What are you currently reading?

[fan2456]

Currently: Nineteen Eighty Four

To follow:

Of Mice and Men

The Old Man and the Sea

Pride and Prejudice

War and Peace

Don Quixote

Edited April 19, 2012 by fan2456

[darksabre]

Currently: Nineteen Eighty Four

To follow:

Of Mice and Men

The Old Man and the Sea

Pride and Prejudice

War and Peace

Don Quixote

 

I haven't read any of those since high school. I should revisit them.

[fan2456]

HS for me was a long time ago. Many of these weren't required. Trying to expand my genre. Cheap and/or free on Kindle

 

Edited April 20, 2012 by fan2456

[Neo]

for those who've mentioned history and war, i suggest Dan Carlin's Hardcore history podcasts. Fantastic and human. His four part series on Germany and the USSR in WWII is amazing.

[Robviously]

Just finished "The Plots Against the President" and am finding myself more and more enthralled with FDR the man and FDR the President. His politics and economic policy is just as relevant today as it was in the 30s and 40s.

His economic policies are relevant today as an example of what not to do. It's not a coincidence that the Great Depression didn't end until World War II hit and we gave up on the New Deal.

 

If you want a balanced look at what went right and wrong during FDR's term, try this:

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) by David Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Fear-American-Depression-1929-1945/dp/0195144031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334889787&sr=8-1

 

Or if you want a counterpoint on why the New Deal didn't work, there's this:

The Forgotten Man by Amity Schlaes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Forgotten-Man-History-Depression/dp/0060936428/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890038&sr=1-1

 

 

I just finished Shelby Foote's famous Civil War Trilogy. Absolutely outstanding and definitely worth your time if you're willing to take on ~3000 pages of history over three books. It lived up to the hype. http://www.amazon.com/The-Civil-War-Narrative-Vol/dp/0394749138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890121&sr=1-1

Edited April 20, 2012 by Robviously

[TrueBlueGED]

His economic policies are relevant today as an example of what not to do. It's not a coincidence that the Great Depression didn't end until World War II hit and we gave up on the New Deal.

 

Popular conservative talking point. Unfortunately we don't live in a world where you can definitively say "Since WWII ended the Depression, it was clearly FDR's policies which caused it to last until WWII". Don't know what would have happened without his policies, can't know it. There's a reason economics is a social science and not a hard science.

[That Aud Smell]

Elegance of The Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (translated from the French by a woman whose last name is Anderson, I believe).

 

This is a gem of a book -- a philosophical fable basically -- not unlike Life of Pi (if you remember that one from a few years back (it was all the rage)).

 

I am hit and miss with books involving female narrators/protagonists, and I am also reflexively averse to all things French. And yet I quite like this book, which is written on a first-person basis in the voices of two French women -- one late middle-aged and the other an adolescent. Well worth a read.

[darksabre]

 

His economic policies are relevant today as an example of what not to do. It's not a coincidence that the Great Depression didn't end until World War II hit and we gave up on the New Deal.

 

If you want a balanced look at what went right and wrong during FDR's term, try this:

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) by David Kennedy

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Fear-American-Depression-1929-1945/dp/0195144031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334889787&sr=8-1

 

Or if you want a counterpoint on why the New Deal didn't work, there's this:

The Forgotten Man by Amity Schlaes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Forgotten-Man-History-Depression/dp/0060936428/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890038&sr=1-1

 

 

I just finished Shelby Foote's famous Civil War Trilogy. Absolutely outstanding and definitely worth your time if you're willing to take on ~3000 pages of history over three books. It lived up to the hype. http://www.amazon.com/The-Civil-War-Narrative-Vol/dp/0394749138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890121&sr=1-1

 

I can't even begin to be able to argue one way or another about the New Deal but I will definitely add those to the queue since I like to get a number of perspectives on an issue.

 

Economics sucks though. TrueBlue, you say it's science but I firmly believe it is sport haha

[5th line wingnutt]

Just finished "The Plots Against the President" and am finding myself more and more enthralled with FDR the man and FDR the President. His politics and economic policy is just as relevant today as it was in the 30s and 40s. That said, I just ordered the following:

 

Looking Forward - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

 

On Our Way - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1934)

 

Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It - Louis Brandeis (1914)

 

The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume 1 - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (2003)

 

For another counterpoint try The Roosevelt Myth by John T Flynn.

