THE CHAOS THEORY

“A Man & His Watch” by Matt Hranek

The author Matt Hranek remarks at the beginning of this book that “for many men, watches seem to have a deeper meaning than just keeping time. Watches mark special occasions, they tell the world a bit about who you are, and they can, if you’re lucky, connect you to the people in your life who matter most.”

I’ve never been a watch enthusiast before. I was given a Swatch by someone I really look up to and I wore it since high school to university days even until my masters degree. And afterwards I use Apple Watch and later Garmin as a part of my sporty life, while at the beginning of my collector phase I tend to purchase more simple watches like an Edwin Jeans watch just because it has my name on the dial, a MVMT, or that time I bought a special edition G-Shock in Hiroshima, as well as that time I bought a Swedish minimalist watch at the N Seoul Tower. Also, I was particularly proud of this limited edition watch by Fossil that made several luxury watch enthusiasts asking about what it is (but it deteriorated less than a year).

But then I learned about brand association and that a watch is not just a time keeping device, but a part of our personality. And soon enough I became intrigued with learning who wears what kind of watch brand, and whether it fits with their personality. Like James Bond with his association with Omega, while Jason Bourne is more of a TAG Heuer guy. Or how Che Guevara sported a Rolex Submariner (which is cool AF but a stark contrast with his socialist idealism), or Indonesia’s dictator Suharto wears Audemars Piguet Millenary 150161ST which shows power. And then there’s Jurgen Klopp, who is loyal to one brand IWC even though he’s not an endorser, which fits with his personality as the brand is a kind of silent luxury brand at par with Rolex, without needing to show off like in-your-face designs of Panerai or Richard Mille.

And so the interest in watches turned into an obsession. I kept searching and reading articles about personalities with the watch brands that they wear, like how Ed Sheeran is apparently an avid watch collector but who loves one watch above all the APs and the Hublots in his collection: his cheap ToyWatch that meant a lot growing up.

Which brings us to this book. The book is listed as the number 1 recommended book on watches, by several different watch websites. It shows what many different watches mean for many different people, from a legacy watch handed down from generations above, to expensive top luxury brands, to cheap watches with a huge backstory that makes them priceless. There’s something for everyone to relate to.

The book is filled with sentimental stories about a man and his watch. Such as Francis Chichester, an adventurer, sailor, and navigator who circumnavigate the globe wearing Rolex Oyster Perpetual. Benjamin Clymer with his Omega Speedmaster Mark 40 that was given to him by his grandfather that pretty much started off his love of writing about watches that eventually led to Hodinkee. Keith Haring and his Swatch collections (which he sees as pieces of art that can be put in our wrists). How Dimitri Dimitrov – a Maitre D at the Tower Bar at the Sunset Tower Hotel – got a Timex watch from Bill Murray. Or that interview with a NASA guy whose job is to test the endurance of watches to see whether they are equipped to be used as a tool in space (which only Omega passed the tests).

There’s also Geoffrey Hess who met his wife because of his love of vintage Rolex (and someone who makes me want to attend vintage collector gatherings). Tom Sachs who loves his Casio G-Shock DW-5600 that he has been wearing for 20 years. A Rolex Submariner reference 5513 that was buried in a beach and found by some chap with a metal detector, and ended up purchased by Grahame Fowler. Sylvester Stallone’s Gold Rolex submariner reference 1680/8. Ralph Lauren’s Cartier Tank Cintrée. Or Andy Warhol’s impressive collection of as many as 300 high-end watches.

As Hranek commented, “at the end of the day, a watch is just a watch – it’s the story behind it that can make it exceptional. Just like Paul Newman’s model 6263 big red Rolex Daytona given by his wife, with the engraving of “Drive slowly – Joanne.” Which is a nice touch since Newman was a race car driver. Or how according to Mario Andretti, “in racing watches can stand in for trophies”, which he indeed collected along the way during his illustrious career.

But my favourite sentimental note on watches got to be the vintage Tudor watch that Jacek Kozubek bought that came with a handwritten note from the seller telling the backstory of the man who had owned it: “her father, who had been a marine, a submariner, and mechanic aboard the USS Barbel, stationed in Papa Hotel – also know as Pearl Harbor.” The seller wrote, “Though it is hard for me to part with my father’s watch… my hope is that someone will appreciate it as much as my father did!”

