Sheep without Muzzle

Today I read “On the Art  of Writing” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. My eyes opened wide every time I recognized my own silly mistakes. I recommend everyone to read the whole book, and pay special attention to Chapter 5 “On Jargon” and Chapter 12 “On Style.”

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, “On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914,” Cambridge: University Press, 1916, Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/190/. 24 August 2008

I started posting links to the books I recently enjoyed reading. Each link has a short description of how I came across the book and what I thought of it. I got the idea from Kyle.

According to World Religions, a Historical Approach, the political ascendancy of a new middle class of farmers and merchants in China happened in the VIII century BCE (p.104). Take that, West!

The same book states that the Chinese government officials applied the Taoist principles of nonaction in as early as the III century BCE (p.113). Did you think Adam Smith invented laissez-faire?

The author is probably bias, but I can understand it. Taoism is an appealing philosophical system.

I thought that “They Made America” would be a great book of entrepreneurship and invention. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a book of capitalism, mistakes, and prejudice.

Harold Evans hales the money-making abilities of entrepreneurs, as opposed to their inventions. When talking about Apple, Evans puts on the pedestal the salesman and marketer Steve Jobs, almost forgetting that it was Steve Wozniak’s genius that gave life to the first Apple computers. He also forgets that iPod and OS X were in development long before NeXT was bought resulting in Steve Jobs coming back to Apple. Also, Apple I was priced $666.66 because this is $500.00 with 1/3 markup. Neither Jobs nor Wozniak knew about “the number of the beast,” to which Evans eludes.

Even in 2004, when this book was published, Evans makes derogatory comments about communist states. According to the author, Thomas Watson Jr. told Khrushchev that good working conditions uphold the dignity of the workers when the head of Soviet Union was visiting an IBM manufacturing site. The author compares Microsoft to Chinese army: they throw waves of expendable soldiers at the threat until it is defeated.

This book diminishes the importance of inventors, even though it can be found in the library of an engineering school. This book bad-mouthes the enemies of the past, like kicking the opponent while he is on the ground, and is discriminative of any kind of foreigners in United States, even though it is written in the 21st century by an Englishman. No, the world has not changed in the new millennium. What a disappointment.