Book Review – Acres of Diamonds (By: Russell H. Conwell)

Sometimes the reasons I pick up a book don’t bode well for the outcome. In the case of Acres of Diamonds, I knew nothing about it, but that it was in my collection for some reason, and that it was fewer than 70 pages (at the time I felt I needed something short for a quick read). So it was only after research, and from context clues, that I found out this book is the transcribed version of an inspirational lecture given by Baptist Minister and founder of Temple University Russell Conwell. Its message can be easily gleaned from the opening story that inspired its title: that of a man who sold his farm, left his family, and eventually died in his quest for diamonds, only to have the man who purchased his farm discover the greatest diamond mine in the world on that land. And if you get the picture there, is it really worth reading on?

Being based on a lecture, the whole thing is rather short (but, to me, who perhaps reads to slowly {carefully}, it seems quite a bit longer than one would actually want to stand up and speak), and, while the language construction is a bit dated and clunky, it is generally a fast read. The message is understandable, if sometimes overly worded: one does not need to start with a large sum of money to become richer; one need not move to the famous large cities of millionaires to make their fortune; and that using your own head and hands to make yourself rich is what God wants you to do. The idea is that you are constantly sitting on “acres of diamonds” within yourself that you simply need to tap into to be successful, and that enriching yourself in this way will not corrupt you. This is essentially the message that all inspirational works rely on, the sort of “American-Dream” ideal.

Of course, there is a big religious aspect owing, I’m sure, a great deal to the author’s ministry. Throughout the text it fights back against the idea that it is God’s will that one be poor (and perhaps stupid), and that to be pious and honorable you need to have no funds. To the modern reader it might sound at first as though it’s going to preach the prosperity gospel (*this work is associated with the prosperity gospel, and by definition, would be included in works of that category, but here I’m specifically referring to the modern “televangelists” and Christ-for-the-rich that is most often associated with those words these days), but within the confines of the text it lacks much of the skeeviness; it is unfair to the poor, but it does not attempt to take advantage of them. Spread copiously throughout are stories of men who started with nothing to gain vast wealth and assertions that “Ninety-eight out of a hundred rich men in America are honest”, otherwise why would anyone trust them with their money/business. To keep this perspective consistent of course the author omits any evidence that would be inconvenient, but that is a sin of every author attempting to persuade.

I personally tend to agree with the idea that many of a person’s problems can be overcome and a moderate amount of personal wealth accrued using one’s own mental and physical facilities, but a lack of acknowledgement for how crippling some forms of poverty can be, or that a great deal more than one percent of the wealthy probably have morality problems is a flaw of the book as far as I’m concerned. Still, the book doesn’t fail to be inspiring, especially if one is susceptible to its message. And as a speech I believe it would become more effective. The whole thing is quintessentially American, with its exotic mix of faith and self-reliance, spoken with that Baptist fervor.

At the book’s end, if you were at all taken by part of the message you are energized, or at least encouraged. And, if you do not find yourself convinced or entertained, the text doesn’t fall into the trap of other inspirational works that take too long to say nothing, being brief enough to not outstay its welcome (too long, for every word is past the “welcome period” for someone who has found they dislike something). It isn’t a perfect text or a perfect argument; indeed, its most useful feature is the many anecdotes it contains (for trivia and conversation purposes) but I’m glad to have read it. It is interesting, and seeing that the author was successful with a seemingly untarnished reputation reinforces its inspirational message.

Book Review – Meditations (By: Marcus Aurelius)

Four years ago I started reading some of the great “classic” political and philosophical works. I finished The Prince and moved on to Meditations (both really threw off my “date written” graph, which is the main reason I mention it). Unfortunately, then life got in the way, and Meditations was much more… “boring” than the previous works I had finished. With my workload intensifying I wasn’t in the right state of mind to read a journal of stoic philosophy, so it went away, and when my workload went down I read “more exciting” books, but this one stayed in my mind, and in my “to-read” pile. Three and a half years later I finally resolved to “really finish” it, and, even though it took me a month, I did (now I just need to get back to On The Road and Europe Central {they don’t have anything to do with this either, really}). Now, does my resistance to finishing it mean that it’s a bad book? Or is it something worth getting through?

There are no high quality versions of my cover.

