{"id":2911,"date":"2008-10-25T17:18:13","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T17:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2911"},"modified":"2008-10-25T17:19:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T17:19:55","slug":"reading-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2911","title":{"rendered":"Reading…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I’ve finished reading <\/em><\/strong>Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Tom Holland<\/strong>. The Persian Wars are the ur-narrative in the recesses of the West’s cultural imagination and Holland does his usual superb\u00a0job of translating ancient conflict into a modern context without losing the authenticity of the former. It’s a\u00a0jarring but a\u00a0probably accurate analogy for Xerxes <\/strong>to view the Spartans, who murdered his ambassadors in an unprecedented act of blasphemy,\u00a0as a “terrorist state” on the far-flung\u00a0fringes of civilization. This Persian viewpoint is interwoven by Holland\u00a0with the traditional historiographic Greek view of Persia as the harbinger of Eastern tyranny and slavery. A fun read!<\/p>\n

Still reading The Discourses of Epictetus – The Handbook – Fragments (Everyman’s Library)<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0roughly one section per night. Epictetus translates well, unsurprising as the former slave turned philosopher was the ultimate up by his bootstraps thinker. Willl comment further when finished.<\/p>\n

Started reading my review copy of Thomas Barnett’s<\/a><\/strong> Great Powers: America and the World After Bush<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong> I can see the significant changes in editing, revision\u00a0and updating from the rough draft I read months ago.\u00a0Great Powers<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is going to pack a punch and will spark debate because Tom is departing\u00a0sharply\u00a0from the unimaginative, Left-Right, Dove-Hawk formulaic debate\u00a0over Iraq\/GWOT and his argument will either be embraced ( because there are\u00a0ideas in Great Powers<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0a wide spctrum of the population will like) or be bitterly attacked ( because there are many ideas that will infuriate robotic partisans) or both. It won’t be ignored.<\/p>\n

I also see that more changes may be coming and that my uncorrected proof edition isn’t the final iteration<\/a>, either. Look for a full review here in late November or early December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 I’ve finished reading Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West\u00a0by Tom Holland. The Persian Wars are the ur-narrative in the recesses of the West’s cultural imagination and Holland does his usual superb\u00a0job of translating ancient conflict into a modern context without losing the authenticity of the former. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,420,5,133,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-authors","category-barnett","category-book","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}