 How the Irish Saved Civilization
By Thomas Cahill Published in March 1995 246 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book is entertaining but stupid. I enjoyed reading it. Something about the writing style is amusing. The historical anecdotes are entertaining. However, based on everything that I know about history, this book gets a lot of stuff wrong. The big picture is correct - there were some Irish monks in the early Middle Ages who played a key role in the preservation and transmission of ancient literature to the present. These Irish monks travelled across Europe, founding dozens of monasteries, including (weirdly enough) in St. Gallen Switzerland, where I used to live. However, the detailed step by step narrative made me cringe. At some points I laughed. My favorite stupid claim is when the author goes on a very long diatribe about how St. Augustine was the first person to write a first person narrative autobiography. He acknowledges that while St. Augustine isn’t the first person to use the word “I” ; he is the first to write about his own psychology and feelings. This is a stupid claim. Some of the oldest pieces of writing we have are written in the first person. Shocker: as soon as people can write, they write about themselves. We have some fragmentary tablets from Sumeria dated to 3400 BC called the Kushim tablets which contain some accounts of people talking about doing business. The first detailed autobiography is the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin written in 1900 BC. By the time of classical Greece, there are countless autobiographies. The favorite that I have read is Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Although I haven’t read them fully, I have listened to clips on YouTube from Herodotus’ History and Xenophon’s Anabasis. These are all autobiographies with deep psychological self reflections. Some Roman autobiographies - such as Cesar - did use the third person, but likely out of respect. Cesar was dictating to a scribe, and the scribe didn’t want to claim glory for Cesar’s acts so the scribe wrote “Cesar crossed the Rubicon” etc… That being said, only about 40 Roman books have survived in full, and about 150 in fragmentary form. So if you narrow the category of book arbitrarily to “fully intact autobiography written in the first person with deep psychological reflections about spiritual themes that don’t primarily seek to give advice to others” then St. Augustine might be a first. This book is full of weird bold claims like that which completely fall apart under scrutiny. There are sweeping claims about the role of women in Ireland and the rest of Europe. The author makes the claim that women in Ireland had many rights while they were enslaved in Europe. Once again, some context is needed. That may be true to an extent, but the Irish practiced sex slavery. On the other hand, there were many great women in antiquity. On the political side, women like Livia (the wife of Augustus) and Theodora (the wife of Justinian) essentially governed many aspects of the Roman state. On the scientific side, there are thinkers like the mathematician Hypatia or Plato’s female student Diotima. Although much has been lost, we have some fragments of many great female scholars in antiquity - there is an early chemist called Cleopatra (not to be confused with the Egyptian queen), a grammarian and historian called Agallis, and a philosopher and mathematician called Aesara. Just as today some women in some places live horrible lives, and others live good lives. To me the hallmark of bad history is when authors make very bold sweeping claims about “the first” or “there were no cases before” which can very easily be contested after about 15 minutes on Google. Good history might instead say “a remarkably early example” or “one of the earliest.” I find that a lot of popular history books tend to fall into this trap. Although I don’t know much about Irish history, there are enough mistakes in the parts of the book that I do know about that it casts a shadow of doubt on the rest. That being said, the book is very well written. At the time, in 1995, it was a best seller. The writing was so engaging that I finished it, and was able to chuckle and overlook the many mistakes or inaccuracies. I wouldn’t recommend this book. It will be boring for historians because its very basic. As for non-historians, the book is dangerous because it is well written but full of mistakes. If you want to read it, be sure to do so with a very skeptical mindset.