I actually started by reading the introduction this time, but not getting through all of it. It gets a bit boring (as introductions tend) but I think the first few pages are a very good… well, “introduction” to what the text is about (The translator’s note is also good reading, and might be a bit better of an introduction in my version: the Penguin Classics from 1977). And after that I caught up to my bookmark, still there on page 2/3 (36/37), which shows you how devoted I was to it starting out. I didn’t exactly pick up the pace on this reading, either. The book is dense and difficult to read, for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that it was never meant to be a book that someone read. The fact that the text was originally a series of journals titled “to Myself” (in Greek) demonstrates this. There are few transitional phrases or sentences and the ideas themselves don’t always follow a nice logical order; everything is dense and clunky, like how you would write down ideas in a notebook. Its only attempt at explaining the philosophy it is about is for the benefit of the author, who was supposed to be its only reader. It flows like a book of introspective quotes about life that is curated well enough to make you stop and think about most of them, and this delays the reading. It’s hard to focus on the next paragraph when the previous is still working its way though your mind, and you’re still analyzing whether you agree with it, or how it relates to your life/perspective, or whether it’s changed your mind. It feels like you need to remember every word for future reference.

And of course there’s also a bit of a language “barrier”, since the book was written close to 2,000 years ago in Greek, at a time when English hadn’t even developed as a language, there are going to be some places where words’ meanings have changed or are difficult to translate. But there are many universal feelings that can still be conveyed; when Aurelius mentions a desire to retire by the beach, or stay underneath warm blankets in the morning (both poor decisions in his mind) you might, as I, be struck by the idea that people have been having these same thoughts for two thousand years. That amount of time can be dehumanizing, and being able to look and see that they weren’t “that” different from us is a useful tool. (Interestingly, I interpreted this as humans battling the same unproductive urges for millennia, but my brother viewed it more as a legitimization of those feelings) Still there are other linguistic oddities that need to be explained, my favorite being “a better thrower down”, which is a saying that I absolutely must now shoehorn into my English usage. And the original context for “cynic” and “stoic” might take some getting used to. (In the text of my copy the translator mentions a joke from the time “How do you tell a stoic from a cynic? … He wears a shirt”, which would still work in modern contexts if you add “Boom! Ancient Greek philosopher joke!” or something to that effect).

I find the whole thing hard to do justice to. I have read some people’s opinions who think the book is an angsty diary that was only kept because it happened to belong to an emperor. And there certainly is some of that there; this book is easily proof that people from all walks of life can find reason to be unhappy. And its cosmic talk about how the body replaces itself (which, when paired with the idea of a spherical earth might mean that Aurelius had more scientific knowledge than some people today), or one’s “soul” won’t endure forever might be seen as the worst parts of a teenager’s stilted nihilism. Still, there is an optimism in it, and it feels wise at the very least in the way a student who has not reached enlightenment but can parrot the master is wise (and Marcus claims to be no master). I suppose the best I could really do at this point is to show you a few quotes from the text, as I’m not going to be getting better at explaining it.

“You can not reprimand chance, or impeach providence.”

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

“The Pride that swells beneath a garb of humility is of all things the most intolerable.”

“Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted your further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.”

“Living and dying… riches and poverty… are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade.”

“Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion.”

“Take no enterprise in hand at haphazard.”

“Life is opinion.”

“What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee.”

“If the crew took to vilifying their steersmen; or the patients their doctor, is there any other they would listen to instead; and how would such another be able to ensure the safety of the sailors or the health of the sick.”

“When men are inhuman, take care to not feel towards them as they do towards other humans.”

“Soon you will have forgotten he world, and soon will the world have forgotten you.”

It’s a difficult book to read, and I wouldn’t recommend you necessarily read it like any other book. Meditations is a good bedside book, or rather a good “wherever you put books that you’ll occasionally pick up and read a few paragraphs from” book. It’s interesting and insightful but dense and clunky. It isn’t exactly a master’s work on stoic or proto-Christian philosophy, but it is an interesting distillation that can deepen your understanding as a reader. It’s not a book for everyone, and knowing what it is and what it isn’t when first starting will likely be important to how enjoyable one finds the book (fortunately they go out of their way to provide this context in many prefaces). It’s not a book to be read lightly, or without care, but when finished, it’s one that is nice to have bouncing around in your head.

