In their own words – A review of We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman

A lot of writing about events (either contemporary  or long past) can feel strangely sterile or detached from the lives of everyday people. This is understandable since the voices that recount events to us in books tend to come

from historians or journalists – historians tend to strive for academic objectivity and write in a way to appeal to people who regard the approval of peer-reviewed journals as existential while journalists tend to write from the perspective of decision makers since they spend most of their live covering and / or exposing the powerful. The end result of this is that our understanding of most events often tends to miss the voice of the everyday people most impacted by the great events of history. It is this uncommon story-telling through regular people’s lenses that endears this great book by a Northwestern University professor to me.

This book tells the story of the ongoing Syrian civil war, perhaps the worst human tragedy since World War II, as a series of over 80 reflections from everyday Syrians – ranging from rural shopkeepers to elite urban professionals, some very hostile to the regime and some somewhat sympathetic. Some of these reflections run into many pages and some are as short as a couple of sentences. However, these diverse reflections do not turn into a jumble as they are systemically organized into a series of nine chapters that provide a full view of the conflict: ranging from reflections charting the rise of the Baath party in the 60s and the emergence of Hafez al-Assad (father of the current president) as the leader of Syria in the early 70s, to the early years (& lost promise) of Bashir al-Assad’s rule in the early 2000s to the spark of the current conflict as part of the Arab Spring of 2011. The book also captures, in these people’s own words, how what started as a popular uprising turned into a very deadly proxy bottle and the harrowing experience many had on the perilous journeys to Europe to escape the war and the many deprivations that marks life in the various refugee camps that have sprouted all around the Levant and Turkey. There is also a somewhat hopeful aspect to some of these reflections as we see refugees now building a life for themselves in their new adopted countries: a young man now works in IT in Denmark after enduring a perilous journey through the Mediterranean while a young lady works as a nuclear engineer in Germany after escaping the war.  

On the whole I got a better feel for the genesis of this conflict, its sheer severity and the effects that this dreadful conflict has had on the average Syrian than I got from reading other books and articles that did not have this first-person narrative aspect. 

Boss Lady - Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper

Elected female heads of state are rare all over the world (the US is yet to produce one for example) and they are rarer still in Africa, where chauvinism is probably still entrenched to a greater extent than it is in many other parts of the world. For a woman to shatter this presidential glass ceiling in Africa is a remarkable feat but even more remarkable to see this happen in a post-conflict state like Liberia where extreme violence against women was a key aspect of the country’s dreadful civil war. The remarkable woman who achieved this feat was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the subject of this engaging biography by Helene Cooper – a Liberian-born American journalist at the New York Times.

As someone with very limited knowledge of Liberian history, beyond the fact that Nigerian soldiers went as peacekeepers in the 90s, I appreciated the fact that the book provides the reader with a summary of Liberian history and the complex socio-political dynamics between the settler community of freed American slaves and the various indigenous tribes they met there. That the oppressed (the Americo-Liberian settlers – often referred to as “Congos”) became the oppressor (of the indigenous tribes) is an unfortunate and all too common aspect of human history. This complex history is also embodied in the person of Ms. Sirleaf, who although often assumed to be Americo-Liberian stock is actually not Americo-Liberian at all (the light skin is courtesy of a German grandparent). However, this has not stopped her from being regarded with suspicion by many through her career as being culturally Congo.

The book does a great job chronicling the efforts and sacrifices made by Ms. Johnson Sirleaf in advancing the cause of economic development in her country. We start from her time as a midlevel finance ministry official in 1960s Liberia to her time in the World Bank in the 70s and subsequent return to the country to serve as Finance Minister in the government of William Tolbert – the last of the long line of Americo-Liberian Whig Party presidents who was brutally murdered by coup-leader Samuel Doe in 1980, to her imprisonment and near-death experience under Doe’s brutal regime and her leaving a cushy job at Citibank to contest against Doe in a rigged election in 1985. She also kept up her advocacy and interest in Liberia while occupying a succession of senior jobs in multilateral organizations during the country’s civil war in the 90s. What I found most striking is how Liberia kept remaining in her consciousness and exercising her mind while she could easily have settled into a life of relative ease in her stints as an expat in Nairobi, suburban New York or Virginia as one of those lucky and connected enough to “make it out” and written off her country as a lost cause.

The book also gives us an insight into the steely resolve behind the grandmotherly mien that has graced the covers of various newspapers and magazines. We meet a woman who got married at 17 after her family fell on hard times following her father’s illness and had four sons before her mid-20s, only to leave all four sons behind and head to the US to attend college as a mature student – which she did while working at a cafeteria. We also see a woman with the courage to divorce an abusive husband and be separated from her sons all the while managing a career as a midlevel bureaucrat in Liberia’s chaotic Finance ministry. The book isn’t a hagiography though as the biographer honestly tackles some of the failings of Ms. Sirleaf, including her early support for the murderous Charles Taylor’s bid to seize power in the Civil War as well as her appointments of her sons to senior posts in government – an act that is at best tone deaf.

The book ends with Ms. Sirleaf’s time as president of the country and how she was tackling the massive development challenges posed by a country coming out of a vicious years-long civil war. If there is one thing that I took away from reading about her efforts in the presidency is that people matter as much as institutions in poor countries like most African countries. Reading about her effort to secure the write-off of $4.7 billion of the country’s debt (which they ordinarily shouldn’t qualify for), I was struck by the high-level contacts that went to work to get this done on her behalf as much as on the country’s behalf: from the head of the emerging markets desk at the New York Fed (who hosted a meeting of the hedge funds holding the distressed debt) to the Irish singer Bono, the US state department and much of the international finance and NGO community. She really did cash in on years of life in the development finance world for her country.

Overall, I found the book to be very engaging and an unvarnished view of the lows, highs and sometimes chilling compromises that come with a lifetime of trying to bring positive change to a poor and troubled country. 

2017: My Year in Books

 I enjoyed reading various books in 2017. This is a recap of the non-professional books I read last year - no point boring people with books about investing and finance!  

History Books

History remains the discipline most interesting to me because of the opportunity it provides for me to get lost in times gone by and for the way it often makes one realize there are few unique things about our present times – as the saying goes “there is nothing new under the sun”.

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India by Sashi Tharoor. There seems to be a constituency of people who regard colonialism as an unfortunate but rather benign affair – giving the “natives” the English language, parliamentary democracy and even a love of cricket. That’s obviously nonsense and few books do a better job of exposing the silliness of that worldview than this very interesting book by Sashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat, former Indian minister and current parliamentarian. He details the systematic deprivation wrought by colonial domination: a deprivation so severe as to move India from one of the world’s richest regions at the time of first colonial contact to one of the poorest by the end of the colonial era in 1947. 