The book also inserted watch history in between the personal stories. Like how Eric Ripert’s watch Vacheron Constantin Historiques American 1921 tilted to the right because it was designed for a driver whose cars back then had big steering wheels. Or how Patek Philippe is credited with inventing the wristwatch, but the style was largely created as a timepiece for women. And it wasn’t until the Cartier Santos-Dumont that wristwatch became associated with exploits of daring and courage: “Louis Cartier invented a small timepiece that attached to the wrist with a leather strap, and gifted the new “Cartier Santos-Dumont” wristwatch to his famous aviator friend [Alberto Santos-Dumont], who never flew without it.”

Furthermore, to write this book Hranek got access to archives of Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Zenith, Hermès, and TAG Heuer, held Paul Newman’s Daytona in flesh, talked with Kikuo Ibe (the creator of Casio G-Shock), among many others, which was an intriguing read by themselves.

And the many pictures of the watches in this book, especially the vintage or rare ones, are also superb. The Cartier belonged to King Constantine I of Greece, Elvis Presley’s Corum Buckingham, Sir Edmund Hillary’s Rolex Oyster Perpetual Officially Certified Chronometer from 1950, John F. Kennedy’s inauguration Omega, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Tiffany & Co Yalta conference watch, the Popeye and Domino engraved Rolexes, the 1952 Tudor Oyster Prince that was one of 26 models sent to Greenland on the wrist of scientists and military and medical personnel to do a seismological and gravitational research. And the many incredible watches that I’ve never heard before, like Orfina, Fisher Ancre 15 Rubis, Elgin, Waltham Trench, Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso, Doxa, Kurono, Autodromo Monoposto, and many others.

I mean, I get it now. It’s not necessarily about the brand name or the price, but more about the memory or what it symbolized. My dad was a watch collector, and among the Rolexes and Cartiers that he has, he was most fond with this fake Rolex Submariner that he bought in a flea market in China. He even like to wear it to the office every once in a while for a laugh. When he passed away, that was the watch that I took to keep him in memory (for the cheekiness), just like Paul Newman’s daughter took and wear his Daytona when he passed away (although I don’t think I will ever wear it in public).

Moreover, just like Hranek, I too have an Oyster Perpetual Datejust, which was given to me by my father in-law on the day I married his daughter. It took me years to realised what it meant, because he didn’t literally say it to me back then: That it symbolized the day he accepted me as his son. So, I get the sentimental meaning of watches, just like when I bought myself a TAG Heuer Aquaracer Solargraph for my 40th birthday then went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in the evening.

Or my current everyday watch IWC Mark XVIII Little Prince edition, a watch that I got obsessed with due to the fact that I love to read books and the watch is a tribute to one of my favourite authors Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Never thought that I would get my hands on it, and just like all men interviewed in this book I wouldn’t trade this watch or any of my other sentimental watches for anything else in the world. Not even this vintage Omega that I found in an antique market in Java, which I bought for less than $10.

“Animal Farm” by George Orwell

How in the world have I not read this book much earlier?

This is an incredible book that teaches us about the nature of politics, disguised in a fable of animals that live in a farm owned by humans.

The book begins with an organised gathering by the animals to stage a coup against the cruel human ruler Mr. Jones, led by a wise elderly pig named Old Major whom passed away too soon and becomes immortalised as the father of the movement. And then the actual coup occurs quite accidentally, when an unplanned incident gives an opportunity for the animals to get rid of the humans once and for all.

And so the Manor Farm is freed and the animals then change the name into Animal Farm, with the place is now controlled by 3 pigs that are the protégés of Old Major: Snowball, Squealer, and the alpha, Napoleon.

What happens next is a masterclass of political analogy by the author, George Orwell. First, the exiled humans begin to badmouth the animals to fellow farm owners, which is acknowledged by other powerful farm owners (not unlike political dissidents backed by Australia, the UK, and the US). The humans then stage a counter coup, which failed but was enough to be used by the pigs as a propaganda of “the common enemy” (that is similar with how the Nazis demonised the Jews), alongside the chant rituals and the revolutionary-type national anthem.

