{"id":3662,"date":"2011-01-03T05:04:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T05:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2011-01-03T05:04:36","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T05:04:36","slug":"best-book-of-2010-that-i-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3662","title":{"rendered":"Best Book of 2010 ( that I read)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saw a number of interesting posts on this &#8220;best book&#8221; \u00a0theme, starting with <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.schaefersblog.com\/my-favorite-books-of-2010\/\"><strong>Cameron Schaefer<\/strong> <\/a>and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chicagoboyz.net\/archives\/18623.html\"><strong>Lexington Green<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and Cameron challenged me to make a comment in this regard.<\/p>\n<p>I am reading two excellent books right now,<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1847065236?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=zenpundit-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1847065236\"> <strong>The Human Face of War<\/strong><\/a> by <strong>Col. Jim Storr<\/strong> and <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0674035194?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=zenpundit-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0674035194\">The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire <\/a><\/strong>by <strong>Edward Luttwak<\/strong>, but as these are unfinished, they are out of the running. So are any books that are fiction, as I am poorly qualified to evaluate books purely upon their literary merit alone. I leave that to the English majors.<\/p>\n<p>As my criteria for &#8220;best&#8221;\u00a0will be the book with\u00a0&#8220;most profound idea&#8221; then&#8230;.the winner is&#8230;..<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/052138673X?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=zenpundit-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=052138673X\"><strong>The Collapse of Complex Societies<\/strong><\/a><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=zenpundit-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=052138673X\" height=\"1\" \/><\/strong>\u00a0by <strong>Joseph Tainter. <\/strong>As I wrote recently:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>A superb academic book, previously featured and reviewed in the blogosphere by <\/strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/globalguerrillas.typepad.com\/globalguerrillas\/2010\/04\/the-simplification-of-complex-societies.html\"><strong>John Robb<\/strong><\/a><strong> and <\/strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com\/?s=collapse+of+complex+societies\"><strong>Joseph Fouche<\/strong><\/a><strong>, The Collapse of Complex Societies embarks upon a critical examination and partial de-bunking of theories that purport to explain the &#8220;sudden&#8221;\u00a0fall of great empires, such as Rome or the vanishing of the Mayans.\u00a0With caveats, Tainter settles on declining marginal returns from increasing societal investment in complexity as a rough\u00a0proximate cause capable of subsuming a &#8221; significant range of human behavior, and a number of social theories&#8221; under it&#8217;s rubric. Highly recommended.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"532\" src=\"http:\/\/photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1156921665l\/477.jpg\" height=\"761\" \/><\/p>\n<p>What was your favorite book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saw a number of interesting posts on this &#8220;best book&#8221; \u00a0theme, starting with Cameron Schaefer and Lexington Green\u00a0and Cameron challenged me to make a comment in this regard. I am reading two excellent books right now, The Human Face of War by Col. Jim Storr and The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,191,420,321,133,247,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-anthropology","category-authors","category-blogosphere","category-book","category-reader-response","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662","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=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}