#11: The context of what came before
Death By Consumption
7/15/24 - 7/21/24
My first time sending one of these from an airport! I am writing this on my phone, waiting to board a plane to the far-off land of Appleton, WI, so forgive any formatting errors or stupid opinions — nothing counts if you write it on your phone, that’s the rule! Because the newsletter platform I use to send these out is outrageously tedious to use on mobile, this will be shorter. It keeps deleting stuff and I’m getting mad!!!
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric H. Cline — in paperback
Look, I’m not saying we’re currently experiencing the fall of civilization. We’re certainly not experiencing (yet) anything as dramatic or as sudden as the collapse of the Bronze Age. But, you know, reading about how quickly everything can end thanks to the perfect combo of climate change, internal and external conflict, and the fraying of the international bonds our society depends on….. not exactly comforting material.
This book was a sobering read, but I wouldn’t recommend it to the more casual history enjoyers. It’s small but DENSE, with no detail left out, for better or worse. At times this achieves what the best histories are able to do, making real people in the past feel real — with gruesome details like the discovery of children found crushed under a stone wall, probably due to an earthquake, or the x-ray that revealed the throat stab wound from the assassin who killed Rameses III. I know this is stoner logic but details like these from 3,000 years ago really make you go, like, wow, these were real people like me??? Absurd.
As a wise woman once said, we really do exist in the context of all in which we live!
After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilizations, by Eric H. Cline — in hardcover
Yes, I did back-to-back readings on the collapse of the Bronze Age. I simply hate a cliffhanger!!! This sequel tells the story of the civilizations in the centuries immediately following the collapse — which ones survived and how, and which ones disappeared forever. Another sobering, carefree beach read!
Those looking for parallels to our own time won’t find many — it’s difficult to compare our society to ones where things imploded so spectacularly that the concept of WRITING was seemingly forgotten for a bit — but it’s still interesting tracking different Mediterranean societies during what’s been called a Dark Age, which proves to be anything but. In these 200 fast pages you get the births of both Israel and Palestine, the invention of the alphabet and ironworking, and the very very early beginnings of Greece. Whoever called this a Dark Age was a fucking idiot!!!!
Much like the first book, this is a detail-choked survey, with the occasional aside attempting to make the story more palatable to non-academic idiots like me. An unfortunate tic of the author’s is to frequently put things in terms of Hamilton lyrics. I truly wish I were joking.
He also tries a little too heavily to tie it to our current times by the end, but he does conclude on a rather terrifying note: “It has been suggested that cities or societies can sometimes be more fragile and vulnerable than they appear, in part because their apparent success up to that point covers and masks the instability (usually this only becomes clear in hindsight).” Probably nothing we need to worry about!
“Love Island USA” season 6 — on Peacock
The fever has broken! I have finished my first season of Love Island. And what a season it was! It’s terrifying how all-consuming this became for a while. I don’t even know what else I watched or consumed over the last few weeks. The only solace was the majority of my friends got sucked in alongside me, so 99% of my conversations lately have been along the lines of, “I hate how hot Rob is,” and, “Leah is so iconic.” What will I even talk about now? Who am I anymore? I’ve forgotten how to live. 3 weeks ago, when I casually suggested we should give Love Island a try, I had no idea the size of the coconut tree we were about to fall out of this summer.