A brisk, sometimes adoring treatment of the tech industry’s rise, circa 1970-2000. Kaplan often traverses the boundary running along technological vision and advancement and business gain and rapacity. Venture investors such as John Doerr receive individualized treatment to rival regulars such as Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. There’s also a useful treatment of the Microsoft antitrust case. But although well researched and written, the book fails to address why so many talented people have dedicated their careers to the field.
Author: kurto
12. Fetter, Taking on the Yankees (1 Aug 2018)
Surveys continuity and change in the business of baseball, 1903-2003. The New York Yankees, the first to operate as a corporation rather than a lifestyle business, have set the standards for commercial operations and, accordingly, on-field success. From the 19th century, although the game was played nationwide, the Major Leagues were confined to the Northeast and Midwest, owners pruned weaker teams and behaved as a cartel as regards player employment via the reserve clause. Revenue depended on daytime attendance; Sunday games, which enabled the working public to attend, fully arrived only in the second decade of the 20th century; the ‘Chicago rule’ ensured one team in a two-team town was always on the road. 1903’s consolidation abandoned the southern frontier cities of Baltimore, Washington, and Louisville, leaving Cincinnati and St. Louis as the outposts. This geographic arrangement worked well for the first half of the century. The Yankees’ rise past the Boston Red Sox and the Giants was based on management’s willingness to reinvest in the team, and also exemplifies the contemporary ‘managerial revolution’, or administrative hierarchy as a source of performance and durability. (1960s-era ownership by CBS demonstrated limits to corporate efficiency.) St. Louis and Branch Rickey sought to overcome New York’s edge via a network of emerging players, but the farm system was ultimately ineffective: the Cardinals rose and fell with Rickey’s judgment, and the Yankees continued to predominate the World Series. Problems in established markets, rather than visionary expansion, prompted relocation of Boston’s Braves to Milwaukee, St. Louis’ Browns to Baltimore (renamed the Orioles), and Philadelphia’s Athletics to Kansas City. The Dodgers and Giants also left New York for domestic reasons, although Los Angeles and San Francisco were new markets. Walter O’Malley is portrayed as unwilling to compromise on Flushing Meadows, where the Mets were born, while the Giants panicked in moving by result of their cross-town rivals’ departure. As is true elsewhere, too much time is spent on intramural New York affairs, and not enough on the decision making in the Californian cities. Integration brought exciting new players into the game, following the Dodgers, most often in the National League sides; but New York continued to predominate in the 1950s, particularly the Dodgers. Baseball’s business model began changing with the debut of radio and then television. But the game missed an opportunity to equalize ‘small’ and ‘big’ market teams, underscoring its tendency to react than to plan for major junctures. Not Curt Flood by Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter and Andy Messersmith – not the reserve clause but free agency – set off the player salary escalation which reshaped baseball. In the face of predictions that big market teams would collect the best talent, parity emerged while the Yankees fell to consecutive losing seasons. But there began 25 years of labor strife. While concerned with New York – the author notes the Mets and the Yankees took decade-long turns in winning the metropolitan attendance battle, roughly corresponding with the teams’ playing success – the author omits discussing the abandonment of the first and second divisions in favor of East and West, and then into three groups as well as the introduction of inter-league play. Fetter’s treatment of the 2000 ‘blue ribbon’ panel on baseball is unconvincing; he does not understand equality of opportunity. The conclusion is tepid. An interesting book that does not quite deliver.
13. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft (15 Aug 2018)
America’s founders underestimated civic virtue. Government is more likely to do justice if it aims to promote a moral citizenry. By ignoring ancient precepts of the Western political tradition, the US focuses on individualism to the detriment of society. Will surveys political philosophy and mid-20th century intellectual currents before making the positive case that ‘statecraft as soulcraft’ is necessary for the community’s cohesion. In the first regard, Will observes that Aristotle thought human nature provided a moral compass, which workings pointed to an orderly society. To accept natural law is to hold that individuals reach better decisions through common judgment. Decision making is a source of cohesion. Hobbes and Locke asserted the privacy of self-interest, rooted in human passions; Hobbes said reason is but a ‘spy’ for passion (contra Kant). In this view, decisions are a source of tension; society is held in check by tolerance; government is a referee. So oriented, moderns have further refocused natural law away from virtue and perfection toward regularity, away from duty toward rights. Turning to contemporary thought, Will demonstrates the leveling characteristics of Freudian psychology, relativism, the academy, and so on, while working his way back to Madison’s founding precept for the Constitution – factions holding one another in check as the ‘defect of better interests’. Madison was one-dimensional, in Will’s view, in thinking that passion trumped all. He shows that if rights rest on convention rather than natural law, then changes in opinion can change these rights. FDR, a social democrat, and Reagan, a Manchester liberal, were each moderns. Burke was the greatest contemporary to side with the ancients. The argument for soulcraft is overtly made with the assertion that the basic goal is not self-government but good government. Neither popularity nor tradition is by itself a guarantee of effectiveness; as regards the latter, this is the distinction between conservatism and reaction. Government promoting virtue is not a question of what to think but how to think. This points up the difference between soulcraft and (Nazi) totalitarianism, of natural law versus the Romantic will to power. But teaching cannot regard all outcomes as equal. Some questions (e.g., slavery) ought to be above the enthusiasms of popular sovereignty. Learned and soundly constructed, but suffers from too many asides and seeming changes of direction, which undermine concentration and depth. As an example, the observation that Plato thought Thucydides failed the first test of statesmanship, to improve the citizenry, ought to have featured in the conclusion, not early on.
1. Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Style (15 January 2022)
The selection of words, the arrangement of sentences, and cadence are primary determinants of classical English style. In contrast to catechism which seek to avoid mistakes via brevity, the author outlines patterns which create forceful prose.
• English is an amalgam of multi-syllable, formal Latin words and shorter, ‘common sense’ Saxon ones. Contrast is therefore readily achieved. Latin is frequently better for complex sentiments, Saxon for plain truth – particularly at the end of sentences. Alternately, Latinate for the false, Saxon for truth
• Express concrete metonyms (surrogate images) in Saxon, the associated abstraction in Latin. Again, movement between the two arrests attention
• Sentences expand ‘to the right’ when detail follows the predicate, and to the left when detail precedes. Expanding to the right creates a crush of action, to the left tension, mystery, surprise. Sometimes the preamble is the main point after all. Branching too can be paired for effect
• So too varied sentence length. One long sentence can support a succession of shorter ones. Also, sentences without adverbs will call attention to those with
• Rhetorical power is created by opposition and movement between poles; simplicity is overrated
• The passive voice gets the narrator / author ‘off the stage’
• Inviting the reader to try something (‘look for’, ‘show me’) enlists him in the author’s project
• Cadence, premised on the pattern of weak and strong syllables, is a way of training the reader’s expectations. A strong ending is decisive, a weak one can be a flourish, and so on
• Detail can add verisimilitude to hyperbolic claim or intent
Visions of the Kantian world-state
European nation-states survived 19th- and 20th-century ideologies (e.g., Marxism, racism) competing with Hobbesian sovereignty for the loyalty of citizens. World War I marked the high watermark of their cohesion. Visions of the Kantian world-state predominate.
Today, even more than in Hobbes’s time, sovereignty is commonly rejected as an expression of selfish particular interests, and today’s aspirations for political salvation have been invested in the power of international organizations.
Hobbes juxtaposed the demands of freedom against the passion for justice, and he lost. The most powerful enthusiasm of all has turned out to be the supposedly critical belief that our loyalties must not be constrained by the merely accidental fact of being born into some specific society. We must make our own judgments of rationality, and we may appeal beyond the state, to rights, international values, and external bodies. Modern democracy tends to play down the importance of sovereignty. Remarkably, however, it is in these European states, with their Hobbesian echo of pure statehood, that legality and decency survive, and to which the refugees move, in flight from a world that often seems to echo the state of nature Hobbes so much dreaded.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2013/3/swimming-with-leviathan
14. Manville, Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (28 Aug 2018)
Traces the evolution of Athenian citizenship in the late seventh and early sixth centuries. The Kleisthenian reforms catalyzed Attica’s transformation to a powerful democratic state. The author begins by sketching Aristotelian concepts of the polis and democracy: justice is the essential condition of the state, and citizens are shareholders in a company whose purpose is moral excellence. Poetry, archaeology, and other remnants of Ancient Athens demonstrate these ideas, but citizenship lacked precise, shared understanding. Kylon’s attempted coup d’etat in 630 provoked aristocratic defense of privilege, as well as Drakon’s subsequent codification of customs such as penalties for killing Athenians (versus foreigners). But interstate warfare played a greater role than socioeconomic factors; scarcity of land was more important in undermining tribal affiliations. The reforms of Solon initiated more precise ideals of membership, inheritance, immigration; he also canceled debt, thus ending the possibility of citizens being sold into slavery, which won many different adherents. Further, several of Solon’s laws transformed formerly private concerns such as marriage, orphanage, weights and measures, and public festivals into public concerns. Yet his foremost concern was the process of justice: the well-ordered society is the just society. His controversial policies, particularly the cancellation of debt, led to tripartite factional warfare and the dictatorship of Peisistratos. The overall effect of his 25-year rule was positive for democratization (a la Pinochet or Kirkpatrick). Then followed 510’s diapsephisis, the judgment of fitness for citizenship on the basis of tribal descent. Kliesthenes’ rise to power dispelled this reign of terror; further, good order became equal order. He revised definitions of citizenship and enhanced participation in the legal system, and his reforms benefitted from foreign threats. Citizens were encouraged to work together domestically and in warfare. The inclusion of anthropology elongates the study, relegating some interesting material to the footnotes. In all, a useful historical work.
15. Will, Bunts (8 Sep 2018)
A collection of baseball essays written over 1970-2000, reflecting on the sport’s seminal figures and movements, and how ‘America’s pastime’ reflects the country’s life. Games are a ‘space for ordered living’, according to Bart Giamatti, made not by nature but by free choices. Unlike football or basketball, baseball is played with a rhythm alternating between concentration and relaxation, as befits a 162-game season. Since teams will generally win and lose 40 percent of the time regardless, it’s the habit of the quotidian athletic performance that helps them achieve results in the balance – the thesis of
- Men at Work
. Donald Kagan denigrates the thesis as unheroic in a
- Public Interest
review republished herein; Will responds this is a Romantic fallacy, lionizing will without disciplined, sustained effort. (Elsewhere he comments that because sport compresses life’s trajectory, sports writers often display facile pathos.) As the author notes, the Greeks considered sport a moral undertaking: by witnessing grace, the soul learns to beauty, by seeing fair competition, the passions are educated. In ‘Good Character, Not Good Chemistry’, he sets forth the case against steroids (and other types of cheating). Winning is valued for praiseworthy attributes, while becoming better (self improvement) implies not only improvement but also the loneliness of the individual regimen. The purpose of umpiring is to regulate striving, not to eliminate violent effort but to regulate it, enabling excellence to prevail. Fans, for their part, are to derive enjoyment for the whole of the contest since pleasure cannot be predicated on outcomes (i.e., losing) that will so often be negative. Will often makes the case that the game has in fact improved. New York teams won 41 of 102 pennants from 1903-53, and 20 of 50 World Series, while there were no teams south of Washington DC or west of St. Louis, whereas since the fall of the reserve clause, very few teams have been repeat champions. As further evidence, he cites attendance: in strike-shortened 1995, 5 teams outdrew Cleveland’s record 2.6 million in 1948; average game attendance [probably tickets sold] in 1954 was 13,000. But the case mainly rests on the feats of the players, which are generally comparable – notwithstanding ‘live balls’, the introduction of the designated hitter, and steroids. There are sociopolitical essays on Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood, the former including the observation that Larry Doby may have been more important than Robinson because he was ‘merely’ talented (by comparison with the surreal Robinson). Will echoes the view that blacks are ‘underrepresented’ in baseball because of the game’s historic connotation with the color line – similar to rugby and apartheid – but does not observe that this helped opened the door to Latin Americans. On Pete Rose-Bart Giamatti, he writes that the important result was baseball’s institutions (i.e., the commissioner’s office) maintained its integrity rather than succumbing to supervision of federal judiciary. Less predictably, he is generally hard on owners during the labor turmoil of the 1990s. John Miller, then broadcasting for the Orioles and Washington DC layer Earl Bennett Williams, is lauded for attention to details: his ‘respect for listeners’ includes fastidious scorekeeping and absence of hyperbole. By contrast, Billy Martin (and Rose) is excoriated for violating baseball’s equipoise – he couldn’t sustain a winning culture. Some nuggets: the introduction of better fielding equipment in the 1880s change the game from a contest between fielder versus hitter to pitcher versus hitter, as prior to, 1 in 2 runs was unearned; players left gloves on the field through the 1940s; the Penn Law Review found the infield fly rule would be superfluous if baseball were to emulate cricket’s sporting ethic – but in America the purpose is to win; a winning team scores more runs in 1 inning than the loser does in 9; the end of the American League umpire’s chest protector lowered the strike zone, but the AL zone remained smaller than the National League’s. In all, the columns hold up well some 30 years later, and Will’s Aristotelian thesis (‘we are what we repeatedly do’) looks no worse for the wear either.
16. Oates, With Malice toward None (30 Sep 2018)
A learned but popular biography of Abraham Lincoln emphasizing the consistency of his vision of the American nation. As an Illinois Whig, Lincoln favored state-sponsored improvement (e.g., roads and technology improvement). He was an eloquent speaker when prepared but not a draftsman of note. Lincoln then served one term in Congress before returning to private pursuits, in which he was known as a railroad lawyer. His rivalry with Stephen Douglas commenced in the late 1830s, rising to its apex in opposing the Democrat’s notion of popular sovereignty, the fudge for extending slavery into the territories. Lincoln ran for the Senate in 1854 but conceded to a compromise candidate in order to keep a Democrat out, consistent with his view of cooperation for the common good. During this time, he appeared in New England and New York in support of fellow Whigs; in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Scott decision, his decision to jump to the Republicans was a substantial boost for the new party. The famous 1858 debates with Dough elucidated his commitment to the federal union: Lincoln would respect slavery as established by law to preserve the union, but would not countenance expansion. 1860s’s split of the Democratic Party ushered Lincoln to the presidency, which occupies half of Oates’ work. Among the more interesting aspects are the decision to go to war, strong-armed tactics to keep Baltimore as well as the border states in the union, setting aside the fugitive slave law in the occupied south, and the struggle to find an offensive-minded general. Gradually, by 1862, he came to regard emancipation as a war aim, although he was conscious of running ahead of his cabinet, which insisted on a victory (Antietam) before the announcement, and more so popular opinion. Lincoln is presented as quirky, a hard worker and good decision maker, but not necessarily a first-grade Periclean leader. Does he deserve to be considered the redeemer of the Founding Fathers?
