Well, well, well. It really is much better to do Bout of Books when I'm not teaching. Today's theme is finding a book from the year when you were born. As this blog's purpose is to bring music and reading together, here's my favorite birth year-related song.
Yesterday, despite not being preoccupied with work, I was consumed by terrible events in Israel/Palestine. For a relevant reading recommendation, it's hard to do better than Edward Said.
Let's get to the update:
Yesterday, I read chunks of Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. The chapters I read yesterday concerned the NSDAP's focus on the peasantry, and the quest for Autarky through changes in agriculural policy. What is autarky you ask? It's the idea of a national economy that is completely self-sufficient, rather than being reliant on global trade. It seems ever more relevant then to read about Germany's goals of economic nationalism in the current nationalist populist upsurge. As Tooze argues, the Nazi effort to stop relying so much on imported food was central to the ideology of lebensraum, the ideology driving Nazi imperialism in Eastern Europe. In short, if you are into reading long serious works of non-fiction, this book is an excellent corrective to popular representations of Nazi economic beliefs, which are too often described by people on the right as "socialist."
I also read quite a bit of Win McCormack's Rajneesh Chronicles, a book collecting pieces originally published in Oregon Magazine during the rise and fall of Rajneeshpuram. I'm reading this book as part of this year's academic reading challenge, for task 9, "academic or journalistic book on the same subject as a documentary film." Since everyone has been talking about Wild, Wild Country, I just had to watch it, and am now learning even more by reading about the Rajneeshees. Without a doubt, this book has much more detail about the abuses of members of the cult than the film does. I can understand why ex-members of the Rajneesh movement have found fault with the documentary.
For today, it's back to Adam Tooze, starting the book's next section.
And for the daily challenge for bout of books, "Year of You" challenge, I choose Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I read this book in high school, during a time when I was on a Vonnegut-reading binge. I haven't read it since then, and only remember it now as a dread-filled and mind-blowing experience.
In the spirit of those dread-filled years, here's today's reading/listening song.
Yesterday, despite not being preoccupied with work, I was consumed by terrible events in Israel/Palestine. For a relevant reading recommendation, it's hard to do better than Edward Said.
Let's get to the update:
Yesterday, I read chunks of Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. The chapters I read yesterday concerned the NSDAP's focus on the peasantry, and the quest for Autarky through changes in agriculural policy. What is autarky you ask? It's the idea of a national economy that is completely self-sufficient, rather than being reliant on global trade. It seems ever more relevant then to read about Germany's goals of economic nationalism in the current nationalist populist upsurge. As Tooze argues, the Nazi effort to stop relying so much on imported food was central to the ideology of lebensraum, the ideology driving Nazi imperialism in Eastern Europe. In short, if you are into reading long serious works of non-fiction, this book is an excellent corrective to popular representations of Nazi economic beliefs, which are too often described by people on the right as "socialist."
I also read quite a bit of Win McCormack's Rajneesh Chronicles, a book collecting pieces originally published in Oregon Magazine during the rise and fall of Rajneeshpuram. I'm reading this book as part of this year's academic reading challenge, for task 9, "academic or journalistic book on the same subject as a documentary film." Since everyone has been talking about Wild, Wild Country, I just had to watch it, and am now learning even more by reading about the Rajneeshees. Without a doubt, this book has much more detail about the abuses of members of the cult than the film does. I can understand why ex-members of the Rajneesh movement have found fault with the documentary.
For today, it's back to Adam Tooze, starting the book's next section.
And for the daily challenge for bout of books, "Year of You" challenge, I choose Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I read this book in high school, during a time when I was on a Vonnegut-reading binge. I haven't read it since then, and only remember it now as a dread-filled and mind-blowing experience.
In the spirit of those dread-filled years, here's today's reading/listening song.
It sounds like you're doing a lot of intense reading! I'm glad you're enjoying learning about what you're reading about. :) Happy Bout of Books!
ReplyDelete