Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, Jason K Stearns, ISBN 978–1–61039–107–8.
The Congo war is sometimes compared to World War I, and the destructiveness and numerous actors do make the comparison somewhat attractive. But what it reminded me of was the US invasion of Iraq and its sequelae: a rapid and successful invasion with a clear goal of toppling an unmitigatedly unpleasant dictator who at first barely apprehended a genuine threat, but unsupported by any realistic planning for the day after victory, and followed by years of conflict raging from terrorism to open warfare drawing in multiple neighbouring countries.
The…
Monstress vol. 1: Awakening, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda.
I encountered the first issue of this as a Humble Bundle sampler (http://ewx.livejournal.com/626752.html) and liked it, and bought it cheap on ComiXology during a sale. From a high level, the setting isn’t the most original: the world is largely divided (with a literal wall) between humans and magical halfbreeds (Arcanics). However it’s a good implementation of the cliché and the plot and characters in any any case transcend it.
The previous hot phase of the conflict between the humans and Arcanics was terminated by some kind of major and very destructive…
From Deep State To Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution And Its Jihadi Legacy, Jean-Pierre Filiu, ISBN 978–1–84904–546–9
This book analyses the background to, and aftermath, of the Arab Spring: the military despotisms in Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Yemen, with a lesser amount of material on Tunisia and Libya.
The question the book asks, essentially, is how the contests between military oligarchies, street protesters, political Islam and violent ‘jihadi’ movements ended with the first of the above remaining in charge, the middle two components crushed, and the latter successful and destructive. …
I recently finished watching Deutschland ’83, which I think may have been recommended by a friend, though all I can say for sure is that it had spent some time in my bookmark folder of things to watch. At any rate, it follows the adventures of a rather unwilling but nevertheless remarkably successful East German agent injected into the West German army.
In some ways it’s a bit on the daft side; Rauch/Stamm is remarkably successful at plundering the Bundeswehr’s and NATO’s secrets (not to mention a couple of West German hearts) and nobody really tumbles to it despite him…
Too Like The Lightning; Seven Surrenders; The Will To Battle; all by Ada Palmer.
Several hundred years hence, the world is a very different place. Concepts of gender, religion, family, technology, law and the state have all been rewritten, in response both to cultural and technological changes and to past disasters. There is a lot of entertaining worldbuilding here, most of it revealed incrementally (although I was amused to see at one point that the author found a way to do a more-or-less plot-justified info-dump).
Also revealed only gradually is the set of related challenges to all of these institutions…
A Savage War of Peace, Alistair Horne, ISBN 978–1–447–23343–5
This is an account of the Algerian War of Independence.
It covers the background quickly: French colonization in the 19th century (an attempt to shore up the Bourbon monarchy, which did not really work), the establishment of the Pieds Noirs (i.e. European-origin colonists, not all French by any means), and early hints of trouble (at least some of it recognized, but never meaningfully acted upon).
Having set the scene it really gets going in 1945 with the Sétif massacre, with around 100 Europeans killed and shortly afterwards many thousands of Muslims being killed in official and unofficial retaliation. …
