Luis Rubio
“The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the mystery that encompasses it”
Lewis Mumford
Knowledge advances at such speed that it is only possible to grasp some sample nuggets of it, but while some of these are truly revealing, the sensation always remains that one learns more but knows less. Here is a brief description of my best readings for this year as it comes to a close.
The Political Thought of Xi Jinping by Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung lifts a smoke screen for the sake of discovering the motivation and objectives of the Chinese leader’s politico-economic project. The result is not praiseworthy, at the least not agreeable: what these authors, both British scholars, describe on removing the veil of the rhetoric and verbal slang is an egocentric world view, in which there is nothing important or significant outside of the leader’s reality. It considers, in fact, a totalitarian perspective where control of the population is the sole means of advancing a project not of development, but instead of control and imposition, both within and outside of China. A book that allows one to understand and be in the end very worried about the future of that extraordinary nation.
The appearance of “strong-arm” leadership approaches on the left as well as on the right in recent years has been the reason behind innumerable books. Nils Karlson writes Reliving Classical Liberalism Against Populism as a means for combatting the destruction of institutions and opportunities for individuals and nations in which autocratic leaderships have proliferated. It is more a manual for action than a treatise on the subject, but that does not prevent it from being interesting reading.
In addition to being an exceptional history and biography, albeit in the form of a novel, A Man Called González by Sergio del Molino is a delicious tale on the Spanish transformation after the fall of Francoism. Mixing history with the leadership of the first socialist president of the “new” Spain, one comes to understand the intent as well as the operational capacity characterizing that great personage and how the nation came to change not only in its political aspect (the democratic transition itself), but also an entire society that fully integrates itself and with conviction into Europe, adopting during the process not only democracy, but many of itscharacteristics and practices. It is a book absolutely not to be missed.
Marcelo Bergman, a criminology academician, published last year his most recent analysis of the causes of criminality* and its implications. With a regional lens that permits him to compare similar phenomena and problems under distinct national circumstances he arrives at very specific conclusions that explain the nature of the problem confronting each of the nations of the region and allows one to derive a notion of the dimensions of the challenge facing Mexico to change the tendencies in matters of security.
Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have for years been, each on his own, writing and meditating on the transitions toward democracy during the last years of the 20th century, especially after the finale of the Soviet Union, and they have dedicated themselves to studying the peculiar phenomenon of the birth of the movements of the illiberal or antiliberal parties that have undermined the progress of democracy. In The Light That Failed, these authors came together to explore the implications of the resentment that democratization triggered in multiple societies, altering the course that appeared to be linear and producing new political phenomena that today are the reality of many nations around the globe.
Few books were as timely for me this year as that of Jared Cohen: Life After Power,** a text that delves into the life of seven U.S. former presidents and how they adjusted to their new circumstances. At a moment when the Mexican president was about to terminate his mandate, and as he was engaged in doing any and everything possible to remain the only relevant person in the country, this book illustrates why it is so important for ex-presidents to have a space for themselves, including an adequate pension that permits them to live comfortably. Cohen studies the way personages from Jefferson in the 19th century up to George W. Bush retired from being public functionaries and who, at the same time, found a way to be useful and relevant for their compatriots. This book complements another extraordinary one published some years ago, The Presidents Club,*** which deals with the requests that the president in office has made from his predecessors, of both parties, as support for his function, a symptom of a consolidated democracy.
In anticipation of this year’s electoral process, I found myself in the possession of two books by José Elías Romero Apis, meticulous observer of national politics. El jefe de la banda and La banda del jefe are two volumes full of interesting anecdotes that make available the content of many of the forms and histories of the old political system. In Poder y deseo, a text written with Pascal Beltrán del Río, the authors describe a series of presidential successions with equal color and seriousness.
In these times of growing conflict at the world level, no one should miss the new book by Sergei Radchenko**** concerning the repeated attempts of the Kremlin to be a world power.
*El negocio del crimen **Life After Power *** Gibbs, Nancy and Duffy, Michael ****To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power
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