Book Review – And Then There Were None (By: Agatha Christie)

How much of an introduction does And Then There Were None need? It’s probably the most well-known mystery novel of all time by the most well-known mystery author in the world. The story of 10 unrelated people arriving on an island only to be murdered one by one has now become a trope, and is found throughout popular culture. But having been written back in the (19)30’s, can it really hold up today as the classic of its genre?

The first thing to note is that the version of the book you can buy today has been altered several times since its original publication, and since the version I read. Most of these changes have been to remove offensive material that wasn’t “as” offensive when the book was published… the most obvious change is the removal of the word “nigger” (I think this is my 4th book this year with some variation of the word) from the title and the poem, but without many reference points myself I couldn’t tell you if anything of substance was changed.

The main gist of the book is as described above: 10 people who have nothing in common save having potentially committed and un-prosecutable crime are brought to an island, accused of their crimes, an systematically murdered. The island is cut off from the outside world by the supply boat not coming back, and weather that is agreeable to the plot. You, as the reader, don’t specifically have to continue guessing who the murderer is, but it’s fun to play along and it becomes easier and easier as you go along because people, you know, die. The writing is a bit stilted, and at times sparse. It feels like things were just left out of some places, whether that was due to a time constraint (real or self-imposed) or is just part of the style I couldn’t say, but I can’t keep up with how these interactions between people are supposed to be going.

And it does move by quickly, it’s a real page-turner, and the problems with the style are mere pinpricks in an increasingly exciting plot. It’s all a bit silly, of course, with the murders all based on the “Indian” rhyme, putting the characters in situations that feel a bit contrived. But it wasn’t written to be the pinnacle of literature: it is, of course, a mystery novel. And without going into too much plot detail I think it is a fascinating idea that turns the genre a bit on its head (though not now with it being so engrained). But it was one of her earlier novels, and I can’t help but feel like a more experienced Christie could’ve done more with the work. It’s still fun to read, but it doesn’t feel like one of the best mystery books of the century (and some of her other famous books were written even before this one).

Because of the format of the novel, you get more than your average introduction where everyone must be described in enough detail that you know why they are there and how they could be the killer before everyone starts dying. But once you get over that hump (the only major hurdle in the novel, and it isn’t very long) you get many of the standard tropes, along with the interesting puzzle of determining whether you think the General, or the Detective, or the Judge, or the Secretary, or whoever is doing the killing. It even has my personal favorite possibility: Butler did it. And this is very entertaining right up until the end where you discover who the actual murderer is, and I was quite surprised. There might be a bit of a disconnect here and there since the book was written by someone who presumably wasn’t actually around murder a whole lot and didn’t have the internet to verify facts about how murders go down. I was easily able to suspend my disbelief, though, and besides this only opened up one plot hole that turned out to be less of a plot hole later on.

I’m not really a big fan of mysteries (certainly not as much as the person who previously owned one of my copies {where the poem was changed to “soldiers”} who underlined and took down notes in an attempt to figure out the culprit), but I would like to think I do know an entertaining book. And this certainly is one. I’d be very surprised if you liked mystery novels and haven’t read this one, but if that is the case it’s worth a look. It might not be the greatest one of its kind ever, or even of Christie’s work, but it’s a solid and entertaining read which I would recommend to my friends who are fans of mysteries, thrillers, or just quick and easy-to-read books.

Book Review – The Screwtape Letters (By: C.S. Lewis)

The Screwtape Letters is that C.S. Lewis book that you didn’t read after the ones you read in school. Unlike (but kinda like) his more famous fantasy novels, it is a Christian Apologetic (is there a better term for that yet?) series of fictitious letters sent by a bureaucratic devil (Screwtape) to his junior nephew (Wormwood). And it attempts to explain how to avoid temptation and straying from faith by telling you how to do the exact opposite, with Screwtape instructing Wormwood as he attempts to tempt his first “patient”.

There are 31 letters, and my book also contains the later-written Screwtape Proposes a Toast, that follow the Screwtape side of the conversation as his nephew attempts to sway the soul of an unnamed British man around the time of the Second World War (though not really, as the demons don’t know “time” as we do), which is about when the text was written and published in the newspaper. They read at times like essays, but do keep the flavor of correspondence throughout, and discuss how turning away from God in both large and small ways will eventually lead to the soul being cast into hell to be devoured by the devils. And with each letter (though they don’t necessarily go in “chronological” order) you can clearly read Screwtape’s increasing frustration and disappointment with Wormwood’s failure to tempt the man.