The Iranian and Cuban revolutions also come in mind when reading this part of the book, just like the case with most draconian rulers that use the same template. This also includes the way they handle the proceeding inner struggles of how to actually manage the farm, which causes a rift between Napoleon and Snowball (the intellectual architect of the new regime in the farm).

And then one day Napoleon stages an internal coup himself, where he get rid of Snowball with the help of 7 attack dogs that he has secretly trained. Hence begins the period where Snowball becomes the pariah of the state, being smeared as the root cause of every future misfortune that ever going to happen in the farm. Which reminds me of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s usage of Fethullah Gülen as the boogeyman in Turkish politics, or Israel’s tactics of using the excuse of Hamas as a justification of all the nasty crimes they’re doing.

Furthermore, with one competing pig exiled, the other, Squealer, becomes the chief propagandist and the mouthpiece of the ruling regime, as well as the overall number one ass kisser to Napoleon. And thus, Napoleon becomes the sole leader of the farm and – just like the real story of his namesake Napoleon Bonaparte – increasingly transformed the place into a dictatorship. They even create a presidential election, with Napoleon wins as the sole candidate.

Soon after, the Sunday Meetings (that symbolises democracy) is being cancelled. The original 7 rules of the farm, which was created to assert equality among the animals, are constantly violated by Napoleon and his cronies with the rules are constantly modified to fit their actions.

And so the idealistic dream of a free Animal Farm ruled by equal animals has turned into an Orwellian nightmare. And true to the dictatorial nature that strikingly resemble North Korea, the Napoleon regime constantly feeding propaganda on the brutality of other farm towards fellow animals, exiling or even killing those dare to speak up against Napoleon and brand them as traitors or spies, constantly diverting issues by creating false flag operations to make the citizens forget about the real problems, and creating more propaganda with songs, speeches, false news that things are better now. They even scrapped the revolutionary-style national anthem and change it to a “more mature” anthem that signals things are now stable and prosperous.

Moreover, squealer keeps on producing statistics showing that things are much better now economically, while in reality they are creating a system where the hardest working animals will get the least food, while animals like pigs and dogs who don’t work to produce food will get abundance of food and will never get hungry. Indeed, an apartheid system has been developed, with pigs and dogs are on top of the caste, while the rest of the population are kept illiterate and stupid so that they will accept everything being told to them without the ability to fight back. Even those few who can read and understand what’s really going on, like Benjamin the donkey, cannot do anything about it.

The book ends on a sour note, where their original revolutionary motto “four legs good, two legs bad” is edited to “four legs good, two legs better” when the pigs are starting to learn how to stand up with two legs like humans. They begin to dress like humans, drink alcohol like human, have diplomatic relations with other human farm owners, and have gatherings with them up to a point where we can no longer differentiate between pigs and humans. The scene where the critical bunch of sheep suddenly change their idealistic chants to chants that support the regime, after a “retraining”, gives me the creeps.

And then as a final touch, they change the name of the farm back to Manor Farm, “its original name.” But now with pigs ruling the land in a much worse condition than the previous human regime.

The book was written with the Russian revolution as the inspiration, and we can see how the characters nicely embodying it. The deposed Mr. Jones is Tsar Nicholas II, the wise pig Old Major is Karl Marx or Lenin, Napoleon is Joseph Stalin, Snowball is Leon Trotsky, and while there’s no specific real-life character assigned to Boxer the horse, his story is the most heart breaking for me and presumably the most common one among the ordinary citizens who simply love their country no matter what.

What a gripping read from the beginning to the end, and I finished the book in one sitting. Absolutely phenomenal.

“Why We Took the Car” by Wolfgang Herrndorf

This is one of the funniest books that I’ve ever read. It’s about two idiot teenagers, one is a loser another one is a foreign student from Russia, spending a summer holiday together doing some misadventure.

The book starts at around the 3/4 mark of the story, where it gets so messed up and it only provides few clues to what has actually happened: An accident, presumably a car accident in the autobahn, with the narrator and protagonist – Mike Klingenberg (the loser) – then lost consciousness in a police station and wakes up in the hospital.

