New Book? New Book!

 

While my esteemed readers were distracted by more pressing matters, I apparently wrote another book. Hoozay!

To Be Men of Business: The Origins of Chickasaw Capitalism has been in the works for sixteen years, and I’ve written a few blog posts (here and here, for instance) about my progress and research findings. The finished product is now on sale from the University of Nebraska Press; those interested in buying a copy can obtain a 40% discount by entering the code 6AS26 at checkout.

It’s the perfect gift for the eccentric relative whose interests are well-concealed, or the college student you’re trying, for some reason, to steer away from business school and toward ethnohistory. And more power to you in either case.

The Yellowing-Trees Month, in Brief

 

What I’ve been reading: The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, by Rabih Alameddine. A biography of modern Lebanon, from the perspective of a gay schoolteacher and his formidable mother. As is often the case with good writing, the fictional parts of the story seem more believable than the non-fictional ones.

 

Videos and films of note: 28 Years Later (2025), which is as good as people say. Since Danny Boyle has (IMO) never made two good movies in a row, I’m relieved to learn that Nia DaCosta will be directing the sequel.

 

Noteworthy remarks by one of my offspring: Addressed by my daughter to the crescent moon: “Hello, Earth’s fingernail." 

 

Quotes that make me less worried about the potential collapse of liberal democracy in America: “Truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

 

The title of this post borrows the Ukrainian word for October, Zhovten, the Month of Trees Turning Yellow. One of my students, on learning that some Indigenous nations (like the Senecas) named the months of the year for natural events, told me that the same was true of the Ukrainian language. That's the Cool Thing I Learned Lately. 

Choose Your Path to…History?

I would bet that the majority of Americans my age have read at least one of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels, of which Edward Packard's Cave of Time was (more or less)* the first. I read this pathbreaking book when I was about nine years old and living in Albuquerque, a place I did not like. I found the sky too big, the desert ugly and bleak, the ubiquitous Mexican food too spicy and mushy for my amateur palate, the local people laconic and bony. I wanted to be back in the Northeast, and books, particularly fantasy books - I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia at about the same time - offered escape to a richer, more colorful, more refined environment.

 

Edward Packard, probably.

Cave of Time offered paths to a new set of realities: the worlds of the past. It was not a comforting book: the possibly endings included being eaten by a dinosaur, enslaved by Han-dynasty warriors, or choking to death on a Precambrian Earth where "oxygen had not yet been introduced into the atmosphere." Yet the various adventure paths were all exciting, and they introduced me and others to the concept of interactive literature. They became a gateway to the obsessions of my teenage years, namely role-playing and computer games. The Cave of Time probably also introduced me to the notion that reading history could, like reading fantasy or science fiction, offer an alternative to living in an unpalatable present. Though the past could prove pretty unpleasant as well.

 

* Packard had written a previous second-person, dividing-paths novel called Sugarcane Island (1976), which he published with a small press. His publisher, RA Montgomery, then took the CYOA concept to Bantam; Cave of Time was the first offering in their new series.  

Some Light Reading for Our Second Gilded Age

 

Coming soon to C-suite office bookshelves and rich dads’ Father’s Day lists: Jet Dreams (Baseturn, $120 US), an illustrated tribute to owner-flown jets and their illustrious owners. Author Jessica Ambats features forty “plucky” CEOs who have acquired Embraers, decommissioned fighter planes, and other luxury aircraft and learned how to pilot them. In some cases, when they or the author wanted to take dramatic multi-aircraft photos, the owners graciously allowed ex-fighter jocks to fly their dream vehicles, confining themselves to riding shotgun.

This one's for you, Junior Birdman.

Ambats adduces several reasons why chief executive officers might want to buy and fly jets, including childhood wish-fulfillment, bonding with millionaire dads, undertaking charitable works for cougars, and getting away from it all. Thorsten Veblen, I dare say, could have identified several more, but then he couldn’t even have afforded a piddling Cirrus Vision SF50, the cheapest private jet on the market.

 

Incidentally, for the cost of that Cirrus (about $2,500,000 US), one could buy a pretty nice house in these here parts - 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, lakeside view, perhaps a private boat slip. Or one could pick up nine or ten gently-used Cessna 172 Skyhawks and fly forty friends and relatives to their favorite sportsball game. Or one could take 50-60,000 people out to dinner at Olive Garden (reservations recommended). The more pragmatic millionaire could simply buy something more personally useful, like a Congressman.

What I've Been Reading

Herewith, some of the more memorable books Your Humble Narrator read this year:

 

The Ballad of Black Tom: Say what you will about Cthulhu, at least he isn’t a damn racist.

 

Between Two Fires: Demonic hordes invade western Europe during the Black Death. Piling on, one might say. This is - no lie - the best fantasy novel I’ve read since N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season.

 

Danubia: Essentially, the Habsburgs were all magic-users.

 

The Dawn of Everything: Very long, and not entirely convincing. But Graeber and Wengrow have persuaded me that inequality is not a prerequisite for complex societies.

 

Echogenesis: A crashed-spaceship story infused with eau d’Edge of Tomorrow. All of the parts are derivative, but the execution is original.

 

Invisible Sun: Stross didn’t want to write this novel, but he did so anyway, and did so competently. Yay?

 

Lost Tribes Found: The “Indians are the Ten Lost Tribes” trope was invented by whites but employed by some Native Americans for political reasons.

 

Midwest Futures: The Midwest has always been a Gernsbackian sci-fi story disguised as a self-satisfied just-so story.

 

Ogres: Another “is it sci-fi or fantasy?” mystery. Well plotted and a quick read.

 

The Power Broker: “Baby Screamed; Rat in Crib” should have been Robert Moses’ epitaph.

 

Saga, volume 10: Superbly written; worth the three-year wait.

 

Superman: Red Son: This is the only Superman movie I’d willingly watch.

 

Tobacco Road: Reading this was like spending all night in a cheap brothel, then taking a bath in a pig wallow.

 

Walking to Aldebaran: A science-fictional First Contact story meets Dungeons and Dragons, with lots of bloody body-horror mixed in. Whoever is re-making Alien should film this instead.

 

William Howard Taft: Several American presidents didn’t really want the office. Taft was one. What he really wanted was a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. And so it came to pass.