A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens — Recommend

This is a re-read for me, but I got much out of it this time than the last. I picked it up because I wanted a fresh look at the human side of the French Revolution in light of the political unrest  (protests, riots, murders, etc.) that have marked the 2nd half of 2020 in the USA. In some ways, it's relieving to see the differences between pre-revolution France and USA 2020. The differences between rich and poor are nowhere near as pronounced and social mobility is much, much higher. On a more doer note, the similarities are disturbing. Most disturbing of all is the similarities between the french revolution leaders and the leading voices of the would-be 1519 revolutions in 2020. Specifically, the need for equity over equality, vengeance over reconciliation, and the identification of problems over the proposition of solutions. This ideology is what lead to the reign of terror. 
With that preface, I can't recommend this book enough right now as a cautionary tale. It's ever more critical to experience the hideous danger of ideology and the heartbreaking misery yielded by poor governance, however, Dickens is not all doom and gloom. The heroes of this story exhibit archetypal traits that lift this book from relevant lessons of the past to inspirational historical mythology.

The book has basically two main heroes, Sydney Carton & Dr. Manette. These are wildly different characters but both accomplish wonderful things at great personal sacrifice. Both sacrifice comfort for something they saw as better. whoever you are, you should be able to identify with one or both of these heroes. The rest of the cast fills out a model with a high degree of integrity to a real moral landscape, each of the characters brings deeply contemplated perspective to the human story. This story does an excellent job of touching on meaningful life beyond intrinsic living.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The righteous mind — Jonathan Haidt — Recommend with salt

Image
  The book in a nutshell is captured by the subheading "why good people are divided by politics and religion". The book can be roughly divided into thirds. The first half of the book is about the origins of morality. Where did it come from? Haidt touches on some philosophical works and debates and ultimately concludes that morality provides evolutionary advantages, and it supersedes reason. He uses an elephant and a rider analogy, morality, roughly equated to emotion, is the elephant. He also uses a president and press secretary metaphor, which I found helpful, reason's primary function is to rationalize the conclusions of the subconscious. I'm not sure this story fully explains morality. I think it could explain some of it, and it provides some satisfying guidance but tas far as I can tell it does not obviate the need for extra-human deliberate construction of morality. Second, he outlines what morality is and isn't. He rejects utilitarianism and deontology as to...
Read more

The Sum of All Fears-- Tom Clancy

Image
The Sum of all fears  It’s classic Clancy. This one is particularly interesting in terms of the breadth of the problem and players. It’s very human and the technical details are as compelling as always. It also highlights the potential danger of MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy in a very penetrating way.  Check out my general Clancy post for a broader take on this series. Verdict Recommend
Read more

Foundation -- Isaac Asimov -- Lukewarm

Image
I read this because people I admire talked about it (Elon musk, Orson Scott Card, Ben Shapiro). It's classic science fiction in an ancient context. It was published in the 50s, 15 years before the earliest start trek, 25 years before star wars, and 35 years before Enders game, all of which are ancient history. In many ways, it belongs to the era of   Edgar Rice Burroughs'  Prince of Mars or even H.G. Well's War of the Worlds more than it does modern science fiction. That being said, there are some truly brilliant ideas explored in the text. First, the book doesn't follow a protagonist, which means no character development and no human story. Instead, Asimov overtly follows humanities' story, jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint and century to century in galactic civilization. In some ways, it reads more like a collection of short stories in Sanderson's Cosmere or perhaps even something from the MCU, but the novel still manages to drive a narrative crafted aro...
Read more