26, 27

26...
Impressive arguing that went on in regards to the Estates General. I either didn't know or didn't remember that the National Assembly was the lowest of the upper class saying "the hell with this!"

Impressive political maneuver by the Russian tsar. To set blaze to your own city in order to secure the safety of your country is exactly the type of decision a political leader should be able to make...

(side note: my great great... grandfather was a gunmaker for Napoleon's army, where the name Radoux comes from, and later was asked by Amer. troops to fix their guns which would lock up after firing one shot- caused lots of unnecessary casualties)

I like the way the authors state that one of the most influential concepts in modern political thought is the idea of "nation". Interesting in the context of McKibben's book which argues that perhaps the most revolutionary concept at this point is "community"


I had no idea what is now modern-day Haiti was one of the wealthiest Euro colonies. And that it accounted for 1/3 of France's foreign trade!!

For all the talk about Italian city-states, I've learned very little about its unification. I didn't know much about its leaders during that time either.

27...
Like all the ones before it, the opening anecdote is very interesting. I know very little about mining practices,a side from what I learned (for better or worse) from Cold Mountain.

More of a reflection... It was striking to me reading the paragraph regarding industrialization and how the authors mention the need to invest in expensive factory equipment. It reminds me of the way in which the new type of expensive equipment we need to invest in isn't big factory machines, but things like solar panels. They are, like the new machines of the industrial revolution, expensive at first but quickly pay for themselves. Yet it seems to me that investors were more enthusiastic about buying the latter than the former...

Along the same lines, unfortunate that we are not more often taught about Eli Whitney's invention of interchangeable parts.

I had no idea you could contract cancer of the scrotum from inhaling hydrocarbon deposits. ouch!