Short Reviews
Mark Mazower, editor After the War was Over:
Reconstructing the family, nation, and state in Greece, 1943-1960,
Princeton University Press, 2000.
The book is a collection of articles
that for the most part provide an excellent account of a dark period of Greek history.
While a few of the articles are weak the majority are very strong. I lived
through that period although, being in Athens, I did not experience the worst of
it. To the best of my knowledge the book is accurate and objective, covering the
atrocities of both the left and the right. Because the articles originated as
papers in a scholarly conference they are not easy to read but this is
compensated by the extensive documentation of their contents. [posted May 2002]
Marjorie Housepian Dobkin Smyrna 1922: The Destruction
of a City, NewMark Press, 1998.
A moving account of
the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 that ended with the expulsion of the Greek
and Armenian populations of Asia Minor. The book documents that the
Greek-Turkish war of 1919-22 was not really a war between the Greeks and the
Turks but a conflict between the British (using the Greeks as proxies) on one
hand and the French and Italians on the other (using the Turks as proxies). The
prize was the oil of what is now Iraq. (That country did not exist then;
its area was still part of the Ottoman empire.) The author does an excellent job
in documenting the role of the outsiders in stirring up trouble amongst the
local populations. The competition between the Western European powers resulted
in enormous suffering not only amongst the Greeks and Armenians but also amongst
the Turks themselves. [posted May 2002](Amz)
Bernard Lewis The Middle East, A brief History of
the last 2000 years, Touchtone, 1995 and
Bernard Lewis What Went Wrong? Western Impact and
Middle Eastern Response, Oxford, 2002.
There is a fair amount of overlap between these two books. The first is a thorough
(over 400 pages) history. The second is more concise (about 160 pages) but it is
not a subset of the first. It contains significant additional material with
emphasis on recent history. (The book was in page proofs when the
9/11 attack occurred.) Unless you have a strong interest in Middle East history
you may not find the first book interesting. I would recommend the second book for
anyone who would like to know more about that region than the what is provided
in TV news or newspaper articles. Click here for a detailed
discussion of the second book. [posted June 2002]
Michael T. Kaufman Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic
Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
A moderately interesting
book. Soros claims that his interest in philosophy has helped devise the trading
strategies that made him a billionaire and the book devotes some space on
discussing Soros' philosophical studies. However Soros's own son is quoted as
saying that his father trades on instinct and that the philosophical explanations are
"bullshit." Analyzing what makes a person a genius in the arts, music,
science, or finance has never been easy (if at all possible) so the book should
not faulted too much for coming up short in this respect. The most interesting
parts are those dealing with Soros' youth in Hungary during WW-II when as a Jew
had to exercise considerable ingenuity in order to avoid deportation. The book
seems to ignore the impact of Jewish culture (with its high regard for learning)
as a motivation for Soros' pursue of studies in philosophy. [posted June 2002](Amz)
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