The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker. There is a tendency for many of us to overvalue the currency of the past and to long for the olden days when things were so much better. Steven Pinker clearly demonstrates with this book that, when it comes to violence, humanity has actually never actually had it so good as this present day and that there’s no peaceful primordial past for us to long for. In page after page of accessible stats, the author charts how violence has been on the decline over almost every timeframe chosen (millennium, century and even decades). He also goes on to describe the various civilizing factors (i.e., the advent of the concept of human rights, the rise of strong states etc.) that led to this state of affairs.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie. Historian Robert Massie, an expert on Romanov Russia, is the author of this engaging and well-rounded biography of perhaps the most accomplished of the Romanovs: Catherine the Great. Mr. Massie describes in vivid detail the ascent of a shy princess from a minor German principality who came to Russia as a teenager to be betrothed to a spectacularly ill-suited heir apparent to the throne and who ended up as one of the two greatest monarchs (along with Peter the Great) of the Romanov era. Longer review here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/philosopher-queen-review-of-catherine.html 

Kohinoor: The Story of the World s Most Infamous Diamond by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. I personally don’t get what the fuss about diamonds is about. It’s basically just highly pressurized carbon, not that chemically different from graphite, that humans have been socialized to value highly when brought to the earth's surface at great expense and chipped away at by someone who knows a thing or two about the reflection of light on hard surfaces. Big deal…okay, I’m in the minority. Many many people care about diamonds...like a lot! And few diamonds have been cared about by as many powerful people in as many places and across as many centuries as the Koh-i-noor, a diamond that now adorns one of the crowns of the British royal family but which has been a prized possession of Mughal Emperors, Persian Shahs, Sikh Emperors and a British Queen who acquired the title Empress of India. This book by noted travel writer and historian of all things South Asia, William Dalrymple, and his co-writer journalist Anita Anand is an engaging history of both this diamond and the Indian subcontinent. Longer review here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.ch/2017/08/a-mountain-of-history-review-of-koh-i.html

Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World by Adrian Goldsworthy. The span of time in the first two centuries AD during which much of the Mediterranean and Europe was relatively at peace has come to be widely known as the Pax Romana. In this (somewhat dense) book, the author explains how unique this extended period of peace was in human history and describes the various methods through which the Romans pacified such a large and diverse empire. While much has been made of the political and administrative skill of the Romans, and a lot of this is deserved, Adrian Goldsworthy concedes that much of the peace was due to the Romans’ formidable military capabilities and their reputation for brutality when needed. This concept of peace enforced by ferocious militarism is probably best captured by the historian and senator Tacitus’ jibe, repeated by Goldsworthy, that “Romans create desolation and call it peace”. 

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors by Dan Jones. Few institutions have had as much influence on European history and popular imagination as the Knights Templar, a religious order of knights in mediaeval Europe and Middle East. They are the source of various weird tales around the Holy Grail and some also consider them to be the inspiration for why some superstitious people consider Friday the 13^th to be an ominous date – it is the date the order was destroyed. While the myths around them are rubbish, their actual history is every bit as fascinating as the myths. Why has an order that only existed for barely two centuries (founded in 1119 AD in Jerusalem and destroyed by 1312) remained so relevant to European folklore? The answer lies in the outsized influence the order had in its day - ranging from being the tip of the spear in The Crusades to essentially inventing modern branch banking. It is this rich history, and none of the myth, that the historian Dan Jones explores in a vivid and narrative way.  He traces the history of the order from its origins as a small group of men escorting Christian pilgrims on the dangerous roads of 12^th century Jerusalem to its height as the most fearsome military body in Europe (and which answered to no king) and finally to the its decline and ultimate destruction by the French king Philip IV.

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge. From the late 11^th century to the late 13^th century, the states and principalities of Europe launched multiple attempts to seize and hold on to Jerusalem and its surrounding areas – an area they called the Holy Land. To our modern mind, these attempts seem bizarre or quixotic but the author does a good job setting the religious and political landscape in Europe that made these crusades happen. This is in addition to weaving rich descriptions of the main players (on both the Christian and Moslem sides) and the major military engagements.  

The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey. How did the Roman Empire transition from polytheism to widespread adoption of Christianity by late antiquity? The popular conception, or at least my view of it, is: Christians were a vigorously prosecuted religious sect within the Roman Empire, however for various reasons (certainly political but potentially spiritual) Constantine became the first Roman emperor to adopt the new faith and he encouraged / proselytized his subjects to adopt Christianity and they were largely cool with making this change. Essentially a rather seamless and peaceful change in confessional adherence. Well, that seems to be quite far from the reality. The author goes into great detail into the level of violence endured by various “pagan” communities as Christianity became increasingly ascendant in the empire: temples were destroyed, libraries burned and philosopher-types attacked and killed. We read about bishops with armies of monks, who seem more similar to football hooligans than holy men, organizing the destruction of pagan communities and the murder of prominent pagans. Perhaps the most lasting attack in the popular imagination was the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria in AD 415 – a brilliant philosopher and teacher brilliantly played by Rachel Weisz in the 2009 movie Agora (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/). The end results of the ferocious attack on adherents of the old Roman religions were the coarsening of attitudes in society, a reduction in the toleration of different behavior and the loss of a colossal amount of knowledge from the destruction of books and the persecution of intellectuals.

Current Affairs

2017 was a bit out of character for me as I read much more about current issues and people than I did about people that were long dead and governments / societies that no longer exist. This was largely because I got sucked into a number of issues and places that were in the news and decided to learn more – e.g., emerging populism in the West and the legacy of colonialism in Southern Africa (both Zimbabwe & South Africa popped up in my news feed / consciousness to a greater extent than usual). 

Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country by Alex Cuadros. I remember visiting Brazil for the first time in 2010 and getting blown away by the sheer size of the country, the scale of its resources and the immense self-confidence of its political and business class. There was something endearing about this large, somewhat chaotic and multi-ethnic country that was allegedly described by Charles DeGaulle “as the country of the future and it will always be so”.  The author of this book, who was a Brazil-based reporter for Bloomberg, does a great job of introducing the reader to the country’s larger-than-life business and political leaders and their symbiotic and often problematic relationships. We meet Eike Batista, a mining magnate with a boom-to-bust story almost unparalleled in modern billionaire history, and many other smaller (and just slightly less confident) business tycoons and the myriad politicians which formed the web of patronage that shocked the world with the Petrobras Lava Jato scandal. Reading this somewhat gossipy book, I found it difficult to not admire the spirit of the country – sure many countries have expansions and recessions but few manage to go through these with as much panache as the Brazilians seem to do!

Nothing but a Circus: Misadventures among the Powerful by Daniel Levin. Oh “networkers”…not the guy who cables your office for internet access, but that uniquely modern person who makes it his / her business to go to every conference / professional happy hour, drops names incessantly and is thrilled to be named to every “Top XX under YY” list no matter how obscure the criteria are or dubious the credibility of the list’s compiler. Well, this is a book about those people. The author takes us on a tour of various places, from the UN headquarters to DC bars and Davos, to his meetings with these networker types and they don’t end up looking good! 

The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Sebastian Mallaby. I often have a feeling that some people are simply better at life than the rest of us and one of the people that probably deserves this “better than the rest of us” tag is James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank. The author, a former journalist at The Economist, Washington Post and Financial Times, produced a great albeit somewhat critical biography of a man who went from a childhood in Australia to a career at the highest levels of London and New York investment banking and a “nightcap” as President of the World Bank. He tells the story of a man of such prodigious ambition and drive that he blends seamlessly between advising CEOs on major deals to discussing the latest research on public health and, just by the way, also teaching himself to play the cello in middle age and then proceed to give a recital at Carnegie Hall. However, this is not just a book about a man with a remarkable career and life story.The author also uses the opportunity to discuss wider issues about economic development and the ways the large development agencies (i.e., the World Bank etc.) are rising up to the challenges and also falling short. 

Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President Was Defeated in Nigeria by Olusegun Adeniyi. In April 2015, what I considered the unthinkable happened: an incumbent Nigerian president lost a bid for a 2^nd term and he conceded defeat. It was undoubtedly a triumph for our young democracy that a president with the entire coercive and patronage power of the state behind him could go to the polls and be soundly defeated. However, this was not just a simple tale of the masses rising up in democratic awakening. It was also a story of key power brokers breaking with the incumbent and placing their bets on a change in government. The author, a former press secretary in the presidency, does a great job bringing the reader behind the scenes to some of the very well hidden power play that led to the defeat of an incumbent president. 

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer. Ever wonder why the Iranian leadership seem to have such an instinctive suspicion of Western powers? I am sure they have various reasons for this attitude but surely one of their motivations for the stance is the legacy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the pro-Western Shah of Iran who was overthrown in 1979. The book’s author, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, delves deep into one of the seminal episodes of Pahlavi’s reign: the 1953 coup that deposed nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosadegh and restored the Shah to absolute rule over the country. Mr. Kinzer does a great job of summarizing the thousand plus years of Persian history and the events surrounding the emergence of the Pahlavi dynasty in the 20s when the Shah’s father (a military officer from the backwoods) overthrew the feckless Qajar dynasty that had run the country for centuries. He then delves into the various motivations for the 1953 coup (and in particular, the loss of concessions by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – forerunner of today’s BP) and the various characters involved in the plot – including Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA point man in the country and a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He then caps off the book with an account of the steady deterioration in the Shah’s rule that led to the revolution that kicked him out of power in 1979. 

Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee. The Bengal Famine of 1943, which claimed over 2 million lives during World War II in this region of India is not as well known as it should. The author not only does a great job describing the horrors of the famine but also sets it in the proper imperial context (particularly the independence movement) and how the indifference of the colonial masters and the attitudes of Winston Churchill were contributing factors that made the famine as devastating as it was. Churchill has a deserved heroic reputation for his conduct of World War II and the way he rallied the British people to defeat fascism in Europe, however it should be noted that he was quite fond of the empire and he had more than a passing dislike for the Indian independence movement. She makes a convincing case that Churchill and his friend and adviser Lord Cherwell could have easily prevented the famine or at least made it much less devastating as wheat supplies were offered by Canada and Australia but Cherwell, who had somewhat of a Malthusian bent, would not release ships to move them to relieve the famine. While it could be argued that the author was particularly critical, I found the book to be very enlightening, especially about what it tells us about the flaws of great men like Churchill and why no one is deserving of a hagiography.

The struggle continues: 50 Years of tyranny in Zimbabwe by David Coltart. The last quarter of 2017 saw the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 year rule of Zimbabwe and while his legacy will remain debated for many years, this book by one of Zimbabwe’s leading civil rights lawyers and opposition politicians does a great job of charting the course of Mugabe’s rule and putting it in perspective with that of his predecessor: Ian Smith. The publication of this book more than a year before Mugabe’s ouster was a courageous act by the author as he indicts many powerful people in the country of facilitating the country’s steady decline into economic hardship and political oppression while he and his family continue to live in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo. The author discusses recent Zimbabwean history in a biographical manner, from his birth in the mid-50s. He honestly described growing up in the then-Rhodesia as a member of a privileged minority, to his support for Ian Smith’s policies as a teenager (including enrolling in the police force and participating in the regime’s fight against the liberation guerillas) and his subsequent realization of the fundamental injustice of the system he was a part of. He describes the sense of optimism and national reconciliation following independence in 1980, the early signs of Robert Mugabe’s autocracy and the world’s turning of a blind eye to these early signs until the subsequent full-scale decline starting in the late-90s and early 2000s. What I found most interesting is the way he describes the 50 years starting with Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 as largely a progression of heavy-handed rule and the many ways in which the country has been shaped by the only two men who have led it in that 50+ year period; Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe. He does make a convincing case that the two men, although they seem very different (one was an unrepentant believer in minority rule and the other led a guerilla struggle for majority rule) were actually quite similar in their political temperament and attitude to opposing views.

The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European by Stefan Zweig. The modern human mind is almost wired to view progress as the natural order of life and who can blame us: the last couple of decades has brought about a dizzying number of technological and socio-economic progress – from ICT technologies / platforms to increased globalization and the expansion of political and civil rights to previously disadvantaged people. However, retrogression and decay are as much a part of the human experience as progress is. Reading this book by Stefan Zweig, one of Europe’s leading pre- World War II intellectuals, brings this point home in a painful way. Published in 1943 during the midnight of European civilization when the entire continent was tearing itself apart, he recalled a Pre-World War I golden age of an interconnected Europe where intellectual and commercial pursuits blossomed and the thought of a continent at war would have been thought of as laughable. Since he was deeply integrated into the European literati, he also describes his interactions with the leading intellectuals of the day in the various capitals and their belief in a glorious future that was unfortunately truncated by two devastating wars in the first half of the 20^th century.

How Long Will South Africa Survive? The Looming Crisis by RW Johnson by RW Johnson. In the late 1970s RW Johnson, a South Africa-based British academic and journalist, published a book arguing that the apartheid system would not survive. This was a bit odd since the government was at the height of its powers and in full control of the political situation but he based his argument on economics and capital flows, not politics. His view was that an “iron law” of the South African economy is a dependence on foreign capital inflows, a dependence necessitated by the capital-intensive nature (mining etc.) of the country’s economy. He argued that the apartheid regime was poised to continue to lose the confidence of the international financial system, which will then stagnate the economy and that this economic pressure and not political or security challenges will ultimately force a regime change. It seemed initially a bit preposterous at the time but the deep economic malaise brought about by the capital flight that followed Botha’s Rubicon Speech in 1985 is believed to have essentially led to the rapprochement with the ANC that De Klerk led in the early 90s. Mr. Johnson is back again (in 2015) with essentially the same book updated for the current environment. He’s basically arguing that increased corruption in the political system coupled with institutional decay (especially at SOEs), dysfunctional labour market and worsening fiscal outlook is likely to make foreign capital less willing to come in (and more likely to see SA individuals and corporates export capital) and that this is likely to lead to the sort of economic malaise seen in the late-apartheid era. I am not sure I agree that the situation is as dire as he describes it but the man does have some credibility and he offers some food for thought.

On the Brink: SA's political and fiscal cliff-hanger by Claire Bisseker. What South Africa’s political class achieved post-94 is actually quite impressive as few countries were able to get as much of a grip on state institutions and ensure fiscal stability as the ANC did after it came into power. This book by a South African business journalist details the hard work done, largely led by the duo of Mbeki and Manuel, to stabilize the post-apartheid fiscal regime and institute a strong and credible economic management system anchored on a strong National Treasury, a very independent central bank and a revenue service that often exceeded its revenue targets. She then details the subsequent decaying of the post-94 institutions and controls along with the capture of state institutions by certain politically connected people and how this has placed the country on a fiscal knife-edge. However, it isn’t all doom and gloom as she outlines a number of “low hanging fruits” that could lead to more robust economic growth and improvement of the fiscus provided there is better leadership.

Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant by Heidi Holland. Many people have a one-dimensional view of Robert Mugabe – to some he is an ogre and a terrible tyrant who ruined a country and to some others he is simply a liberation hero who stood up to imperialists and he and his country got punished for it. This book by a South African journalist, who lived in the then Rhodesia and had met Mugabe in the 70s when he was still a guerilla on the run, is one of the most robust attempts to paint a multi-dimensional portrait of the man. She takes an almost psychological approach to evaluating him and does many interviews with people who had known Mugabe from different stages of his life: from close family members still living in his hometown, to colleagues in the liberation movement, to people who knew him in his early days as leader of Zimbabwe – including the widow of the last colonial governor, Lord Soames, with whom he struck an unlikely but very close personal friendship. She even had a long interview with the Mugabe himself. Reading the book one gets a sense of a very complicated man with equally complicated motivations for his various actions. In the end I don’t think I got a single “haha” moment from the book but various pieces of the mosaic fell into place.

Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith. South Africa is a multi-ethnic country with many tribes (the country has 11 official languages) and tribal identity remains very strong. This book by a longtime Africa correspondent basically focuses on how the interactions and power struggles between two of the country’s tribes (i.e., English-speaking whites and Afrikaans-speaking whites) played out in the late 19^th century and culminated in the Anglo-Boer war of 1899 to 1902. Mr. Meredith devotes substantial portion of the book unpacking the character and actions of one of the most consequential Europeans in Africa: Cecil Rhodes and his interactions with various black leaders, Afrikaners and the British government. He also provides details of the interplay between foreign capital in the mining industry (led by the “Rand Lords” – of which Cecil Rhodes was the most prominent) and the desire by Paul Kruger to maintain the Afrikaner control and character of the Transvaal, the then independent republic where the mining industry was concentrated. This power play ultimately made the Anglo-Boer war inevitable. He then goes into details about the increasingly punitive tactics that the British government had to employ to ultimately secure the surrender of the Afrikaner governments and how the humiliations they suffered in the war led to a heightened sense of grievance and nationalism in the Afrikaner community, a communal state of mind which went on to shape much of South Africa’s 20^th century history. 

Fate of the Nation: 3 Scenarios for South Africa's Future by Jakkie Cilliers. Few countries have as much penchant for scenario planning as South Africa does: National Party politicians were big users of scenario planning, each side to the CODESA deliberations that ushered in multiracial democracy came with their scenario planners and the ANC government has kept this scenario planning obsession alive. Even SA corporates are in on this: Anglo American (the epitome of SA Inc for much of the 20^th century) had a full scenario planning division that rivalled Royal Dutch Shell’s capabilities in this sphere. Why this obsession with scenario planning exists is really not clear to me, maybe it has to do with what may be the national pastime in South Africa – which seems to be the constant display of a weird mix of apprehension and pessimism. A pastime which while unsettling at first can become an endearing quality when you get used to it. This book from Jakkie Cilliers, a scenario planner at SA’s Institute for Security Studies, continues in this tradition by exploring three potential scenarios for South Africa’s medium to long term future. The first which he terms Bafana Bafana (after the country’s perennially underperforming men’s soccer team) is basically a status quo situation: no major reforms are undertaken but there is no marked shift to populism or leftist policies. The economy chugs along at c. 2.5% growth annually – pedestrian growth no doubt but not a disaster. His downside scenario is Nation Divided, in which more populist policies are adopted and there is increasing racial and class conflicts. Under the scenario, the economy grows at just over 1% annually – a very disappointing outcome but not Venezuela or Zimbabwe-style contraction. His upside (or wishful) scenario, Mandela Magic, is one in which the nation’s well regarded but largely ignored National Development Plan from 2012 is fully implemented and the nation has a grand economic bargain (similar to the political bargain reached in the 90s) which then leads to the resolution or near-resolution of its key structural problems. This Mandela Magic scenario should result in average growth rates of c.5% annually, a rate of growth that essentially means the GDP doubles in a decade and a half – nice outcome if they can get it! On the whole I found the book quite interesting not for the detailed forecasts, which I think is a bit silly, but for his erudite qualitative analysis of what the various pathways for the country’s future could look like.

The Last Days of Stalin by Joshua Rubenstein. What happens when a dictator who has run a large country with un-paralleled ferocity, incessant internal purges and no anointed successor dies after 3 decades in office? Well, a lot of really strange things happen, including a reluctance to be the one to declare the death of the great leader for fear you may be wrong and the great man recovers. This book by an American historian provides a fascinating account of the few months leading to the death of Joseph Stalin as well as its immediate aftermath. The demise of Stalin led to a number of things, including high-stakes palace intrigues that included the execution of Lavrentiy Beria (Stalin’s widely feared and loathed security chief) but it also led to some loosening of the worst excesses of the Stalin regime (including scaling back of the Gulag system) as the new politburo reasoned correctly that some level of internal reform was needed to sustain the Communist Party’s hold on power. For a much more humorous take on the strange events of this period, watch the comedy from Veep creator Armando Iannuci that is loosely based on this book: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/

Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari. This book is somewhat of a sequel to the author’s very successful history of human civilization: Homo Sapiens. If Homo Sapiens is essentially a discussion of how a mid-level animal species competing with hyenas in the food chain (i.e., humans) came to be the undisputed master of the world, Homo Deus is a somewhat sobering forecast of how the expansion of technology and increased concentration of wealth may lead us to a situation in which two classes (or even species) of humans emerge. In one class will be the very rich and very powerful, who can use their wealth and intelligence to purchase the science and technology to become almost superhuman while the mass of humanity becomes what the author terms the “useless class” as Artificial Intelligence and other technologies do the work or fight the wars that the mass of humanity has done for much of history. This forecast (which may not turn into reality) has many sobering socio-political implications as the masses have gained rights and better living standards because the elites have needed them as both a workforce and a fighting force: you can’t expect to have a formidable army if the health outcomes of your country are so horrible so you give the masses some healthcare. What happens if robots can do all the work and fighting that humans used to do? Why should the rich and powerful care anymore?

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis. There have been many great collaborations in history: including Abbott and Costello in American comedy, the Wright Brothers in aviation and the ice-cream making duo of Ben and Jerry. This book by best-selling author Michael Lewis is the great story of one of the most prolific collaborations in academic history (certainly in the field of psychology): that of the Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman (who later won a Nobel Prize) and Amos Tversky (who died before the Nobel was awarded). The prolific output of this duo in the field of heuristics has led to a fundamental rethinking of how human beings make decisions. The author does an excellent job of both explaining the very complex academic work of these academics in a very accessible way and also of exploring their interpersonal relationship over the decades.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce. In the aftermath of the populist lurch in various Western countries ranging from the US to Australia, the Washington DC-based commentator for the FT released the most comprehensive explanation that I have read of the long-term causes of the trend. What I found most interesting is the notion of the trend (starting in the 60s) by western countries and corporations of increasingly “privatizing risk” by shifting risk to the individual, a situation that has made the lived experience for many in Western societies to be less secure and more precarious than that of their parents. The end result of this seems to be greater anxiety and an increased openness to be swayed by populist politicians. A longer review of the book is here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.ch/2017/07/where-did-this-populist-wave-come-from.html

Travelogues

I am not sure “travelogue” is the correct term for these books but they are all by the same author: Simon Winchester, who is best known as a travel writer so “travelogue” it is then!

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester. At the surface, this appears to be a book about the great earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906. In reality it tells a much bigger and richer story than the earthquake as it is nothing short of an engaging history of the pioneering spirit and utter chaos behind the creation of one of the world’s greatest cities – now made more famous by Silicon Valley companies. The author not only describes in a very accessible way the geological basis for the earthquake and for why living in the San Francisco Bay is still somewhat of a dangerous affair in geological terms, he also does a great job of describing the socio-economic life of early San Francisco and provides a vivid account of the destruction wrought by the quake itself.