[5th line wingnutt]

Popular conservative talking point. Unfortunately we don't live in a world where you can definitively say "Since WWII ended the Depression, it was clearly FDR's policies which caused it to last until WWII". Don't know what would have happened without his policies, can't know it. There's a reason economics is a social science and not a hard science.

 

You are right, we cannot know.

 

On the other hand we know his policies did not work prior to WW2. FDR ran on an anti-war platform his first three campaigns. Then he did pretty much everything he could to get us involved in WW2. He gave Britain a whole bunch of destroyers under lend-lease and also gave Britain and Russia other war materials. Not the act of a neutral. He embargoed steel and oil against the Japanese. This is also not the act of a neutral.

 

Very, very ironic that his anti-war political campaigns and his economics failed to end the depression but his pro-war actions did end the depression.

 

Also, this is much more than a conservative talking point, it is the verdict of economic historians.

[TrueBlueGED]

You are right, we cannot know.

 

On the other hand we know his policies did not work prior to WW2. FDR ran on an anti-war platform his first three campaigns. Then he did pretty much everything he could to get us involved in WW2. He gave Britain a whole bunch of destroyers under lend-lease and also gave Britain and Russia other war materials. Not the act of a neutral. He embargoed steel and oil against the Japanese. This is also not the act of a neutral.

 

Very, very ironic that his anti-war political campaigns and his economics failed to end the depression but his pro-war actions did end the depression.

 

Also, this is much more than a conservative talking point, it is the verdict of economic historians.

 

I'm not sure why you needed to conflate his economic policies with his foreign policy (unless you're making the argument he entered the war for economic purposes--but I don't think that's what you're saying). Ultimately, yes, it was WWII which ended the Depression. How much FDR's policies helped improve conditions during the Depression versus whether they ultimately extended the Depression, however, is a topic of intense scholarly debate--to which there will probably never be an objective answer, since economists are so polarized ideologically these days. At the end of the day I'm uncertain it mattered either way, since presidents have little control over the economy (even though they magically get the credit/blame for economic conditions). Our economy would have to be significantly more command-oriented for any president's policies to have anywhere near the impact that most people think they do.

Edited April 20, 2012 by TrueBluePhD

[5th line wingnutt]

I'm not sure why you needed to conflate his economic policies with his foreign policy (unless you're making the argument he entered the war for economic purposes--but I don't think that's what you're saying). Ultimately, yes, it was WWII which ended the Depression. How much FDR's policies helped improve conditions during the Depression versus whether they ultimately extended the Depression, however, is a topic of intense scholarly debate--to which there will probably never be an objective answer, since economists are so polarized ideologically these days. At the end of the day I'm uncertain it mattered either way, since presidents have little control over the economy (even though they magically get the credit/blame for economic conditions). Our economy would have to be significantly more command-oriented for any president's policies to have anywhere near the impact that most people think they do.

 

FDR had a rubber stamp congress (except for the supreme court packing project). He had a compliant supreme court during and after the 193? (I think 1935 but maybe 1936) term. How much command oriented do you need?

[LastPommerFan]

FDR had a rubber stamp congress (except for the supreme court packing project). He had a compliant supreme court during and after the 193? (I think 1935 but maybe 1936) term. How much command oriented do you need?

 

Parliamentary sytems always have this. Would you claim them all to be command oriented? There is a difference between single party rule and a command economy.

 

The best lesson I take from FDR was his pragmatism. When something didn't work, he often moved on to something else. I wish politicians today would take such an approach, rather than tying them selves to a sinking ship and trying to spin it into a great step forward for the country (i.e. the War on Drugs, all the crappy Home Ownership initiatives, The War in Iraq, etc.)

[TrueBlueGED]

Parliamentary sytems always have this. Would you claim them all to be command oriented? There is a difference between single party rule and a command economy.

 

The best lesson I take from FDR was his pragmatism. When something didn't work, he often moved on to something else. I wish politicians today would take such an approach, rather than tying them selves to a sinking ship and trying to spin it into a great step forward for the country (i.e. the War on Drugs, all the crappy Home Ownership initiatives, The War in Iraq, etc.)

 

Precisely.

[5th line wingnutt]

Parliamentary sytems always have this. Would you claim them all to be command oriented? There is a difference between single party rule and a command economy.

