CxD #211: Why Ukraine Must Win 🇺🇦 + Next CxD bookclub read announced!
Apologies for the gap in publishing, but I retreated to the jungle for a spell where I found these critters looking deep into my not-self:
CxDers who are looking for literary daring in eastern Europe, you've come to the right place! 🤓🤗
Our next book is by the recent Noble prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob. It's purported to be quite the enrapturing adventure:
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank—a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day—is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries—those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is—The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.
We will discuss the first 200 pages, via Zoom, on Sunday, May 1st, 5pm CST.
CxD book-club is open to CxD newsletter subscribers on cxd.community. Please consider joining if you care about intimate community, conversation, and a place to share ideas about character with others on the same journey. 🥰 Below, a fellow CxDer already reading the book in the thickets of the Australian jungle!
Why is the war against Russia so enormously significant for the future of civilization? If this question sounds hyperbolic to you, consider diving more deeply into these resources. Ukraine Must Win
Ukrainians and the world’s democratic powers must work toward the only acceptable endgame.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/how-democracy-can-win-ukraine/627125/
In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about the wider implications of Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine. They discuss different forms of war, Putin’s miscalculation regarding the internal divisions of America and the EU, the problem of misinformation, international norms of behavior, the role of China, the civilizational importance of trust, globalization and de-globalization, existential risk, the role of India, Ukrainian leadership, the danger of nuclear war, regime change in Russia, and other topics.
https://wakingup.libsyn.com/276-defending-the-global-order
In a wide-ranging conversation at his compound in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells The Atlantic what Ukraine needs to survive—and describes the price it has paid.
By Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg