Book abstracts

9. Atkinson, Rugby-Playing Man (12 Jul 2012)

by kurto

Remember America’s ‘tavern league’ era, when ill-resourced, player-coached teams contested lightly organized leagues while celebrating the cultish, borderline behavior of 20- and 30-year-olds?
These days, most do not. The game is predominated by students, most of whom weren’t born at the time of its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. So what do we really know of the stereotype?
Jay Atkinson’s

    Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man: Guts, Glory, and Blood in the World’s Greatest Game

, a well-crafted autobiography of a senior-grade player in Florida, Boston, and elsewhere, is a poignant, representative snapshot of the men who identified with rugby beyond all else.

    Rugby-Playing Man’s

dust jacket sensationalizes its contents, but the narrative is more nuanced. As the author begins, ‘There are the things we do for love, and the things we do for rugby, which are pretty much the same, at least in my case’.
To be sure, there are any number debauched adventures, some of which could still transpire today. It is one thing to revisit tales among teammates, however, and another to bring them to life – without pandering – for a new audience. This is a primary achievement of Atkinson’s effort.
Still more interesting are recollections of how Atkinson found his home at hooker, a controversial state championship match, or a tour of Wales. Anyone who played in the era will relate. Though the book is consciously neither historical or sociological, later generations and outsiders will glimpse the game as commonly experienced.
Disgust with the tavern-league era – homespun administrators as much as outre players – is one explanation for American rugby’s latter-day obsession with professionalizing. The union’s present constitution seals the board off from the grassroots: only well-heeled capitalists need apply. Most have no affinity for American rugby culture, always a weakness for any government.
Atkinson’s

    Rugby-Playing Man

surpasses its author’s narrative, portraying the good and bad of a bygone time. America’s modern era, which has fallen short of its self-declared goals, will do well to find an equally skillful telling.

See also http://www.gainline.us/gainline/2015/02/on-the-tavern-league-era.html

11. Wright, France in Modern Times (29 Sep 2012)

by kurto

Surveys the leading events and historiography of France from the mid 18th century. Far more than England or Germany, French society and government passed through radically distinct phases, and yet inevitably retained pronounced features of previous periods. As such, the royalist-republican duality reconstitutes itself in clashes such as the catholic-statist Dreyfus affair. Although it is not his intention, the author regrettably avoids taking sides: the narrative is strictly chronological. Also, there’s no mention of the things which are distinctly French, or the dichotomy of Descartes and Pascal (reason or revelation).

13. Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (20 Oct 2012)

by kurto

Demonstrates the Athenian statesman’s commitment to popular (democratic) governance in the face of monarchical and (uber)aristocratic tradition as well as the Peloponnesian War’s tribulations. As summarized by Thucydides, his leadership aspired ‘to know what must be done and to be able to explain it, to love one’s country, and to be incorruptible’. His successes are portrayed against the backdrop of the Athenian empire and regional conflagration, which broke both the city’s power and its experiment with representative government. As so often with Kagan, the bygone era’s realities are comprehensible to the modern reader.

1. Rumelt, Good Strategy (2 Jan 2013)

by kurto

Strategy discovers a situation’s critical factors and derives a coherent, simply presented approach to the objective. According to Rumelt, who does not address the interplay with tactics, it comprises diagnosis, setting a guiding policy, and identifying / specifying a coherent set of actions. The latter creates strength, which sets it apart from Rumelt’s examples of bad strategy, which amount to sloganeering and disconnecting activity. Good strategy is often unexpected – not necessarily complex – because (pace Drucker) it has identified what’s really (already) going on. The key to the policy is to make it participatory (i.e., shared leadership).

4. McChrystal, My Share of the Task (2 Jun 2013)

by kurto

A military memoir sketching how General McChrystal reorganized practice and doctrine during America’s two anti-terrorist wars of the 2000s, Iraq and Afghanistan. The author’s command was primarily reactive and tactical: indeed, politics proved his undoing, as the Obama administration disliked both the Afghan theater and a McChrystal interview. Though highly praised, there seems little in the way or overarching approach; however, McChrystal’s extended record of sound decisions and execution is enviable.

6. Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order (10 Nov 2013)

by kurto

Efficient apparatus, rule of law, and accountability are the pillars of effective government and thus political order. Bypassing the thinking of Ancient Greece, Fukuyama relies on anthropology to locate the modalities of government and simultaneously man’s tendency to underline structure through familial instincts. Premodern China, 13th-century Egypt, 16th-century Turkey, and the medieval Catholic Church provide leading case studies of statecraft and its demise. As ever, decline is an important theme: moral and cultural advancement suggest political decay. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, in this taxonomy of political forms (up to the French Revolution), the author as political thinker considers what is best for man, and as political scientist what is best for government. As such, passages are dry and detached; however, the beginning each chapter helpfully limns its contents. Worth rereading.

7. Norman, Edmund Burke (29 Dec)

by kurto

A short, dual-purpose treatment that competently sketches Burke’s life and career and deficiently maps his applicability to modern conservative politics. The profile’s achievement ironically stems from making the context of his political career accessible to 21st-century (British) readers. In an ahistorical, generalized setting, however, prescription without the counterbalance of opportunity costs and other risks loses rigor. Still, an impressive effort for a practicing politician.

2. LaCouture, DeGaule: Ruler (19 Jan 2014)

by kurto

A biography of 20th-century France’s leading figure, authoritatively narrated by the foreign editor of

    Le Monde

in the classical mode of synthesizing primary sources and interviews. This second volume ranges from de Gaulle’s efforts from August 1944 to restore France’s international status to his passing in 1970. The protagonist excelled in affairs of state, wherein the government must be preeminent (e.g., relations to the big 3, Algeria, the formation of Europe); whereas his endeavors to guide domestic politics without participating in them (styming communists in postwar elections, the 1962 constitution, the tumult of 1968-69) expose the authoritarian, arbitrary mnature of ‘Gaullism’ and the general’s egomania. De Gaulle was a warrior who parlayed close study of history into statesmanship, but he could not surmount politics as the French state is democratic. He also was a fine writer, thereby providing rich material for this study, which evinces a finely balanced dialectic treatment of core episodes while deftly using synthesis to energize the narrative. (Is it possible for an American to write in this style? It requires adjustment merely to read it.) However, the nuance of such an approach sometimes leaves one grasping for the author’s principal conclusions of the man.