UNESCO Representative Literature, part II

I read Race de bronze, about the indigenous peoples of Brazil, and Le mulatre. These are pastorals in the classical mode of western pastorals, and I've read many like them, although not from these cultures.

I also read a remarkable book, Introduction a la strategie, by Phelizon and Desportes. It's written in dialog, a form I don't usually like, but there was certainly no sacrifice of quality or content here, as it does in other dialog form books I've read. There was an acute observation about the fact that the US may be a victim of its own success and has never had to work hard at strategic thinking. At another point they discuss a new term for what we would call in English civilian strategists, i.e. scholars of strategy who don't actually practice it. That gave me pause: I consider myself a political strategist and I also consider that I practice it constantly; I also use strategy in non-competitive situations, like creative writing. So I'm wondering now how to categorize what I do within these various classifications. I don't think I fit easily.

I also read Governess, by Kate Brandon. This is may be a work of history, but the author is not a historian. Rather than look into what we know about governesses in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries through a lot of no doubt tedious archival work, she just provides us with the low-lying fruit of well-known women who were a some point governesses. Unrepresentative and unsatisfactory, doesn't live up to its billing. Her treatment of Mary Wollstonecraft in particular is completely disappointing.

I read a stack of articles on analogical cognition and await with impatience the rest of the books on this topic I ordered. I also read three or four books on Special Forces, one by Tom Clancy, two manuals for special forces off the Internet. And, since I had misplaced the latest issue of The Economist, I ran out of reading material on Sunday night! I have since found said issue, crumpled under a chair in my common-law partner's disorderly bedroom.