Decadent Societies

This is a review of a book by Robert Adams.

Overall, I liked the book, but cannot give it my highest rating. The writing style left something to be desired in many spots - lots of very long and convoluted sentences with obscure words, including untranslated and uncommon foreign phrases.

As to the information in the book, there was quite a bit there that I had never heard before or had not seen all in one place. The Byzantines seem quite "redeemable" from Adams' point of view. I had no idea that the Old Regime in France had a tax structure that horrendous to all but the top dogs - the only wonder is that the regime did not collapse sooner. Similarly for the Romanovs in Russia. There are also interesting points made about (western) Rome and the British Empire. It seems that the main issues come down to bad leaders, tax exhaustion, social inequity, excessive regulation and complacency (of the ruling class at least).

Adams does spend a bit of time discussing what decadence means generally and how this all might apply to us today in light of the history previously mentioned. This is not as easy a thing as might be expected.

The last part of the book makes some very interesting points on how things stand in the US. At first, it seemed that Adams was going to beat up on conservatives only, but then he really did a number on liberals and their non-judgmentalism (especially in its more extreme forms) and other foibles. He wrote this in the early 1980's, but it is still/more relevant to our current situation if you ask me. I nearly laughed out loud a few times!

Look past the sometimes not so good writing and focus on the points being made. There is lots here worth considering.

Comrades and Strangers

This is a book by Michael Harrold about his life during his almost seven years in North Korea where he worked as a translations adviser.

First, let me say that a main reason that I bought this book was because of a few comments in the amazon.com product description:

"For seven years he lived in Pyongyang enjoying privileged access to the ruling classes and enjoying the confidence of the country's young elite. In this fascinating insight into the culture of North Korea he describes ... and many of the fascinating characters he met ... socialite friends. After seven years and having been caught passing South Korean music tapes to friends and going out without his minder to places forbidden to foreigners, he was asked to leave the country."

I think this description was a bit exaggerated and/or misleading. I was expecting to gain some insight into how the elite lived and thought; the author had little if any contact with the elite, and there was not much insight given there. He did drink a lot of beer while having some light chats with some North Koreans who could speak English, but no heavy weights from what I could see; even these people seemed to keep him at arms length most of the time, but then he was a foreigner and that is a problem there. On his being asked to leave, the music tape thing described happened a long time before he left it seems, and I am not at all sure that went to any forbidden places at all. That fight he got into in front of a hotel not long before he left seems to have had much more to do with his departure. BUT, then again, he was later asked to return to his old job.

In any case, I still liked the book. Harrold does relate many interesting anecdotes and also explains how the scene there and internationally was viewed from inside North Korea - or at least how he thought it was viewed there, as the North Koreans were not big on sharing their innermost thoughts I gathered. It is written with some attention to chronological order, but is also a little stream of consciousness (disorganized) at the same time, so be warned. I did think that he spent way too much time talking about his beer drinking and not enough on (other) local color and what it was really really like to live there on a day to day basis throughout the year(s).

Harrold has gotten some criticism for being too sympathetic to the North Korean viewpoint, but then to be fair, he is clear that things there are far from OK. It is true, as he points out, that things in South Korea are not all freedom and prosperity for all either. The Kim regime in the north has done some good things for the people, but then again, the bad has out-weighted the good for many many years at least. It is instructive to hear how the North Koreans themselves probably see things. But then, is their viewpoint based on less than complete information?

It was a little sad to see how much it appeared to have hurt Harrold when he apparently reached the conclusion that he had never really been accepted there after almost seven years.

The book is rather long (about 400 pages), but is pretty entertaining and should keep a reader interested. Is it the best one could have hoped for from someone who spent so long there? Well maybe not.