Book Review – Page 2 – Modern Literati

February 2, 2020February 2, 2020

The Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi

I purposely looked for novels about the middle-east that are written by their inhabitants, not foreigners, and The Cypress Tree is one of those that I found. The said search criteria were due to that 1) I want to know about the middle-east, and 2) I want to know the truth. Almost all the time when westerners write about the east, regardless Asia or the middle-east, there is always a hint of Orientalism, still. It was such a strong influence since the 17^th century that the effect still lingers. I believe it is very likely that the writers from the west know too well that they could be under such influence and tried their best to get rid of it. However, the force was too powerful and lasted too long to really come clean of it.

January 3, 2020

Orientalism by Edward Said

I was introduced to the idea of Orientalism five years ago. Since then, I have read a few times of this book and most recently last month. Orientalism refers to discourses that construct fixed and unchanging characteristics, most typically those interpreted as backward, childlike, and illogical, to the East to justify their domination by British colonizers. It was a revolutionary idea introduced by the famous post-colonialism scholar Edward Said who was a Palestinian American and a professor of literature at Colombia University.

December 25, 2019December 29, 2019

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans

The first thing that comes to mind usually when we talk about the Nazi regime is their brutal treatment of the Jewish people in Europe during their reign in Germany. We know so much about the infamous concentration camps in Dachau and Auschwitz, the mass extermination in Treblinka, and the cyanide gas chamber as the final solution to the “Jewish Problem.”

October 3, 2019October 6, 2019

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky

Anarchism for me seems to be an extreme and radical form of government. I am interested in reading what is it all about only because Noam Chomsky, being called an anarchist, is everything but radical. That makes anarchism interesting to me in the first place. By reading his book, or by understanding what is anarchism, I learned the most not about anarchism, but what is really democracy and socialism.

October 3, 2019October 6, 2019

The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant

This is one of those books that inspires one to dig deeper into the materials lightly touch on by the author. It is a very short book that has only a hundred pages. It covers a few important topics, including government, religion, the earth, war, and socialism. It is not about the history of those topics, but the lessons learned through their history. One of the most exciting inspirations I have received from this book is the lesson one would learn from the development of socialism, or the other form of polity of a country, like capitalism.