Experience

16+ years teaching Taiwanese | FREE 30-minute trial classes available!

Bernard English

Bernard English
FREE 30-minute trial classes available!

Online English Tutor/Teacher

My photo
Native Speaker of American English Conversation practice. Chatting or in-depth discussion of news articles. TOEFL-IELTS practice / CV, SOP, journal paper, essay revision 英語家教 彈性排課, 免通勤, 托福, 職場英文, 履歷/論文修改…等。 請看我的學生推薦信。

Search This Blog

email: bernard.english@gmail.com

website: https://sites.google.com/site/taipeibm/
FREE 30-minute trial classes available!

Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts

Sunday, December 4, 2022

How the West Brought War to Ukraine by Dr. Benjamin Abelow, MD REVIEWED by Ellen Taylor SOURCE: Counterpunch

He organizes the provocations before, and after, the coup of 2014,  an event in which the malign intent of the US is revealed in a leaked phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, as they, in the words of  Russian expert Stephen Cohen quoted by Abelow “plotted to midwife a new anti-Russian government by ousting or neutralizing a democratically elected president…” and installing the US’s chosen candidate.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Ray Dalio Says America’s Decline Will Upend Lives, Not Just Portfolios by Maneet Ahuja FROM Forbes

 


Saturday, March 14, 2020

REVIEW: Conceived in Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard Conceived in Liberty (4 Volume Set) by Murray N. Rothbard

Conceived in Liberty (4 Volume Set)Conceived in Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I confess that even as an American, I basically had no clue about early colonial history and the revolution, or civil war, as Rothbard calls it occasionally. Who knew the NY county I grew up in was a hotbed of Tory reactionaries--darn public education. There is an overwhelming amount of detail in the four volumes which, as he wrote, put the narrative back into history so that readers can judge things for themselves. Readers unfamiliar with Rothbards better known economic works will be rewarded with lots of brief observations and lessons on economics and finance. Rothbard's (aka Mr. Libertarian) anti-authority strain and democratic tendencies is epitomized by his unorthodox explanation of the Salem witch hunts. He argues that many of the accusations emanated from the elite and were actually politically motivated. It was the "revulsion of the people" and "popular petitions" that ended the witch trials.

One broad lesson he teaches is that the liberties were not to be had in America just because there was a lot of land available. It certainly helped, but there were numerous attempts to impose European style feudalism and status/caste social system throughout early American history on settlers who couldn't just pick up and go elsewhere. Another lesson is that the states had very different histories which elsewhere he has written could not really be overlooked until around 1900 when the power of the Federal government overshadowed any differences among states. In fact, he argues that the degree of resistance of oligarchies to reform was roughly proportional to the degree that a state ended up with a liberal constitution. And he makes it clear that force had to be an option, quoting a Dutch revolutionary as saying that following the American example, every man "was to be ready, 'every man with his musket.'" The principle of armed resistance on the part of ordinary colonists as opposed to relying on conventional standing armies is a major theme of the fourth volume. Perhaps he goes into too much military details for some readers, but in doing so he makes it quite clear the a people's war, or guerrilla war, was what worked and not George Washington's insistence on conventional direct confrontation with the British forces. No wonder Washington lost more battles than he won.

He approvingly quotes the historian Shy on Charles Lee, an early proponent of guerrilla warfare, though it wasn't called that at the time:"Intellectual that he was, Lee tried to see the Revolution as a consistent whole, with every aspect in rational harmony with every other. It was a fight by free men for their natural rights. Neither the fighters nor the cause were suited to the military techniques of despotism--the linear tactics, the rigid discipline, the long enlistments, the strict separation of the army from the civic life that marked Frederick's Prussia."

Another big strength of Rothbard's account is that he is not blindly devoted to any of the historical figures he covers. His command of the history and devotion to the truth allows him to chart people's adherence or divergence from the principles of liberty. And there were certainly some surprises there. "The opportunist" Benjamin Franklin was actually on the secret payroll of the Brits at one time. Even more disappointingly, Thomas Paine late in his career sold his pen to the conservative forces. Its hard to do justice to how carefully Rothbard covers all the twists and turns of individuals as they turn left and right in regards to economic and political principles. And yes, that includes George Washington.