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester. Is it possible that an entire culture could be seen in a whole different light by outsiders as a result of one man’s single-minded devotion? The answer to this seems to be yes, as it is what I took away from reading this engaging biography of Joseph Needham, a British biochemist and self-taught sinologist who created the 27-volume Science and Civilization in China: a series of books regarded as the definitive history of science in China. Through this work, which absorbed most of his time from about 1940 to his death in 1995, many have come to appreciate the true scale of Chinese inventions and contribution to science. The book charts Joseph Needham’s chance introduction to China through an affair with a visiting Chinese scholar colleague of his wife named Lu Gwei-djen in 1936. On meeting her, he decided to learn the Chinese language and explore her culture and so began a romantic and professional collaboration that was to last the rest of their lives (she died in 1991 and he in 1995). Their romantic relationship actually lasted many decades and they both got married in 1988, 2 years after the death of Needham’s wife, when he was 88 years old and she 84. Their joint work leaves on and is still being compiled and expanded by a research center in their alma mater, Cambridge University.

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester. Can a writer produce an engaging biography of a body of water? Most writers probably cannot but someone with the uncanny descriptive capacity of Simon Winchester surely can and he does this in superb fashion in this book after managing a similar feat in an earlier book on the Pacific’s cousin ocean: The Atlantic. I picked up this book after reading the Atlantic in 2016 and I was not disappointed as this was an impressive discussion of the scale of the ocean and the various cultures, battles and commercial activities that have shaped the largest body of water on earth. The range of topics discussed by the author is breathtaking: the post-World War II rise of Sony and the broader Japanese electronics industry, the various pacific ocean nuclear tests and the emergence of pan-pacific surfing culture – and that’s just naming three of the ten eclectic chapters of this fun book. 

A mountain of history – Review of Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill – Nicky Oppenheimer, South African diamond magnate

Koh-i-Noor (“Mountain of Light” in Persian) is a diamond with a history as rich as its luster. Since this diamond was dug up, probably in the present-day Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the 13^th century, it has been passed between Mughal Emperors, Persian Shahs, Afghan Emirs and Sikh Maharajas and crisscrossed the area that is now modern day India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan before finding its way into the hands of the British state in the mid-19^th century under Queen Victoria’s reign. It is the history of this exceptional stone, and its equally exceptional owners, which forms the topic of this short and accessible book by historian and travel writer William Dalrymple and journalist Anita Anand.

It is fair to say that few diamonds have filled psychological needs at a deeper level and for a more varied set of people across as many centuries as the 105 carat diamond that is the centerpiece of the Queen Mother’s Crown, which is on display in the Tower of London. The

I am fascinated by the history of objects because they often carry with them a deep history. Something as mundane as a salt cellar from the Benin kingdom (in present-day Nigeria) displayed in the British Museum isn’t just some piece of brilliantly carved ivory. Carved on its face is a testament to the kingdom’s earlier peaceful contact with an European power (i.e., the Portuguese) and its journey to the museum also embodies the history of the kingdom’s later hostile contact with another European power (i.e., the British). Few objects bear as much witness to history as the Koh-i-Noor does and the authors of this book bring this diamond's tryst with history to life in a vivid way. The history of the Koh-i-Noor is the history of the Mughal Empire at its height with powerful kings like Aurangzeb, who cherished the diamond. It is also the history of the decline of Mughal Empire and the sacking and plundering of its cities by the Persian Shah Jahan, the subsequent decline of Shah Jahan’s own dynasty and its replacement with the Afghan Durrani dynasty which came to its definite end with the debacle of the First Anglo-Afghan war in the 1800s. This same gem found its way from the collapsing Durrani dynasty to the emerging Sikh empire in the early 1800s before the current owners (i.e., the British) claimed it after the British East India Company’s conquest of the Punjab from the Sikh Empire in the 1840s. Through all these changing fortunes and brutal battles, the Koh-i-Noor remained an object of great desire and was passed from one conquering empire to the next.

While I got a feel for the eras that span the Koh-i-Noor’s history, I didn’t get the same feel for the depth of characters in the book as I did for other books by Mr. Dalrymple. This is certainly an unfair comparison as this book deals with a history spanning hundreds of years while some of the author's earlier works which I have thoroughly enjoyed have focused on a relatively short span of history: the Return of a King dealt with the events surrounding the First Anglo-Afghan war in the late 1830s / early 1840s while the Last Mughal was largely focused on the events leading to the Indian Rebellion of 1857/58 and its immediate aftermath. This book necessarily glosses over the lives and characters of many of the key actors in the Koh-i-Noor’s history as to do more than that would have led to a multi-volume door-stopper of a book rather than the accessible short read the authors produced. If this book has something close to a flaw, I think it is the evidence one gets that this is a book written by two authors with different styles as the hand-off from one section to the other could be slightly jolting.

Overall, I think this an apt book for the times. In this climate of increased agitation for “de-globalization” and the erection of walls, it is important to remember the bonds of a shared past embedded in a gem that is smack in the center of something as central to British identity as the crown of its monarchs. The centerpiece of the crown isn’t something from the British Isles or even Continental Europe, it is a diadem that for many years adorned the Peacock Throne of Mughal Emperors and was later worn as amulets by Sikh Maharajas. 

Philosopher-queen – Review of Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie

“You forget the difference between our two positions: you work only on paper, which is smooth, supple, and offers no resistance to either your imagination or your pen; whereas I, a poor Empress, work on human skin, which is much more irritable and ticklish" – Catherine the Great in correspondence with French Philosopher, Denis Diderot

In the long list of the brilliant, average or downright incompetent people who served as Emperors and Empresses in the c.300 years of the Romanov dynasty, two people stood out in their leadership and impact on the Russian state that they earned the appellation of “Great”. These are Peter I and Catherine II – both widely regarded as the two most competent Russian leaders ever. Peter was the son of a Tsar and raised from birth to lead his nation, so while his achievements are breathtaking they are not necessarily wholly unexpected given his background. However, what strength of character propels a young girl born into a minor German noble family into a position of being rated as one of the two most impressive autocrats in Russian history. This excellent book by author Robert Massie gives us an insight into the character of this extraordinary woman.

I think to understand the life of Catherine the Great, it is important to understand two things: the first is the unique form of government that was Romanov Russia and the second is the intellectual and humanist revolution sweeping Europe in her lifetime (i.e., the enlightenment). I think much of Catherine’s character is defined by the fundamental contradictions of combining a renaissance European mind with wielding absolute power over a vast realm that was barely out of the medieval age.  Since I picked up this book after reading the sweeping narrative history of the Romanovs by the writer Simon Sebag Montefiore, I already had a decent sense of Romanov Russia. This was a form of royal rule that went beyond mere monarchy into full-fledged autocracy: Russian monarchies didn’t have to be bothered with constraints of constitutions – up to the ascension of Catherine’s son, there were no rules governing royal succession and Russian monarchs had absolute discretion to appoint their successors and Peter the Great used this discretion to appoint his 2^nd wife, a former Lithuanian camp laundress, as his successor. However, Russian monarchs had to contend with running a vast, diverse land and with a regicide rate that was significantly higher than the European average. That a German lady with tenuous legitimacy (she was simply proclaimed Empress after the overthrow of her husband Peter) was able to hold to power for many decades until her death in old age and expand the wealth and boundaries of her empire all the while maintaining friendships with the leading intellectuals of her day (Voltaire, Diderot etc.) is simply remarkable. The author does a great job of demonstrating how she achieved this feat through a combination of clear vision, prodigious hard work and a level of political sagacity that would have made Machiavelli proud.

