Month: October 2023

1. Wolf, Wired (14 Jan 2006)

by kurto

Narrates the rise and fall of Louis Rosetto, visionary of digital technology as catalyst for cultural transformation. The first third sketches Rosetto’s nomadic existence before landing in San Francisco in time to exploit the first Internet boom. The book then hurtles through the tale of

    Wired

magazine as a microcosm of the dot-com phenomenon. Much of the tale centers on Rosetto’s obliviousness and Andrew Anker’s cynicism. It all ends rather abruptly when Conde Nast and Lycos purchase the magazine and web properties, respectively. Like

    Burn Rate

, there is ample personal connection.

2. Gaddis, Cold War (21 Jan 2006)

by kurto

A synthetic history of the Cold War that divides the major events thematically rather than chronologically. The most enlightening chapters outline how the wartime alliance dissolved into hostility and how the West emerged from the moral stupor of detente. The roles of Reagan and Thatcher are understated, however, and a fuller application of Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s

    Dictatorships and Double Standards

would have balanced the treatment of client states and moral equivalence. A good bibliography.

3. Coyle, Lance Armstrong’s War (27 Jan 2006)

by kurto

Reveals the performance requirements and culture of pro racing and the personality of Lance Armstrong. The author follows the Tour de France great through the 2004 season, when Armstrong won his record sixth consecutive title. Though Armstrong is often reviled for his competitiveness, it’s unclear why the habits that made him a champion become odious as he seeks to defend his stature. [The book and this summary were both prior to his exposure as a drugs cheat.] Armstrong largely gets a pass on rampant allegations of doping, and fair enough: innocent until proven guilty.

12. Richter, Political Theory of Montesquieu (2 July)

by kurto

An extended survey of Montesquieu’s works and selections from the most famous, notably Persian Letters and Spirit of the Laws.

    Survey
Causes of Rome
Rome fell because wealth became despised by the populace, so the patricians ceded their privileges in hopes of retaining access to power
More states have perished from corruption of moeurs than lawbreaking
Whenever in a republic all is tranquil, the state is no longer free. True harmony includes dissonance
Spirit
Solon divided the classes not to determine eligibility to vote but to hold office
In a tyranny, religion is the depository of moeurs and fundamental laws because the judiciary is unreliable
In monarchies, free speech is not on behalf of truth but because candor indicates power
Since everything human must end, so virtuous government must end, usually when the legislature becomes more corrupt than the executive. In a democracy, first comes corruption, then the laws are no longer executed. Once principles are corrupted, even good laws work against the state. Corrupt republics rarely do great things: only a people with simple moeurs establish societies, cities, laws.
In a democracy, power is the chief characteristic of the people; liberty is its effect, but not the source of power. Liberty is tranquility derived from personal security. However, the greater the apparent advantages of liberty, the nearer the republic is to losing it. First comes the petty tyrants, then the single dictator.
True equality is far from extreme equality. True equality is not that everyone or no one commands; but that we command or obey only equals. Citizens whose condition is so weak may be considered to have no will of their own: they are incapable of taking part in the execution of society’s ends.
Republics succeed in small geographies. In large ones, the state’s resources corrupt officeholders: the public good recedes from view. Sparta persisted because its sole end was liberty.
Harrington explore how far a state’s constitution may carry liberty, but forgot liberty’s essence. As Tacitus observed, it’s extraordinary that corrupt Roman conquerors led Germanic barbarians to solidify those moeurs which led to English constitutionalism.
There are two types of tyranny, the real and violent, and tyranny of opinion, when those who govern institute things contrary to the nation’s moeurs.
Political vices are not necessarily moral vices and vice versa, a reasonwhy laws against the spirit of society are tenuous. Means exist for preventing crimes (penalties), and can serve to change moeurs. To assert that laws or religion do not always restrain society is to overlook that frequently they do. Civility is superior to politeness: the former prevents us from displaying our own vices. The more people in a nation, the more evident and necessary are both.

4. Cafferty, Suitcase Number Seven (16 Feb 2006)

by kurto

A biography, initially presented as a faux autobiography, detailing the 1950s rugby career and subsequent bachelorhood and alcohol-ravaged life of Munster scrumhalf Tom Cleary. Cleary was 17 times an Ireland replacement but never earned a cap in the era before substitutes; the author presents this shortfall as symbolic of Cleary’s travails after rugby — never reaching his potential. The title refers to Cleary’s 1960 tour of South Africa and Rhodesia, which places him a teammate of Syd Miller and Tony O’Reilly. Though depicted with great sympathy, the details of Cleary’s mature years are less interesting for rugby readers. The appendix is rich with statistics and match reports from Munster, Ireland, and the SA tour.

