Book report 7

Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker

This is one of the books my sister, Piglet, had to read for one of her Master’s courses and bought for my Kindle for Christmas.  All I know, is it was more interesting than anything I read in graduate school.  It provides great detail of myriad aspects of the “pyrate” life between 1716 and 1726, the era from which most of our common images of pirates are taken.  For example, one of the first things pirates really did during this time after taking a boat was to sew a black flag with a skull and crossbones, which signified that they were beholden to no country.  While pirates were more numerous during this time than at any other, they were also being pursued more vigorously by governments and executed in record numbers.  Pirating as a career was virtually non-existent after this decade of looting and debauchery.

Although pirates lived up to every image we have of them burning boats, stealing every bit of gold down to the Captain’s fillings, and surviving mainly on rum, the author takes a very sympathetic view of the pirating life.  Prior to 1716, most pirates were actually privateers with charters from one government or another to attack an enemy country’s boats as an unofficial extension of the Navy.  However, during this lull in hostilities between Spain and England, there were record numbers of unemployed sailors looking for a way to support themselves using the only skills they possessed.  Given the surge in supply, conditions on merchant ships were more horrendous than usual, with many likening the harsh working conditions in exchange for meagre rations to slavery.  In fact, sailors on the slave ships died at rates similar to the human cargo from Africa.  In such abysmal conditions, many sailors came to see hanging if tried for mutiny as preferable to taking what work they could onboard a ship or begging on land.

In fact, most pirate charters were surprisingly democratic in response to the unfair dictatorships under which most of them had previously laboured.  They elected their captain, but they also elected a quartermaster to oversee the captain’s decisions.  A council was usually convened for particularly important decisions, like which route to take or whether to attack a nearby ship.  Neither the captain nor the quartermaster received better rations or a significantly larger share of the loot than they common sailors.  A share of the loot from each raid was typically set aside to form an insurance pool should any pirate be injured or take ill.  Really, the pirates were just ahead of their time; they were trying to create a world where people were treated equitably and with dignity in a time when that just wasn’t done.  It was such a threat to those who had the power, whether merchants or governments, that they had to be wiped out as quickly as possible.

Despite having full bellies and fair treatment, most pirates didn’t expect to live long.  Between government executions and the general hazards of a violent life at sea, mortality estimates range between 10-50% of pirates on the sea during this decade.  As most of their mottos reflected, though, a short life as a pirate was better lived than a long life as a slave.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

It’s difficult to know how seriously to take this book since the author has a clear agenda: to vilify the CIA.  Although I haven’t yet finished the book, he’s clearly building to the argument that the CIA lead us into war in Iraq due to organisational flaws that have surfaced and been ignored for decades.  However, many of his most damning passages are taken directly from reports written within the CIA and only released in the last ten years.

The book is a litany of CIA operations gone wrong, which were typically sold to the American public as successes.  Even the sitting presidents during most of the CIA’s history relied on the CIA to report on their own effectiveness, which often constituted misplaced trust.  From just after World War II, when the CIA was created, right through to the present day, it seems that the CIA has attempted to interfere with the sovereign government in any nation it viewed as suspect or merely inconvenient.  Until the end of the Cold War, this was most conveniently done by labelling a government “Communist”, even if they didn’t even know the meaning of the word.  In many cases, we worked to replace democratically elected governments with right-wing dictatorships that we thought we could control.  I think the author summed it up nicely by saying that we partnered with communists to fight fascism during World War II but reversed that to partner with fascists to fight communists ever since.  Although both are flawed in practice, at least I like the ideas behind communism more than those underlying fascism.

On a personal note, it was interesting to see how many times staffing was suggested as the primary weakness in creating a legitimate intelligence force.  It was repeatedly suggested that the CIA doesn’t hire the “right type” of people, nor can they retain the talent they do hire.  This is the basis of my field, and the sister company of the organisation for whom I worked in Minneapolis and Sydney actually had the contract to re-vamp the CIA’s hiring practices around 2005.  I wish I’d been involved in that project, and I’d be interested to know if they were able to make a difference.  I often find that even when clients are paying us massive sums to “fix” their problems, they often create the greatest barriers by narrowly defining what changes are possible, failing to implement the suggested tools and processes, or undermining the legitimacy of the work we do.