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 The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance: Inside North Korea's Global Cyber War
By Geoff White Published in August 2022 304 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 I remember growing up learning about the insane isolated state of North Korea. However, what most people do not realize is that under Kim Jong Un, North Korea significantly began opening up. North Korea opened up by becoming a hub of global organized crime. North Korea has pivoted several times. First, it started printing “superdollars.” Superdollars are very high quality US dollar counterfeits. They were developed in North Korea’s labs by the country’s top scientists. Later, Korea began getting involved in the production of illegal drugs. North Korea would finally hit the jackpot when it discovered cybercrime. The communist educational system produced many high level computer scientists but no private sector to employ them. The government provided a select hand picked few with work opportunities, where they would get access to the uncensored internet. North Korean hackers would spend the 2010s doing a wide variety of crimes. They would hack Sony in retribution for a film that satirized North Korea’s leadership. They would steal money from Bangladesh’s central bank. They would unleash ransomware which would hold people’s computer files hostage unless they ponied up Bitcoin. They would create mock credit cards and use runners to withdraw cash. I found that accounts of North Korean money laundering to be the most interesting aspect of this book. Learning the details - and how investigators uncovered said details - kept me on the edge of my seat. Something about the book’s writing felt very sterile. The author felt very removed from the action. Simultaneously, there was sometimes too much of a focus on the humans involved and not the big picture. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more about North Korea’s cyber operations.  King Arthur's Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England
By Jim Storr Published in June 2016 302 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book is a boring and poorly paced account of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. I did not finish it. Roughly 20% of the book consists of an explanation of the methods the historian will use for the remaining 80% of the book. When you finally get past the many warnings, and into the actual history, you get a disorganized jumble of facts that do not connect well to each other. This book falls into a very uncomfortable niche: it is too simple for professional historians, but too technical for casual readers. Writing history books is hard, and sometimes they flop.  Permanent Record
By Edward Snowden Published in September 2019 352 Pages Thibault’s Score: 5/5 This book is an absolute must read book to understand how the American deep state works. Edward Snowden was a high level CIA and NSA contractor. In 2013, he revealed to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald what is now common knowledge - that the government collects all data on the planet, and stores it forever. All phone calls, text messages, Facebook posts, Twitter DMs, Discord conversations, word documents, internal business memos, powerpoint presentations, video calls, and other files you may have are stored and monitored by the NSA. At the time of his revelations Snowden had everything - a 6 figure salary, a beautiful fiancée, and a house in tropical Hawaii. He would lose everything after his revelations. The government would cancel his passport while transiting through Russia, exiling him there. Although the government had forced him to go to Russia in the first place, it would then use his exile there as proof of his treason. Snowden’s revelations were probably the single biggest news story of 2013. Now, they have all been forgotten. However, since then something major has changed. In 2024, everyone understands that the internet is not a free place. It is somewhere you will be monitored, tracked, and manipulated. Snowden has been forgotten by the younger generation. To my shock, many educated, smart Gen Z kids have never heard of him. They couldn’t believe me when I told them about Snowden, and asked me about what this guy’s “theory” was. The fact that the government propaganda would train the kids to think that Snowden was just some bargain basement conspiracy theorist rather than an actual insider shows how insidious propaganda is. But there is some significant hope. Millennials still believe in the institutions of America. My generation thinks that although there is some corruption, the government and its institutions are fundamentally benevolent. Gen Z kids assume that the government and its institutions are fundamentally corrupt. The single most interesting revelation to me in the book was about the structure of the deep state. Snowden often worked for companies such as Dell or Perot Systems. He rarely directly worked for the NSA. The deep state has been privatized. The very word “deep state” is a misnomer - it implies that the government is in the driving seat, making all decisions. In Snowden’s case, the private contractors were the technologically advanced elites. The government employees were just the help desk workers and bureaucrats. He reveals that the private contractors would drive policies, carry out plans, and make the key decisions. There is a tripartite hierarchy within the deep state. At the bottom, there is the private sector - everyone outside of the three letter intelligence agencies and the regulatory state. In the middle, there is the actual government - the agencies like the CIA or NSA as well as economic regulatory bodies. At the top are the small number of private parties that benefit which dictate policy. This book is very well written. Snowden comes off as someone that I would be friends with. It reads like a thriller. If you want to learn about the deep state, start here. My own intellectual journey, in part, started with Edward Snowden. No matter how much you think you know about the shadow government, whether its nothing or a lot, I still recommend reading this book.  A Brief History of King Arthur
