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David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years: I got this book because of reviews like this one which emphasize that Graeber starts with a fundamental challenge to the idea that you have to pay your debts. Why? How were those debts acquired and why are they “yours”? What are the alternatives to paying your debts? Especially when the real claim is “countries have to pay their debts,” this turns out to be rather more morally fraught than we usually acknowledge: Haiti, for example, was saddled with hundreds of millions of debt (not in today’s dollars) for daring to seize its independence and that of its citizens from their enslavers. Debt, money, and violence are intimately linked, and maybe have to be when debt is conceived of as something that can be precisely measured rather than as part of a web of continuing connections between people. You can read extracts or an interview and a response to critics if you’re interested in learning more but can’t get your hands on the book. A lot like Jared Diamond's books in that the thesis is provocative and appears to have a good deal of truth to it even though he may get big details wrong.
Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China: Super-interesting book about modern China via various profiles, from party bosses to human rights lawyers to construction moguls. The rule of law as a concept lacks most meaning, but some people are trying to change that; in the meantime, local Party officials can decide how much in taxes peasants ought to pay (until very recently, there were no taxes on city dwellers) and if someone with connections wants your block to build a luxury home on, you’re going to be evicted with a couple hundred dollars to find a new place to live. The one-child policy and associated coercion is still going on in various provinces, but there’s also been a lot of agitation and protest across all these issues (corruption, taxes, expropriation, forced sterilization, and so on) that sometimes gets the Party to act, at least in the sense of fixing a few problems and sending a few people to jail. Pan suggests that China’s version of authoritarianism may be robust enough to survive for decades longer—agreeing with skeptics like Evgeny Morozov and Rebecca MacKinnon that the internet is not an inevitable engine of freedom even as hundreds of millions now have access to it—and presents the views of some who think that reform is possible within the one-party system, as well as others who think that’s never going to work. It’s a really fascinating read.
Jason Mazzone, Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law: Another book about intellectual property owners’ overreaching, with a chapter on trademark but mostly about copyright claims—claims to own public domain works, claims that there’s no such thing as fair use, contracts that deny fair use rights, and so on. Mazzone suggests administrative solutions—have an agency make rules for what’s fair use, and overriding private agreements to the contrary. I’m not a fan of agency determinations; I don’t think they’d solve the basic problem of resource disparities and intimidation, but I do like the idea of imposing public policy limits on corporations, and making it easier to recover damages from someone who wrongly asserts copyright claims over a public domain work or a fair use. But unfortunately, the law is moving further away from that—Congress recently amended the patent law to make it harder to recover against false patent claims, and it’s all we can do to beat back increases in copyright protection. Changing norms may be our only feasible defense in the US, though matters are potentially more balanced elsewhere.
Al Seckel, Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion: Beautiful coffee-table book full of the promised optical illusions of many stripes (and forks and staircases). Generally visual artists talking about their art are not very interesting, and this book’s descriptions of them do not veer from that, but there is a large selection of works from almost every one of the (all male) artists represented so it’s a good volume anyway.
Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China: Super-interesting book about modern China via various profiles, from party bosses to human rights lawyers to construction moguls. The rule of law as a concept lacks most meaning, but some people are trying to change that; in the meantime, local Party officials can decide how much in taxes peasants ought to pay (until very recently, there were no taxes on city dwellers) and if someone with connections wants your block to build a luxury home on, you’re going to be evicted with a couple hundred dollars to find a new place to live. The one-child policy and associated coercion is still going on in various provinces, but there’s also been a lot of agitation and protest across all these issues (corruption, taxes, expropriation, forced sterilization, and so on) that sometimes gets the Party to act, at least in the sense of fixing a few problems and sending a few people to jail. Pan suggests that China’s version of authoritarianism may be robust enough to survive for decades longer—agreeing with skeptics like Evgeny Morozov and Rebecca MacKinnon that the internet is not an inevitable engine of freedom even as hundreds of millions now have access to it—and presents the views of some who think that reform is possible within the one-party system, as well as others who think that’s never going to work. It’s a really fascinating read.
Jason Mazzone, Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law: Another book about intellectual property owners’ overreaching, with a chapter on trademark but mostly about copyright claims—claims to own public domain works, claims that there’s no such thing as fair use, contracts that deny fair use rights, and so on. Mazzone suggests administrative solutions—have an agency make rules for what’s fair use, and overriding private agreements to the contrary. I’m not a fan of agency determinations; I don’t think they’d solve the basic problem of resource disparities and intimidation, but I do like the idea of imposing public policy limits on corporations, and making it easier to recover damages from someone who wrongly asserts copyright claims over a public domain work or a fair use. But unfortunately, the law is moving further away from that—Congress recently amended the patent law to make it harder to recover against false patent claims, and it’s all we can do to beat back increases in copyright protection. Changing norms may be our only feasible defense in the US, though matters are potentially more balanced elsewhere.
Al Seckel, Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion: Beautiful coffee-table book full of the promised optical illusions of many stripes (and forks and staircases). Generally visual artists talking about their art are not very interesting, and this book’s descriptions of them do not veer from that, but there is a large selection of works from almost every one of the (all male) artists represented so it’s a good volume anyway.
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