While it is impressive how well Lewis can keep the “opposite day” style presentation up without contradictions arising, there are some that pop up here and there. The most common of these being the veneer of politeness as each letter ends “Your Affectionate Uncle, Screwtape”, which seems like something the office workers of hell wouldn’t really attach to things they send. Even with it obviously being a lie, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t use something more cold and business-like. There are a few other inconsistencies like that which always seem to pop up when representing devils, as manifestations of evil are hard to rationalize. Through most of the book, though, the motivations and desires of the demons are surprisingly understandable, and that makes the message of how easily one can be turned away from the Lord more powerful.

The book does a very good job of encapsulating the teachings of the modern Christian philosophy, and does so in an entertaining way, not just with a reverse perspective, but with the snippets of story that can be found every few lines that hint about the larger narrative both on earth and in hell that really give the reader the sense that the story is happening in a world. And this method of storytelling, coupled with the fact that Lewis is generally a good and engaging writer, smoothes over most of the rough parts of the book. There are still times that I’m not sure about how things really fit together, for instance I was sure that “our Father Below” (“Satan”) was either imprisoned in hell, or not present there but out in the world sewing lies and deceit, but of course the book is an interpretation meant to focus on a point, and not get mired in the details of things like where “Satan” is, how soon souls enter hell, and how exactly did the power structure of the fallen shake out once they were cast out of heaven.

The notion that there is an office to work at, a college to attend, and quotas to meet for devils is, of course, a ridiculous one, but as it is meant to be more of a representation of a system definitionally unknowable to men on earth, it is allowed some leeway in how it goes about it. I feel it’s more for introspection and self-analysis than really to “teach” you something directly. I won’t be making any life choices off of what I read in The Screwtape Letters, but while reading, things were brought to my attention, debated, solidified, or organized in my head that wouldn’t have likely come up otherwise. And unlike so many other texts, this one provides another useful way of approaching a problem by looking at it backwards (like the recent {at the time of writing} CGP Grey video: 7 ways to maximize misery) and seeing the result opposite the one you want to achieve, or what those who oppose you are looking to get you to do.

And, in as much as it’s trying to tell you the best way to live your life closely to God, there isn’t much here that hasn’t been said before. If you want to call it “advice” it’s solid (if you actually interpret and don’t take it from the devil’s point of view), but everyone is going to have their objections. There isn’t anything earth-shattering or miraculous, just competently executed restatements of ideas that have their roots stretching back sometimes to before Christianity.

So is it a good book, then? Yes. But of course, it isn’t for everyone. Like many of his strictly Christian writings, this is a book for Christians. It isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, and, while it is quite entertaining regardless, some might find it a bit preachy. It’s a quick read, and not particularly dense or stiff, indeed I’d call it a fairly average novel that I’d probably recommend to my friends, especially if they have some connection or ideas about the source material.

Book Review – It Can’t Happen Here (By: Sinclair Lewis)

Sinclair Lewis’ hastily written smear/propaganda novel It Can’t Happen Here has been getting a lot of attention recently, though often in connection to Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (another one on my “to-read” list), with the election. That is the reason I picked up the book in the first place, but for the purpose of review I’ll mostly be putting Trump to the side in an effort to be more “timeless”. Also, there’s already a ton to unpack here without interjecting any modern politics. The book verges on being one of the tried and tested genre of “essay disguised as novel” (like, say, Starship Troopers) and certainly a lot of time is devoted to both internal and external political debate and theory. But does that really make for a compelling novel-length read?

Starting before the start, my edition has an intro by Perry Meisel, a fact I usually wouldn’t mention save for the fact that I tried reading it and found it slow, boring, and enthusiasm-killing (as many introductions tend to be). I didn’t get very far before stopping, and my memory is (intentionally) hazy so I have no direct criticisms other than I’d recommend skipping it.

The actual novel starts off a bit slow, beginning (as many novels are wont to do, unfortunately) with a description of a dining room and then an event taking place there. You’re introduced to the townspeople (some of whom won’t show up again until more than halfway through), given a bit of foreshadowing, and then the book settles in to its slow-burning start for several chapters. There’s some political chatter, and a few characters that, if one knows the time period, are obvious stand-ins for real historical figures (most of whom I had to look up because this time is a bit glossed over in history classes), but other than that, the start is a rather boring look into the life of a middle-American newspaper man.

