Upheaval by Jared Diamond

UPHEAVAL by Jared Diamond is the latest from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse.  Here, Diamond focuses on “turning points for nations in crisis.” To begin, Diamond sets a tone for the book by offering a rather gentle, patient explanation of what he hopes to accomplish with his text. In chapter one, he shares some personal crises and lists twelve factors (e.g., acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility, getting help from others, and applying core values) related to the outcome.   He then indicates a parallel set of factors regarding nations in crisis and, in the following 6 chapters, discusses several pairs of issues like the “sudden upheavals” of Russia’s war with Finland and Japan’s contact with Commodore Perry or internal pressures and history in countries like Chile and Indonesia. The subsequent section reviews crises currently underway for the world (climate change, nuclear weapons, energy resources), for Japan (economy, demographics, Asian neighbors) and for the United States (political polarization, elections), culminating in an epilogue with “lessons for the future.” UPHEAVAL is a thought-provoking analysis that received a starred review from Library Journal, was recommended by Bill Gates, and featured in this interview on PBS Newshour:

Babel by Gaston Dorren

BABEL by Gaston Dorren is a fascinating trip “around the world in twenty languages.” He notes several lingua francas, languages like Portuguese, Persian, Russian, French, Swahili, Malay or even Turkish, that bridge the gap between people with different mother tongues. In addition, he points to a number of languages (German, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil) that make the top 20 due to the common characteristic of being spoken in compact but densely populated regions.  Dorren indicates that “the figures are debatable, but it’s safe to claim that at least 75 percent of people on this planet are able to communicate in one of the Babel Twenty.” Each of those languages is covered in a single chapter, ordered by size beginning with Vietnamese (85 million users) and continuing through the top 5 (Arabic, Hindu-Urdu, Spanish, Mandarin and English).  Each chapter provides a brief overview with a chart on characteristics such as script, sounds and exports; then, roughly ten to fifteen pages delve into the specific language, exploring culture, geography and history through a fairly academic lens. Dorren’s website, Language Writer, contains a section about BABEL, including a page filled with sound files to help with clarifying pronunciation. BABEL received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and will certainly appeal to many readers, particularly those intrigued by linguistics, travel and vocabulary trivia.   

The Age of Walls and The Nationalist Revival

I remember being intrigued by Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography a couple of years ago and he has a new title, THE AGE OF WALLS, about How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World.  He begins with a chapter about the Great Wall of China, “built around a simplistic idea: on one side of it was civilization and on the other barbarity.” There, he discusses numerous challenges – ethnic unrest, disparity between rural and urban areas or between young (more educated and technologically savvy) and old – facing China today. THE AGE OF WALLS continues with chapters profiling the USA, Israel/Palestine, Africa, and more.  Near the end, Marshall looks at walls in Europe and the UK which is highly relevant given the ongoing Brexit negotiations. I particularly liked how he repeatedly sets a historical context and also the parallels which Marshall encourages his readers to draw between various regions.  For example, he quotes David Goodhart writing about group identity and the UK with “the people who see the world from Anywhere and the people who see it from Somewhere,” describing the Anywheres as tending to do well at school and university, feeling at home wherever they go, “whether that’s Berlin, New York, Shanghai, or Mumbai. On the other hand, Somewheres … live within twenty miles of where they grew up and identify with locality, region and country.”  This clearly impacts worldviews, attitudes towards migration, and prospects for working together to combat poverty around the globe. THE AGE OF WALLS received a starred review from Booklist.   

 

One of my Junior Theme research students recently saw John B. Judis (The Populist Explosion) speak at Northwestern University about his new book, THE NATIONALIST REVIVAL which focuses “on Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization.” Judis advocates for greater efforts at understanding and cooperation as he writes of “cosmopolitans” and “nationalists,” also referring to Goodhart’s analysis of Anywheres and Somewheres. However, Judis argues that nationalist sentiment is “an essential ingredient of a democracy” and contends that “politicians, parties and policymakers who simply discount these [nationalist] sentiments, or who identify them solely with right wing excesses – as many in the United States and Europe have done – are likely to encourage exactly the kind of nationalism they might have wanted to avoid.” Achieving positive reviews across the political spectrum, Judis strives to “identify and reclaim what is valid in nationalism – and of the liberal internationalism of the post-World War II generation – from both the cosmopolitan liberals who believe in a borderless world and from the right wing populists who have coupled a concern for their nation’s worker’s with antivist screeds against outgroups and immigrants.”  A thoughtful, balanced analysis worth reading.