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden

The author is the executive editor of the New Yorker who was given a packet of letters her grandmother wrote during her year teaching on the Western Slope of Colorado.  In 1916, the area was still extremely remote with children skiing several hours on barrel staves to reach the school in the winter.  Making the book even more interesting for me, the area lies just outside Steamboat Springs, which is now a popular ski town that Eric and I passed through several times.  She even visits Strawberry Springs, which was then a camp for aspiring dancers and is now an amazing hot spring known for allowing nude bathing after dark. 

The grandmother, Dot, and her best friend were almost 30 years old and seeking yet another escape from marriage and polite society.  So far, they’d managed to spend a year in Europe and almost as long in New York City since graduating from Smith University, whose president felt that girls should complete courses in the same subject areas as at men’s universities, even though women couldn’t be expected to learn at the same level of depth or complexity as men.  The girls’ positive attitudes toward things like waking up with a thick blanket of snow on the duvet atop their shared bed and breaking the ice on their wash water was surprising given the affluent lives they lived back East.  Ironically, the author remembers that despite being unconventional for her time, her grandmother still admonished her for any behaviour that could be interpreted as “common”, which included wearing trousers!

As the year concluded, both women moved on to lives that better fit others’ expectations of them.  However, neither had an easy life, and I’m sure their experiences on the frontier prepared them better for disappointments and tough circumstances than following the path of most of their peers would have.

Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong by Emily Oster

I listen to an NPR podcast called Planet Money that presents two short episodes a week relating principles of economics to current events.  A couple of weeks ago, they had an episode with this author, who did both her undergraduate and doctoral work in Economics at Harvard.  She and her husband, also an economist, now both teach at the University of Chicago. 

When she got pregnant, she was frustrated by the lack of clear data available to support decision making.  As she dug more deeply into some of the commonly stated “facts”, she found that many were based on outdated research or practices.  As one example, the ban on food in most delivery rooms stems from the risk of regurgitating food into the lungs and choking to death…back in 1950s when women were put under general anaesthesia to give birth.  Even if you have a C-section these days, you’re not going to be knocked out. 

Because the medical professionals with whom she interacted during her pregnancy did not seem to be any better informed than online chat forums, she decided to examine the source of conventional wisdom on a number of topics related to pregnancy in order to draw her own conclusions.  As someone with a strong background in statistics and research design, she was able to identify flaws in a number of commonly cited studies that essentially render their results meaningless.  She was also able to interpret the results of more rigorously executed studies to determine for herself what behaviours were safe.  She acknowledges that individual circumstances contribute to decision making but presents the evidence as clearly as possible to support that process.

Although a number of the decisions for which she presents data are well behind me now, and I think I worried a lot less than she did about many of them, it was still interesting to see how little the data supports so many of the things I’ve been told (ok, mostly read online since we haven’t seen many doctors).  Very helpful was the discussion of data relating to the actual process of giving birth since that’s starting to be something niggling in the back of my head.  Although reading about labour for an hour or so made me feel a little short of breath, it’s probably good to get used to the idea that this baby is coming out eventually.

Bound South by Susan Rebecca White

After reading about labour, I needed some brain candy.  This was a fun novel about the modern South, specifically Atlanta, that attempted to explore substantive topics like race/class relations and acceptance of homosexuality.  I finished it in just over 24 hours, so clearly it was a fun read.

Nancy Wake by Peter FitzSimons

Nancy was an Australian who was heavily decorated by the French, English, and US governments for her exploits with the French resistance during WWII.  Obviously her strength, courage, and perseverance during several years behind the lines in occupied France were admirable, but I was almost more impressed by unrestrained approach to life.  As a struggling runaway from an oppressive mother, she used a sudden windfall of 200 pounds to book first class passage to England via Canada.  Rather than travel more economically to leave some funds off which to live, she drank the best champagne and stayed in the best hotels all along the way.  Throughout her youth, rather than save something for tomorrow, she maximised every experience.  At the beginning of WWII, she and her husband entertained lavishly, despite being aware that eventually privation and rationing would leave them nothing to fill even their own plates.  To be fair, before that time came, Nancy was fighting in the forest and her husband had been tortured to death by the Gestapo, so there was no point saving for later.  As a planner who spends more time worrying about tomorrow than enjoying today, I wish I could be a little more like Nancy.  I hope I can encourage our daughter to enjoy life more and worry less.