Media Entertainment Reviews: 1. The book "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the rise of Western Power" by Victor Davis Hanson was a great read. I am not 100% convinced by his arguments, but he makes them well and entertainingly. The basic question hanson seeks to answer is why westerners are so danged good at war. His answer is a cultural dynamism that is missing from Asian, Native American and African societies. It isn't bravery and it isn't better strategy or even better technology. Or, I should say, those factors are not the basis of the superiority in war (not necessarily in battle). They are the results of the cultural dynamism that gave westerners more freedom, more capitalism and a greater stake in the outcome.
The battles are Salamis, Guagamela, Cannae (one the westerners called Romans lost in a great slaughter. Hanson makes the point that after this incredible defeat of its main army just miles from Rome, the Romans didn't surrender, they simply put the entire society into the war. Meanwhile, Hannibal and the Carthaginians had no idea of how to take advantage of this defeat. In their experience, the enemy gave up after such superiority had been demonstrated.), Poitiers, Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke's Drift, Midway and Tet.
Hanson makes much of the fact that many cultures consider it o.k. to torture and murder prisoners while they consider the western concept of absolute annihiliation of the enemy military to be barbaric.
Great read and highly recommended.
2. Good CDs: Allison Krauss's "Forget About It" is a must for Bluegrass lovers. "Phillips 66," the last album from John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas, is almost a return to his folkie days in The Travelers. His voice was just about shot, but his songs, especially "Me and My Uncle" and "Southern Boys" are worth the price of admission. Nickel Creek is great bluegrass from a bunch of twenty-somethings who have been performing for more than half their lives. The bluegrass version of "Spit on a Stranger" sounds like that's the way it should have been sung in first place. The Stone Coyotes "Born To Howl" has some great songs. Admittedly, Barbara's voice has one of those Edie Brickell type sounds I find hard to stomach, but, unlike Edie, the material is outstanding. |
