Have I already read that?

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Oooooh, rejected hams, my favourite! (Calcutta Gazette, 4th January 1810)

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Material deprivations and the removal of life-saving support are priority concerns for people with mental distress in the current climate. Anti-stigma campaigns allow politicians to adopt a caring facade that arguably makes it easier for them to get away with regressive policy. The problem with anti-stigma campaigns is not only the cover they provide, but also that they focus the narrative on attitudinal barriers to the exclusion of material conditions. This reduces the pressure on politicians pushing through cuts and chimes perfectly with a neoliberal ideology that blames disadvantage on individual deficiencies while denying the role of structural inequalities.

The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, by Ellen Clifford 2020.

Lots of other good analysis in there too. If you have spare cash, please consider popping some towards Disabled People Against Cuts.

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Soviet Space Graphics, Alexandra Sankova, 2020

This is a really pretty book, but lacking in context for my taste. Some of the images show significant similarity with illustrations from the other side of the iron curtain at the same time - for example, if you changed the labels on some of the cutaway illustrations they could have been in the Eagle, next to the Dan Dare comics. But others are completely different - and I would be really interested to what extent artists were working from similar models, what influences were going in each direction and so on. I’m too much of a nerd to have the images without information. 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi, Johann Chapoutot (translator Miranda Richmond Mouillot) 2018

When people do terrible things, there is a tendency to reach for explanations like - they were mad, or they were a complete aberration to normal people. Anything which creates a clear distance between the perpetrators and everyone else. But the truth is that more often than not, it is “everyday people” who commit acts like this - and that is the case with the Nazi regime. 

This book looks at what it calls the “mental universe” of the Nazi regime - the beliefs that both informed what they did and why people were drawn to them. It puts them within a historical context, which makes them more understandable. 

It’s a long read, and not a comfortable one, but recommended. 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Landscape Beneath the Waves: The Archaeological Investigation of Underwater Landscapes, Caroline Wickham-Jones, 2018

This is a really nice review of the methods, scope and major discoveries of underwater archaeology across the world. It is entirely about the archaeology of places which used to be above water - this isn’t shipwrecks, but places like Dunwich or Doggerland. It can be a little dry, but kept my interest for all of it except some parts on the legal background (which is probably more me than the book tbf). 

I think one of the best points made is that underwater and onshore archaeology need to be integrated - to understand a landscape they have to be understood together, not as separate sites. Unfortunately, the tidal area is one of the most difficult places to deal with archaeologically - but that doesn’t invalidate the need to integrate. 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor, or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.

Scratching the Surface, essay in Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde, 2007 edition. 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Nuclear War in the UK, Taras Young, 2019

This is a visual history of the materials published on nuclear war in the UK - from leaflets which were circulated to homes in the UK, to training materials for specific groups which were never meant for wide circulation. It’s a great choice of images and information, and is a nice readable size (passes the “comfortable to read in bed” test). 

My favourite image in the book is this one - sorry about poor image quality, but I had to share:

Well, will your pet survive a nuclear war? Will they? 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Finding Franklin, Russell A Potter, 2016

As a (very low grade) Franklin Expedition nerd, I thoroughly recommend this both as an introduction for non-nerds, and also to minor nerds who will probably find things that they didn’t already know in there. It’s more the story of the search than the expedition - but that tells the story of the different theories about what happened to the expedition as part of it. It was written after the Erebus was found, but before the Terror was found, though that doesn’t really affect the narrative - it’s going to take years for the archaeology of those ships to be looked at, synthesised and published (it took over 30 years for the archaeology of the Mary Rose to be fully published - and the preservation there was only a third of a smaller ship). It also covers well the current politics around the ships and the expedition.  One of the things that surprised me was that the “Peglar Papers” - some of the very little written material from the expedition, which are very difficult to interpret as they are obviously personal notes not intended for others to be reading - have not had any sort of imaging analysis to see if more text can be read than can be read with the naked eye. Nice discussion of the papers here. 

This is one of them, showing the difficulties:

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Invariably, the politics of blame directs our attention to certain individuals, and not others when organisations have failures. Invariably, the accepted explanation is some form of "operator error", isolating in the media spotlight someone responsible for the hands-on work: the captain of the ship, a political functionary, a technician, or middle-level managers. To a great extent, we are unwitting participants because without extraordinary expenditure of time and energy we cannot get beyond appearances. But we are also complicitous, for we bring to our interpretation of public failures a wish to blame, a penchant for psychological explanations, an inability to identify the structural and cultural causes, and a need for a straightforward, simple answer that can be quickly grasped. But the answer is seldom simple. Even when our hindsight is clear and we acknowledge the players omitted from the media spotlight, as long as we see organisational failures as the result of individual actions our strategies for control will be ineffective, and dangerously so.

