Natterings From Nepantla

Something about the winter months always gets me busy making hypothetical travel plans. Occasionally they turn into real travel plans.

Lately, for instance:

• Looking at Seattle-area attractions to maybe go see before or after the Seattle Worldcon. Which got me thinking about how what I really want to see up in Washington is the Museum of Glass, which is actually in Tacoma. But Tacoma is where Enfilade! is held these days. And the museum turns out to be right next to where a lot of bus routes come together. Including the one that goes past the Enfliade! hotel. So if we're getting there the day before the con starts, I can go see the museum in the morning and get back in time for the first session.
• Looking at LA and Anaheim-area attractions in anticipation of the 2026 Worldcon in Anaheim. I think I may have to make a big list like I did for DC.
• Checking out Montreal-area attractions in case the Montreal Worldcon bid wins, which seems pretty likely with the other declared bid having announced it's moving to a later year. Oh, hello, Canada's biggest railway museum, you are a likely target!
• Seeing if it is possible to get from here to Exploding Whale Memorial Park entirely by train and bus. Answer: yes, but not easily. The simplest way would be to take Amtrak down to Eugene, stay overnight, then take a bus that runs from the Amtrak station out to Florence, then a local bus which gets one to within about half a mile of the park. It would be possible to get to Florence, spend a few hours, and then get back to Eugene the same day. It is technically also possible to get back to Portland on Amtrak the same day, but that might be a bit much.

How's Bluesky holding up with its fast growth? Also notable Worldcon news but not with enough details to give it the front-page treatment yet.

One more for the booknook review-a-thon.

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The Dawn of Everything aims to shake up everything the pop-science reader has been taught to believe about prehistoric human societies.

It falls into roughly three sections. In the first, the authors tackle popular misconceptions about "primitive" peoples, starting from the imperialist-era myth that the noble savage represented the state of innocence that all humanity began in, up through more recent variations of the idea and into other now-debunked ones. Along the way, they name and flame all their least favorite popular writers (Jared Diamond appears to be at the top of the list).

After two or three chapters of this the book transitions into the fun part, which occupies most of the book. Here, Graeber and Wngrow gleefully produce example after example that fails to conform to the standard anthropological models developed in the 19th and 20th centuries: Societies which don't fit the standard band -> tribe -> chiefdom -> state progression. Societies which oscillated between two categories on an annual basis. Societies which figured out casual agriculture and then stuck with that for a long time rather than proceeding straight to intensive-full time agriculture like they are supposed to. States without the assumed required powers of states, kings whose authority only reached a few hundred yards away from their person, societies which built organized monumental architecture, supposedly the final peak of civilization, and then went "nah" and switched to entirely different city plans.

In the conclusion, the authors restate their opposition to the myth of the fall from grace, but then turn around and proceed to argue their own version of it. Humanity once had basic freedoms which are now lost, they say, as society has become "stuck" in a mode which no longer allows experimentation with different modes of living. Where did it all go wrong, exactly? They can't quite bring themselves to say, and so the book ends in a frustrating ellipsis.

What is never stated in the text, but feels crucial for understanding it, is that Graeber and Wengrow are self-identified small-c communists. Knowing that, one can see a theme to the examples that are given in detail, and catch the moment, a couple chapters before the end, where they do point out how they think it went wrong (not a specific historical moment, but an attitude shift that has occurred in more than one context).

If you love books like 1491, the fun part is absolutely worth reading the whole book. It just behooves the reader that these authors, no less than the ones they villify, also bring an agenda to the stories they choose to tell. I'm keeping my copy, personally, but it gets to sit next to a Jared Diamond book.

I've had a stack of books growing for a while that I wanted to at least mention here before I put them away or donate them. Some of which include:

The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits, edited by Mike Ashley: A collection of mysteries spanning the history of the western Roman Empire. The choice to put them in chronological order by setting is a good one for keeping the historical context straight, but unfortunately it means the best of the bunch comes first. That's "Never Forget" by Tom Holt, where he deploys a particularly excellent example of a literary trope I can't name because it would be a huge spoiler.

