Monday, June 22, 2009

Formative Literature

It All Started With Marx by Richard Armour was one of my first geopolitical reads as a young teenager and I fear it set the standard for me regarding how entertaining I think political books ought to be.
Here is the opening of chapter 4, Russia Under Lenin.

"A new day was dawning and the tsars were dimming in the east. Difficulties might lie ahead, but only during a brief transitional period. Everyone happily tightened his belt, or put on suspenders. (footnote: Peasants who had neither were in for some embarrassing moments.)
In the new goverernment, the working class was the base. This situation was readily accepted by the Russians peasants who had years of experience in starting at the bottom and remaining there. They had nothing to lose, they were told, but their chains, (footnote: No mention being made of their lives.) and they were ready to make the sacrifice. If a shot was occasionally heard in the distance, it was probably someone who was merely discharging his debt to society."


As you can see, I was basically imprinted with an appreciation of The Daily Show.
I just wish I could order the rest of Armour's books. This homeschool would be using them as supplemental texts.

3 comments:

lime said...

that's fantastic! where has he been all my life?

Fred said...

Haha Acton. I love teaching history for many reasons, one being that we get to read some really interesting stuff like this.

Doug The Una said...

Duty comes in many forms, but almost always from behind.