But then, before the story continues any further, the book takes us back to school in their hometown Berlin where it all started before the summer holiday. The first few chapters are filled with all the eccentric characters in the everyday German life, from the teachers, to his nut job schoolmates, to Mike’s crush Tatiana (who is obsessed with Beyonce), to this particular weird new student from Russia nicknamed Tschick, who looked more like a Mongolian, has an anti-social tendencies, and almost always come to school already drunk.

It was with Tschick that Mike eventually breaks out from his boring personality and boring life, and do some stupid adventures together. One particular act is stealing, nay, borrowing, a f***ed up Lada car, drive it to a supposedly made up place that Tschick swore it exist (it was in Romania), and to go there without a map nor a compass but only with a random sense of direction, where they don’t know where they are most of the time. What could possibly go wrong? The Richard Clayderman cassette in particular is a very nice, psychotic, touch throughout the narrative.

The book has a good flow of writing, quick and witty, broken down into 49 short chapters that makes it easy to read. It is narrated in a laid back style of talking, by Mike that sees almost everything from a sarcastic teenager point of view, and might just have a little sociopathic tendencies or mild autism or whatever, judging from the way he doesn’t really understand people’s reactions towards his antics.

The book is also filled with bizarre conversations during the trip, between the 2 clueless teenagers that still have a whole life ahead of them, who are afraid of the future but simultaneously not bothered about what will come, who have a vivid imagination about the world but not a single clue about their place in it. And they also have many weird encounters with people along the road, like the creepy happy family, the communist sharpshooter, the hippo with the fire extinguisher, and of course a chatty girl named Isa who has loads of crazy stories.

It’s fresh, it’s hilarious, and have an air of innocence about it, due to the fact that all this time the boys are only 14 year-old. I absolutely love it.

“My Turn: A Life of Total Football” by Johan Cruyff

Johan Cruyff is arguably one of the top 3 greatest footballers of all time, often ranked only behind Pelé and Maradona. As a player, he won 3 Ballon d’Or, won multiple trophies at Ajax and Barcelona, and reached the 1974 World Cup final with his country Netherlands.

But his legacy in football is arguably what he did after he became a manager, where he perfected Rinus Michels’ Total Football that became the DNA of Barcelona, and to some extend helped to create the modern football thanks to the generation of coaches that learned from him, such as Ernesto Valverde, Ronald Koeman, Luis Enrique, Frank Rijkaard, Xavi Hernandez, and of course Pep Guardiola.

In this memoir, he tells it all from his side of the story, the human story. How he grew to love his iconic shirt number 14, the kidnapping attempt on his family at Barcelona, THAT turn, why he finally stop smoking, why he didn’t join the Netherlands national team in 1978 World Cup, on retiring at 31, returning from retirement to play in the US and Ajax’s sworn enemy Feyenoord, on his footballer son Jordi Cruyff and the lesser known grandson who briefly played in Wigan Athletics, or that time when his Barcelona team bought an Ajax player a bit too expensive so that he can help Ajax with their financial difficulty.

Throughout the stories we’ll find an impressive list of name droppings, especially those players that played under him, from Marco Van Basten, to Dennis Bergkamp, Michael Laudrup, Andoni Zubizareta, Hristo Stoichkov, to Romario, and many more.

However, the majority of the book is unfortunately filled with ego that got in the way of a good story telling. In fact, the more I read on the more the book becomes less of a structured autobiography and more of a long list of rants about his tenure at both Ajax and Barcelona – which weren’t as smooth sailing as I previously thought -, his super star attitude in the Dutch national team, his bad decisions in life such as the questionable investments that bankrupted him, and even his very honest contempt towards Louis Van Gaal.

But knowing who he is and what he’s done to football, I think he’s got a pass for being obnoxious. A GOAT pass reserved only for the brilliant few.

And this brilliance is apparent when he stops moaning and starts talking about footballing tactics, which pretty much explains how modern football is now being played. Things such as how he thinks that a build up play should begin with a ball-playing goalkeeper. Or this line over the decision of putting 2 non-natural defenders at the heart of his defense at Barcelona: “Consider the wisdom of putting Ronald Koeman and Pep Guardiola, two attack-minded players with good scoring ability, at the centre of defence. Neither of them was a real defender, and yet it worked because defending is a matter of positioning, agility and ability to attack. If you have those three elements in your team, you don’t even need to defend.”

