Unsound or biased readings of history create false expectations of present politics. Conquest, a specialist in Soviet Russia, reviews the Enlightenment, the French and Russian revolutions, and the legacy of Western intellectuals such as Hegel. There is a crucial distinction between the ‘law-liberty’ culture of Britain and America, and the prescriptive traditions of the Continent. Conquest demonstrates the left’s hyper-criticism of tradition and its ready acceptance of the untried. Thus the title.
Book abstracts
8. Batelle, The Search (2005)
Asserts the preeminent role of research in digital media and commerce. Search transparently indicates the user’s intent, which trumps content as a locus for advertising or efficient transactions. The premise is explicated through the tale of Google’s phenomenal rise. The are significant errors of commission and omission, chief among them the presumption that users always efficiently and effectively judge query results. This devalues almost to the point of dismissal the role of editorial expertise. Battelle makes a parallel mistake in stating that the content is merely a vehicle for advertising, as if the purpose of content always is popularity. The author does redress the damage done to news gathering by online classified in of course contextual advertising, though nowhere is it acknowledged the Google’s cost structure is subsidized by content producers. Despite presenting himself as a journalist — there are numerous, tedious references to Wired and the Industry Standard, two publications beloved by marketeers — it is clear that Battelle’s instincts lie with advertisers (intent over content). The syntax is grating and it seems the author enjoys poststructuralism, or at least the fashionable leanings of a college anthropology professor. The book is presently viewed as a paradigm of wisdom in the digital domain, but will it endure?
(Postscript: one wonders whether search would have been shown by Battelle to have contributed to the rise of ‘fake news’, seen as a dynamic factor in the Trump’s presidential win?)
9. DeSoto, The Mystery of Capital (2005)
Identifies why market economies do not function in post communist and Third World countries as they do in the developed world. Most have more than enough capital. But it is dead because it cannot be transformed into liquidity; assets cannot be measured as standardized units; and laws do not work to protect assets, but instead to force owners into the underground economy. The leading example of successful transition to from informal to formal economy is the 19th-century United States. Present-day failures threaten the credibility of capitalism. A bit repetitious toward the middle, yet through and penetrating.
10. Zavos, How to Watch a Game of Rugby (2005)
Individuals bring unique perspectives to watching rugby games, and the action catalyzes the group experience. In what amounts to a sports cultural essay, Zavos aims to broaden the horizons of that experience through selected history and vignette, but too much of the book is only tangentially related to the thesis. That said, there’s much relevance to the American game, which does not view test matches as its ne plus ultra. Includes an interesting timeline.
7. Badiou, Adventure of French Philosophy (14 May 2023)
Collected essays of a 2d-tier postmodern paladin, demonstrating French philosophy has run itself up the political dead ends of power as determinative and nihilism. Badiou asserts 20th-century existentialism – from Sartre in the 1940s to Deleuze in the 90s, including Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Levi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan – rivals ancient Athens and 19th-century German idealists (but not Republican Florence, which says something of the political bent).
Finitude is intended to deprecate the possibility of universals. Truth is a process or labor, not the pursuit of veracity of proposition. Postmoderns confuse scientific advances and consequent revision with the impossibility (futility) of settlement, and so surrender to nihilism (the point at which ‘enjoyment and dying are indistinguishable’). That calculus advances does not compromise arithmetic. But postmoderns prefer to seek profundity in paradox, though enigmas borne of logic chopping are not signposts to wisdom.
Consciousness implies unconsciousness, which is to be considered part of the subject and its intentions; subject do not imply objects. Plato’s subject is detached from ideas; Descartes’ is not because reason (thinking) is required. If we deemphasize the humanity of the subject we should not ne surprised activities such as politics are becoming inhuman.
Badiou’s though moved from dialectical (in which the event identifies the subject) to mathematical (formalism). His primary interlocutors are Plato and Hegel; his opponent Kant. A Maoist, he seeks to make a virtue, a practical theory of irrational behavior of the mob: several essays lament the ‘failures’ of 1968, when the French failed to follow the Red Guards; the ‘actually existing’ didn’t conform to the philosophy of history. Interestingly, deconstruction was a disaster for philosophy, a preoccupation with words and etymology overlooks that French language depends on syntax.