By Mike Ashley Published in April 2010 384 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Although I enjoyed this book, it is probably not for you. This book is, for the most part, a very detailed discussion of the historiography surrounding the historicity of King Arthur. The author assumes that the reader already has extensive knowledge of King Arthur, the time period, and the specific legends surrounding post-Roman Britain. I have actually read several of the primary sources upon which the author draws - namely Gildas, Bede, and Nennius. I also have already extensively studied the time period. Finally, I also am very familiar with academic history. As a result, this book was comprehensible to me - even though at times I still struggled with some parts, especially when he discusses the calculation of dates and easter cycles. The book isn’t a history per say. Instead, it is an in-depth discussion of the merits and dismerits of various sources. I find historiography very interesting, and liked the book. The chapters concerning the dating methods relative to the various sources were the most interesting. The writing style is good. A lot of the time academic writing is full of bullshit filler text. There is no thanking of professors, no arguing against imaginary opponents, and no use of unnecessarily technical or pseudo intellectual language. As far as academic histories go, this one had some of the best writing. I probably do not recommend this book. If you are a professional historian who is already familiar with the legends, sources, and history, then reading this could be a nice way to go into depth and disentangle myth from fact. But if you are a casual student of history, this isn’t a book for you.  When McKinsey Comes to Town
By Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe Published in October 2022 624 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book is a very mediocre leftist attack piece against a target that deserves much more serious criticism. The book jumps hastily from example to example about why McKinsey is evil. I agree with the authors and overall also think that McKinsey is probably evil. However, we have completely different reasons why. I’ve worked with companies very similar to McKinsey, and although I haven’t worked with McKinsey I’ve interacted with their people quite a few times. The authors blame McKinsey for behavior such as firing workers, offshoring, and high executive pay. However, all of these are natural results of market forces and government regulations outside of the control of McKinsey. Blaming individual companies for responding to government regulations is like blaming drug dealers for the war on drugs (when in fact drug dealers only exist because drugs are illegal in the first place). At the same time, the authors argue that McKinsey lobbies for Ayn Rand’s dog-eat-dog form of capitalism. Every McKinsey report that I have seen, every single LinkedIn post, and every employee suggests the opposite to me. As far as I can tell, they are all crypto-Marxists pushing for an economic system predicated on state control of industry. McKinsey’s front page is full of SDG language indicative of government regulations. The authors suggest that McKinsey makes companies more profitable, at least in the short term, but destroys them in the long term. I’ve come to the conclusion that McKinsey is a scam company that just takes money without doing anything. When my father worked at Apple, he came right after McKinsey had consulted. He, and other executives, discovered that McKinsey had been charging Apple high consulting fees for copy-pasted templates that they circulated at other Bay Area companies. He was ecstatic when Steve Jobs did not renew their contracts. I quit reading halfway through this book because it is clearly written by people who have not done any business at a high level. It is written by outsiders, rather than insiders. The authors don’t understand how McKinsey actually works, or how business works, and are trying to piece together a narrative based on sob stories and news reports.  The Blocksize War: The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules
By Jonathan Bier Published in March 2021 228 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book chronicles the history of the “blocksize wars,” an internecine conflict within the Bitcoin community over how Bitcoin should be updated. Bitcoin was designed with a 1 mb block size limit. This was suitable for a small number of transactions, where everything could be settled in minutes. As the number of transactions increased, a larger block size became necessary to settle the transactions. I remember that, around this time, I struggled to use Bitcoin because of the small block sizes. I remember needing to wait hours, or sometimes even days, to settle transactions and paying huge fees that effectively doubled the price of whatever I bought. The argument is a very strange one: on one side, the large blockers wanted to do the obvious and increase the block size. On the other side, the small blockers didn’t want to increase it or wanted to increase it slowly. Strangely, many small blockers admitted that the block size would eventually need to be increased. The arguments of the large blockers are very straightforward. Increase the block size to make Bitcoin more