David Graeber, David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything.

 In a book of a such overwhelming ambition there have to be problems. And there was no lack of criticism poured on Graeber and Wengrow. Yet, there is no doubt that untimely deceased Graeber was the mind of the first magnitude. His wonderful "Bullshit Jobs" exposed the fragility of the modern civilization with unparalleled alacrity. 

 The main thesis of Graeber and Wengrow is that the modern nation-state was not an inevitable product of the development of civilization. Furthermore, the last 500 years when this form of organization became dominant is a small blip on the overall history of humanity. 

    The mainstream progression of the history of human civilization accepted by the Western historians is strangely similar to the concept proposed by Friedrich Engels, the main collaborator of Karl Marx, and enshrined in bronze by Stalin (actually, by his court historians). With world popularity of Yuval Harari, it is unassailable. Namely, once their were hunter-gatherer (forager, in more modern terminology) societies build on a more or less uniform template. At some point, some of them progressed to chiefdoms, started agriculture and cities. Agricultural society begot hierarchies in the form of the rulers and the ruled and widespread enslavement. First civilizations were built by the slave labor. There were two main forms of the developed statehood--slave-owning Empires of the West--Hellenistic and Roman--and the "oriental despotism" based on the uniform conscription of the labor force by the state. 

  After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Germanic states formed in its wake, reworked its slave owning system into something called "feudalism". At the sunset of the Middle Ages, the national monarchies began to form, which started to transform into nation states and so it went till the "End of History" declared by Fukuyama after the Cold War. 

    Not only this scheme was Eurocentric but also it omitted the societies, in which the majority of the human race lived most of the time. In fact, after the falls of the Roman, Parthian Empires, India's Guptas and China Han dynasties, their former populations were somehow organized, and their organization was not identical to the previous, only on a smaller scale. Nomadic peoples populated all Eurasia from east of Hungary to the north of Korean border. Native American societies were a completely different story altogether. 

    The main "discovery" of Graeber--still contested--was that prehistoric societies had a variety of forms of social organization. Even societies with the same mode of production, fisheries, in case of his studies, had a vastly different template. Northwestern tribes had chieftains, noble hierarchies and enslavement, with little role for women. Northern California tribes were more egalitarian with women playing a significant role (I wonder whether a current difference between California and Alaska politics had anything to do with his vision😏). But altogether this is highly probable that foraging societies had as much difference in their political organization as the modern nation-states. For, if the template was uniform, how it happened that it evolved in so many unrelated social units?

Death of Graeber in the beginning of the COVID epidemic is an unreconcilable blow to the anthropology and humanities in general. 

Rob Copeland. The Fund.

     During the assault on the Trump presidency, the "New York Times" made "sensational" accusations of the collusion of his team with the Russians. The proofs could have made the stage-managers of Stalin's show trials blush. One had an e-mail account on a different name, another met Russian Ambassador (at the Washington diplomatic corps assembly in official capacity) and so on. 

        The book by Rob Copeland is a similar hack hit job. First, he describes Ray Dalio in the terms usually reserved for the serial killers and drug lords. Then, at 200 pages of his book he lists his high crimes and misdemeanors. What are his trespasses? Sometimes, he was rude and/or insensitive to his associates. He made occasional wrong decisions overriding his colleagues. Ray fired a mid-ranking executive without a reasonable cause, according to the fired individual. Who in the position of power over people, even a manager of a warehouse, or a restaurant did not? 

Chris Impey. Worlds without end: exoplanets, habitability and the future of humanity.

  A very good book in its first half. Contains a lot of useful popular information on exoplanets and how they are discovered and investigated. The second half is dedicated to unrestrained speculation about humans role in the Cosmos. 

Clive Oppenheimer. Mountains of fire: a nothing burger.

 I checked out the book of Professor of Volcanology in Cambridge (sic!) to learn about 1) why volcanoes exist, 2) how they operate, 3) what is their geological function, 4) how they influence biosphere, 5) what instruments scientists use to study volcanoes. All I got was a crummy travelogue. 

P. Zeihan, Disunated nations: the scramble for power in an ungovernable world.

 The endless wars since 2001 bred "security consultants" and "defense contractors" so much so that even the deep pockets of CIA could not feed them all, so they turned to literature. They all subscribe to neocon dogma because they know the hand which feeds them. If fact, no other way of thinking about international affairs survived the onslaught of the "New York Times", WP, CNN and the web censorship by Microsoft and Google. 

Even the title of this book is plagiarized from a number of manuscripts (Sean Byrnes, Suga Chen and onwards to 1957). The chapter about the US is lifted from the opus by Mandelbaum and Zakaria with its (half-right as almost everything Mandelbaum in the new century) assertion that the US de-facto performed the functions of the world government in the field of defense, trade, circulation of currency, etc. etc. and extended it to the XVIII-XIX century UK. First, the model of the "World Government" was successful only because in the other parts of the world another power, the USSR, maintained some semblance of the world order. Equally, Britain could have ruled the world in the XIX century but never Europe (A paraphrase of Metternich's that "I sometimes ruled Europe, but never Austria"). Other powers -- the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Prussians and the Russians did the same in their spheres of influence. I.e. they suppressed local nationalisms, established and kept trade routes, provided protection for the allies and defense from enemies and promulgated uniform legislation and religious observance. 

    For China, 5.2% of the annual GDP growth is proclaimed a "crisis" by the Economist's neocons; with the same op-eds, they celebrate UK growth in excess of 1% as a triumph of British economic policy. Equally, he pommels on (totally invented) depopulation of Russian Federation, while at the same time oblivious to the fact that Japanese death rate exceeds the birth rate, one of the lowest in the entire world, by almost twice. Japan's population "pyramid" has two peaks -- one at 50 and another at 75, with overwhelming preponderance of population after 50 and experiences monotone fallout below that age.  

     His most ridiculous conclusion is that China and Russia are spent powers, while he predicts rising of France and Japan. Of France there is no discussion -- for he proposes that it reestablishes its colonial empire and takes over the Suez. Some of his pronouncements suggest that he might have had too many tequilas at lunch. Gas and oil pipelines between Russia and China will never be built (they are already functioning). The Japanese Navy is superior to the Chinese. At least, numerically, there is no comparison. Or, because of his racial prejudices, he considers Japanese perennially superior in technology? In fact, technological prowess of Japan is largely a myth -- it is enough to compare Japanese and Chinese rocket and nuclear programs. Of all defining modern technologies, only in industrial robotics, they are leading, yet followed closely by SK. 

  Koreans, Indonesians, Philipinos, etc. will agree to occupation by Japan in a new incarnation of the "New Sphere of Co-Prosperity in Asia" -- a nickname for the wartime Japanese empire-building. Given wartime behavior of the Japanese on the occupied territories, the understanding by the Japan's neighbors of its good intentions is certainly sweet. And Zeihan's craziness continues on every other page.