The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughn, 2016 edition

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole

I had been vaguely aware of the Cairo Geniza, which is why I bought this book when it was on offer. Normally, a geniza is a place in a synagogue where religious texts are stored temporarily before being given appropriate burial in a cemetery. But in one synagogue in Cairo, the congregation not only stored religious texts but a whole host of other documents as well - and never cleared them out. The result was a treasure trove of documents from the 6th to 19th centuries, with many from the medieval period. This book is the story of the discovery of this trove, and discoveries within it, and sorting and cataloging - a process which has been going on for a century and shows no sign of being finished soon. 

These are two documents which show the range - a child’s handwriting exercise, and a fragment of illumination. 

The book gives the history of the rediscovery, and as part of that gives some of the interesting bits which were found by different people. There’s some fascinating “you only see what you’re looking for” - different people looking at the same fragments and finding entirely new things. A great read, and leaves me wanting to read more about it. One slightly odd thing is that none of the pictures in the book are labelled, which was unexpectedly annoying. 

The collection of documents is in various places across the world. To give an idea of the scope, the collection in Cambridge has 193,000 documents, of which they have digitised 18,000.  You can keyword search the digitised ones - 353 mention cheese :) 

[haveialreadyreadthat]

...the events that constitute our lives are subject to many interpretations, not just by outsiders, but by ourselves. When an unexpected event occurs, we need to explain it not only to others, but to ourselves. So we imbue it with meaning in order to make sense of it. We correct history, reconstructing the past so that it will be consistent with the present, reaffirming our sense of self and place in the world. We reconstruct history every day, not to fool others, but to fool ourselves, because it is integral to the process of going on.

The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughn, 2016 edition

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Ironically, efforts to communicate more can result in knowing less. Rules that guarantee wide distribution of information can increase the amount to the point that a lot is not read... The ability to produce, accumulate, store and exchange information using sophisticated transaction systems has become a symbol of legitimacy for many organisations. Obfuscation parades as clarity: they produce too much, obscuring rather than enlightening.  Systematic censorship is a natural response to this abundance.

The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughn, 2016 edition

[haveialreadyreadthat]

A History of Sub-Saharan Africa, 2nd ed, by Robert O Collins and James M Burns, 2013

This was an attempt to combat my very Euro-centric knowledge of history, and I think it would be a great start for anyone wanting to do the same. It works both thematically and chronologically, with dips into detail of individuals and areas which I find keeps me more engaged with ‘stories’ in history. Any survey history with this sort of breadth is going to both pass over some things, and paint others with a broad brush (for example, the Mau Mau Uprising gets two sentences), but from the perspective of someone coming to this subject with only patchy background knowledge it feels like they have chosen well.

The impact of the environment in shaping political issues is well presented - like empires of horsemen who came to a dead stop at tetse fly areas, as they just couldn’t keep the horses alive to keep expanding. (It’s a pity that books which look into this in more detail eg Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History are so incredibly expensive).

Each chapter ends with “Further Reading”, so it can be used as a guide to go deeper into the subject.

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1830 by Frank Mort, 1988 (this edition with new introduction, 2000)

This book has a very boring cover, so the image is from the Whores of Yore archive - if you have any interest in the history of sex/sexuality etc you should be reading that site and following on twitter.

This is a really good examination of the issues that includes issues that were around class (some reforms to industrial working conditions were demanded because of the perceived danger of working class female sexuality, which according to upper-middle class men needed to be separated and controlled from working class men). For some middle-class women, ‘positive’ social reform was highly bound up in ‘purity’ movements, which put them on the side of the repressive forces of society, even as they felt that they were on the opposite side.

It’s quite in-depth, and a little dry, but well worth the effort.

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Angry White People, by Hsiao-Hung Pai, 2016

The bravery of this author, to go into these groups and communities while not being white, is something that I found both amazing and terrifying (for anyone who would be as worried as I was about the welfare of the author, she ends up in some situations which sound quite scary, but never comes to actual harm). She gets stories from people which expose the feelings of loss and alienation - but she also highlights communities which face the same challenges without going to the far right. One of the parts which stuck with me was the same level of anger being expressed at (white) labourers for a building project being brought in by the construction company from several hundred miles away, as was expressed towards non-UK incomers.

She gets people’s trust and people’s stories, which lets the narrative unfold naturally, without it feeling like polemic.

[haveialreadyreadthat]

Call of the Mall, by Paco Underhill, 2005 Why We Buy, by Paco Underhill, 2011; audiobook read by Mike Chamberlain

The first book is something which is rapidly becoming a historical artefact; online shopping and economic changes I think have changed malls and shopping in general quite considerably; hence my reading the second book after the first. Both are engaging and interesting, highlighing things that affect our behaviour as shoppers. I like the section in ‘Why We Buy’ about older shoppers being slower, and that most shops are not designed to accomodate this - but that relatively simple changes can increase sales from both them and younger groups.

The thing that sticks for me is about the design of shops and malls - that like many things they are designed for what the designers think that people should do, rather than what people actually do.

[haveialreadyreadthat]

The Megalithic Monuments of Britain and Ireland by Chris Scarre, 2007

This is a good introduction and overview, and brings together differences and similarities between megalithic traditions in different parts of the British Isles. Good for contextualising some things that I already knew about individual monuments.