Ebook Walls A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick David Frye 9781501172700 Books
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Chosen as Main Selection, History Book Club
Ebook Walls A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick David Frye 9781501172700 Books
"In Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, David Frye takes an interestingly oblique look at history through the impact of, well, walls, dividing up the world into two population segments: those who live behind them (for protection) and those who live outside of them (the cause of needing protection). At times he perhaps takes a little license in terms of overstating or simplifying, but it is all mostly fascinating, informative, and engaging.
Wall construction goes back to nearly the earliest of post-nomadic days, connected to the rise of agriculture and then of cities as populations were able to support themselves in one place for the first time. Walls rose step by step with civilization and in fact Frye makes the case that they helped create and form said civilization. First and most obviously by protecting the city inhabitants from the “barbarians outside the gates.†But less obviously he points to how walls allowed for greater security, which allowed for less need to have every person (usually men) able to function as a warrior, which allowed them to therefore specialize in skills beyond fighting so they could become smiths, poets, bakers, etc. Fortified cities became fortified regions became fortified empires and grand civilizations. And then even more nuanced is the way the walls “softened†those who hid behind them, forcing the inhabitants to hire “real†fighters from outside their walls (often from amidst those damn barbarians), leading to a cycle of empires rising and falling: as they rise they need security so they build walls, then they lose fighting skills so have to outsource soldiers, then those soldiers turn on them, the empire falls, rinse and repeat.
Frye takes us through a host of such cities/empires, including China (one can’t very well have a book about walls and not include the Great Wall, now can one?), Greece, Ancient near east, Eurasia, Rome, Byzantium, Great Britain, Russia, Mesoamerica. Frye moves not just in space but time as well, bringing us walls from four thousand years ago to the Maginot Line (Frye uses a loose definition of “wall†in places) in World War II to the Berlin Wall to contemporary times. While “build that wall†has clearly entered our vocabulary lately, making a book about walls and their impact quite timely, readers may be surprised at just how much wall-building has been done around the world the last ten or twenty years. It’s truly shocking and Frye does an excellent job covering this modern day return to wall building efficiently and effectively.
It’s a return because with the advent of heavy-duty cannon, walls lost their ability to protect, a transition made vividly clear in Frye’s chapter on the Turks’ siege and eventual conquering of Constantinople.
The impact of walls construction and failures on world history, on which regions rose and fell in power, on the psychology of an entire people as well as the psychology of smaller groups is nicely conveyed throughout in often insightful and always engaging fashion (Frye is a smooth stylist and paces the book smartly). My only issue with the book is that his insights are so often so sharp, and so often so intriguing, that I wish he had broadened his definition or his focus even more with regard to modern day walls. We move through the massive construction around the world so fast that I would have liked to slow down a little to more deeply consider the causes and potential impact. As well, I would have liked to have seen him look at smaller-scale walls, the ones we see more and more of in modern-day life around “high interest targets†such as airports, chemical plants, the White House, etc. Or prison walls, in a time period when controversy wages over the inequality of the current justice system and how we “wall off†our poor and our minorities--the “barbarians at the gates of our homes (to be fair, he does deal briefly with gated communities). And even metaphorical walls—the bubbles we can put up thanks to modern technology and social media. Granted, that would have made for a much longer book, but Frye proved himself to be a good enough writer that I would have happily followed him for another one or two hundred pages on the topic.
That said, asking for more is hardly a major criticism, so it should come as no surprise that I highly recommend walls for a different but important take on history and society."
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Walls A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick David Frye 9781501172700 Books Reviews :
Walls A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick David Frye 9781501172700 Books Reviews
- Having read much of history over a lifetime, I find Frye's offering a refreshing change. His thoughts and writing style force you think differently while enjoying every minute of it thanks to his writing skills. I hope to see more of his work being published.
- David Frye’s book, Walls, offers a dispassionate account of societies’ motivations for building walls, and the impact walls have had on the civilizations that built them. Throughout the book, the reader may begins to extrapolate how walls shaped societies’ developmental outcomes, including the knowledge, beliefs and practices of those within them. The book is a fascinating and easy read, and provides a unique prospective on the history of human civilization as described through some of the most influential man-made barriers. I very much enjoyed it
- I loved this book; I use it for research and intellectual stimulation to reflect on civilization; where we are now, where we were back at the dawn of this whole mess we call civilization and culture.
- I enjoyed this original approach to history. The rigorously researched book is filled with interesting and not widely known anecdotes about the wall builders and their counterparts. It left me thinking about the correlation between building walls and building civilizations. It is also interesting to think about the ways in which our reasons for needing walls have changed.
- Frye uses great story telling and thorough research to present ideas about the rise of modern society that makes us consider the way we view ourselves and our past. Not just a history about walls but about the people they divide throughout time.
- Learned a lot. Highly recommended.
- In Walls A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, David Frye takes an interestingly oblique look at history through the impact of, well, walls, dividing up the world into two population segments those who live behind them (for protection) and those who live outside of them (the cause of needing protection). At times he perhaps takes a little license in terms of overstating or simplifying, but it is all mostly fascinating, informative, and engaging.
Wall construction goes back to nearly the earliest of post-nomadic days, connected to the rise of agriculture and then of cities as populations were able to support themselves in one place for the first time. Walls rose step by step with civilization and in fact Frye makes the case that they helped create and form said civilization. First and most obviously by protecting the city inhabitants from the “barbarians outside the gates.†But less obviously he points to how walls allowed for greater security, which allowed for less need to have every person (usually men) able to function as a warrior, which allowed them to therefore specialize in skills beyond fighting so they could become smiths, poets, bakers, etc. Fortified cities became fortified regions became fortified empires and grand civilizations. And then even more nuanced is the way the walls “softened†those who hid behind them, forcing the inhabitants to hire “real†fighters from outside their walls (often from amidst those damn barbarians), leading to a cycle of empires rising and falling as they rise they need security so they build walls, then they lose fighting skills so have to outsource soldiers, then those soldiers turn on them, the empire falls, rinse and repeat.
