Shakespeare lived in the 1600s, which means: In the early days of British Colonialism. This must have been a most exciting age. An age in which people gave up everything the were and had and exchanged it for a new start in unknown parts which were generally perceived as virgin territory (maybe, apart from the obvious reference to the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. one of the reasons for the naming of Virginia). This perception was of course wrong, and the people in Shakespeare’s time knew this; after all, the numerous contacts with native Americans and their very different outcomes were reported back to London.

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Geschrieben von Thorsten

Kategorie: Bücher

Veröffentlicht: 01. Januar 2021

Die Schatzinsel ist natürlich ein Klassiker der Jugendliteratur, den man eigentlich gelesen haben muss, und zwar nicht nur als Jugendlicher (...ja: traditionell eher die Jungen als die Mädchen), sondern auch noch als Erwachsene*r (da spätestens sollten auch die Frauen informiert sein), weil dieses Buch immer noch als die Blaupause sämtlicher Piratengeschichte verstanden werden kann und es daher vielfältige intertextuelle Bezüge darauf gibt.

Ich hatte das Buch als Kind oder Jugendlicher nie gelesen und musste erst 49 Jahre alt werden, bevor es dazu kam. Klar, das Buch liest sich flott runter. Es ist geradeheraus geschrieben, keine aufwändigen Kunstgriffe, die zum Nachdenken anregen und beim Lesen stören. Und auch klar: Die Charaktere sind eher einfach geschnitzte, flache Charakter. Alles ganz Jugendbuch halt.

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Geschrieben von Thorsten

Kategorie: Bücher

Veröffentlicht: 15. November 2020

Japanese steampunk set in 19th century London amid a terror campaign from Irish nationalists that is used as a cover for an attempt on the coming Japanes Prime Minister's life. Happily, all will be well in the end.

The plot of Pulley’s debut novel is well-filled with drama but unfortunately it develops rather slowly. It takes almost half the novel's length until you feel that something meaningful is finally starting to happen – until then people and settings and concepts are introduced, we are in London (mainly) but also in Oxford and Japan. Another thing we only learn very late in the story: Who the main characters really are and how they tick. One of them, Nathaniel Steepleton, is a picturebook civil servants and leads a steady and predictab le life devoid of any fun or surprises. Whereas the second, Keita Mori, is a watchmaker who makes unbelievably complex mechanisms but, more importantly, manipulates people into shaping their lives so that they one day they will all be in the right position to effect his ulterior goals (of saving the world, or at least: Japan). In the process of his manipulations Mori also improves people's lives and situations.

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Geschrieben von Thorsten

Kategorie: Bücher

Veröffentlicht: 28. Dezember 2020

The main assumption on which this book is built is that economics as a science has the right tools but asks the wrong questions. The authors, a »rogue« professor of economics and a journalist specialising in the economy, vow to put these instruments to good use on interesting questions.

For example, they ask why drug dealers so often live with their mothers. And come up with the hardly surprising answer that the pay of the average (lowly) drug dealer on the street is disastrously low. Or they ask why, against all expectations, crime rates in the US suddenly and enduringly dropped from the mid-90s. And come up with the much more interesting answer that the mid 90s were also the period in which children who were not born due to the legalisation of abortion in the 1970s would have reached criminal adulthood.

The latter example explains why I believe the whole branding of this book (or the authors, for that matter) is a misnomer. The book is built on statistics, on identifying correlations and isolating causes and effects. Granted, economists also make use of these methods - but that does certainly not make these methods the sole property of economics.

Levitt, a professor of economics no less, flirtatiously concedes that he does not know the first thing about economics. He may be right, I believe. There is one fundamental claim made in this book that truly falls in the realm of economics: That people always act on incentives and that in order to understand and predict human behaviour you only have to look out for the incentives involved. I do not agree. Young men embarking on a career as drug dealers although pay is pathetic and the risk of serious injury or death on the job very real – where are the incentives? Of course, if you apply a very broad definition of incentive, such as »what makes people want something«, then you can e.g. name hope for better payment as an incentive for apprentice drug dealers. But if you employ such a broad definition, the term cannot serve as an explanation, it merely labels the inexplicable (why do people, against all the obvious evidence to the contrary, hope for better pay in this carreer?)

I do not believe this book has much more to do with economics than just any book in a capitalist world. Still, the book makes for enjoyable reading and is good training in looking for concealed correlations and explanations.

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Geschrieben von Thorsten

Kategorie: Bücher

Veröffentlicht: 15. November 2020