God's Philosophers by James Hannam

I decided to take a break from the study of war, and picked up this at Chapters last week:

Actually, I picked up the slightly-differently-covered softcover, but the principle is the same.

Hannam does a very interesting inversion of the standard story of the poorly-named middle ages.  He begins with a history of the great medieval scholars.  If you already have your Abelard sorted out from your Adelard there are not a lot of new names, but the exposition is exceptionally clear and accessible.  It is a bit more than a refresher for me, and it has been more than 30 years since I tackled any of this in any detail.  Medieval science and philosophy, in case you are not familiar with it, was far in advance of where it is usually portrayed, and the efforts of the church were not always stifling.  Plus I came away with a far better understanding of the distinction between realism and nominalism, which is an issue I still run into in looking, for example, at evolutionary biology.

The next step was new to me: the Renaissance as an intellectual disaster.  To push the envelope of Hannam's thesis, it was triumph of the literature nerds, with medieval mathematics and logic texts pulled from the syllabus because they were hard to understand, and thousands of medieval Latin manuscripts recycled for binding printed books.  This by "scholars" with such a shallow knowledge of history that they confused classics copied in Carolingian Miniscule as original manuscripts of centuries before.

As far as I can tell thus far, Hannam does not view history as a tale of simple, directed progress.  After a lot of reading in biology in the last few years, I am coming to see the relegation of "progress" as a tool for organizing our mental map of the world as a step just as important in the 21st century as moving ourselves from the center of the universe was in the 16th.

I have to mull over his ideas and his sources a bit but the ideas are at least novel and something of a fresh take for me at least.

A great book for anyone interested in History and Philosophy of Science, and for that matter in historiography.  If you are in the SCA and want ammunition to defend the accomplishments of your period, this is definitely a book you want to read.

Cleanly written, I'd say accessible to a high school student but useful for an undergrad in an introductory or non-specialist program covering the material; or great, of course, for an interested amateur.

See Margin Call!

OK, I confess, when I see a movie generally I watch things blow up.  I decided to see this film because I work with folks in an investment bank and I wanted to see how well it showed their loves.

I was blown away.  Margin Call is the best drama I have seen in a long time.  It depicts very real people in real situations; there is no over-the-top screaming and shouting but instead the beautifully depicted real behaviors of believable people in very tense situations.

The sets are utterly perfect -- I've done a small amount of IT work in an investment bank in NY; the way the set looks, the way the people look, the way they sound, the way they work, is utterly accurate.  The simple fact that in chimes in as right at so many levels gives it extra impact for anyone who has worked in a business office.

The depiction of how Over The Counter securities are traded is also dead-on-right; quiet people at computer monitors talk to counter-parties over the phone.  The screaming and waving of the old-style stock exchange is gone -- gone, I am told, from the stock market as well.

Great movie, great performances.  I've seen it three times -- cinema alone, at home with my wife, and with the producers' commentary.  Each time it just gets better.  My wife loved it -- felt the character's dilemma, saw the ways in which they were trapped, and really connected with the performances.

Dr. Zhivago as a mini-series

I was going to rent the 1965 film last weekend - it is a personal favorite and had been since I first saw it in the 70s - but instead picked up a 4-hour BBC TV miniseries from 2002.

It is brilliant; like any book Pasternak's novel has far too much material for any film, so an interesting comparison can be made between what two directors would choose to exclude and include.  So, no half brother but the suicide of Yuri's father is included.  A better understanding of his obsession with Lara and of Komarovsky's effect on his own life.  More development of Strelnikov. Very nice locations, although I think the winters in the 1965 version manage to look cold in a way this version does not. 

Well worth renting.  Yuri Zhivago is still a schmuck for cheating on his family, but there's not much you can do about that.  At least in this version he expresses some measure of guilt over it.

For the wargamer?  A better armored  train for Comrade Strelnikov.  After a couple of scenes, anyone gaming the civil war will pay more attention to logistics.  Overall, just a lovely story set against the background of the revolution.

A couple of interesting documentaries

Unknown War -- A fascinating Brezhnev-era piece from 1978 showed up at my favorite video shop.  This is pretty broad brush stuff, as probably befits a Soviet official history aimed at an American audience.  There is a current western historian there to provide some perspective; which if you do not actually know the history yourself is more than needed.

What does it offer the wargamer?  A lot of documentary footage that I for one had never seen before.  If you want to see some great combat film footage, and are old enough that "detente" is a nostalgic period in your life (I visited some of the cities shown rebuilt in the film in 1974) I'd recommend renting it (or finding it elsewhere -- I am sure much of it is kicking around youtube).

If you consider yourself at risk from too much Communist propaganda, you might counter-dose with Russia's War -- which basically portrays Stalin's entire time as General Secretary as his war against his own people.  Likewise kicking around you-tube and available on DVD.

This, by the way, is my preferred film version of 1984.

I also recommend the recent Polish film Katyn - very powerful stuff.  It paints a county coming to terms with the enormity of Nazi occupation, while dealing with the Stalinist occupation that took its place, and how individual Poles tried to come to terms with that reality.

My final offering in what seems to have been a festival of grimness in the last couple of weeks is the book Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.  It covered the area of Poland and the former Soviet Union controlled by the Nazi and Stalinist states from final collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture to the death of Stalin.  The detailed portrayal of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 that opens the book is certainly as compete as any I have seen.  The book also makes a real effort to affirm the dignity and uniqueness of each of those murdered; it is well worth reading.  In looking for a link for the book I found (I should not have been surprised) that there is a lot of controversy around it; both because the Holocaust is a loaded subject for a lot of people and because (as also should not be surprising) no group comes away with completely clean hands.

I really must find a light comedy or a superhero movie to watch come Saturday.

So, how did we do this week?

Well, I have actually labelled two Soviet units (410 Rifle Regiment and 119 Separate Tank Regiment); however I have lost the light here to photograph either them or the Romanians.  I will try to make that happen early this week; then my WWII armies will have their own blog.

I also now have a new time waster -- The Operational Art of War is a multi-scenerio operational warfare engine.  The interface looks like a good old fashioned hex map boardgame, but the internal engine is quite bit more sophisticated.  I think the sweet spot is WII, but it has scenarios available from the ECW up to the cold war.  It also has a powerful scenario editor and a very active community so the replay value should be pretty good.

I will be out of touch next weekend while I take #1 son to university in Montreal; but I will post here if I make progress before or after that.