Lady Aristotle

SKIP THIS BOOK

Reviewed: 09-05-22

Alas, Mr. Mortimer has become infected by the 21st century need to signal his self-perceived virtue, no matter the venue.

He is incapable of writing about the Regency period without interjecting himself, and his righteous views (also what he assures us he knows to be OUR views).

The result is an insistent belief readers probably need (or surely would want to hear?)
the author’s strong, repetitive opinions about the comparative (if obvious) merits
of life in the 21st century.

The author knows he’s doing this. He offers a lengthy defense (or demand for applause?)
for his new-style Time Traveler Tour / unexpected, unrequested lecture on current events.

Unfortunately this comes at the end of the book,

This announcement at the finale is a small taste of the experience of the entire book.
Wobbling between explaining (unpersuasive) why his current superior ideas HAD to be included,
along with claiming (very true) how becoming immersed in these different times is so valuable.

Turns out, what is NOT valuable or enjoyable is to be ripped out
of that time you’re visiting,
to hear your Guide scold and berate people who (being dead) cannot respond.

Or to listen to the author purporting to “compensate”
for people who (being readers) can’t respond either.
About 15 male authors were appropriately referenced.
Jane Austen was referred to 15 times! Oh my, in confusion
I felt SO equal!
(Joke)

Every opportunity to judge, mock and read-in meaning to what people on the Tour said and did seemed to be discovered and accomplished. Check.

It was tedious. There is so much more space for details about the Time in the books written in his pre-woke incarnation, unburdened by this impulse
to aggrandize himself by piping up to offer HIS,
more commendable, stands.

Perhaps worth reading the older Time Traveler books?

ONLY IF you can manage not
to become upset by oddly presuming the author endorses everything mentioned
about Restoration or Elizabethan or Medieval Times!

That is how those books were initially received, of course.
It is why they were good.
This one is not.

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37 people found this helpful

Worth Listening to in 2022 - If this Review is relevant for you, you’ll know it.

Reviewed: 07-27-22

This series is a highly valuable historical artifact.

Explanations of the mindset motivating Soviet ideologues is presented clearly.

A history of earlier Russian thinkers you’ve never heard of are explored, and surprisingly point the way. The take-over by men who made their ideology a religion then a Crusade, with brutal authoritarian and totalitarian regime is slightly more explicable.

The case (without irony) is made that perhaps piles of murder victims are instrumental necessities,
exempt from moral judgement, when utopia is the goal.

Stop! Don’t pass on this.

These lectures work on two levels.
The first, a curated history of public intellectuals from Catherine the Great to Communism.
This is fine, so long as you keep in mind the (obvious) different ideas held by those (obviously) not mentioned.
And to be fair, the “mentioned” are worth knowing about, in terms of understanding 1917!

The second level, I was unprepared for:
Professor Steinberg is
a credulous apologist for
Soviet Communism.
No exaggeration, all of it.

Again, stop!
This is NOT a drawback.

It is insight.
Chilling, upsetting, and only safe consumed in small doses, sure
But fascinating.

Bet you didn’t know that with Lenin, Trotsky, Buchanan, Stalin, all of them, any member of the vanguard or “true-believer,”
turns out, everything they did has TWO possible interpretations?

Admit it, you want to hear THAT

Two options. Every time.
The Professor insists.
And explains!

One view (as you might expect) involves themes of coercion, oppression, extreme brutality and murderous violence.

“And that’s fine for what it is“
the Professor allows.
(And that’s . . . a direct quote)

However!
There IS another view. Deeper and more sophisticated, a second view, involving (as you might not see coming)
themes of undoubtedly sincere utopian impulses
and exuberant visions for society’s possibilities!

Either view may have motivated the revolutionaries.
Who can say?

Though some have strong opinions,
as between these views . . .

Gotta listen (while sitting out of reach of your device, please.
It’s expensive!)

If you can take it and commit,
the Professor is what makes
this series of so worthwhile and eye-opening.

