On the Fifies

I write this to tell anyone that is interested that David Halberstam is a fine storyteller. This is true. You will like his books. There is nothing I know to say otherwise. I think knowing this is important, especially if you have not yet opened up a book of his yet.

You see, the 50s is my second book of his, and the same general rule applies. David Halberstam is a fine storyteller, period. However, this is both a pat on the back and a critique. He tells great stories based on the people living the stories he tells. The shame is that his gift is limited. A reader of this book may know some of the big events that happened in the 50s and the people associated with those events, but they will not know what it was like to live those events.

I like Halberstam’s books. They work, but.. But. He writes biographies. This may work if they were not expected to be histories. Individual men (and they are mostly men) are profiled and what they do are profiled. They make actions and they do things that have an effect in the culture. The shame is that they build walls around the world. I have no idea what it was like to be a person in the 50s based on the book. I know, on some level, what happened but I am not that person.
Buy the book, by all means. He does a good job of bringing you in. I am glad I read the book and learned all he brought forth for me to learn. I just wish there was less a focus on people and more of a cultural criticism of the people and the time covered in the book. My own facile view of the time is based on the television shows of the time. These are dealt with much too late in the book to really view the considerations I care about. I wanted to compare reality versus the television shows that granted the best view of reality I knew. Halberstam shows that the visual culture is far removed from reality, but I hoped to engage that much earlier. That necessary and important social criticism does not happen until chapter 34 (pg 508).

Overall, I would recommend this book, as I would the entire author’s work, but I would recommend that you explore more works for context of the period and the

Some thoughts on Ernest Gellner’s _Nations and Nationalism_

I like the book. My wife told me that I tore it up. Nationalism is something that has interested me recently, especially as I see it as a major stumbling-block in improving the course of mankind in the world. Nations and flags are something you hold onto instead of opening up your arms and hands to the idea of a better world. That said, I have read little in the subject, the most pertinent being Hobsbawm’s essays in the collection _The Invention of Tradition_. I am just opening up the hermeneutic circle in hopes of someday closing it.

I do have several critiques of the book, and many of them are answered or at least brought up in the introduction to this addition. The primary critique is that the book is overly generalized. To illustrate his concept of nationalism only arising after industrialization, Gellner uses a hypothetical country to make his point. While I understand he is trying to construct a general model of nationalism, his experiences and theories naturally have to be based off of real situations to be a working model. All nations and nationalistic movements will differ in specifics from the model he creates. Does this show the strength of his model, or its weaknesses.

A secondary critique is that the models he uses are entirely too Eurocentric. The book could be titled _European Nations and Nationalism_ quite easily. The post-colonial struggles for a definition of nationalistic identity all over the formerly colonized worlds are give short shrift, and I think this is because they do not fit as easily into the model he argues for in this book. The idea that the European culture imposed on the developing world is too strong to be subverted by one of the native folk cultures seems to me rather patronizing in a cultural aspect. That many of the colonial borders still exists should be reason to reexamine the model, not look for reasons why the cultures do not fit the model working in it.

A final, more personal critique is Gellner’s dismissal of the Marxist view of history. While the Marxist view can be open to some of the critiques I have against Gellner, I feel that the burden lies to Gellner to show more particularly how his model is superior to one that has been studied and refined through academic discourse over the past century and a half. I recognize that this book is long in print, so I am sure some Marxist historian has taken up Gellner and his glib dismissal of the Marxist system. I respect the cultural model drawn by Gellner, but I doubt the prevalence of the influence on a large scale of the socio-linguistic system he uses as the center of his theory. To me, class still seems like a larger division, even if Gellner disagrees. I still find this work interesting and illuminating, so I will not dismiss it despite my critiques. I have to read more on the subject

On The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman

This is a very good, even-handed analysis of the the WalMart effect on the economy from the local consumer to the globalized manufacturing of the products we consume ever day. It was well-written and easy to read.

My main complaint is that the writer at times speaks of some of what we might call the company's evils in a most dispassionate manner. At the time of reading, this feels like he is implicitly condones the actions of the companies and its suppliers (even though its clear the suppliers have little option in going along with WalMart).

Overall, I think the objectivity of the author plays a key part on the effectiveness of the book. His bias is in the pages, but they do not yell too loud. Anyone looking int the effect of late twentieth century capitalism on America would be well served to read this book.