Recent reading

[luzula]

The Comfortable Courtesan, Vol 1 by A. L. Hall (2017)
Okay, I can tell already that I'm going to save these up for comfort reading. The narrative voice is distinctive and gripped me from the first page, and the book is hard to put down. I love how there are so many supportive relationships between women in them, and also between women and men. Also lots of queer people. Recommended!

Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn (1970)
Recced by rushthatspeaks. This is about certain kinds of social movements during the Middle Ages. It's kind of disorienting, because it goes like this:

Movement: We want a more egalitarian society!
Me: That sounds like a good idea.
Movement: This will happen when the end of days comes, and to hasten that time God wants us to kill all the infidels, especially the Jews! Also all the rich people and the priests. After that everyone who is left will love one another like brothers and the rivers will flow with milk and honey.
Me: Errrrrr.

Obviously this is only a subset of the social movements of the Middle Ages, but the book talks about what social conditions can lead to these kinds of movements.

Comments

[the_rck]

I've been listening to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, and that pattern of social movements seems, based on that, not to be unique to the Middle Ages. The sub-groups to be murdered change some, but...

Humans are predictable in depressing ways?

[luzula]

Maybe? I don't know enough about the differences between various movements and their social basis to say...

Would you recommend the podcast?

[dariaw]

Sounds really interesting - thanks for the reviews!

[luzula]

Glad to pass along interesting books!

[oursin]

Also, cults, development of around charismatic leaders, how little changes...
I read that really shortly after it first came out: it was mind-expanding not just in what it was about but about How You Can Do History.

[luzula]

I was struck by the movement that went through with the "all things in common" program, but where the leader then crowned himself king and lived in opulence while the rest starved, and all protests were put down by force. Maybe they would have left, but they were stuck in a besieged town... : /

[oursin]

Though I think there have been more recent cults where the leader/guru was living high on the hog (the Bhagwan and the however many it was Rolls Royces) while everyone else was in austerity, and not surrounded by a besieging army...