Six 5-Stars: An Omnibus Book Review

 

While I’d like to take the time to give each of the following works independent consideration, I do not have that time. Instead, I’ve assembled a short list of short reviews of five six (of so many) more recent books I highly recommend. Each part will be accordingly pushed at Amazon. There were five, but I added one more to the end. (Amazon is, for some odd reason, a little slow to add a few of these, but we shall see).

Getting right into it:

Andrei Martyanov, Disintegration (2021)

Almost daily, Mr. Martyanov provides learned, insightful commentary on various geostrategic matters that all thinking Westerners (and others) need to consider. Even if, especially if they do not want to. His book reads a bit like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, if Edward Gibbon had lived during the 5th century, and had Gibbon addressed the process as it unfolded. Post-modern America has essentially rejected everything that once made it excellent. It has shunned Western Civilization itself. In fact, it increasingly shuns any civilized standards. This book keenly examines multiple “whys”, some of which go far beyond Martyanov’s usual military expertise: mindset, morals, economics, and more. The military adventurism, if one is honest, provides perhaps the most highly visible evidence of the decline. Yet, as the author notes, the United States is undeniably gripped by the “historical, psychological, and anthropological centrifugal forces of disintegration”. Before one can hope to salvage something for the future, it is important to understand what has led to the present. This book is a fine summary starting point.

Michael Hudson, …and forgive them their debts (2018)

Were one honest, and one wanted to claim a single book to demonstrate the vampiric effects of mass financial capitalism on a modern or postmodern economy, then this work would be very high on the list of available options. Hudson traces the history of usurious destruction across the ages. Time and again, the same patterns play out, a tale of credit, overextension, misaligned allegiances, corruption, decline, poverty, and immiseration. One thing that will stand out to the Western and/or Christian reader is the repetitive Biblical calls for sound economics and necessary periodic debt forgiveness. No civilization that fails to curtail financial excesses and protect its people therefrom ever lasts. Ours is no exception. But, while the contrary might seem true, it is never too late to do the right thing. In 2023, half the world is already breaking from the broken werewestern system of lies, theft, and enslavement. May the other half follow. This book lights the way.

Alexander Macris, Running On Empty (2022)

At the moment, as I write this review, de-Dollarization is all the rage around the globe. This will have ramifications for all populations and for generations to come. Some will benefit more and sooner than others. Macris’s excellent short book examines a nearly-hidden, or, rather, oft-ignored reason behind the rise, fall, and changes to and behind the Dollar Almighty. The Petrodollar was a first in world history, and perhaps a “worst” so far as economic ideas go. Instituted as a kind of emergency stopgap, it indeed served a temporary purpose for a select few beneficiaries. Their day has now ended, and many will pay the (over)due bill. It’s remarkable that many of the predictions in this book, written but a few months before my review, have already come to pass. And then some. If one wants to rapidly catch up, this is a fine place to start.

Padraig Martin, et al, The Honorable Cause (2023)

By the current, hysterical counter-reactions, one would never know or even suspect that the cause of Southern Nationalism and identity was lost. Mr. Martin and his associates have assembled a wonderful collection of short essays on the very-much-alive-and-needed cause. Herein, one will find others frequently talk about yet seldom deliver with sincerity, clarity, or intelligence – diversity. Read a grand assortment of diversity of thought concerning a People and their rightful place in the modern/post-modern pantheon of nations. While each of these presentations will or might strike the reader differently, they all point in the same, forward direction. As Martin correctly summarizes near the end, “we need to create functional parallel societies”. Given the general decay and collapse around us, that is an imperative notion. The great news for Dixie is that they, we, rather, already have such a society. In time, perhaps sooner than most imagine, we will only need to hone it a bit further and then turn it loose. Even better news: the ideas expressed in The Honorable Cause are not necessarily exclusive to Southerners. It is understood, if unpopular to admit, that many other demographic and geographic groups yearn for independence and sovereign peace and prosperity. I encourage members of all identifiable parties to consider the hopeful and honest expositions herein.

Mary Morrissy, Prosperity Drive (2016)

Humanity. Morrissy has delivered eighteen gripping short stories about, ultimately, the human condition. This book is a little outside of my ordinary reading. As such, beyond the author’s high and deserved reputation (including the esteemed recommendation of a close mutual friend), I had few expectations. Refreshingly, both expectation and reward were forged hard and fast as I plowed through the pages. There is an element, or so I gather, of feminism in the collected works – of what wave I cannot say. Yet, without saying, I was happily pulled along by the current. We people are not always pretty, pleasant, kind, or worthy, and neither are all of the characters contained between these covers. But they are all real; they feel real, recognizable, and memorable. One will find a little of many mortal commonalities herein: the beautiful, the sorrowful, the pitiful, the startling, the regrettable, the disdainful, and the mundane. There is also a recurrent notion of familiarity as the various well-painted actors revolve around the title location. One may not exactly “find” oneself in the text, though one can expect to trace a few memories, perhaps in homage to the old Welsh concept of hiraeth, the longing for a home or place that one may have never even visited before, or which is not so clearly recalled. For instance, for those who venture but a few pages in, my grandfather (not father) kept his mint-conditioned old American car in a garage packed full of lawnmowers of all things (scores of them – a hobby I suppose it was). For a moment, before being shocked, again, by the depths of human nature, I was taken back in time. It’s a fascinating ride, made all the more enjoyable by Morrissy’s flowing, alluring poetic prose. Go for it. Cruise Prosperity Drive.

Jeffrey Addicott, Union Terror (2023)

It’s remarkable to consider, in the early 21st century, that in the middle of the 19th, the only world power that gave substantial material support to Lincoln’s Union was Russia. I sometimes wonder if modern Russians consider the irony that Czar Alexander’s support for nascent US terror helped give rise to the empire that would deliver similar tactics and operations to the American Indian Tribes, Nagasaki’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral, the good people of the Donbass, and many others. Professor Addicott delivers a tour de force about a tragedy that has afflicted populations far and wide beyond the borders of Dixie. I encourage all to carefully consider, among many other points, what Addicott says and implies about the wisdom of Karl von Clausewitz, against whom there really is no intelligent arguing. A must-read for all peoples of goodwill and open minds.