Review: The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding by Robert Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this very prematurely, never even having set foot in Australia and knowing next to nothing about its history. Still, despite the overflow of people and place names, this was extremely eye opening. The treatment of the prisoners, in particular, is probably some of the most sadist material I have ever read. It is absolutely crazy that people in charge could do such things and still consider themselves civilized.

And many of the characters were unforgettable, especially Alexander Maconochie and his Merit point system. I wonder if any other place has ever tried a similar system, since it seemed to produce some excellent results.


And I expected to read more about The Kelly gang, but they were mentioned only in passing, so I can only imagine the target market was people who are much more familiar with Australian history than I am. 



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Review: King of Sting: The Story of Australian Conman Peter Foster. An Audible Original

King of Sting: The Story of Australian Conman Peter Foster. An Audible Original by Justin Armsden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting. I had never heard of this guy, and he apparently caused a lot of damage and is quite notorious in Australia.

I confess it seemed like some parts were left out. For example, for the first scam mentioned (chapter 1), they know that 60% of the money went here, and 30% went there, but they cannot  get it back? I was just thinking that if I had tried to convince someone to give me money for a non-existing business venture and just put the money in my bank account, the police would find the money trail (as apparently they did here) and then arrest me and return the money. How come they couldn't arrest Peter and return this money in this case?

At other points I felt like something was amiss. As in, some of the people who were duped by him. I am assuming they're not telling the whole story and rather than being duped into a legitimate enterprise, they were duped into thinking they would be scamming others along with Peter, or something along those lines. Also, the judge who gave him the ridiculously low bail amount is definitely on the take.

Regardless, an interesting story. I wonder what will happen from this point on.

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Review: Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an extremely interesting book, although I'm not sure how useful it is. It is a review of the recent history of 7 countries that Diamond has some connection, experience, or ties with. The countries were Finland (extremely interesting to me, given how little I knew of their recent history), Japan, Chile, Germany (also interesting, given how much I thought I already knew), Indonesia, Australia, and the United States.

To his credit, he does mention, in the final chapter, that a quantitative study should be made of this ideas. I agree, although I think he should have done this since he was writing the book.

All of this isn't to say I disagree with his 12-part model. But that sort of is the point. This model may or may not be correct, and whether I agree or disagree makes no difference until quantitative analysis is applied to it, rather than anecdotal info taken from his non-random assortment of countries.

Having said that, I reiterate that the histories of each country were extremely interesting.

I liked his statement that if he were a dictator trying to engineer Japan's downfall, he would institute the exact policy they have right now

Some notes I took regarding the US:
- Since 2005 (especially with the advent of the tea party), there has been much less will to compromise, which means fewer laws have been passed, budgets have been late more than once, and the government has shut down more than ever before.
- Under our first 43 presidents (over 220 years), only 68 nominees for government positions were opposed by filibuster. But when Obama was president republicans blocked 79 nominees in 4 years. This forced a change in laws which means minority opinions will be less represented in the future.
- "There is no way China or Mexico can destroy the US. Only we can destroy the US"

3.5 Stars

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