Our Reads of 2024

The Chaos Agent - Mark Greaney

The 13th book of the series, and quite possibly my favorite. This plays out with multiple storylines threaded together and is much more of a mystery novel than any other in the series. The end result isn't too terribly surprising, I think I had the "who" figured out pretty early on, but the "how" was executed quite well. 543 pages of spies, AI weaponry, a crazy billionaire, people being targeted for assassination on a global scale, and surprisingly large amount of time spent in Cuba.

 

Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather. This novel details New Mexico about a hundred years ago. Could be interesting.

 

If you like that, check Cather’s The Professor’s House.

If not . . . There are millions of other books out there.

 

As the child of parents from Appalachia, I believe I'm fluent in yee haw and the correct nomenclature is "who done did done it."

 

I had no intention of sharing my reading of this book with anyone; it was meant to be a private guilty pleasure. I wasn't seeking a book that would uncover the scandalous secrets of Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Empire. I knew that it was not going to be liked that. In fact, I knew that it would be centered around a girl navigating a male-dominated world. Crystal Hefner was trapped inside the Playboy Mansion. I knew the story before I read Page 1 even through I never heard of her before. I actually expected a more feminist perspective on the matter, but it was just her story. Her story was exactly what I expected it to be.

 

Recently, I came across a Youtube video about the Grand Mosque seizure in 1979. I never heard of it until I watched the video. So, I decided to read more about the topic and came upon this book which was only about 68 pages long.

The book reminded me of a poorly written paper by a college underclassmen or a high school senior. The first 30 pages were more of wikipedia information. However, it did touch some themes of radical Islam that were interesting to me, but that the author did not deep enough.

The insurgents in 1979 focused solely on opposing the Royal House of Saudi Arabia and showed no interest in insurgency beyond Saudi Arabia's borders. The response to the siege prompted Saudi Arabia to take a more proactive stance in spreading Sunni Islam worldwide, particularly through involvement in the conflict against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which set the stage for the rise of Al-Qaeda. Additionally, the Saudi government overlooked Al-Qaeda as their objectives did not target the royal house, unlike the perpetrators of the 1979 siege. However, the authors discussed this thesis so briefly that this paragraph was basically everything to it.

 

I love how a large proportion of your books are basically "This book kinda sucked!"

I had a friend who felt compelled to stop and eat at the sketchiest Chinese restaurants ever and order a very Americanized dish. Your book choices seem a similar quest.

 

For Profit Democracy: Why Government Is Losing the Trust of Rural America a sociological book that relies on talking to actual people and using their experiences (rather than abstract statistics) with the government (in this case the federal government and the state of Georgia) and private corporations conspiring to take land away from poor people in order to build a nuclear power plant that is leaving a lot of the land that some of the people still own less and less usable. My central Illinois homey Loka Ashwood (currently a professor at the University of Kentucky) points out that these people losing land that has been in their family a century and a half (white and black) tend to be moving more toward an anti-state anarchism rather than an anti-big government conservatism, mainly because the problem is that profits matter more than people, which the GOP is cool with.

 

I have not found a book that I like for awhile. For this book, I simply pick the topic rather than a book through reviews or recommendation. I actually do believer the author had something important to say, but just fell short. The siege might have been more important than it seemed. The same year, the Ayatollah took over Iran. It set an alarm all over the Islamic world. They were anti-monarchist Islamists. The threat became very real because of the siege. Consequently, Saudi Arabia slowed down its process of westernization and liberalization, adopting a more conservative stance domestically. While the author only touched upon these points, I supplemented the narrative with my own knowledge of the broader context, expanding on the main thesis of the book.

In the same year as the siege, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Subsequently, the Saudis took on a more significant role in propagating Islam across the region. This increased involvement deepened the partnership between Saudi Arabia and the CIA in Afghanistan. The author implied that the mujahideen were predominantly anti-Soviet or anti-Western factions, and the Saudis backed them strategically because they did not pose a threat to Saudi Arabia or its monarchy. This support ultimately allowed Al-Qaeda to operate without challenge from the Saudis until the events of 9/11.

So, he had something to say, but he did not go into it. He basically wrote a paragraphs more than I did on the main thesis.

 

The Anxious Generation - Jonathan Haidt

This is a fairly thorough look at how kids develop, what has happened to mental health among adolescents and young adults since approximately 2012, and suggestions for how to stem the tide.

The book starts with a fairly simple question after looking at the changes in survey data of adolescent mental health starting around 2012: "Why was their a synchronized international increase in rates of adolescent anxiety and depression?"

Regarding how to build healthier childhoods, the suggestions are:

1. No smartphones before high school.
2. No social media before 16.
3. Phone-free schools.
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.

Haidt recounts some of his own parenting choices, including allowing his 13-year-old son to attend a late night match at the US Open unsupervised. He also delves into some concepts like Nassim Taleb's "antifragile" description of humanity.

He also suggests a loose "ladder" from childhood to adulthood:

Age 6: The age of family responsibility.
Age 8: The age of local freedom.
Age 10: The age of roaming.
Age 12: The age of apprenticeship.
Age 14: The beginning of high school.
Age 16: The beginning of internet adulthood.
Age 18: The beginning of legal adulthood.
Age 21: Full legal adulthood.