On the basis of implications, there is ever so much to disagree with – the margins are littered. In fairness, however, this book isn’t a postmodern primer.
11. Ambrose, To America (2005)
A readable but largely uninspiring survey of key events and figures in American history. Most interesting is the chapter of the Battle of New Orleans. Based on the success of his works, the author is apparently a fine storyteller but spends rather more time explicating his liberal politics than addressing his craft. Not as good as Hexter, Howard, or Beloff.
12. Gladwell, Blink (2005)
The key to snap judgments is reducing extraneous variables. ‘Thin slicing’ identifies the critical factors and draws on experienced evaluation of them. Many such evaluations are in fact subconscious; both asking people to articulate the process and introducing additional information reduces efficiency and accuracy. Drawing heavily on neuroscience, the book explore the right conditions for spontaneous decision making, unconscious prejudice, and how facial expressions betray thoughts. ‘Take charge of the first two seconds’.
13. Lowenstein, Origins of the Crash (2005)
Constructs a systemic explanation of the American financial market’s fin-de-siecle crash. Beginning with growing public faith in equities during the 1980s, Lowenstein portrays the rise of ‘shareholder value’ (i.e., stock prices) and excessive executive compensation as the most important paving stones. Both worked against ethical, long-term decision making. During the late 1990s, business standards also slipped in accounting, stock analysis, and law enforcement (as the government was overwhelmed and self-disarmed by the repeal of Glass-Stegall). Although dot-coms were everywhere evidencing bad deeds as well as misjudgment, the worst offenders were Enron, Worldcom, and Arthur Anderson. The author is marginally confident that Sarbanes-Oxley and other reforms will prevent recurrence: has the culture changed? (Probably not, human nature being persistent.) The indictment is compelling, but for the curious tenet that the market permissively allows ‘too many’ companies to compete in certain segments, such as air travel. Ultimately, he seems to lean toward centralism or worse.
14. Miller and Heiman, Conceptual Selling (2005)
People buy to solve their problems or address their goals. Pushing product therefore is inferior to a three-step sequence of getting info about the concept, connecting your product’s attributes to the concept, and getting incremental commitment that advances the sale. Key tactics include setting a single sales objective for each call; establishing minimum and best-possible expectations and getting commitment to next steps (or else walking away); defining a valid business reason for the call; and establishing credibility through experience, knowledge, presentation, or association. Getting info comprises confirmation questions to re-establish expectations, searching for new info to better define the concept, and questions to uncover the client’s attitude (the ‘win plus results’’ phase). When giving info, focus on differentiation, on tailoring strengths to the concept. Commitment questions, which are not closers, are to ensure interim steps. The call plan (chart p320) comprises identifying the concept, defining a valid reason, establishing action and commitments, establishing (test) credibility, getting info, giving info, getting commitment.
15. O’Brien, The Great Melody (2005)
The most important issues of Edmund Burke’s Parliamentary career are encapsulated by opposition to authoritarian government, formed of his Irish heritage. The political contexts of Ireland, America, India, and France vary significantly, but Burke always is on the side of ordered liberty. The Irish question is however the most problematic because Burke had to abjure his roots and adopt an English Protestant (Anglican) persona in order to be part of the political conversation. Yet the French Revolution drew his most vehement response because he rightly intuited its attempt to expel all tradition and custom (especially religion). Burke believed it is not the institutions (forms of government) which are the source of political malfunction, but human fallibility itself (p. 603). O’Brien resolutely challenges the Namierite school, which dismissed Burke’s role because he rarely held high office, by demonstrating Burke’s impact on the major events of his era. The list of seminal events also includes the Whig struggle with George III and Pitt the Younger’s ascension to Prime Ministership. The book is considered ‘unreliable’ by some historians as O’Brien is willing to conjecture and draw conclusions where documentary evidence is silent. Ultimately his project is to reclaim Burke for the liberal tradition. An excellent appendix on the connection between the French and Russian revolutions. Dense but worthy.