Catherine the Great was a case study in assimilation. Born Sophie Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg in 1729 in Anhalt (in present day Germany), she only moved to Russia around the age of 14/15 when the reigning Empress of Russia (Elizabeth) summoned her to become a bride-in-waiting for her nephew and heir (the future emperor Peter). She converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity (to the chagrin of her Lutheran father) and threw herself into mastering Russian customs and language – something her husband Peter never managed. She mastered Russian within a year, learned to manage a “mother-in-law from hell” who also happened to be empress and developed a set of relationships within the army and the court that proved very helpful to her ascending to the throne and keeping it. Throughout her life she managed this tricky task of assimilation so well that while her husband was widely reviled for being foreign (and German), she largely avoided that charge even though she was much less Russian than him – her husband, Peter, had at least been Peter the Great’s grandson.

Following the coup against her husband and subsequent regicide, she went on to rule Russia for 34 years and to notch major achievements. She expanded the boundaries of the Russian state through various conquests (including the annexation of Poland and the Crimea as well as the establishment of Alaska), reformed education and health services (she had herself and her grandchild vaccinated before promoting vaccination amongst her skeptical subjects) and instituted various administrative reforms (including chipping at the edges of serfdom). She also sought to spread the fruits of the Enlightenment in Russia and a lasting homage to this effort stands in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, which was initially built to house her large collection of the leading European art of her day.

  

The book isn’t all about affairs of state though as the author devoted significant space to discussing Catherine’s many love affairs. No it wasn’t hundreds as often claimed by mischief makers – it was more like 12 according to the author and only 4 of these were significant, with the one with Grigory Potemkin as the most significant of her life (she may have secretly married him actually). I could not however help but get struck by how someone with as fine a mind as Catherine the Great came to be as emotionally needy and in need of such constant affection. However, this deep longing to be constantly in love may be explained as a psychological response to a loveless and joyless childhood that was followed by a loveless and joyless marriage. Her marriage to Paul may never have been consummated and the children she bore during their marriage were not fathered by him. Her mother-in-law (Empress Elizabeth) also effectively “kidnapped” Catherine’s first child as soon as he was born and raised him personally as a property of the state.

The book however stops well short of a hagiography. In many ways a legitimate charge of hypocrisy could be leveled at her as she was more “enlightened” in thought than in action. As a princess of the Russian empire, she wrote moving criticism of Serfdom. However, on becoming Empress and getting to fully realize the importance of Serfdom to the wealth of the nobles and the crown she was happy to go on with that evil system. She wrote glowingly of what could be termed “17^th century human rights” with her pen pals Diderot and Voltaire but thought nothing of installing a former lover as king of Poland and conspiring with Prussia and Austria to carve up his kingdom when it suited her plans. This was a very balanced book and on the whole, I found it to be a very informative and lively portrayal of a strong, lively woman who lived life on her own terms and raised the standards of her age. 

Where did this populist wave come from? – A review of The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

I recently read this new book from the FT’s Washington-based Chief U.S. commentator but I must admit I approached it with a fair degree of skepticism as I was half-expecting it to be yet another book from yet another journalist about the inevitability of Brexit and the election of President Trump from the very same people who were happy to declare to whoever would listen that neither event could happen. However, I have a lot of respect for Mr. Luce’s commentaries in the FT and thought “why not give it a shot?”. Well, I am glad I did not judge this book by its cover! The author did a great job of discussing the historical roots of the recent wave of populism and its most recent macroeconomic drivers, while also making an attempt to proffer some policy / political prescriptions for treating the ailments for which populism is merely a symptom.

Many commentators have noted the drift all across the western world of the working class populations away from traditional parties of the left into nationalist movements. This ranges from the move of the blue collar American male from the Democratic party into becoming Trump voters to the hemorrhaging by Labour of its traditional working class Northern England voting bloc to UKIP and the loss by the French socialists of core working class voters to Marine Le Pen’s Front National. When did the traditional parties of the “working man” start losing their close links and solidarity with the working class and why did this happen? In a sense the working man’s party became cerebral and the author made a convincing case for tracing the genesis to the student movements of the late 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic and in one year in particular: 1968. This year marked the iconic street battles between students protesting the Vietnam war (i.e., “the hipsters”) and the Chicago police (“the hard hats”) at the sidelines of that year’s Democratic National Convention. In the author’s view, while the hard hats section of the Democratic Party won the battle that year - they got Herbert Humphrey elected, the hipsters won the war as they succeeded in picking their candidate in 1972 with the emergence of the “peace candidate” George McGovern. In the exact same year that American college students were making their mark on their country’s party of the left, their counterparts in Paris (the “Soixante-huitards”) were making their mark in their own country and nudging France’s traditional parties of the left towards more embrace of liberal social values as opposed to their historical focus on the class struggle. The author did a great job of describing the process of disengagement of traditional leftist parties from the working class sensibilities and labour movements that birthed them.

This drifting apart of blue collar workers from the traditional parties of the left may not have been sufficient to spark the populist movements across the western world if it was not coinciding with a profound change that has been happening in western societies (at least the Anglo-Saxon ones) over the past couple of decades. In the author’s words, “since the late 1970s, Western governments of right and left have been privatizing risk”. I personally consider this sentence to be the most important in the entire book as I think it probably explains a large part of the anxieties that is driving the embrace of populism. This privatization of risk is so pervasive that we often don’t think of the various profound manifestations of this trend. I can easily think of one seldom discussed example of this and it is pensions. A couple of decades ago most workers in a western company were part of a defined benefit scheme: i.e., they had pensions that guaranteed them a certain monthly payout in their retirement years. These payouts were often linked to their final working year income and was going to be paid out for as long as they lived. There were of course risks involved in this arrangement: the investment returns on the pot of money set aside may be insufficient to meet the liabilities (financial markets do have a habit of fluctuating!) or pensioners may live for longer than the actuaries predicted when they advised on how much money should be set aside (there’s a fancy term for this: “longevity risk”). What happened is that these risks were borne by employers and not employees and this situation created financial difficulties for many companies. This situation, among other reasons, led to the vast majority of companies moving from a guaranteed payout in retirement (i.e., a “defined benefit”) to one in which employers make contractual payments to an employee while s/he is in its service without being on the hook for the employer’s pension years (i.e., a “defined contribution”). Companies provide support and investment platforms for their employees to invest for retirement but ultimately, the risk of sufficient funds for retirement is the employee’s to bear. There are pros and cons for this arrangement but it’s instructive to note that for most of the workers in formal employment in the western world, the risk of ensuring adequate retirement funds has shifted from a corporate risk to one that is now private to the individual. If companies with teams of actuaries, treasury staff and all sort of expertise largely did a questionable job of managing retirement funds, what are the odds that the Average Joe will do a great job of setting aside adequate funds and investing these funds prudently to address a myriad of risks including cost of living inflation and longevity risk. Pensions represent just one example of many instances in which risk has become increasingly privatized over the past couple of decades – the “gig economy” is another as is the increasing prevalence of out-of-pocket payment for healthcare. The author contends that this privatization of risk has made the median contemporary westerner more exposed to the impact of arbitrary misfortune than his / her parents and that in some respects western society seems to be reverting to resemble the days before the social safety net revolutions of the early 20^th century. I’m not sure that things have gone that far but the man has a point.