 

The best lesson I take from FDR was his pragmatism. When something didn't work, he often moved on to something else. I wish politicians today would take such an approach, rather than tying them selves to a sinking ship and trying to spin it into a great step forward for the country (i.e. the War on Drugs, all the crappy Home Ownership initiatives, The War in Iraq, etc.)

 

Actually this is the best lesson. He had no clue what to do and tried one thing after another. None of them worked. WW2 worked.

[LastPommerFan]

Actually this is the best lesson. He had no clue what to do and tried one thing after another. None of them worked. WW2 worked.

 

That would be the other side of the coin.

[5th line wingnutt]

Parliamentary systems (sic) always have this. Would you claim them all to be command oriented? There is a difference between single party rule and a command economy.

 

The best lesson I take from FDR was his pragmatism. When something didn't work, he often moved on to something else. I wish politicians today would take such an approach, rather than tying them selves to a sinking ship and trying to spin it into a great step forward for the country (i.e. the War on Drugs, all the crappy Home Ownership initiatives, The War in Iraq, etc.)

 

Parliamentary systems always are command oriented. The chief executive and the legislative are always aligned. If they are not constrained by a constitution and a court, well what then? As for sinking ships...I am opposed.

 

The three things you mention are all stupid. The war on drugs...if people want to take drugs, and they do, they will. Alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment. The drug prohibition did not. Why not?

 

Home ownership? Who cares? Especially why does the government care?

 

War in Iraq? Why did we do this?

[LastPommerFan]

Parliamentary systems always are command oriented. The chief executive and the legislative are always aligned. If they are not constrained by a constitution and a court, well what then? As for sinking ships...I am opposed.

 

The three things you mention are all stupid. The war on drugs...if people want to take drugs, and they do, they will. Alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment. The drug prohibition did not. Why not?

 

Home ownership? Who cares? Especially why does the government care?

 

War in Iraq? Why did we do this?

 

Exactly, yet, long after they proved to be terrible, people were/are still tying their banners to the cause. It kills me every time I hear a Dem defend the clinton era homeownership policies or a conservative defend the war in iraq. But ever admitting a mistake seems to be a poison in todays political climate.

[TrueBlueGED]

Parliamentary systems always are command oriented. The chief executive and the legislative are always aligned. If they are not constrained by a constitution and a court, well what then?

 

You're still confusing economics with politics. A parliamentary system with responsible parties does not mean there is also a command economy. And all modernized western democracies have some kind of constraint, be it a constitution or a common law system.

 

Actually this is the best lesson. He had no clue what to do and tried one thing after another. None of them worked. WW2 worked.

 

He didn't know exactly what to do, neither did anybody else. Again, economics is a social science for a reason, economic theories are theories and not laws for a reason. Designing economic policy is not the same thing as designing a bridge.

[Assquatch]

The Aud Club.

[Robviously]

I can't even begin to be able to argue one way or another about the New Deal but I will definitely add those to the queue since I like to get a number of perspectives on an issue.

 

Economics sucks though. TrueBlue, you say it's science but I firmly believe it is sport haha

If you like U.S. History, all of the Oxford History of the United States books are outstanding. Check out Battle Cry of Freedom. If you admire FDR as a wartime president, you really need to read what Lincoln went through. (He literally had to run for re-election during the war (1864) against the guy who served as his top general when the war began - McClellan.)

[Robviously]

Popular conservative talking point. Unfortunately we don't live in a world where you can definitively say "Since WWII ended the Depression, it was clearly FDR's policies which caused it to last until WWII". Don't know what would have happened without his policies, can't know it. There's a reason economics is a social science and not a hard science.

I'm not sure why you can write it off as a "conservative talking point" when it's empirically true. No recovery took place when the New Deal policies were in place: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1528.html The Great Depression was basically two recessions (1929 and 1938) with little recovery in between. How is that a success?

 

And we can know how his policies worked. Crack open any Macroeconomics textbook and you can pick up the broad strokes of how government policies affect national economies. It's silly to say "well, we'll never know" because by that standard you could never criticize anyone for anything. (Not even after you knew the results?) Everyone acknowledges that Herbert Hoover's policies did not help (Smoot-Hawley, for example) and FDR's own people acknowledge that his policies were an extension of Hoover's. There's no mystery here.

