It has taken me forever to get to this note. I read this book almost three months ago now, and my notes were rather terse, so my memory of it isn’t very good.
« Posts under History and Culture
The White Man’s Burden, by William Easterly
I finished up William Easterly’s “The White Man’s Burden” almost two weeks ago, and I wanted to write down some of my impressions before my memory of it degenerated completely.
Easterly was one of the big research economists at the World Bank for over 16 years, and his experiences in that capacity frustrated him to the point that he’s written a couple of books in an attempt to change the public’s perception of how foreign aid should be managed and delivered. I believe that this is his second book on the topic, and I’m not sure how it differs from the first.
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A modern day Old Christmas?
I guess it’s weird to be thinking about Christmas in March, but I happened to pick up Old Christmas recently, and it hooked me. It was written by the early American author Washington Irving in 1820, and recounts the Christmas he spent with the family of a friend in England in 1815. It’s a short, fun read, and I highly recommend it. You can check out an electronic copy for free at the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org). I’m not going to recount the story here; what I’d like to discuss instead is some of the customs and activities that one may have found if one was celebrating Christmas in England a couple of hundred years ago. Who knows, maybe it would be fun to incorporate some of this stuff into your next Christmas celebration; or better yet, invite some friends over in July or something and have yourselves a Ye Olde Christmasse Bashe.
So if you think you’d like to host your own ‘old school’ English Christmas this year, read on…
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