So what is the way forward? The author makes a case for stronger social safety nets across western societies, saying “I believe that protecting society’s weakest from arbitrary misfortune is the ultimate test of our civilizational worth”. However, there are no silver bullets and the author was honest in admitting that some of the well-intentioned ideas suggested may have unintended consequences. For example, the Universal Basic Income (“UBI”), a system that pays everyone in a society a minimum amount of money, has its advantages but also has serious drawbacks. How would a UBI be designed to ensure that the incentive to work remains? What about the potential for UBI to make western societies even more attractive to migrants and serve as a powerful magnet that is likely to exacerbate the migrant wave that is proving very challenging for European politics and societies to manage at the moment.

On the whole, this is a very accessible book (of c.200 pages) that is a great addition to the topical debate of populism in western societies. 

2016: My Year in Books

As an unrepentant bibliophile, I often think of my level of happiness with a year by the quantity and quality of the books I managed to read. On that score, 2016 was a reasonably good year (not the best I have had but well far from the worst). Here are the books I read (/ remembered reading) and what I found most memorable and exciting about them

History Books

If I have anything close to an “intellectual first love”, it would be history – not too difficult to figure out the roots of this urge since I have a historian father. I read a number of interesting books (some released in 2016 and others released earlier)

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones. Really interesting book about the royal family who ruled England for over 300 hours (starting in 1154 with Henry II, until 1485, when Richard III died). The book takes readers through 300+ years of medieval English history told through what is essentially a family saga that started with the drowning of a prince  in the English Channel as his drunken crew attempted to cross from Normandy to England while thoroughly drunk. This triggered a 12^th century version of the constitutional crisis as the drowned prince was the only son of Henry I and on his death, the attempts by his daughter Matilda to establish her reign was thwarted. Matilda’s son (Henry II) finally managed to secure the kingdom in his own right and launched a dynasty that proceeded to rule for 300+ years and gained and lost different bits of the current British Isles and France. The book covers such historical figures such as Richard the Lionheart and events such as the early innings of the 100 year war. Overall, great introduction to medieval English and French history

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Ian Mortimer. Continuing the medieval English theme is the book on the life of one of the greatest Plantangent kings, Edward III. Medieval societies were much simpler than our current age and facets of life were more fused back in the day. It would take a couple more centuries before business, civil administration and the military will split into distinct areas of human endeavor. Reading this account of this monarch who ruled England for 50 years is like reading an engaging account of someone who was the greatest military general, most important civil administrator and richest businessman all at the same time. This often misunderstood figure probably oversaw the height of English influence in the medieval period, a sharp reversal from his father’s ill-fated reign - his father (Edward II) was deposed by his wife (Edward III’s mother) and her lover (Roger Mortimer).

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownworth. After earlier reading a highly entertaining history of the Bryzantine empire by the same author (https://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014_07_01_archive.html), I was excited to discover this book. History buffs all over the world easily associate the Normans, a group of Scandinavians (“Norse-man”) who had earlier settled in the area of France they came to give their name to (Normandy), with the conquest of England in 1066. What is probably not as well appreciated is the central role that the Normans played in Europe more broadly. Groups of Normans settled in and heavily influenced nations as diverse as England, Ireland, France, Italy and Cyprus. I was particularly impressed by the kings produced by the Normans in the Kingdom of Sicily and with one in particular, Frederick II who became Holy Roman Emperor and whose talents were so numerous he came to be widely known as Stupor Mundi (the wonder of the world).

After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton. Interesting narrative history of the origins of the Sunni-Shia split. Even-handed portrait that puts the schism in a solid historical context. Longer review here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/after-prophet-epic-story-of-shia-sunni.html

Conquerors: How Portugal seized the Indian Ocean and forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley. If you have ever wondered why so much of the world speaks Portuguese, then this book introduces you to the coalface of the pioneering efforts to forge that empire. The book provides gripping narrative accounts of the pain endured and inflicted by these pioneering Portuguese sailors and explorers in the 15^th and 16^th century in places as far afield as present-day Angola and India.

The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Paul Strathern. History of one of the most powerful banking families (perhaps only rivaled by the Rothschild’s). Tells the story of how a family, in the course of a few generations, parlayed a small banking operation in Florence into a much larger fortune that bought control of a city, ensured entry into titled high nobility and also bought a few papal crowns (including two members of the family who became popes). A longer review is here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016_05_01_archive.html

The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Think of a dysfunctional family with a spotty track record of governing ability but with monopoly autocratic power over a vast empire, then you have the Romanovs. This was the royal family that reigned over Russia for 300 years before the Bolsheviks made it impossible for them to keep reigning. Simon Sebag Montefiore as usual delivers a sweeping history that is both gripping in its narrative and rich in historical detail. A longer review is here: http://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/review-of-romanovs-1613-1918-by-simon.html

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph Ellis. If you think the American constitution (in operation since 1789) was arrived at organically by the delegates to the constitutional convention, or even more bizarrely, something that was divinely inspired in some late-18^th century version of Moses receiving the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, then you really need to read this book by Joseph Ellis (a noted scholar and author of the early American republic). The author argues that the shape the American constitution took was the deliberate and sometimes slightly manipulative work done by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison who served as President, Treasury Secretary, Chief Justice and Congressman in the first government under this constitution. All four men had witnessed the shortcomings of the previous confederacy arrangement (which was still favored by several leaders, including Jefferson) and were resolved to birth a more cohesive, federal arrangement.

Current Affairs

I not only spend my spare time reading about people who are long dead or events that are long past. I sometimes also read about current issues or recent history.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer. The one sentence description of this book is that it is about the efforts of librarians in Timbuktu to spirit away hundreds of thousands of valuable ancient Islamic manuscripts during the occupation of Timbkuktu and Northern Mali by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2012. However, that will be a gross simplification of the author’s efforts to describe the cultural richness of Timbuktu in its 14^th / 15^th century heyday, the concerted global effort in the1970s and 1980s to track down and preserve these beautiful ancient manuscripts and finally the painstaking and very dangerous task of smuggling the manuscripts out of the various libraries in the city before the invading Al-Qaeda forces could get to destroying them as they had destroyed other global cultural patrimonies. The author also provides a good insight into the poor governance, shifting tribe loyalties, economic desolation and civil wars that have shaped the Sahel and made it such a fertile soil for germinating extremism.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J D Vance. Why is Donald Trump president-elect? Simple, he won the presidential election in enough states to get over 270 pledged delegates threshold to the Electoral College that actually elects US presidents. Well…yeah, but why did a neophyte politician dominate a sizable Republican field and then went on to puncture the shibboleth of a Blue Wall for the democrats that ran through the rust belt (winning states not carried by a Republican since Reagan). And why did his message of “Make America Great Again” resonate with so many voters? While we will never fully get the answers to this questions, this great book (released before the election) does a good job of explaining why this pithy if somewhat silly slogan resonated with a huge swath of people who treated it as their cri de couer and then subsequently turned out in large numbers to deliver a primal scream of an election result. This book does a great job of introducing readers to the deprivation experienced by many communities in the Appalachian region of the US from a viewpoint that is both non-condescending and informed. This is a viewpoint that only “a member of the tribe” and a “local boy made good” is capable and qualified to have.

Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change by Allister Sparks. How did a vicious system of apartheid come to an end in 1994 without the massive upheavals widely predicted by many experts? Apartheid crumbled with much less violence and much quicker than outside observers predicted just a few years earlier. Some people credit divine providence and some others credit the almost-saintly regard in which Nelson Mandela was held. Well, both views may well be true but they are very incomplete. For to take both viewpoints (all due to divine grace or all due to Mr. Mandela) is to ignore the concerted and broad human agency that delivered the transition from apartheid to universal suffrage. The author chronicles the many years of clandestine meetings and negotiations between then enemies in places as diverse as London, Lausanne and the South African wilderness to hammer out a resolution to a system that both the oppressed and oppressor had come to accept could not continue. Reading the book I was struck by the deep patriotism and love of country exhibited by both sides, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party led by De Klerk and the ANC led by Nelson Mandela. Neither party was willing to watch the country they love burn or go to the dogs so they were willing to compromise. The result is a constitutional democracy, which for all its warts, is a thing that many of us Africans should be proud of and eager to emulate. Majority rule is entrenched but minority (including sexual minority) rights are strongly protected and the judiciary is indeed independent. The result of the many clandestine meetings in the 80s and 90s detailed in the book is the current situation in which very few people are as happy as a clam but not that many are driven to violent desperation. While this doesn’t sound romantic, it is as good as one could have wished for starting from the dark days of apartheid and something the cast of characters in Mr. Sparks’ book can be proud of midwifing.

Travelogues / Unclassified

These books probably shouldn’t be in this category. I just put them in this Travelogues section because their authors are best known as travel writers.

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple. Book on the Fist Anglo-Afghan war (1839 to 1841) that ended in a humiliating defeat for the British. The book highlighted the challenges the British faced in establishing order over a country with a tough, unforgiving terrain and deeply fractured tribal loyalties. Reading the book, I was reminded by the saying attributed to the Roman Poet Horace, Mutato Nomine De Te Fabula Narratur (“change but the name, and the story is told of yourself”). One could easily have changed the date on many of the stories / intrigues the author described to the 2000s and the stories will still fit as a glove. It seems over 150+ years, the outside world’s understanding of Afghanistan had not changed materially -  the more things change the more they remain the same.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester. I decided to read this book after earlier reading a great book about the pioneers who physically united the vast continent that is the United States through linkages such as roads, railways, canals etc. (review here: https://seunoloruntimehinsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014_02_01_archive.html). This book is basically a biography of the Atlantic Ocean. While it may seem silly to describe a body of water in biographical terms, it is perhaps apt to do so since the Atlantic is a living, breathing thing  - the Atlantic was born some 100 million+ years ago when the plates of the super-continents shifted, the ocean also continues to grow every year as ice caps melt and temperatures rise and the ocean will someday die in the very distant future. The book provides a rich account of man’s interaction with this vast body of water from pre-historic times to the modern age. It describes in vivid fashion, our attempts to cross it (by boat, by air and by submarine cable), the wars we have fought on it and how it has come to define coastal communities from Lagos to Newfoundland and Tierra del Fuego. One sad thing that struck me is the sheer amount of pollution that the Atlantic has endured ranging from the tailpipe emissions from the numerous ships and planes that cross it daily to plastic waste and even nuclear waste! (until 1993 many countries adopted the Atlantic Ocean as a dumping ground for nuclear waste)

Economics / Business

Like many people lacking the nourishing security of a trust fund, I must work for my bread and the way I earn my keep is to work as a private equity investor. This makes reading books about economics and business a necessity (if only to not be terrible at my job). However, I was lucky that none of the business books I read this year felt like a chore. 

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma. This is a very accessible book on the guidelines (he lists ten) for accessing the economic growth potential of countries. The author has unique credibility as he does not only have academic economic training, he is also a markets practitioner in his role as Global Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. So this is not an ivory-tower type, this is someone who has to find a way to make money for clients like the rest of us. I had two very important takeaways. One is the dampener that slowing population growth (or even aging) will put on economic growth. Major economies all over the world are facing a marked decline in the growth of the working age population (China’s working age population shrank last year) and this will be a major headwind on economic growth globally. The second key takeaway for me is the importance of the reform cycle to economic growth in emerging markets. Many emerging markets are poor partly because institutions are weak and economies are often badly managed but fixing these issues are politically costly and most politicians will rather not reform. However, when such countries are pushed to the wall (global recession, commodity price bust etc.) they bite the bullet and make needed changes. This reform cycle provides a tailwind for economic growth and supports asset prices for a while until the leaders get comfortable / complacent, stay too long and start doing silly things. At this stage, these countries get set for another bust and the cycle starts again when a reformer shows up again. This boom-bust cycle makes it critical to get the timing right in emerging markets if one is to escape unscathed.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon. Interesting book about the extraordinary productivity revolution that was seen in the closing decades of the 19^th century and the first seven decades of the 20^th. The upshot of the book is that the period in America (and much of the world) between 1870 and 1970 was an exceptional time in human history for economic growth and most of that was attributable to the rapid increase in productivity. At the beginning of the period, the fastest way most people could have travelled from point A to Point B was the speed at which a horse could travel (granted the transcontinental railway in the US was built in the prior decade, but the general point holds). By the 1970s, overworked bankers were already shuttling from London to New York at the speed of sound on Concorde flights. The book is replete with the productivity enhancements from inventions such as the washing machine, the automobile, penicillin etc. The challenge is that productivity boosting innovations have stalled over the past few decades. Facebook is nice, it gives its users a great deal of satisfaction and has made loads of money for its founders but it is not even in the same zip code in terms of increasing productivity as the invention of the washing machine or dish washer was. Washing machines and dish washers saved housewives all over the developed world from hours of drudgery and helped increase women’s participation in the labor force and made the ones already in the workforce more productive. This is a somewhat sobering message. If Robert Gordon is saying productive growth will be flat / slow going forward and Ruchir Sharma is saying that working-age population growth will be a headwind and both play out as predicted, then we should all be bracing up for secular stagnation in global economic growth.

How Asia Works by Joe Studwell. Interesting book about how the Asian economies were able to deliver rapid economic growth and lift a lot of people out of poverty using tools / policies such as capital control, mass mobilization of rural people into light manufacturing and government directed investment into areas such as energy, roads, ports etc. This sectors are critical for growth but are often not the most attractive place for investors or lenders to direct money to without government intervention. Japan followed this path first, then it was followed by the various Asian Tigers and China. Not sure how many times this rabbit could be pulled out of a hat but Ethiopia appears to be pursuing this strategy in Africa, let’s see how it turns out.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll. Exxon Mobil is not an ordinary company, it is the largest company in an industry (oil & gas exploration and production) that is far from normal. Ploughing billions of dollars into drilling for oil (sometimes in “iffy” countries) just strikes me as somehow different from selling toothpaste, soap or cheap shirts. The book by Steve Coll does a great job in giving readers a peek behind the curtains at this very unusual company that has its own security apparatus and sometimes even better intelligence in some countries than governments do.

Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager's Reports 2002-15 by Edward Chancellor. Many investment books tend to look at companies through a demand lens: how many widgets can it sell? who will buy the widgets? how much can they pay for them? etc. This book, based on the investing strategy of one of the world’s most successful fund managers, takes a different approach. It evaluates companies on the supply side: how much new capital is coming into a given sector, what new capacity is being added and how rational is the new capacity? etc. If one accepts that a key detractor to generating profits and creating wealth is competition (we’d all love to own an unregulated monopoly!), then thinking about companies in this way makes a lot of sense.