I picked this up at Chicon 8, at an unusual dealer table. It wasn't for an ongoing business, but someone local who was trying to downsize their enormous collection of books.

Wine & War by Don & Petie Kladstrup: An account of French vintners during World War II. Partly about their family members who served in the armed forces or resistance, partly a story of what happens when the occupation rolls into town and takes a particular interest in your industry. This was a find at the Enfilade! bring-and-buy last year.

The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow: About the members of the Lunar Society, an 18th-century association that included Erasmus Darwin, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, and other scientific luminaries of the time. Interesting, particularly about the ends of their careers and some of their colleagues and rivals as Europe slipped into a more anti-intellectual age (I didn't know that Joseph Priestley spent his last years in the US, or that Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined for his work as a tax collector), but not a keeper.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson: The story of the investigation into the Broad Street cholera outbreak that marked a step forward for epidemiology (eventually, after a lot of post-outbreak wrangling between scientific theories). The title refers to John Snow's famous map of deaths around the Broad Street pump. The book says that Snow came up with an improved map later, and then doesn't include it. Argh.

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens by Jack Weatherford: A great read about the prominent women of the Mongol Empire, particularly Genghis Khan's daughters who were originally supposed to be co-rulers with his sons. Also a good look at the structure of the empire and why it was doomed to fall apart almost immediately. Almost everyone in the book comes to a bad end but there are some fun stories along the way.

Written for booknook's October review-a-thon.

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Be My Guest opens with a note that it has been distributed to Hilton hotel rooms "to provide entertaining reading for our guests." That it does, unusually for a business book.

When seeing a book purporting to be about a guy rising to the top of the business from nothing just by hard luck, the cynical reader may suspect that it is actually about a guy who comes from privilege and family resources. And that reader would be right, but this one has two redeeming features that make it a worthwhile read.

The first is that, rather than the modern ideal of building a big pile of financial engineering and management metrics, Hilton pursued an older ideal of building a real business and having happy customers in an industry he genuinely loves.

The second is Hilton's own life story and the times it is woven through. He was born in the New Mexico Territory in a time the primary language was Spanish, the leading families of his town had all fled Mexico when Emperor Maximilian was defeated, and buying a new horse meant waiting for the next band of nomadic Native Americans to stop by. His adventures before discovering his true business love include being the youngest member of the first legislature of the state of New Mexico and volunteering for service in World War I at the ripe old age of 29. He experiences the Texas oil boom, which comes across as the last gasp of the Wild West; the crash of 1929; and the much worse-sounding panic of 1907, when, as he puts it, money simply did not exist for a few months.

For the first few decades, Hilton talks about the popular dances and songs, and the spirit of the times. Of World War I, he says that so much has been written about it that his experiences wouldn't add anything, but I don't think I have read a book before that has brought home so well the effect of millions of men being plucked out of their homes, seeing the great cities of Europe, and forging lasting bonds with others from all over the US. Paris is a revelation to him, and one of his new business partners afterward is a war buddy.

Once Hilton has made it through the hiccups of his first few hotel purchases, the narrative becomes duller. World War II passes in a blur of big business deals. His stint as Mr. Zsa Zsa Gabor is described as something that just sort of happened to him for a while. (Reading between the lines of that and the few details of his first marriage, Hilton must have been an absolute disaster as a family man.) The book wraps up with a couple of chapters on lessons for life and business, some of which are the old standards (find your specific talent, embrace the future, etc.) and some of which are very much part of the worldview of the times.

I am not much into business books. But the driest subject can come to life when you have the right person talking about it, and Hilton is an interesting guy to spend time with. At a mere 288 pages, you might wish for a little more of that time. Recommended, in the unlikely case that you ever cross paths with a copy.

Does the decline of music festivals point to a similar future trend for cons? Maybe not!