When digging into the data around the mental health issues that have arisen, Haidt digs into some of the differences between boys and girls, longitudinal studies linking problematic social media use at one measure to ADHD at the next measure, the use of reducing/removing social media in reducing feelings of loneliness and depression withing 3 weeks, and the fact that some of the researchers that questioned the early research of Jean Twenge and Jon Haidt had changed their views once they removed all digital entertainment options and focused solely on the social media data. He also points out that 12 of the 14 RCT studies at the time of the publishing showed causal effects between social media use and mental health outcomes once you get past the one week mark in reducing or removing social media usage.

Finally, he digs into some practical things that can be, like requiring device manufacturers to install easy to use parental control software on devices that will be used primarily by minors to allow parents to block social media, pornography sites, etc. on their children's devices, having schools go phone-free, bringing back much larger amounts of recess and free play at schools (US students average 27 minutes outdoors at school while US prisoners get 2 hours per day), having parents set reasonable time boundaries on device usage, etc.

This was really solid, though the data stops in 2023 so a few of the more recent meta-analyses and RCTs aren't covered.

 

Ad Infinitum by Nicholas Ostler. This book describes itself as a biography of the Latin language. I like the writing style of the author, though the Latin phrases are often beyond me. I only got to Latin II in high school and didn't take it in college. It should be an interesting read.

 

This sounds like a very interesting book.
It also reminds me why I am thankful to have never spawned and raised children.

However, I think the comparison to prisoners is off base, though.
Prisoners spend 24 hours a day in prison, so 2 hours a day seems reasonable (and probably way too low).

Children spend 7 hours a day in school, so half an hour seems reasonable.

Kids can have several hours a day of free time, if their parents choose to allow it.

I think the more interesting study about that time would be the anxiety of kids with all that structured time (in organized events) v. kids who are free to spend time unstructured "play" time.

Of course, too many of the second group of kids would just piss away that time on social media and video game, as opposed to pissing away that time doing other things.

 

Half an hour is far below what used to be normal and there are schools that have reintegrated a lot more free play and recess time that are seeing the social factors improve with small improvements in grades as well. Keeping a 10 year old boy stuffed in classrooms from 8-3, with 30 minutes (usually combined with lunch these days) to run off some energy is contrary to everything we know about how boys learn and grow.

 

I remember being able to play full games of football, soccer, and basketball during recess. My kids have like 10-15 minutes here and there, and I agree that it sucks.

 

You must know a different level of schools or go deeper into the past because I never knew more than a half hour of recess and recess started for me in 1970.

 

As a kid, we always had half an hour of recess, lunch was half an hour and recess was the other half.

Now, we also had gym class.

We also had study hall for one period a day.

If the 27 minutes is lunch, recess, gym and study hall, then I totally agree that is not enough time.

Why just boys?

 

I started school in 1980 in the DC suburbs. In elementary school we had a morning and evening recess, PE class, and lunch to break up the day. Middle school had PE, lunch and a free period built in that most people spent outside or in the gym. HS still had mandatory PE until grade 12, lunch, and a free period. At every level there was significant time built into the schedule to allow for lots of physical activity and unstructured activities. My nephew came through the same system 15 years later and most of that was gone with recess and free periods completely removed and PE being voluntary after elementary school.

 

There's a good amount of research showing boys need much more physical activity during their formative years. Girls benefit as well, but not nearly as much.

Additional issues are how much more homework is required these days, the stunning amount of standardized testing (Texas now does it at every grade - in VA I did tests 3 times before the SAT), and the reality that parenting and social norms have changed so that now people call the cops if they see a child/group of children walking alone (this is the most recent example I'm aware of) when that was normal during my childhood.

Kids, especially boys, aren't moving, exploring, and learning to manage the world around them anymore and when combining that with smartphones/social media they're arriving in college without the basic skills to handle the normal pressures of becoming an adult and are being diagnosed with anxiety and depression at levels that are exponentially higher than they were prior to 2012.

 

For the record, I was objecting to the comparison of school age children to prisoners.

While I do not doubt that the research demonstrates what @TheJoeGreene is stating about the need for variety and exercise and "free time" during the school day, my point is that there is a lot of time for kids outside of the school institution for children. Not so for those who are incarcerated.

That was why I think it is not a fair comparison.

Did you have any classes?
Really, that sounds like a great balance and better than I had at school.

Voluntary PE after elementary school is a terrible, terrible idea, ESPECIALLY now.

Same here. We had recess attached to the lunch period.
We did have PE everyday.

This. 100%

Growing up, I received plenty of physical activity just because, disorganized sports, bike riding, building things etc. Just, well, "being a kid."
I suspect there is far less of that now. And THAT is likely a big problem.

 

As a college professor (and former intern host), I can attest to this.

I am fortunate that I teach at a largely commuter college (we do have campus housing, but that houses less than 1% of the students), so most of my students have lives. Also, I teach in a program that builds professional skills, so I have very few students who are right out of high school, but I have some.
That being said, the percentage of students requesting accommodations far exceeds what I saw 15 years ago. Also, for better or worse (mostly better), students are far more forthcoming when discussing their need and issues.

Better as I can better accommodate them.
Worse, as i don't need to hear it. It is incredibly depressing to hear how anxious and depressed people are.

 

I will be doing the dishes in the house more. By doing them this week I have been able to listen to confessions of an economic hitman. I accidentally went an hour into the new confessions before I realized it was the new confessions and not the old one. There are on the third edition of that one so i gonna check this third edition out then go to new confessions.

 

I also want say I used Hoopla and it's great, I will sing it's praises to all.