Thomas Education

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews     Is it a short story (quite short, leading to a single conclusion) or a novella (develops two or three characters). I think of this writing as mittelEuropa: the characters behave in a very polite old-world fashion, and worry about the behavior and place in society. The psychological detail is Kafkaesque, as it seems designed to be at once boring and yet build suspense.  I can readily imagine this being read aloud some evening around the fireplace, gradually building the suspense.  And I could not help wondering about the writer's own frame of mind, as this was his last work before suicide. The three protagonists -- beside the "objective" professorial narrator -- are described as sharply distinct emotional and intellectual people, each engaged in their own attempt t...

Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich by Thomas Levenson My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews   What a great story! A romp through English history around 1700, showcasing several disparate characters (yes, all Great White Men) who unwittingly wove together the financial strands that built the Empire upon which the sun never set. In Econ101 I had learned of the first economic bubbles--tulipmania, and the South Sea bubble. The first was based on a product (tulip bulbs); the second, on trading promises. This book treats not of tulips, but of the imaginative development of the tradable stock certificate. Isaac Newton was so much more than a gravity and calculus inventor. What a fertile time for new thinking was 1700! Each chapter of this book describes a different character and his eventual influence on modern thinking. Mo...

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews   What a stimulating book, an excellent text for a college history or political science course. Better yet, something for high school students to discuss briefly, then read later in university so they can readily see their own thinking mature. Timothy Snyder's work can be gainfully read by a popular audience for some basic general conclusions about history; yet the same work, on closer reading, yields deeper insight and fodder for discussion about the very meaning of human political organization and the development of civilization -- what separates us from the beasts, from tribal warfare, from that Hobbesian life nasty, brutish, and short? He reminds us how quickly we can slide back into that nasty, brutish, and short existence. The author notes, with devastating clarity, the relative peace enjoyed by citizens,...