That man is Doremus Jessup (dormouse sometimes), a college-educated reporter type who returned to Fort Beulah and ended up buying the local newspaper, the Informer. He’s just your average guy, with a couple daughters, one married one not, a son he hates (and you will too if you read it), a plain wife, a dog wonderfully named Foolish (one of the most clever bits of the book), a super-masculine friend named Buck, and an affair that makes all his points about the immorality of his enemies a little more dull. Though shortly after we, the readers, find out about this affair, it is then “suggested” to Doremus by his daughter with the very strangely written “kind of be lovers”, which I can’t help but feel is an attempt to justify what had just been written, even though it should be plain to the reader that, despite his flaws, Doremus is a better person than the Fascists who start running the place. In any case, I was not persuaded to forgive Doremus, nor like him much more, especially with him being written like a person I’d not want to spend much time with really, but that seems to be one of Lewis’ go-tos.

The book plods along until we get to the actual election of Buzz Windrip, Democratic Party candidate, facing off against boring Republican Walt Trowbridge. At this point, to add to his large cast of political stand-ins, Lewis starts throwing some real people under the bus, most notably Upton Sinclair (I’m not sure how much was motivated by people getting their names mixed up) who’s all in for the obvious pseudo-fascists. Other real people are sprinkled in here and there; Franklin Roosevelt has to be mentioned because he was President at the time, and other people it’s just fun hearing about if you know the time period, like Harvard Nazi Putzi Hanfstaengl. Buzz is a demagoguish (called so by the Saturday Evening Post in the novel) populist styled after Huey Long to the point that it’s heavily implied he’s from Louisiana, though they never tell you outright what state he was Senator for. He gets support from religious radio hosts and everyone who wants to government to give them $5000. Apparently that makes him pretty popular (though, other than people liking money, there’s never really any indication of why he is being supported) and he releases a 15-point program that if divvied up correctly could be the bullet points of either major party currently, with a few “this guy is obviously going to try and be a dictator” bits thrown in for good measure. He then wins because the book has no plot otherwise, and starts making America a hellhole.

It might sound like I’m being pretty down on the book so far, but that’s because I’m trying to give you a bit of the plot, which for pretty much the whole way takes a back seat to Doremus’ political philosophy arguments in his own head. He spends a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a “modern democrat” (or a “Lincolnian democrat”, whatever that could possibly mean) or something and about how terrible the current regime is without doing anything about it, probably because a newspaperman doesn’t make for an exciting action hero and that isn’t how Lewis writes. Doremus seems to disagree with everyone else who proclaims a political opinion, but most of them are either communists or one of Windrip’s “fascist” “Corpos”, and it’s pretty obvious he is actually pandering to the common mindset of those likely to buy the book and read it. Still, it is excellently written and quote worthy. It’s one of those books where you feel like there’s some important message you need to remember on every page. And it’s probably the main draw for the book (which is good considering how much room it takes up) not the tale of the upstart dictator. At the very least it makes you think about and solidify your own positions, a thing Doremus doesn’t do a very good job at.

With his newfound “absolute power” (slightly explained away by him intimidating Congress) Windrip starts to do all sorts of things, like reorganize the states into many fewer zones to be more easily governed, inflate the currency, take a bunch of that money from everyone, and put people that criticize him in jail and later concentration camps. All this is done by replacing the civilian government, the courts, and much of the military with his cronies in the “Minutemen”, who the army is ordered to train, and they obey that order for some reason. The Minutemen don’t start out like your normal fascist gang, though, in fact, their turn to the violence that often characterizes such party movements happens only after Windrip becomes President, and far too suddenly for it to make any sense. They go from jolly marching squad to merry murderers in the space of a page, and most of the rest of the story for our “heroes” hinges on them becoming crueler, which those in such positions would do, but I’m just not sure as quickly.

