cakereads's review against another edition
1.0
if you're looking for well-researched, in-depth study of walls through ancient history to present time, this is not the book for you. i found the book to be fairly problematic for the following reasons -
(1) sweeping statements: it feels like details are sacrificed for the author's casual, irreverent "style".
(2) too much focus on the human cost ... but only for the Chinese empires: the previous chapter talks about the roman emperors who built walls and monuments, but beyond a brief statement that yup, he imposed his monuments on the populace, the "bad" parts of the roman focus on the sex scandals.
but when we go into the chapter on chinese emperors building walls ... paragraphs after paragraphs on forced labour and bloody reprisals. i mean ... come on, it isn't unimaginable that the romans had their fair share of tyrannical emperors? who killed a shit ton of people? but the author chooses to highlight only these parts when it comes to the chinese? sus, but idk feel free to disagree.
(3) factual inaccuracies: no academic background in history beyond an interest in reading history books. i'll be the first to admit that i'm very credulous when it comes to the printed word - i mean, history books take years upon years to write, right? there are pages upon pages of references - i would imagine what these authors are saying are credible.
i'm not going to fact-check this book, because i already wasted time reading this, but the one glaring example that showed me this book might not be as well-researched/accurate as other history books i've read - it states that india is in southeast asia. not fucking kidding. thought it might have been a typo - i mean it happens - but there is ANOTHER reference to india in southeast asia, alongside mentions of malaysia and thailand. wtf bro. this isn't even fucking research - all it takes is a google search.
what a fucking waste of my time. why are people giving this five stars??? also, [a:Tom Holland|52292|Tom Holland|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1223405186p2/52292.jpg] and [a:Jack Weatherford|2497|Jack Weatherford|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322949256p2/2497.jpg] blurbed this book. was thinking of checking out their books, because of the good reviews, but now that i know they gave kudos to this book? i think i shan't waste my time on them - there are so many other books to read.
yeah, you can say i'm disappointed.
(1) sweeping statements: it feels like details are sacrificed for the author's casual, irreverent "style".
(2) too much focus on the human cost ... but only for the Chinese empires: the previous chapter talks about the roman emperors who built walls and monuments, but beyond a brief statement that yup, he imposed his monuments on the populace, the "bad" parts of the roman focus on the sex scandals.
but when we go into the chapter on chinese emperors building walls ... paragraphs after paragraphs on forced labour and bloody reprisals. i mean ... come on, it isn't unimaginable that the romans had their fair share of tyrannical emperors? who killed a shit ton of people? but the author chooses to highlight only these parts when it comes to the chinese? sus, but idk feel free to disagree.
(3) factual inaccuracies: no academic background in history beyond an interest in reading history books. i'll be the first to admit that i'm very credulous when it comes to the printed word - i mean, history books take years upon years to write, right? there are pages upon pages of references - i would imagine what these authors are saying are credible.
i'm not going to fact-check this book, because i already wasted time reading this, but the one glaring example that showed me this book might not be as well-researched/accurate as other history books i've read - it states that india is in southeast asia. not fucking kidding. thought it might have been a typo - i mean it happens - but there is ANOTHER reference to india in southeast asia, alongside mentions of malaysia and thailand. wtf bro. this isn't even fucking research - all it takes is a google search.
what a fucking waste of my time. why are people giving this five stars??? also, [a:Tom Holland|52292|Tom Holland|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1223405186p2/52292.jpg] and [a:Jack Weatherford|2497|Jack Weatherford|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322949256p2/2497.jpg] blurbed this book. was thinking of checking out their books, because of the good reviews, but now that i know they gave kudos to this book? i think i shan't waste my time on them - there are so many other books to read.
yeah, you can say i'm disappointed.
vikontrimaite's review against another edition
Sienos.
Per paskutinius 20 metų sienų atsirado daug daugiau, galingesnių ir ilgesnių, nei per visus praėjusius 4000 metų. Norėjosi kiek daugiau apie tas dabartines sienas sužinoti, kelių pastraipų epiloge neužteko.