Like me, I suspect you’ll conclude the Professor
is genuinely oblivious to the . . . absence, or gaps,
in basic moral perspective
throughout his enthusiastic and erudite presentation.

He IS very and happily aware of
“the contradictions”
implied by the actual facts of what I refer to above.

But as he is a Hegelian or
a neo-Kantian or I forget,
but in any case,
this causes him to
REVEL in the contradictions!

This is a bit unnerving yet he
does sound credulous,
in every case,
that there IS a contradiction.

Meaning, whoever we catch up with in mid-atrocity,
REALLY didn’t start out that way,
most likely.

Don’t laugh.
Have you never considered influences from intervening events? For example,
the Civil War exposed many
to … war-time realities?

Such as, the ability to:
- order people around
- “requisition” food, drink
and women across the land
- practice battlefield justice and
“summary judgement”
- engage in pointless (or
motivated) random brutality
without consequence

The Professor reckons it is
very likely that for some Bolsheviks,
the “experience of the efficiency” of such war measures
posed some quandaries,
when later enduring difficulties and failures everywhere,
once back engaged in the Herculean struggle
to WILL utopia into being.

They
“experienced the efficiency”
again, a direct quote.

The professor’s attitude
is WHY you should listen.
It is an example of what is possible (now, all around us)
by seemingly sensible, harmless folks.

It is NOT a polemic.
The “politics” don’t appear immediately and don’t ever tightly track to modern issues.

NOT to understate the feelings provoked listening to the unconscious moral depravity
woven through this account of “history”

It’s not easy. I recommend making a firm plan to stop after 1-2 lectures, and have
a pre-planned outlet (a walk around the block?).

Your family, friends, pets and small appliances will thank you.

Good Luck,
Kristin

Ps.
Any R. Girard fans?
The unaware brutalizer of the scapegoat
reminisces of past glories
of past violent mobs

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Why Was this Written?

Reviewed: 05-30-21

Mr. Karl Marx was a cranky, pessimistic, pompous self-styled uber-intellect of the 19th century German variety.

His general philosophies, as with most public thinkers of any generation, alas, do not stand the test of time.

What makes Marx singular, then?

Perhaps his audacity, in making specific, bold assertions about future events which he claimed to KNOW were INEVITABILITIES?
All this based on Science he discovered or revealed or concocted, which led to a novel approach to History, which enabled him to KNOW how human progress
would progress.

Except Marx was wrong.

For some reason, Mr. Thompson avoids being clear on this point. Marx. Was. Wrong.
His theories (which is all they ever were, flawed theories and incorrect predictions) were and remain useless.
History itself passed judgment in his own lifetime — Marx did NOT know overly much about the nature or sensibilities of other humans.

Luckily at first, few people relied on
(or had ever heard of) the terribly wrong theories of Marx, based on his irredeemably flawed assumptions about human nature.

Later unfortunately, the name of Marx
was used, invoked as inspiration —
in each and every appalling rendition of
20th century Communist Revolution
made possible and imposed by barbaric, self-styled intellectual authoritarians,
bar none.

Consistently, the hell of Communism
has been observed to be imposed
and to cause misery,
NOT to unfold naturally in an inevitable history.
The utopian nonsense falsely imagined by Marx has been exposed as WRONG!

Why does Mr. Thompson insist on trying to smooth over the literally disproven, worthless truth claims of Marx?

To retain a (perceived) cache
of the Marx brand?

There is a disturbing refusal
(a pretense of confusion) to directly connect Marx and his ideas to
what turned out to be the inevitably
horrific outcomes of the elite revolutions
imposing Communism and claiming inspiration from Marx.

Either way, Marx is irrelevant OR
his name has been hijacked,
his ideas rewritten to conform to reality and he must be treated like others whose ideas lead to totalitarian evil.

Trying to quietly keep the Marx brand in the respectable cannon of Western Philosophy, pretending confusion over his relationship
to Mao or Stalin is shameful!

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