Moreover, his tactical brilliance is also shown in some rhetorical scenarios that he occasionally discuss. Like his intriguing opinion that Marco Van Basten could have become a world class right back. Or his fantasy squad consisting of Piet Keizer at left wing, Brazilian Garrincha at right wing, Bobby Charlton at left midfield, Alfredo Di Stéfano at right midfield, Ruud Krol at left back, Carlos Alberto at right back, with Franz Beckenbauer, Pep Guardiola, Diego Maradona and Pelé are also in the mix, including Lev Yashin at goalkeeper.

Specifically for Pelé and Maradona, he is convinced that they are a perfect match, “because Pelé’s enormous sense of responsibility connects nicely with Maradona’s individualism. I know for sure that during the match Pelé would watch over Diego as a kind of guide, because footballers have a perfect sense for that kind of thing, and Maradona would give something back to Pelé, which would allow him to be fully appreciated.”

All in all, I must admit that after years of wanting to read this book, I’m disappointed on how it turns out to be when I eventually read it. It is perhaps best to read with prior knowledge about Cruyff’s story or have read his biography by other writers. But in my opinion this book is still an unmissable one for any football fan, because it shows glimpses of the mind of an absolute footballing maestro, directly from the legend himself.

“A Movable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway

This is Hemingway’s memoir about the time when he lived in Paris, a period “when we were extremely impoverished and extremely happy.”

It is about his writing habit, his many strolls around the neighbourhood, the roads that he walk pass every day, the cafes that he frequented, the library and bookstore where he often borrow books from.

It is also filled with stories such as how he pick up the betting habits on horse races, and plenty more tales from the expat scene that live in that particular place in that particular era between World War 1 and World War 2, which include fellow writers and artists such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and more of the so-called “Lost Generation.” It is the real-life scenes of what would become the prelude of his fictitious first novel “The Sun Also Rises.”

But perhaps above all, this book is about the romanticised Paris. The Luxembourg Garden, Cafe de Flore, Les Deux Magots, his daily lives with his first wife Hadley Richardson, and the environment that facilitated Hemingway’s first big break as a writer.

“Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

They say to be an extraordinary writer, you need to have an extraordinary life. Fyodor Dostoevsky grew up in a poor family, where his parents and their 5 children live in only 2 rooms. The father and mother were very hard working, deeply religious, and they spent most of their evenings reading serious books aloud to their children, an activity that developed Dostoevsky’s passion for books since early age.

Dostoevsky was a sickly and delicate child growing up, a shy boy but with a brilliant ability to write. This ability, and his love of books, landed him into a trouble in 1849 when he was already a grown man, where he got arrested for “taking part in conversations against the censorship, of reading a letter from Byelinsky to Gogol, and of knowing of the intention to set up a printing press.” Something punishable by death under the rule of Tsar Nicholas I. But at the very last minute before the firing squad executed him, the sentence was changed from death to hard labour in Siberia.

This intense experience left a mark on Dostoevsky, and it constantly recurs in the subject of his writings. Especially after his obscure nervous disease developed into violent attacks of epilepsi, which he would suffer for the rest of his life.

And his suffering didn’t stop there. After he was allowed to go back to Russia in 1859, about 5 years later he lost his first wife and brother Mihail, and proceeded to pay his brother’s debt and support his family even though Dostoevsky himself still lives in poverty. This, is when Dostoevsky came up with the idea of Crime and Punishment.

The novel is a brilliant portrayal of the range of negative human emotions, from suffering, to greed, lust, anger, envy, sadness, disappointment, to perhaps the most extreme one: the urge for murder. It gets so real and dark that sometimes it gives me literal eery feeling down to my bones.

It’s astonishing how Dostoevsky can make me feel the suffering of Raskolnikov’s poverty and desperate situation. Can make me see that Raskolnikov’s plan – to murder one evil pawnbroker, steal her money, and use them for several good deeds – actually sounds sensible. Can make me feel as if I’m the one who has just killed the pawnbroker lady, with all these weird guilty feeling sensations throughout the period when I’m reading the book.

