Akshay Ahuja

Society

The desert and the settlement: three American anarchists

 Akshay Ahuja reviews A Paradise Built in Hell, Good News, and The Long Loneliness.

December 3, 2012

The Collapse of Complex Societies (review)

The Collapse of Complex Societies is a useful book. Its model seems valid enough to me, and it contains a wealth of historical background. But I think most readers of this site already have a good idea where this society is headed. For the kind of wisdom that might point to renewal — towards which we still have to work, even if it happens long after we’re gone — we need to look elsewhere.

March 29, 2012

Society

Man and the natural world

Thomas describes changing attitudes to the natural world in early modern Britain, a time period that he sets at approximately 1500-1800. A great many things happened in the relationship between Britons and their natural environment during this period: enclosures of common land, increasing urbanization, the birth of scientific taxonomy, early attempts at conservation, and many others. I read a few pages, saw that Thomas was an engaging writer, and decided to take a first step towards dispelling my massive ignorance of the human past.

January 13, 2012

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