Well, It's That Time Again.
Actually it's about two months past that time, but I've been so busy writing my next book (to be titled "Little Red Lies" - Disproving Kremlin Misinformation Regarding the Genocide in Ukraine) that I've completely overlooked Peakd. This is the annual "what I read in the past year" post, covering my 2023 reading. Full disclosure, there are several this year that I didn't include here because it's a little awkward to admit I read them. I guess it'd be closer to the truth to say "here's what I'll admit to having read in 2023."
It's the first year since 2016 when my reading hasn't really had a specific focus, and it shows. Still, it's been a good year for my "have read" list.
I really should post a review of this one, but again I just couldn't be pulled away from writing my memoir (and now the media expose) to write a blog entry. This does a DELIGHTFUL job of showing how Demagogues have become such standard fare in American politics that the country is now beyond logical reasoning (and we needn't even mention the ability to admit one is wrong).
Absolute poppycock. I really want this week of my life back. The entire book hinges upon the idea that the childish axiom of "believe it and you'll achieve it" is a scientific principle, if "science" is the term you want to use for this mumbo-jumbo about the "spiritual overmind created by collective consciousness." The book's underlying thesis is that everyone who badly wants to be rich will do so, and that everyone who is poor chose to be poor and thus is to blame for his own poverty. Every Olympic silver medallist in history (I find it hard to believe any Olymian hasn't devoted their lives to the quest for gold), every man who ever died by losing a duel (I find it hard to believe anyone in a fight to the death isn't committed to winning), every nation that has ever been conquered (you have to be an idiot, a Hungarian, or a Tucker Carlson watcher to believe any nation under attack is not devoted to the cause of protecting their own freedom) and forbidden by its conqueror to honor its defenders (Tibet, anyone?), disproves this. I wish the author were alive so I could spit in his arrogant face.
Not an especially useful volume for the information in it, considering that some of the earlier articles speak of Ronald Reagan's "upcoming re-election campaign," but it's an enlightening example of why avowed Russophile stephen Cohen should not be taken seriously in his commentary on Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine. In this book, Cohen makes the argument that the USSR is unbeatable, that the US will collapse if we try to confront them, that the reason relations are tense is not because of Soviet aggression but because we had the unmitigated gall to do anything about it, that we have a moral responsibility to consider their interests and allow them a free hand in whatever part of the world they wish to enslave... essentially, the same arguments he still made about the far weaker Russian Federation up until his death, including blaming Russia's behavior on "NATO expansion." It is worth noting that the "unbeatable" Soviet Union collapsed less than three years after this book's publication, and the sole reason for that is that nobody listened to Cohen and Washington did exactly what he said couldn't be done.
Overall it's a must-read, but only if it's accompanied by a commentary filled with historical headlines proving its inaccuracy. That way, anyone who reads it will know that this hammer-and-sickle-worshipping moron, who spent his life reviling the West while sucking at its teat, was wrong in the 1980's and was still wrong until that blessed day when he had the decency to finally die.
I'd have preferred for this to be a bit longer, but it's still more useful than Sovieticus. While Komrade Kohen empties his pen telling readers all the reasons why it is futile to fight against the Kremlin, Galeotti takes a more practical approach and says "if you want to fight Putin, you're doing it wrong." He pokes holes in several delusions about Putin. The most enlightening, in my opinion, was the explanation that Putin's standard method of dealing with a crisis has been to hide and hope it takes care of itself, a revelation which, even though this book was written before the Wagner Rebellion, goes a long way toward explaining its outcome.
Overall, I'd say this one is likely a must-read as well, because it debunks both Right Wing hero-worship and Left-Wing aggrandizement of a man who has more in common with Harcourt Fenton Mudd than he does with either Josef Stalin or Donald Trump.
(Sigh)
I really wanted to like this one. It sets out to make points that need to be made, and in its defense, it manages to make a few of them. The chapter highlighting the damage done by "family courts," which are subject to no legal oversight, run by proudly professed misandrists, and which openly boast that they hand down rulings based on emotions rather than law, yet whose decisions can deprive one of any of the rights guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was the highlight of the book. The chapter using documented statistics to debunk the "rape epidemic" narrative was a close second.
However...
...I found the author's petulant, whiney tone in some sections to be so jarring that it was hard to focus on the book's high points because I was still too busy rolling my eyes at its low ones. The chapter at the end wherein the author encourages readers to become something called a "/pol/ Jedi," whatever the Hell that is supposed to mean, left me with the impression that "Bob Lewis" is a pseudonym used for a collection of different authors and that each chapter was written by a different person. That's the only way I can account for such a vast difference between the scholarly tone of one article and the "I'm a pouting teenager who thinks he's a badass" tone of the next one.
Basically, it's worth reading up to page 131 and then the tone falls off a cliff into pouting high-school wannabe-chad territory quickly.
Are you Christian? Do you not have enough controversy in your life? Here. Let me help you.
This book is an impassioned, thorough, and frankly extremely well-researched (albeit annoyingly repetitive in terms of chapter endings) argument that polygyny (the practice of a man marrying multiple wives) is not only permitted but in fact encouraged by both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Pilkington makes the case that biology (the fact that women have always outnumbered men in the world's population), social reality (the few men who are born tend to get themselves killed faster than women do, especially in times of war when men die protecting women), scriptural tenet (both Testaments say a woman is better off married than single) and economic force (it makes more sense to share the burdens of child-rearing and domestic duties with other women in this day and age) all point to the reinstatement of what he calls "truly traditional marriage."
Whether anyone agrees with him or not, it's a thought-provoking read that will challenge the views of any Western Christian (though many Middle Eastern, Ethiopian or Nestorian Christians say it describes how they've been living for centuries). One way or another, I guarantee you'll never look at the Parable of the Ten Virgins quite the same way after reading this.
