird, unknowable place, littered with the decaying remains of modern civilization & so I felt the sequels explained too much. It was a little hard for me to follow the explanations of the how & why of Area X, when I didn't really care if Area X was explicable or not. In many ways the series reminded me of Stranger Things, because the 1st Season stood on its own well, & the subsequent seasons kind of following the superfluous sequel pattern I've outlined (like Hunger Games, Stranger Things has teen adventure and teen drama helping it along), but with the later seasons starting to explain the Strangeness a bit too much. Also, the Upside Down really reminded me of Area X & the Hawkins Lab was a bit like The Southern Reach. Acceptance & Authority were still pretty good & did not fly completely off the rails like the also superfluous Dune sequels. 

 This novel was clearly written during or in the aftermath of pandemic lockdown. 5 people are trapped in a literal bubble together, inventing various amusements (including baking projects) to keep themselves & each other occupied. I wish I had done something so productive & impressive! This is the first Chambers novel I’ve read in which there are no human protagonists. As usual, there is a Futurama reference:  Roveg seems sort of based on Dr. Zoidberg, having frills, more than 4 limbs, & an exoskeleton, & always being tempted by free food. I’ve read this whole series kind of wondering “where is the author going with this…”, so the acknowledgements at the end saying that this book is the last book Chambers is writing in this universe makes me more interested in her other books (e.g. the Monk & Robot books) than I was before. 

Philosophical novella mostly about the divide & difference between self and soul, as illustrated by Lyra’s conversations with her Daemon Pantalaimon & witch-diplomat Lanselius. Has many illustrations. I may have liked it better than Lyra’s Oxford, even though in a way, less happens. Makes me look forward to picking up the Book of Dust series, maybe once I’ve read more the library books I checked