efficient. The arguments of the small blockers are complicated and diverse - their camp was much less unified. Some argued that Bitcoin should never be changed because it would undermine the stability of the system (future changes could lead to crazy things like hyperinflation). Others argued that Bitcoin wasn’t supposed to be a currency, and should just be a science project. Yet others agreed in principle with block size increase, but simply disagreed with every single specific proposal. Although economic self interest would predict that the big blockers should win, in the end, the small blockers won. As a result, Bitcoin is crippled and can only be practically used for large transactions today. The small blockers won by resorting to underhanded tactics. Most notably, they took control of all online Bitcoin discussion forums, and censored everyone who disagreed with them. They also worked with mainstream media journalists to write hit pieces personally attacking all large blockers on unrelated issues. The small backers enjoyed institutional, and government support. I can’t help but suspect that they enjoyed this support from people who did not want to see Bitcoin succeed. Some tech - like Segwit - functionally allowed less data to be transmitted allowing more data to be transmitted within the 1 mb, functionally increasing the maximum block size to 4 mb. However, this tech was too little too late to save Bitcoin. The book is mostly a collection of conference notes, discussions the author had, Reddit, and discord posts. The author does not seriously discuss the potential role of intelligence agencies in influencing the community in either way, or the interest that the government might have in crippling Bitcoin. This is to be expected from authors who haven’t studied intelligence agencies and psyops. However, in this case, his book is crippled by his lack of speculation. If you don’t know at least the basics of Bitcoin already, this book isn’t for you. But if you already know the basics, and want to learn about the niche topic of the blocksize wars, then this is a good book for you. The one thing that I would caution is that I think that although the author attempts to be unbiased, he is clearly a small blocker who discounts “conspiracy theories” out of hand. I wish that the author would take the time to interview ex-intelligence officers and insiders about black ops to familiarize himself with how the government operates in the shadows.  The Great UN-Reset
By Constantine Du Bruyn Published in March 2023 242 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This strange little book sums up many of the conspiracy theories about the “Great Reset” as promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The book is well written, and easy to understand. The big picture is mostly correct, but it gets so many details wrong, that I cannot possibly recommend it in good faith. I am in a very good position to access many of the claims. My day to day work has led me to extensively interact with people from groups like WEF, the WTO, UNCTAD, and UNIDO. My historical work has repeatedly led me to study the history of groups such as the Jesuits, Templars, and Milner’s Kindergarten. I have many family members with deep ties to both US intelligence agencies and big tech. In many ways, I would likely be considered by many (perhaps by Du Bruyn himself) to be an insider. I want to start with a few of the things that Du Bruyn gets right. First, there is a plan to create a global centrally planned economic system. This system will have the long term goal of becoming a world government. UN SDGs are one of the most prominent tools being used to build this system. It has its evolutionary origins with the Milner group in Edwardian England, and eventually evolved into the United Nations. However, Du Bruyn gets a lot wrong. I would just like to point out two small, but very annoying mistakes that he made. None of these mistakes, on their own, would detract from the book. However, they are so frequent that they are a big problem. First, Du Bruyn incorrectly claims that Lord Alfred Milner started the Round Table Journal. The journal was started by Lionel Curtis, in 1913. Curtis was a member of the Milner Group, and was mentored by Milner. Curtis also started Chatham House. Milner only became involved in both later, although he may have supported their creation. I wish that Du Bruyn had instead written something along the lines of “Milner’s associates created the Round Table journal.” Second, Du Bruyn says that the Knights Templar established a banking system to manage the finances of the crusaders in the Holy Land. The Templars did not have any banking in the Holy Land. The Templars actually established trusts to manage the affairs of knights in Europe while they were away crusading in the Holy Land. Once again, this might not seem like a big difference - but it's one of the many small mistakes that he makes throughout the book. A lot of the information in the book is disjointed. There is no direct line of succession in between the Templars, the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the Milner Group, and WEF. These groups are sometimes evolutionarily connected but are not centrally run. For example, Cecil Rhodes who helped found the Milner Group was a Freemason. Likewise, the Freemasons claim descent from the Templars, but this relationship is shaky. I don’t think that discussing these groups is prudent, because to a reader who doesn’t already know the history it might discredit the central arguments in the book. My lived experience contradicts many key points. I got to WEF events, and have met a handful of WEF YGLs. I don’t think that the YGLs are going to become world leaders At the end of the book, Du Bruyn covers a number of