Frye takes us through a host of such cities/empires, including China (one can’t very well have a book about walls and not include the Great Wall, now can one?), Greece, Ancient near east, Eurasia, Rome, Byzantium, Great Britain, Russia, Mesoamerica. Frye moves not just in space but time as well, bringing us walls from four thousand years ago to the Maginot Line (Frye uses a loose definition of “wall†in places) in World War II to the Berlin Wall to contemporary times. While “build that wall†has clearly entered our vocabulary lately, making a book about walls and their impact quite timely, readers may be surprised at just how much wall-building has been done around the world the last ten or twenty years. It’s truly shocking and Frye does an excellent job covering this modern day return to wall building efficiently and effectively.
It’s a return because with the advent of heavy-duty cannon, walls lost their ability to protect, a transition made vividly clear in Frye’s chapter on the Turks’ siege and eventual conquering of Constantinople.
The impact of walls construction and failures on world history, on which regions rose and fell in power, on the psychology of an entire people as well as the psychology of smaller groups is nicely conveyed throughout in often insightful and always engaging fashion (Frye is a smooth stylist and paces the book smartly). My only issue with the book is that his insights are so often so sharp, and so often so intriguing, that I wish he had broadened his definition or his focus even more with regard to modern day walls. We move through the massive construction around the world so fast that I would have liked to slow down a little to more deeply consider the causes and potential impact. As well, I would have liked to have seen him look at smaller-scale walls, the ones we see more and more of in modern-day life around “high interest targets†such as airports, chemical plants, the White House, etc. Or prison walls, in a time period when controversy wages over the inequality of the current justice system and how we “wall off†our poor and our minorities--the “barbarians at the gates of our homes (to be fair, he does deal briefly with gated communities). And even metaphorical walls—the bubbles we can put up thanks to modern technology and social media. Granted, that would have made for a much longer book, but Frye proved himself to be a good enough writer that I would have happily followed him for another one or two hundred pages on the topic.
That said, asking for more is hardly a major criticism, so it should come as no surprise that I highly recommend walls for a different but important take on history and society. - The subject of walls is all the rage nowadays. With the balkanization and increased nationalism of the world…there is no more apt physical representation of it than an actual wall. But the idea isn’t new. Walls have been around since the early days of civilization, in fact an argument made in this book is that walls are very much responsible for civilization as we know it. Frye’s perspective on the matter is fairy binary and best represented in the Athens/Sparta duality…those who built walls, enjoys a relatively safe environment where sciences and arts would emerge and thrive, those who didn’t build walls relying instead on their sheer muscles for safety were uncivilized barbarians. So it’s the basic brain and brawn dichotomy. Some may dismiss it as an oversimplification. But Frye really puts forth a compelling argument and empirical evidence to support it. The walled in civilized society got soft and weak over time, making it easily conquerable. But the wallless brutes and the subsequent conquerors weren’t really leading enviable lives either, their lives essentially lacking any pleasure outside of rape, pillaging and murder. So who would you have been back in the day…a civilized arts appreciating science knowledgeable Athenian enjoying all the modern comforts of the time or a dirty brutal savage Spartan, toughened from childhood by the life of personal abnegation into something like a dirty malnourished possibly naked fighting machine? Soft as it might make you, life behind the walls sounds infinitely more enjoyable, doesn’t it. Of course, the walls didn’t always work as intended and even when they did work they required enormous effort to build and maintain, resulting in crazy high death tolls, but most of the time despite all the possible negatives it was still the best bet under the circumstances, much like democracy. And so it went on for centuries, empires came and went with their walls. And this book gives a terrific overview of all that straight down to the present day, wherein the rapidly increased migration and refugee crisis of the recent years resulted in modern wall building around the world, particularly Europe and Middle East. And now, of course, there’s a very real or at least much talked about (which seems to add up to the same thing these days) possibility of a wall between US and Mexico. Frye presents some very interesting statistics testifying to the effectiveness of walls protecting the country from the designated undesirables…in Europe it seems to just resituate the matter to the next country over, sort like passing the bucket, but on a grander scheme of things. It certainly puts things in a perspective and offers readers much food for thought in mulling over the situation. But aside from that, this book is such a terrific work of historical nonfiction. I love the concept of taking a subject and revolving the world around it and Frye’s done a really awesome job. The man is erudite, clever, knowledgeable on the subject and also surprisingly (since such books often tend to go for the neutral tone) opinionated and darkly humorous, it makes his narrative style all the more compelling and made this book all the more pleasure to read. It took a while to get through and in retrospect it might be best to dip into this one instead of plowing through most of it in one day to the sheer amount of information with which the mind is bombarded. But Frye is never pedantic and always entertaining, so it reads very well and easy as far as nonfiction goes. I finished it and felt accomplished and instantly smarter, like an instant brain boost. Which is just awesome. I know Tim Marshall also has a book about Walls coming out and sadly Netgalley didn’t have a friendly version of it, but now I’m thinking what more do I need to know about the walls. Then again in a while, it might be a great way to revisit the subject from another terrific intelligent author, but for now I consider myself adequately educated on the subject thanks to David Frye and this great book. Recommended. Thanks
