User Profile

@M0KHR@mastodon.radio One a day and I should have it done in like 33 kiloyears or so.

Dr. Chancellor Merkel’s view of freedom is a refreshing one. Democracy as viewed from the perspective of someone raised under dictatorship is not perfect, often a frustrating, but the only path to freedom. I enjoyed this text and it highlighted for me the massive difference between the experience of integrating East Germany to international order as contrasted with many other former Warsaw pact countries. Dr. M’s steadfast desire to maintain a rules based international order is laudable if difficult to imagine here in early 2026.

She knows him inside and out. It is unique in my experience for a historian to have as much exposure to their subject as she had with LBJ. This text tells the whole tale from the Hill country of Texas to the White House and back. After the tale is told, Doris takes us on a tour of her conclusions which are razor Sharp and as applicable today in 2026 as any, I have read, especially useful, are her conclusions about the power of the presidency and how the human beings who occupy that office influence its role in the world.

It’s a good summary of events but what it lacks is a critical analysis of Soviet economics and the very influential role their failure played in the end of the first Cold War.

Adam… a familiar voice in the world of making leads you on a brief journey through his philosophy of making. From what it is, to how his own methods have evolved over the years. A quick and pleasant read. I’d say nearly any maker worth their multitool could learn a thing or two from this text.

… so Schlesinger did his best to write one. A valuable record of a turning point of the 20th century.

Whew… if Schlesinger had written a one page summary of every day JFK was president it would have been a shorter book.

Getting there…

On to volume 2

Ok so hate him or deplore him, it’s worth knowing how he came to be who he was, and how that personality put him in the chairmanship of the general secretariat of the CPSU.

Kotkin left no stone unturned and compiled a great narrative of Stalin’s formative years. Stalin himself isn’t center stage for a lot of time as the events of the 1917 revolution and civil war swirl around him, but he sure ends up in the center of centers in a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship. It’s an improbable journey.

Ok so hate him or deplore him, it’s worth knowing how he came to be who he was, and how that personality put him in the chairmanship of the general secretariat of the CPSU.

Kotkin left no stone unturned and compiled a great narrative of Stalin’s formative years. Stalin himself isn’t center stage for a lot of time as the events of the 1917 revolution and civil war swirl around him, but he sure ends up in the center of centers in a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship. It’s an improbable journey.