17. Davis, Crucible of Command (15 Oct 2018)
A dual biography of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant which serves to portray the primary military campaigns of the Civil War. Lee, 15 years older, sought to prevail by making Northern opinion give up, albeit through winning a Napoleonic, climactic battle; Grant, the most offensive-minded of Northern commanders, was tasked to win in the Confederacy’s spiritual homeland. Defeating Lee helped Grant become ‘second to Lincoln’ as man of the century. Both were Whiggish West Pointers, Lee the scion of a Revolutionary War hero who was forced to become head of the household, and was made by the Mexican War. Grant was hard-working but left the army to become an indifferent businessman. Although Lee was a prized recruit to the Confederacy, because of rivalries and state sovereignty, he didn’t become primes inter pares until May 1863 – months before his failure at Gettysburg. Grant worked his way up through Mississippi Valley wins at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, shrugging off a reputation for drunkenness and officer rivalries. Both Lee and Grant preferred surprise, indirect moves, and forceful follow-ups. In summer 1863, as he was charged to clear western Tennessee of Southern cavalry, he grasped the broader potential for destroying Southern resource base in Alabama and Georgia. His planning along with his successes made it inevitable he would be brought east to face Lee (which happened in April 1864). Also that summer, Grant came to appreciate the need to abolish slavery, though he was generally minded to avoid politics and in fact left the niceties to George Meade. When asked by politicians in March 1865 to recommend surrender, Lee declined; a month later he conceded to Grant’s generous terms at Appomattox. Swept to the presidency in 1868, he suppressed the KKK and was the first two-term president to display a modern approach. Lee, elected president of a struggling Virginian college, helped a Republican become governor of the state, thus enabling the Old Dominion to regain admission to the union in 1870 and side with Reconstruction (the only Southern state to do so). Lee, a fatalist, believed God’s intentions practically eliminated risk since events were preordained. Grant, the late bloomer, was prepared to take the good with the bad, to live life all over again.
22. Sampson, Mandela (5 Dec 2020)
An authorized biography, bolstered by the author’s contemporaneous journalism, seeking to assess the political temperament and performance of Nelson Mandela. Prepossessing the demeanor of a tribal chieftain and educated by Wesleyans, Mandela’s prison years instilled discipline and broadened vision, the crucial step toward peaceful revolution and African statesmanship par excellence. Taking to Johannesburg in the 1950s, where he practiced law and politics making expert (if ‘vicious’) use of the Socratic method, Mandela discovered a cultural energy comparable to the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s. He was impulsive and of two minds, torn between multiracial communism and black nationalism. Mandela opposed the socialistic element of 1956’s Freedom Charter, but contemporaries thought that if he wasn’t a member of the South African Communist Party, it was ‘merely tactical’. Less enamored of nonviolence than Oliver Tambo or Walter Sisulu, he abandoned the approach after the Sharpeville riots failed to catalyze political change. Following his capture and trial, Robben Island isolated Mandela from daily tactics: the African National Congress inmates turned to collegial development of strategy while learning to master animosity toward the Afrikaners. Meanwhile, the author tends to jump ahead consistent with contemporary left-liberal views, blaming the CIA and Thatcher for opposing sanctions, being slow to reconcile to the ‘inevitable’ ascendancy of Mandela and the ANC (soon coming to power in 1987?!), and failing to anticipate the end of the Cold War (in 1978!). Sampson notably overlooks that the Cold War’s end made it safer for the Nationalist government to retrench. But the dynamics of Mandela’s negotiations with Botha and deKlerk read more reliably, particularly in the portrayal of his views on renouncing violence, as do his thoughts on opposing general amnesty in exchange for commencing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mandela misapprehended the cost of the ANC’s historic alliance with the USSR, and was slow to grasp the prospect of nationalization as deterring Western investors. In office, modeling is mixed (i.e., antagonistic) cabinet on Clemenceau’s, he displayed a quiet dignity, his forgiveness establishing moral supremacy, in contrast (the author says) to aggressive black American politicians. A persistent themes is the tension between the demands on a politician (i.e., winning power, projecting ideology) and the vision of a statesman (long-term good of the community). The last word: ‘You don’t lead by position but by the strength of your ideas’ (p. 529).