Reviews and Comments

(Review in English -le français n'est pas ma langue maternelle, donc je peux m'exprimer d'une façonne plus efficace en anglais.)

This book provides what I think is a very comprehensive look into the key issues facing the fashion industry- labour, environment and consumerism. In each topic explored, Millet takes care to thoroughly examine the key issues, causes and where possible, potential solutions. There is no doubt that anyone could learn something new from this book.

As someone who had already previously done a lot of research on these topics, there were parts where I feel I didn't learn much. Nevertheless, I think the vast majority of people would have almost no idea about the true effect and scale of the fashion industry. In particular I was shocked to learn of the horrendous impact of the cotton industry internationally, as well as of the American predominance in it. I would be interested to see a further discussion on the effects of other materials (wool, linen, polyester) in this detail. However, the ever strong popularity of cotton meant the emphasis on cotton was entirely reasonable.

Highly recommend this book for anyone looking to know more (not sure if there is an English edition out yet.)

Writing like this makes you love life. It made me want to write about any mundane thing with the same romanticism and positivity Walser approached his life with. What more can you want from a book than that?

Full review: specual.me/posts/berlinstories/

For me, the repetitive objectification of women was infuriating with little payoff. Perhaps it is true that his inability to evaluate women by any measure other than their attractiveness is symptomatic of the general lack of self-expression and open communication in the society, but this doesn't change at all after he experiences the souls of women through psychedelic use (even as his understanding of others in general grows.) The second half of the book was more interesting than the first as he starts to explore psychedelics, but there are probably better books out there if a fictional representation of 60s/70s drug culture is what you're looking for.

Full review: specual.me/posts/timeofchanges/

Is The Grand Chessboard still worth reading? Mostly, I think so. The Grand Chessboard provides fascinating and prescient geopolitical analysis from a very historically influential figure. It is, however, outdated given its 1997 publication.

Full review here: specual.me/posts/thegrandchessboard/

What if Hitler had written science fiction?
This is the question that Norman Spinrad asks in The Iron Dream, and one I can't say I'd ever thought of exploring the answer to before. This story within a story contains an entertaining, homoerotic exploration of a post-Nuclear future where the quest for human genomic purity is centred by a Hitler self-insert. The satire of Nazism simply doesn't miss, even as we have passed the Cold War context in which it was written. Highly recommend giving it a shot if weird/bizarro fiction ever floats your boat.

Full review here: specual.me/posts/theirondream/

This (I think) well-researched book traversed the beginnings of not only the Esperanto movement, but its predecessor Volapuk and failed offshoot Ido. In this, the author weaved throughout prominent social movements and aspects of political context to paint a picture of the people involved in artificial languages and why. The relative success among artificial languages of Esperanto is, according the author, not because of any particular genius of the language itself but of the (accidental) genius of Zamenhof’s approach to starting a community and movement around the language.

This book continually made me think about what could have been had these idealists succeeded in selecting a international language before English won out. The points behind it still make sense. I also wonder what would have happened if Esperantists were not persecuted so harshly during the interwar and Second World War periods. Would we all be speaking Esperanto now? Probably not, but the movement may have been bigger or different in some way.

At any rate, this book is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the social/political history of artificial languages (particularly International Auxiliary Languages).