 

In his defense, he latched onto ideas that were popular at the time (both economically and, obviously, politically). That doesn't mean they worked, and that's pretty easy to see in retrospect.

[TrueBlueGED]

I'm not sure why you can write it off as a "conservative talking point" when it's empirically true. No recovery took place when the New Deal policies were in place: http://www.u-s-histo...ages/h1528.html The Great Depression was basically two recessions (1929 and 1938) with little recovery in between. How is that a success?

 

And we can know how his policies worked. Crack open any Macroeconomics textbook and you can pick up the broad strokes of how government policies affect national economies. It's silly to say "well, we'll never know" because by that standard you could never criticize anyone for anything. (Not even after you knew the results?) Everyone acknowledges that Herbert Hoover's policies did not help (Smoot-Hawley, for example) and FDR's own people acknowledge that his policies were an extension of Hoover's. There's no mystery here.

 

In his defense, he latched onto ideas that were popular at the time (both economically and, obviously, politically). That doesn't mean they worked, and that's pretty easy to see in retrospect.

 

By your own link, unemployment dropped from 24.75 to 14.18 from 1933-1937. Is a 10 point drop in unemployment nothing? Even the double dip recession still had a lower maximum unemployment rate than when FDR came into office. I've never made the argument that FDR ended the Depression, as such an argument would be foolish and completely untrue. My point is we cannot know what would have happened with different policies, we only know what did happen. The conservative talking point is that FDR's policies made things worse, or prevented the recovery in the long-run. But really, we have no idea at all what would have happened without his policies. That's all I'm saying.

 

And I maintain that presidential politics has a minimal impact on the macro economy. Track the actual economy across nations...economies have thrived and suffered under very similar conditions and government policies. In a market economy, political policies have minimal effects on the macro economy--not zero effects, but minimal. Most effects are on the margins and don't change the overall arc of economic output. As a broad stroke, research has shown that Democratic versus Republican presidents has zero statistically significant effect on GDP. At the end of the day economics is a social science, not a hard science. There are competing theories about what to do or not to do...but they are theories, there is nothing even remotely equivalent to an equation for acceleration due to gravity or centripetal force. Economics is a completely different animal, and to pretend otherwise is foolhardy.

[Robviously]

By your own link, unemployment dropped from 24.75 to 14.18 from 1933-1937. Is a 10 point drop in unemployment nothing? Even the double dip recession still had a lower maximum unemployment rate than when FDR came into office. I've never made the argument that FDR ended the Depression, as such an argument would be foolish and completely untrue. My point is we cannot know what would have happened with different policies, we only know what did happen. The conservative talking point is that FDR's policies made things worse, or prevented the recovery in the long-run. But really, we have no idea at all what would have happened without his policies. That's all I'm saying.

Again, by this measure, you can't criticize anyone for any action because you can never know how things would have turned out had that action not taken place. Do you also take a "we can never know" approach to Smoot-Hawley?

 

Yes, we CAN know how well those policies worked. We have a decade of Hoover/Roosevelt policies and we have every other decade of the 20th century. We also have hundreds of years' worth of economic data for countries all around the world.

 

And I maintain that presidential politics has a minimal impact on the macro economy. Track the actual economy across nations...economies have thrived and suffered under very similar conditions and government policies. In a market economy, political policies have minimal effects on the macro economy--not zero effects, but minimal. Most effects are on the margins and don't change the overall arc of economic output. As a broad stroke, research has shown that Democratic versus Republican presidents has zero statistically significant effect on GDP. At the end of the day economics is a social science, not a hard science. There are competing theories about what to do or not to do...but they are theories, there is nothing even remotely equivalent to an equation for acceleration due to gravity or centripetal force. Economics is a completely different animal, and to pretend otherwise is foolhardy.

You're really selling decades of economic research short. And if you really think government doesn't have a major effect on economy, I'm not sure what to tell you. We split two countries in half in the 20th century -- Germany and Korea. In each case, both halves were identical in terms of culture and demographics. The difference was government. And in each case, one half of Germany/Korea ended up way better off than the other half. The part where government made a difference in the economic well-being of each country is as obvious as, well, gravity.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Robviously

[Eleven]

Currently: Nineteen Eighty Four

To follow:

Of Mice and Men

The Old Man and the Sea

Pride and Prejudice

War and Peace

Don Quixote

 

Don Quixote is one of the most entertaining novels I've ever read.