So, it's another one that's almost as outdated as Sovieticus. Still, it's useful in that it provides exactly what the series title says: opposing viewpoints. Considering that so much of the debate surrounding the USSR's fall foretells the current debate around the still-ongoing collapse of the PRC, it's worth examining which doom-and-gloom prophecies came true and which did not. It's also helpful to see how lotus-eating peacenik thinking (such as the idea that America should drastically reduce its military budget since the Cold War was over) led to the current state of the world, with America unable to protect vital allies because we followed that foolish advice. The amount of emphasis that was placed on Ukraine, even then, proves that the current Russian genocide was in fact all too predictable. Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn, normally viewed by Westerners as "one of the good Russians," weighs in with the classically Russian lie of "Ukraine has never been a state and should be absorbed into Russia" in this book, which frankly goes to show that NO Russian should be trusted because even the ones who oppose a dictator have no problem imposing their collective will upon neighboring states.
Oh, and the article by a Boston Communist saying the USSR fell because it became too capitalist and that the Republics needed Communism in order to survive, was absolutely hilarious.
Here's another that I really wanted to like. The biography of a man who was to Israel what King Arthur was to Great Britain (except that we now have hard proof, outside the Bible, of David's existence while Arthur remains only a legend) should have been a more exciting read than this. Yet the author, in classic Western style, waters down this Middle Eastern warlord to the point where he seems like he'd be more at home among a Southern Baptist convention than a band of warriors because focusing on how gruff and tough he was wouldn't fit the classically soft-hearted image of what Westerners think Christianity (and its Jewish precursor) are supposed to be. I felt more like I was reading sermon notes than a biography of one of the Ancient World's greatest generals.
Pro-tip, Chuck. Just because the man you are writing about is a Biblical figure doesn't mean the Bible is the only source of information you're allowed to use for their life.
Overall, a lot better than Lewis's book (once you get through the Ann Coultier introduction, that is), and this is another I should have done a review of. An interesting statement in itself, that: one of the most influential female speakers of the past half century did a better job debunking Western feminist dogma than a man (or boy, as I suspect) did. I'm sure there's a joke or three in there somewhere, but I digress.
This is a collection of articles and speeches Phyllis Schlafly has written or delivered over her decades in the public spotlight, and the common thread is how contemporary feminism (which can more accurately be described as misandry in a pantsuit) has done little for women other than force many of them to give up what most of the world for most of Human history has regarded as the aspiration nearest and dearest to most women's hearts: a family. She further argues that this has been done to the detriment of all of American society, from the military (where female officers have been promoted more for their gender than for their service record) to the bank (where wages have dropped due to a sudden increase in the labor pool) to the real estate market (where cost of housing has risen due to the expectation that every household will have two incomes).
Frankly it's a must-read for everyone in the Western hemisphere and if I may be blunt, the more offended you are by what you read in it, the more you may be assured you are in fact the target audience.
A guide to psychological manipulation...
Oooookay. So, does it tell how to manipulate people, or how to protect yourself from being manipulated? The book's biggest flaw is that it never fully answers that question. Some chapters are geared toward one, some toward the other. Some chapters focus on how to use psychology in marketing, some discuss how to recognize a narcissist and extricate yourself from them, and one focuses on how to start a cult.
Yes, you read that right.
I'm not sure what's more frightening: the fact that this information is casually sold on Amazon, or the fact that the steps seem creepily plausible.
Speaking of things that are "creepily plausible..."
If I'd read this when it came out, I'd have sworn it was a fantasy, probably written by a twenty-something-year-old male with a BDSM fetish who watched "Taken" and read The Arabian Nights and decided to write a book that blended the two. The atmosphere depicted is so over-the-top, the level of constant objectification and sexualization so complete, that I would have been convinced it could not exist in the real world. But after living in Beijing and seeing enough of its seedy underbelly, after dating a woman who on more than one occasion was nearly sucked into the Human Trafficking world that permeates that putrid city, after reading Park's In Order to Live and thus having some of the gaps filled in for me about just how the modern slave trade operates, and after witnessing with my own two eyes how lawless the world can get when you step outside of Western jurisdiction, I suddenly don't find it difficult to believe at all, especially in a place like Saudi Arabia.
(Not Pictured)
This didn't make the photo at the top because it was a borrowed copy and thus wasn't on my own shelf. It's also notable for being the only work of fiction I read this year. Some of my readers may remember a 1997 creature-feature called "The Relic." Not many people know it was based on a book (and one from a series, at that), nor that it had a direct sequel.
This is the sequel.
Obviously I'd recommend reading the book that the film was based on before reading this, if for no other reason than the sheer fact that while the movie wasn't horrible, the book was a lot better. But if you haven't read the book and have only watched the movie, the sequel still makes sense if you go in knowing a few things beforehand. For one, in the book Harry survived, and it was he, not Margo Greene, who discovered the big secret about the creature's identity at the end (and he didn't share that information because he wanted it for eeeeeevil scheming purposes), so bear in mind that at the beginning of this book the main characters don't know just how the Museum Beast came into existence. For another, the main character in the book didn't even appear in the movie. His role in the book and Lieutenant D'Agosta's role were combined into one. In the book there were two lead cops: a hard-nosed D'Agosta who is pretty much the same as he was in the film, and an FBI agent named Pendergast who I think was the inspiration for the Robert Downey Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes.
Anyway, in this book they're both back, and this time there's not just one of the head-ripping creatures running around. There's an entire colony of them living under New York, and they have a leader who fancies himself a god. I make it sound kind of ridiculous but it's actually a hell of a page turner.
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