Chronografiškai pasakojama trumpa civilizacijos istorija sienų požiūriu. Sienos - skirtos apsisaugoti nuo barbarų, nejausti baimės ir užsiimti kokia nors kita veikla nei karyba, pvz, suklestėję menai, teatras, filosofija, etc. Barbarų visas gyvenimas - karas. Norėjosi or apie barbarus daugiau sužinoti, buvo tik vienas skyrius.
Labai įdomu buvo apie Romos imperiją skaityti.
Per paskutinius 20 metų sienų atsirado daug daugiau, galingesnių ir ilgesnių, nei per visus praėjusius 4000 metų. Norėjosi kiek daugiau apie tas dabartines sienas sužinoti, kelių pastraipų epiloge neužteko.
Chronografiškai pasakojama trumpa civilizacijos istorija sienų požiūriu. Sienos - skirtos apsisaugoti nuo barbarų, nejausti baimės ir užsiimti kokia nors kita veikla nei karyba, pvz, suklestėję menai, teatras, filosofija, etc. Barbarų visas gyvenimas - karas. Norėjosi or apie barbarus daugiau sužinoti, buvo tik vienas skyrius.
Labai įdomu buvo apie Romos imperiją skaityti.
libra17's review against another edition
5.0
I found Walls while browsing nonfiction in my local public library, and picked it up because the topic seemed both interesting relevant, especially during the Trump administration where several scuffles over funding for his proposed wall have already happened. David Frye's Walls is a book about how civilizations (traditionally understood to mean groups of people who put their efforts toward various types of specialized work, particularly agriculture) have tried - and always, inevitably, failed - to defend themselves against barbarians (understood to mean nomadic groups whose cultures all focused on war and constant preparation for war, and who constantly harassed, pillaged, and destroyed the communities built by those who lived behind walls) by using work to create barriers for protection. As can be surmised by my single sentence overview of the history of walls, those who built them, and those the walls were meant to defend against, walls have not been particularly good at this task. Chapter after chapter focusing on different time periods, different continents/regions, and different situations, all saw walls that the civilian population had depended on eventually fall. I learned a lot while reading this book, and the most important lessons are probably these:
For military usage, we cannot depend purely on physical barriers to defend a largely civilian populace. Modern warfare alone would prevent this from being an effective tactic, even ignoring the fact that this has been tried repeatedly throughout history and has, repeatedly, put ill-prepared citizen soldiers in hopeless battles where combatant and noncombatant alike have paid terrible prices. That being said, primitivism - veneration of the supposed 'noble savage' and 'warrior culture' - is a misplaced ideal built upon a false understanding of history. We would not want to live as a spartan, goth, or mongol nomad, and those cultures have no place for modern values of things like equality, education, or arts (to name a few of things) because - as cultures built around physical insecurity and anxiety - those cultures have no room for anything outside of war and constant preparation for war. As this is not a society that many hope to live in, we should instead choose to find other paths.
For nonmilitary uses (such as using border fences to stop immigration), physical barriers do not solve the problem; they merely shift it. As hardened barriers went up around the middle east, refugees fled to parts of europe. As those parts of europe put up fences and walls, refugees went around the barriers to unwalled borders or new, more easily accessed countries. As a new round of barriers have gone up, still more distant countries are expecting to see the desperate travel farther to reach their borders, going around the inaccessible points in bids to escape situations where circumstances make life a possibility only in theory. This should tell us that barriers will not do anything to help the world solve its problems; only be dealing with root of the issues - war, persecution, and other inherently dangerous and unstable circumstances - can we solve the world's 'migrant crisis.'
Overall, Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick is an excellent book. I am happy to have read it, have purchased my own copy, and have recommended it to others. Its inherent lessons - left for the reader to surmise from history across time and location - carry messages that everyone needs to hear and understand.
For military usage, we cannot depend purely on physical barriers to defend a largely civilian populace. Modern warfare alone would prevent this from being an effective tactic, even ignoring the fact that this has been tried repeatedly throughout history and has, repeatedly, put ill-prepared citizen soldiers in hopeless battles where combatant and noncombatant alike have paid terrible prices. That being said, primitivism - veneration of the supposed 'noble savage' and 'warrior culture' - is a misplaced ideal built upon a false understanding of history. We would not want to live as a spartan, goth, or mongol nomad, and those cultures have no place for modern values of things like equality, education, or arts (to name a few of things) because - as cultures built around physical insecurity and anxiety - those cultures have no room for anything outside of war and constant preparation for war. As this is not a society that many hope to live in, we should instead choose to find other paths.
