Books

Darkness at Noon

Former Soviet Party superstar languishes in prison while awaiting execution by the Soviets. 

Not recommended. 

These people are just the worst. The book is largely an assertion along the lines of “us old Bolsheviks were making good progress toward trying real communism and then these Stalinist thugs came and ruined it.”

Which is, of course, stupid on its face. 

Soviet thinking had all the worst vices of religious thinking and none of its virtues. It’s so exhausting to listen to the performative rhetoric competition. “How far can I distort my worldview? Did you distort your worldview enough to escape the KGB death squads?”

There’s pretty much nothing else to this book. 

Warning: I’m going to block anyone who shows up in the replies defending any flavor of Marxism, Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.

The Courage to Be Disliked

Dialogue lays out the fundamentals of Adlerian psychology as the most effective self help strategy.

The title is so good, the book has tons of sales, the reviews were glowing, and the connection to Japanese culture was so tantalizing. But the book turned out to be just one of the many dime-a-dozen self help books that grab onto some specific mode of psychology and tell you to stop worrying because now you have their special insight. 

If you’re a troubled teenager, go for it. Or for any of its near clones. Otherwise, skip it.

Do you have a favorite primer on Adler? I thought this was a decent afternoon skim if you've never heard of Adler or are over-indexed to Freudian trauma frameworks.

No I do not. Psychology is not a real science. I wouldn’t have read this if I’d known the whole thing was <insert big name in psychology> fanfic.

Strong agree with the implication that many put waaaaay too much stock in Freud, but I don’t think the antidote is more naive reductive astrology posing as repeatable falsifiable scientific truth, even if it sails under a different flag