5. Johnson, Modern Times (2006)

by kurto

A tour of the principal socioeconomic, intellectual, and political events and trends of the 20th century through the 1980s. Key observations: political violence is infectious and degenerative in nature; it is highly important for leaders to be seen as moral and ethical. In the last century, the left was responsible for the bulk of the disastrous experiments with social engineering in Russia, China, and various socialist outposts, but the right also participated as in Germany, Italy, and Spain. The author convincingly points to the enduring role of individual agency as well as the law of unintended effects. Because he is not a professional academic and is conservative, he is considered idiosyncratic but his conclusions have never been refuted.

6. Lewis, Moneyball (2 Apr 2006)

by kurto

Follows the back-office management of the Oakland As’ 2002 season to uncover how the small-market team defies baseball’s conventional wisdom. For GM Billy Beane, on-base percentage (i.e., not making outs) is superior to any other statistical measurement, and players (especially minor leaguers) can be acquired at a significant discount (or sold at a premium) to the market’s valuation. Joe Morgan emerges as the arch defender of the status quo. One corollary that’s not addressed: if you don’t allow runs you can’t lose — defense wins championships after all.

7. MacMillan, 1919 (8 May 2006)

by kurto

Narrates the course of the Paris Peace Conference following World War I to assess its consequences as measured against contemporary expectations as well in hindsight. Clemenceau (‘bury me standing, facing Germany’), Lloyd George, and Wilson as well as Balfour and Curzon are key figures. The study reviews the proceedings regarding European, Asian, and Middle Eastern regions by country, focusing heavily on the redrawing of borders. Self-determination, mixed nationalism newly awakened by the collapse of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman empires, proved explosive; however, the course of twenty years, not simply the treaty, led to 1939.

20. O’Brien, Anglo-Irish Politics in the Age of Grattan and Pitt (7 October 2023)

by kurto

A Namierite survey of Protestant Ascendancy politics in the Irish Parliament during the 1780s-90s, well sourced of contemporary correspondence but sometimes forced and lacking fluid narrative. The Act of Union came because English hopes of rowing back political rights in exchange for economic concessions foundered on Anglo-Irish sense interdependence.

1691’s Treaty of Limerick established the basis of unstable 17th-centry politics. William of Orange had come to Ireland to defeat Jacobites not Catholics, but the Irish missed the distinction. Almost immediately Protestants saw London (i.e., Westminster) as working at contrary purposes. But the locals were willing to accept venality, and both the Irish and (less often) English privy councils altered or pocketed Parliamentary legislation sent for formal assent. In Anne’s reign the English Commons rescinded all Parliament land grants. Further grievances rose in limiting wool exports, coinage, Poynings Law (permitting legislative alterations), and 1719’s Declaratory Act (direct legislative authority, less often used than Poynings).

In 1770 Townshend sidelined Ireland’s ‘undertakers’ to concentrate power in the Castle, converting Anglo-Irish to opposition, thereby entrenching personal rivalries in the political process and also opening the route to 1782. This change surpassed the influence of the contemporary American rebellion, the author asserts; Irish protest literature was present out of doors but never played much role in Parliament (contra Bailyn’s Origins). Constitutional revisions commenced in 1779 with economic issues: more complete legislative freedom was seen to safeguard free trade. Charles Francis Sheridan was the ideological paladin, echoing Locke, essentially arguing the Anglo-Irish were a separate nation. Henry Grattan assumed Parliamentary leadership from Barry Yelverton, besting Henry Flood. There was no coordination among Irish and English Whigs. The opposition sought repeal of the Test Act, of Poynings, restoration of habeus corpus, independent judges (in the House of Lords), control of the exchequer, and domestic use of hereditary revenue (essentially land tax of absentee owners, tantamount to taxation without representation). These demands were supported by the paramilitary Volunteers.

(In correspondence, Burke described Grattan as a madman to be stopped?)