I would say that the average reader who may not have time for all of the volumes, would perhaps enjoy volume 4 the most. All the volumes are (legally) available for free at mises.org.

View all my reviews

Friday, February 1, 2019

Book Review: PAYING THE PRICE College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream by Sara Goldrick-Rab FROM Kirkus Review

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Welfare: Separating Fact from the Rhetoric FROM The Acton Institute

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

A titan of Facebook considers his good fortune BOOK REVIEW of Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn By Chris Hughes FROM The Economist

Monday, December 19, 2016

The Hundred-Year Marathon China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower Book by: Michael Pillsbury Reviewed by: Shoshana Bryen FROM The Jewish Policy Center

"In Korea today, the Jewish Talmud is a best seller. Parents send their children to Talmud classes and businessmen read it at work. Why? Because the Koreans believe that hidden in the Talmud is the secret to long-term Jewish success – not in the nasty, European, anti-Semitic sense that “Jews rule the world,” but in the Asian historical sense that Jews are an ancient people with values and a family structure similar to their own and the success which they want to emulate. . . . But the Koreans are missing something. It isn’t the book that carries the “secrets of the Jews”, but rather the method of teaching and learning—endless questioning and arguing; endless variations on the theme (if you haven’t studied 40 interpretations of each verse of the Bible, you aren’t there yet); the ability—no, the absolute requirement—that students challenge teachers and teachers respond to those challenges. It is accepting the risk of being wrong in front of one’s teachers and peers . . . ."

Sunday, November 13, 2016

‘Climate Casino’: An Overview of Global Warming By FRED ANDREWS from the NY Times

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

AI will create 'useless class' of human, predicts bestselling historian book review by Ian Sample, Science editor at The Guardian [Book: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem]

Perhaps we should all be satisfies with what Rutger Bregman calls bullshit jobs.
http://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/rutger-bregmans-utopia-for-realists-shows-us-why-we-deserve-universal-basic-income

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: Extreme Money FROM Chicago Tribune

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir – Guardian Book Review by Oliver Burkeman

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Book Review: Thomas Jefferson’s Quran: How Islam Shaped the Founders By R.B. Bernstein FROM The Daily Beast

Sunday, November 10, 2013

How Civilizations Die: an ambitious, brilliant book by Phil Lawler FROM Catholic Culture

At Amazon: How Civilizations Die by David Goldman

Monday, July 29, 2013

The J curve The geometry of geopolitics BOOK REVIEW from The Economist [published in 2006]

You can check how he applies his J Curve to China in particular:

Will China's slowing growth lead to unrest?  by Ian Bremmer FROM Reuters


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Thinking, Fast and Slow. By Daniel Kahneman Book Review FROM The Economist

Not since The Da Vinci Code have so many people recommended a book to me. Though as of now, I don't know of anyone who has actually read it through.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Borderless Economics by Robert Guest, book review by Warren C. Gibson FROM The Freeman

Contrary to what you may have heard, it is not always necessary to  write long complicated sentences, not even when taking TOEFL. Here are a few simple ones from the article:
"Guest compares foreign aid with remittances from expatriate workers."


"Guest is not an academic economist, fortunately."


"Most academic economists avoid moral questions."




Friday, February 17, 2012

One is the loveliest number Interview with NYU Sociology Professor Eric Klinenber FROM The Economist

"Other nations boast even higher rates of independent living: 30% of all households in Japan contain just one person, and in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark the figure is 40-45%."

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Why Violence Has Declined Book Review By Robert Epstein FROM Scientific American

"The shift toward nonviolence, he says, has been driven by many factors, such as the spread of agriculture and the rise of feminism and democracy."

Monday, June 20, 2011

Irrational belief FROM The Economist [Short]

"The first part of the book is a mixture of psychology and trendy neuroscience research that presents the evidence for Mr Shermer’s central claim: that, instead of shaping belief around painstakingly gathered, soberly judged evidence, people most often decide upon their beliefs first, and then use an impressive range of cognitive tricks to bend whatever evidence they do discover into support for those pre-decided acts of faith."

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The good, the great and the gelded Book review FROM The Economist

"The three critical ingredients, he argues, are a strong state, the application of the rule of law to all parts of society and a means of holding rulers to account for their actions."

Followers