And of course the potential backlash to all of Windrip’s plans is ignored. Lewis seems completely ignorant of the idea that states had less than 75 years (a larger amount of time has elapsed between the publication of this book and the day I am reviewing it than between it and the Civil War) before fought a war for “states rights”, and that many Americans have guns they aren’t afraid to use. It’s not entirely unrealistic to me that there wouldn’t be a second revolution, or some other large form of armed resistance, but there is no mention for ¾ of the book of anyone fighting the Corpos with guns. All the pushback from the states at being disintegrated, all the fighting men would do if they really saw a government this openly cruel and tyrannical (to white people) is swept under the rug for the convenience of the plot, without even a token reference. At one point the main character gets enraged, goes to his desk, gets out his revolver, and then puts it back into the drawer within moments. The idea of actually fighting back is never even seriously considered, and that infuriates me reading it. I get that he’s a news guy, and wants to win the battle with words, but no one else talks about it either, the only time anyone else even thinks about fighting is when a Minuteman is trying to get with Sissy (Doremus’ unwed daughter) and she mentions it. This general disregard to arm gets a character killed when he barges in on an illegal court proceeding, that follows what he knows is an illegal arrest for simply writing an article critical of the regime, and has the gall to stand there alone shouting at armed men to let the man go. As his character was supposedly a soldier, you’d think he’d have the sense to bring a gun, or a club, or at least an angry mob so he didn’t get singled out and killed so easily, or anything at all save his temper. But the story wouldn’t move along then.

And the story does start to move on, at an increasingly fast pace as Lewis’ writing deadline approached and he attempted to cram in everything he wanted to say. At least that is my inference (he was on a pretty strict “get this published before the election” deadline, though). And his Nobel-Prize-Winning writing style really starts to break down. Lewis himself understood that living up to his prize was difficult if not impossible following his receiving it, and while I’m not trying to determine here what writing deserves a Nobel Prize (though I’ve been reading more by the laureates recently), I think it’s safe to say that the last half of this novel is not why he won any awards. Mistakes begin to increase, plotlines are lost, and the rest starts to fly by at breakneck speed. Nearing the last quarter, at the only time where the book goes back in time for a moment, a character is resurrected magically as the two timelines don’t line up (he’s dead in the end in both, unfortunately for him). Randomly inserted is a whole chapter about a black intellectual who attempts to explain that blacks submitting to the government would be better for everyone and gets killed for it in what I assume was supposed to be an impactful scene but since I had just learned of his existence a few pages before I wasn’t that surprised or interested. And, as with other contemporary books, “nigger” (or negro) is used quite liberally in this chapter (and in a few other parts of the book) while words that are presumably “fuck” or the like are censored with a “     “. And this is followed by the government beginning to unravel in a surprisingly bloodless manner.

The end especially, but the whole thing really, just lacks plot coherency. There is the fire of fascism (though a bit toned down from what we know now even with the torture and the murdering and such), but there is no smoke: the motivations of the antagonists just don’t make sense. And that’s a problem because it’s fairly easy to write characters that could understandably be swayed by a National Socialist agenda (there is one, and for his part Shad works). And to me that can partially be attributed to Lewis just not knowing how people work. He’s terrible at writing children (‘s dialogue), which is fine because there’s only one that does anything, and his other characters seem completely ignorant of that fact that in regular conversation people aren’t as truthful and ridged as an author is capable of being. The way Doremus talks most of the time, or how Sissy talks about affairs and rape, are gratingly inhuman, and others act more like robots for the plot. It’s probably for the better that they are absent most of the book in favor of political semi-treatise. But there’s a whole lot written for not a lot of substance. It all boils down very easily, and didn’t need to be stretched into a novel, but it’s not an egregious offense. There are parts that are quite insightful, or mirror modern problems so well one thinks “when was this book written?”, because it feels like yesterday. And that does give a little hope, that we’ve been worrying about the same problems for so long they obviously mustn’t be that big a deal.

But that does make the political aspect a bit dubious, especially in the modern day. Lewis keeps trying to hit you with the idea that some boisterous snake oil salesman can trick everyone and turn the country into a fascist state, that “it can happen here”, but it just never lands. He just doesn’t have any of the details worked out, he get the broad strokes about the people’s hate for the “’Jewish Communist’ Atheists” and the desire for money and power, but everything smaller seems missing. I get that the “facts” about how the European regimes came to power had not yet been fully established as the history was still being made when the book was written, but as someone who has read more than the average person on how Hitler (and other dictators) came to power, this just doesn’t click. In the same way that today, for all I might not like Trump and his “politics” I can’t call him a fascist, there’s too many pieces missing. Electing Huey Long president would probably have been a mistake, but it wouldn’t have resulted in this book becoming true. And I think the book is the worse for being written as allegory to him on a fairly tight deadline.