The Renunciation Act of 1783 shifted power to Ireland, but not through Parliamentary success or incipient rebellion. In making concessions, the Castle disregarded settled policy and the Cabinet, and Shelburne mismanaged the dysfunction. Upon taking office, Pitt sought to barter improved economic terms for reduced sovereignty. More broadly, he first sought to link national debts – the Irish were to pay for their administrative costs – and saw Irish trade demands as claims to sell colonial produce to the mother country: he did not see the claim to autonomy within the empire. His cabinet colleague Jenkinson saw Ireland as more equivalent to English towns, and helped re-turn Pitt from Adam Smith to mercantilism. These commercial propositions as well as the Regency affair were inconclusive.
Grattan refused the Castle in April 1782, as the nexus of power was then between the Irish parliament and British cabinet, the Castle being an executive agency. Yet there was no cohesion among the opposition. Country independents were regularly bought, the pensions list growing and growing in the 1780s. The Patriots were doomed to permanent opposition. Losing Corry to the Castle in 1788 handed the Parliamentary reigns to Grattan but he failed to capitalize on the febrile environment of February-March 1789; he too would later cross over.

In the 1790s the Lord Lieutenants transformed what had been ‘elitist insurrection’ into violent peasant uprisings by the Volunteers and Whiteboys. Pitt continued to see that commercial concessions would alleviate conditions. But his Irish reform policy was really an effort to reform the English legislature(?). Thus 1782 had not only separated the combatants but also increased the cost of patronage, and some in the cabinet immediately saw the failure to redress Irish concessions meant the Act of Union must follow: it was the product of exhaustion not evolution. 1800 having sidelined the Anglo-Irish, 1829’s Catholic Emancipation then removed the final barrier – the conflict became Catholics versus the Cabinet.

O’Brien’s choppy narrative itself undermines efforts to show political outcomes were pre-determined by class, as demonstrated by counting votes. Though he frequently (and admirably) cites correspondence, his Namierite approach seems likely to be masking problem and nuance.

19. Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics (1 Oct 2023)

by kurto

Narrates the progression of football strategy as reflected in team formation, demonstrating various and evolving answers to the dichotomy of results versus aesthetics.

In the 19th century, solo dribbling defended by hacking coalesced into the forward-heavy 5-3-2. As northern UK teams began to challenge London, Scottish sides popularized close passing. As the game spread abroad through colonialism and trade, the pyramid became as the global default until 1925, when the offside rule changed to only 1 defending player behind the ball, after which the WM formation came in.

Why did football spread outside the empire?; but the book is mainly free of racist cant.

The history of tactics is encapsulated in the search for balancing defense and attack. The next innovation was Danubian, the ‘coffee house’ football of Austria, Hungary, and Germany, credited to the coaching tree of expatriate Jimmy Hogan. Contemporary forwards began dropping back or sitting deeper: more forwards make it more difficult to regain possession. The new inside left center came to be seen as more creative than the right center, so although numbering is not universal the number 10 became the playmaker.

English teams resisted the trend. Only much later, following 1953’s comprehensive defeat to Hungary, did the home of football see the modern game passing it by. Most countries have endured doubts of national strengths, whether technique or strength (brawn), and consequently looked abroad; yet Wilson sees England as unusually insular. During the 1960s, English orthodoxy lay in goals being scored in 3 or fewer passes. The author is highly critical of this ‘pseudo intellectual’ fad; but elsewhere suggests Dutch total football exemplifies the contemporary proximity of French postmodernism.

Selections are either for player quality (e.g., Brazil or Argentina) or fit within the system. No tactical system is so dour as the defensive Italian catenaccio of the 1960s. Hereafter, the book tends toward sketching national trajectories which illustrate tactical elaboration, often showing club coaches transitioning from domestic to cross-border or international competition. For example, the isolated teams of Peronist Argentina favored playmaking, the Dutch skipped the ‘WM’ formation as well as the pressures of early league tables. British emigres are often influential. Total football introduced the vertical (not lateral) interchange of positions. Dynamo Kiev’s Lobanovski saw that attack and defense relate not to position but possession.

1970’s World Cup, along with landing on the moon, was the first global TV event and also the last major tournament without pressing: Brazil’s playmakers were ideally suited. But the second striker became the fifth midfielder, upending the 4-4-2 and clogging the midfield. The shift underlined that defensive elements of innovation have often taken root more easily than the offensive, speaking to the rarity of individual skills. 1990’s outlawing the backpass and defensive challenges from behind marked the next major landmark. Who invented the 4-2-3-1 as it evolved over 1996-2000 cannot be established. Will the striker become obsolete?

The point of tactics is to multiply individual ability. Argentina, which reveres the 10, most evidences the struggle between defense and offense; but players can’t be effective 1-on-2. The greatest-ever sides have been 1954 Hungary, 1970 Brazil, 1974 Netherlands, late 1970s Milan.