possible solutions. I really like this chapter. He does not focus on politics. Instead, he suggests using cryptocurrencies, homeschooling children, and building local communities. The book is quite well written, and easy to follow. The sentences are short, clear, and well constructed. It is a very pleasant read. The good writing makes this book even more dangerous - and makes its frequent factual mistakes more dangerous. I would not recommend this book. This book would be very off putting to someone who isn’t already aware of the issues discussed. It isn’t rigorous enough to stand up to serious historical scrutiny. The challenge that Du Bruyn has is writing a short book. I would instead make it more narrowly focused on a smaller number of issues - perhaps focusing more closely on a specific group like WEF or the UN SDGs. This book feels like a failed opportunity. It is almost really good. However, I think it is Du Bruyn’s first book. I would be very open to reading other books written by Du Bruyn in the future, to see if he can overcome these challenges.  The Ancient Celts
By Barry Cunliffe Published in 2018 496 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Barry Cunliffe is one of my favorite historians; but I find the celts to be a boring civilization. The result was a great book that I didn’t find very interesting. Writing history is hard. You can easily slip into a number of common mistakes such as refuting other historians who the reader doesn’t know or care about; over-flavoring and accidentally writing historical fiction; including too much historiographic detail and writing a phone book; including too little historiographic detail and writing a conspiracy book; or narcissistically focusing on your own historical journey that nobody cares about. Barry Cunliffe always manages to walk the fine line. The book starts with a discussion of the broader history of celtic studies. The Celts themselves had no or little concept of being Celtic - the very term is a later historiographical error. The word comes from a Roman description of the people of what is today France and Northern Italy. Interestingly enough, the Romans wrote that the Irish and Britons were similar to the Celts but were not themselves Celts. Weirdly enough, today the word “Celtic” often refers to Britons such as Welsh or Scottish, the Irish, and a handful of continental people like the Galicians and Bretons. The Celts were a savage and noble people. Although Cunliffe tries his best to collect many Celtish accomplishments such as long distance trade, complex social organizations, and art - the picture he paints is ultimately of a savage and primitive people. They had no writing, no large scale states, no math, built no buildings that have survived, and ultimately contributed little to the intellectual progress of humanity. I was a little bit disappointed. I hoped to find some sort of secretly advanced civilization that equaled the Romans but has been neglected. Instead, I found exactly what I expected, and that made me feel a little bit sad. Many of my ancestors were French Celts, and the Romans were not. One always hopes to learn that one’s ancestors achieved civilization without the help of foreign conquerors. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the celts, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t already have that specific niche interest.  Scotland's Hidden Sacred Past
By Freddy Silva Published in November 2021 343 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 I’m not sure what the book’s main point is. This book is a haphazard mishmash of facts, myths, and speculations about the history of ancient Scotland. The facts are not well organized, and don’t amount to anything. History books can be written in one of three ways. The first, and worst, way to write a history book is to argue for something. The second, most reliable, way to tell history is to compile a well organized chronological account of events. The third way to write history - to tell a story - is most difficult but the best if well executed. This book does neither, and is fairly chaotic. The author speculates about a wide range of possibilities concerning ancient Scotland such as that the standing stones are some sort of ancient hard drive which stores information using vibrations, that the Armenian language is directly related to Scottish, and that giants used to live on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The historiography is sketchy. He draws a lot of radical conclusions from limited evidence, without ever providing plausible alternatives. As anyone who reads my book reviews knows, I am very open to ideas about the Younger Dryas, Atlantis, or visitations by extra-terrestrials - however, I set the bar for evidence very high. If you are making these bold claims, then you need to at least explore alternatives that are more mainstream. Finally, the book is full of melodramatic accounts about the author’s misadventures. As someone who has traveled internationally, none of these misadventurers stand out as remarkable or interesting. For example, at one point, he falls in some beachside rocks, scratches himself, and bruises his arm. He then proceeds to write about the incident as if it was a life-and-death struggle for survival. However, he doesn’t go to the hospital. Instead, he has a beer, and takes photos of his arm for Instagram, and proceeds with the adventure. Either he is a big baby and the incident itself is cringy because it wasn’t severe, or the passage is poorly written because it doesn’t do justice to the injuries the author actually sustained. I’ve read many worse books, and it definitely has its fascinating moments. Despite the positives, I would not recommend this book. |
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