For nonmilitary uses (such as using border fences to stop immigration), physical barriers do not solve the problem; they merely shift it. As hardened barriers went up around the middle east, refugees fled to parts of europe. As those parts of europe put up fences and walls, refugees went around the barriers to unwalled borders or new, more easily accessed countries. As a new round of barriers have gone up, still more distant countries are expecting to see the desperate travel farther to reach their borders, going around the inaccessible points in bids to escape situations where circumstances make life a possibility only in theory. This should tell us that barriers will not do anything to help the world solve its problems; only be dealing with root of the issues - war, persecution, and other inherently dangerous and unstable circumstances - can we solve the world's 'migrant crisis.'
Overall, Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick is an excellent book. I am happy to have read it, have purchased my own copy, and have recommended it to others. Its inherent lessons - left for the reader to surmise from history across time and location - carry messages that everyone needs to hear and understand.
alesia_charles's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting book, though I don't think it fully engages with what it means that wall-building societies harbor romantic ideas about unwalled warrior societies. It's not an amusing conceit, it's dangerous. How hard would it be to point out that achieving safety via the ability to deal out violence in response to violence is merely a delusion of safety? Yet I kept looking for that to happen in the book and didn't see it.
I'm also extremely dubious about the book's frequently-expressed idea that warrior-society men never did anything but fight. I know that the ancient and early medieval Norse (the "Vikings") were also farmers rather than solely warriors, for example. Relying solely (or so it appears) on highly negative accounts from visitors to those societies is not a good look for a scholar. So it needs to be read a bit skeptically.
I'm also dissatisfied with the last chapter, which discusses recent trends in wall-building quite knowledgeably but, again, does not fully engage with what that means. That is, it obviously means that modern wall-building is about controlling civilian populations rather than being, in general, meaningful barriers in the military sense. (Though with exceptions: obstructing terrorists, for one; but why the author left out the Korean peninsula's DMZ I can't imagine.) The book makes the very useful and fascinating point that the most significant effect of these efforts has been to redirect the flow of civilian populations in motion - that is, what the migrants and refugees do is seek other routes. Yet I saw no real effort to examine what this fundamental shift in the purpose of walls, and the utter failure to address the causes of these mass migrations, means for modern humanity.
Still, as a grand tour through thousands of years' worth of wall-building civilizations and their nomadic enemies, the book is worthwhile. Perhaps its bald recounting of all the times the nomads attacked cities and murdered tens or hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children will make them seem less romantic to its readers. One can hope, anyway.
I'm also extremely dubious about the book's frequently-expressed idea that warrior-society men never did anything but fight. I know that the ancient and early medieval Norse (the "Vikings") were also farmers rather than solely warriors, for example. Relying solely (or so it appears) on highly negative accounts from visitors to those societies is not a good look for a scholar. So it needs to be read a bit skeptically.
I'm also dissatisfied with the last chapter, which discusses recent trends in wall-building quite knowledgeably but, again, does not fully engage with what that means. That is, it obviously means that modern wall-building is about controlling civilian populations rather than being, in general, meaningful barriers in the military sense. (Though with exceptions: obstructing terrorists, for one; but why the author left out the Korean peninsula's DMZ I can't imagine.) The book makes the very useful and fascinating point that the most significant effect of these efforts has been to redirect the flow of civilian populations in motion - that is, what the migrants and refugees do is seek other routes. Yet I saw no real effort to examine what this fundamental shift in the purpose of walls, and the utter failure to address the causes of these mass migrations, means for modern humanity.
Still, as a grand tour through thousands of years' worth of wall-building civilizations and their nomadic enemies, the book is worthwhile. Perhaps its bald recounting of all the times the nomads attacked cities and murdered tens or hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children will make them seem less romantic to its readers. One can hope, anyway.
More...