Back to the Books

Things being as they are, I think it's time to re-read some Eric Hoffer.

Hmmm. Looks like The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements might be a good one right now.

I guess I'll follow that with another reading of that old standard, Charles Mckay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Need to find that quote:
 "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Don't know what put these books in my mind ...

UPDATE: Back to my sociology roots, here's pretty good video from the Khan Academy and Jefffrey Walsh on Aspects of Collective Behavior

Never Too Old to Learn Something New: Currently Reading

Here are some of the open books I have on my Kindle (why yes, they are Kindle books!).

First, a couple of Naval gems I missed during my misspent youth studying the Law and other things:

Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China by RADM Kemp Tolley, USNI description:

The U.S. Navy's patrol of the Yangtze River began in 1854 when the USS Susquehanna was sent to China to safeguard increasing American commerce in the region. As Kemp Tolley explains in this entertaining history of the patrol in which he was to later serve, the presence of gunboats along the river greatly benefited the integrity of the shoreline factories. Tolley was a young naval officer in the 1930s when assigned gunboat duty, first in the Mindanao, then in the Tutuila, and finally the Wake in August 1941. His colorful description of life as a "river rat" is filled with anecdotes about the resourceful and high-spirited sailors who manned the old riverboats in that distant land.

History, politics, and a sympathetic eye for the plight of the Chinese people - well written and an interesting read.

Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology by Norman Friedman , USNI description:

While the overriding image of the First World War is of the bloody stalemate on the

Western Front, the overall shape of the war arose out of its maritime character. It was essentially a struggle about access to worldwide resources, most clearly seen in Germany’s desperate attempts to counter the American industrial threat, which ultimately drew the United States into the war. This radical new book concentrates on the way in which each side tried to use or deny the sea to the other, and in so doing describes rapid wartime changes not only in ship and weapons technology but also in the way naval warfare was envisaged and fought. Melding strategic, technical, and tactical aspects, Friedman approaches the First World War from a fresh perspective and demonstrates how its perceived lessons dominated the way navies prepared for the Second World War.

Here's one that helps me look at our current culture(s) and crowd psychology:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. Wikipedia description:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions". MacKay was an accomplished teller of stories, though he wrote in a journalistic and somewhat sensational style.

The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetisers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Present-day writers on economics, such as Michael Lewis and Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles.[2] Scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan mentioned the book in his own discussion about pseudoscience, popular delusions, and hoaxes.

Yes, it's an "early study," but it's a good one.

Open Books

Books currently being read:

Narrow Seas, Small Navies, and Fat Merchantmen (1990) by Charles W. Kobdurger, Jr.:

In the narrow seas , more often than not, it is the bordering small navies which now call the tune to which the super-navies dance. It is they who determine who shall pass and the price he shall pay .
. .
In these small navies, there are few conventional flat-deck aircraft carriers or nuclear-powered submarines. Ship types tend to be down-sized across the board. If they do have a carrier it will be a V/STOL one. They replace destroyers with fast attack craft.
They pay for this in comparative radius of action and in sea-keeping ability --- neither of great interest in most narrow seas it should be noted.

Asymmetric Warfare at Sea: The Case of Sri Lanka (2016) by Jayanath Colombage (Admiral, former Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy):

Maritime terrorism is not just a possibility but a real one. Recent history indicates that the general vulnerability of the maritime environment has become more apparent. To analyze the maritime terrorist threats,
it is not enough to study only the capabilities and motives of terrorist groups, but one must also observe the maritime industry, shipping practices, the vulnerability of the shipping trade as well as counter measures taken by the authorities and other institutions which are entrusted with the security of the shipping routes.

USNI on Naval Cooperation (2015) edited by Sam J. Tangredi. Excerpt from CDRE Adeniyi Adejimi Osinowo's "Africa Partnership Station Helps All Sides" (2011):

APS provides a platform for addressing both African maritime-security limitations and non-African stakeholders' strategic interests. With the extent of challenges and thinness of resources, it is imperative that African maritime services cooperate at all levels to tackle the situation. This mission can be seen as representing a necessary compromise between pride of sovereignty and maritime-security capability. It is an effort-multiplier benefiting all sides.

Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World (2010) by Martin N. Murphy:

Several of the factors that favour pirate activity also favour maritime insurgent/terrorist activity. . .

The overriding common factor is politics. While this might be obvious in the case of insurgency and terrorism, including that weak states are less capable of resisting insurgent or terrorist infiltration , it is possibly less evident when it comes to piracy.

Throughout history, however, the ebb and flow of pirate fortunes has been inextricably linked with the ebb and flow of power on land, with the power and policies of states and their political leaders, strong as well as weak. . . .

Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies Series) (2014) from Michael McDevit, "Small Navies in Asia: The Strategic Rationale for Growth":

The ROKN shifted focus to littoral war fighting, concentrating on the North Korean submarine threat. Pyongyang's onventory of midget submarines (40 small 300 tonners, and 100 minis) is challenging. One of the most embarassing features of the post-sinking (sinking of the ROKN Cheonan) investigation was the finding that ASW readiness for ships operating in the Yellow (West) Sea was neglected because of the ROK Navy assumption that the Yellow Sea was too shallow for submarine operations.

General Lee: His Campaigns in Virginia 1861-1865 (1906) by Walter H. Taylor:

General Lee anticipated a severe struggle. There were many prominent men on each side of the controversy who contended that the war would be of short duration ; with them there was a disposition to underrate the steadfastness of purpose and the endurance of the other side; and they pretended to expect a sharp, short, and decisive contest. The first call of Mr. Lincoln for volunteers was for three months' service, and the leaders on both sides contended that the war would not last ninety days. General Lee took an entirely different view of the case. He seemed to realize the magnitude of the impending conflict; he gaged correctly the indomitable will, the untiring energy, the fertile resources, the pride of opinion, that characterized the people of the North ; and he knew full well that there would be no holiday affair in a conflict between the two sections of the United States, each animated by a traditional devotion to cherished institutions, each boasting the proud lineage of the Anglo-Saxon, each determined to win or die, and each confident of success.

He looked upon the vaporific declamations of those on each side who proposed to wipe their adversaries from the face of the earth in ninety days as bombastic and foolish. Notwithstanding his views, so freely expressed, and his recommendation that the volunteers be enlisted for the war, the Virginia troops, as also most of those of the other Southern States, were enlisted for twelve months. The civil authorities could not bring themselves to believe that there could possibly be any need for an armed force beyond that time.

So many lessons to be learned from history and examining assumptions that come back to bite those who assumed.

In many ways, naval fiction helps to focus on possibilities that might have to be dealt with. In this vein, Claude Berube's The Aden Effect and Syren's Song and Singer and Cole's Ghost Fleet are interesting to expand your discomfort zone.

UPDATE: Forgot to add a gem, Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. Also Sarah Rose's For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History (2011) which was industrial espionage on a grand scale, indeed.

Finally, if you want an understanding of China's 100 years of humiliation, you could start with The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (2004) by Hanes and Sanello.

UPDATE 2: Fixed bad links for Hopkirk and Rose books.