I suppose through this review I’ve sounded pretty down on the book, a side effect of it being easier to list faults than to heap praise, but if it had been a truly bad book I wouldn’t have finished it. I was interested the whole way through, and the politics and philosophy are intellectually stimulating. It’s a book that really makes you think about, rescale and reorganize just what your beliefs are. I took copious notes as I read both for this review (which are included below because of the sheer mass of them, especially when considering how few I take for other books) and for myself to read in the future in the form of photos of paragraphs to pages. It really does seem like there is something important to remember on every page, and that the opinions are well-considered and wise. But as a side effect it is quite dense, and the actual story, already a mere ghost, starts sliding to a halt many times. I enjoyed the book and it’s worth a read if you’ve been considering it; I’d recommend snippets before I’d recommend the whole book, though. As post-prize work of a Nobel Laureate it isn’t as good as one would imagine, as a smear book to prevent the presidency of Huey Long it was late but perhaps would have been effective, as an expression of a political philosophy to which you can compare your own and think about heavy decisions it works well, but as a tool for evaluating modern politics, or story about a realistic rise of Fascism in the US it falls a bit flat.

Notes

Intro by perry meisel is terrible  

Why do they always describe the dining room first, it’s a bore? 

Pg 16 “for the first time in all history” I think not

The rarely seen whisper exclamation

When was this written?

I ask again (comic books and radio complaints)

Page 26, error or intentional

Page 31 last paragraph

Spit and image

Pg 40, paragraph after break

I have yet to find an author that can describe characters in ways I can remember

I always loved the idea of the communists being Jews, and then you find out the communists hate the Jews

Interesting list style in pairs with no oxford comma

Jewish atheists said the cardinal

Chapter 6 excerpt

Doremus isn’t the greatest person in the world

Democrats in cleveland

Pg. 58 flags and song

Capitalize the he when referring to God

These 15 points sound like a mixture of both parties today (that’s why two parties doesn’t make sense, they don’t always line up)

Windrup is like dr oz selling fake medicine

Napoleon wasn’t short  

Lincolnian democrat?

I like all the special character œ just isn’t around much anymore 

He doesn’t look as nice as a nazi

Never mentions the state buzz is from

Saturday evening post calls him a demagogue

Lots of real people (putzi)

The colonel speaks in unexpected places where its news to speak

“summer schools  in which well-know writers taught the art of writing to eager aspirants who could never learn to write”

Interesting collection of people voting for him

Trance well foreshadowed

Cherishes the woe(?)

Chapter 13

One problem is it seems every page is worthy if remembering

John ball 1381

Spelling mistake “adanced” 114

“kind of be lovers”

I feel like the daughter suggesting adultery just after we learned about it is just meant to try and make it okay(or maybe she knew)

Just ripping at upton Sinclair, tearing him apart

The states would fight way more fiercely than portrayed here, I feel like he’s hand waving

Firing workers paid a dollar a day(nobody gets their 5,000 dollars)

He pandered to both groups in private. 

Why inflation is bad

Lewis neglects how many people in the us own guns and would form mobs of their own to fight the minute men however small their resistance ended up being (and more soldiers would likely disobey orders {if they saw white people getting hurt})

The minute me are far from the average facist gang, intentionally, but perhaps unrealistically so, their turn to evil seems rather abrupt

Jung

He can’t write children

Will rodgers censored

The book takes a while to get going

“it can happen here” 217

Rexall

Robbed him of bootlegging

Sissy talking about rape is strange

It tasted like saltpeter, was that so hard to say Sinclair Lewis

Plaint

Depreciated? Pronunciation

Why censor words?

The the mistake

Defended itself out wards

It starts to ramp up near the end

They know when to break with family

Apparently they re-incarnated swan

So far in the boo there’s been the fire of fascism, but there was never the smoke

Few typos and mistakes near the end, he’s losin’ it (still more mistakes)

That bit about “today’s” youth and all around it seem like thy were written yesterday (and give a little hope)

His rebuke of private corporations and talking if the need for government control seems overly strong

Even then war with Mexico wouldn’t last long at all

Mexican, Ethiopian, and Chinese patriot

Second to last work misspelled

Strange rebellion