And the way Dostoevsky construct the development of the story after the murder, that’s a testament to his maestro ability. I was made to wish that the murder never happened, because firstly Raskolnikov didn’t do everything that he planned to do (aka steal all of the pawnbroker’s money) so his main incentive wasn’t even collected because he got so distraught after committing the murder, and thus the murder was for nothing. Secondly, the mental agony of murdering another human being was insane, where Raskolnikov became ill afterwards due to feeling a tremendous sense of guilt.

Meanwhile, look at how life turns out to be for him, without the murder and stolen money. Oh, but now we (as in Raskolnikov and the readers) have to bear the burden of hiding the truth, not to mention the total paranoia of anyone finding out about it.

This is the genius of Dostoevsky, where he could make the reader feel the regret and all the emotional struggles throughout. That is, until the feeling of relieve after Raskolnikov eventually admitted to the murder and get sentenced for it. What an absolute wreckage of an emotional journey it has been, what a brilliant book.

“The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids” by Ryan Holiday

It is rare to have read and understood a book before we even read the introduction, but this is what the Daily Dad is for me. I’ve been a keen follower of the Daily Dad mailing list since day one, and I have read every single entry until today. But there’s just something different when reading it in a book format, neatly organized into chapters and topics, and of course with mostly new materials.

Indeed, they say that knowledge is an organized information, and true to Ryan Holiday’s style of writing, this book provides us with parenting lessons from a wide range of discipline, from history to sports, from politics to business, which are broken down into 366 days of the year.

Lessons such as spending time with them, playing with them, on reaching out to them, how our behaviour will set the standard for them, how to set up good examples (because their little eyes are always watching us), about what we all need as a parent: patience and discipline, that our house shouldn’t be a neat and spotless place but instead a place where it looks like kids are living there.

It is also about the balance between supporting and pushing our kids, creating a relationship where they can talk their feelings openly, how to raise readers, how to be an ancestor and not a ghost, about our casual remark on them that could stick with them, about the inner thought that we instil in them, what’s really going on behind a tantrum, how to support them no matter what even when they screw up, teaching them how to handle winning and losing properly, how to teach them resilience, and so much more.

As Holiday remarks, “parenting is a topic that every philosophy and religious tradition has spoken about. We can find lessons on how to control our temper in front of our kids from Plato. Lessons on how to cultivate a peaceful home for our kids from Marcus Aurelius. Lessons on how to not spoil our kids from Seneca. Lessons on how to support our kids from Queen Elizabeth II. Lessons on how to inspire our kids from Florence Nightingale.”

Holiday then continues, it is also “Lessons on how to cultivate curiosity in our kids from Sandra Day O’Connor. Lessons on how to cherish time with our kids from Jerry Seinfeld. Lessons on how to balance our careers and our kids from Toni Morrison. Lessons on how to believe in our kids from the life of Muhammad Ali. Lessons from mothers who survived the Holocaust, fathers who led the civil rights movement, sons who became war heroes, and daughters who won Nobel Prizes … the Stoics and the Buddhists, the moderns and the ancients. We can learn from them all.”

As the saying goes, everyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad. And this is the perfect book to help us learn how to be a great dad.

“The Daily Laws” by Robert Greene

This is the best of Robert Greene’s wisdom, in a form of summaries taken from his previous books: 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature, as well as from his speeches.

The strategies and stories are neatly broken down into 366 chapters for each day of the year, and organized under 12 different themes for each month. So not 48, not 33, but 366 laws filled with insights from history.

For an illustration, most of the summary of 48 Laws of Power are in the 30 days of April, The Art of Seduction is in the month of July, and The 33 Strategies of War are mostly in September. Imagine what would the other 9 months look like?

As usual with any Robert Greene book, I don’t want to spoil any more details. It is perhaps better if you don’t read it, because it’s supposed to be a heavily guarded cheat sheet of life. One that I’m reluctant to share.

All in all, the book is a good introduction for everything about Robert Greene’s thinking. In fact, I already gave 1 copy to a friend while I was still reading the month of May (yeah I read the book in one go, instead of reading one page a day).

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West” by Dee Brown

This is a meticulously researched book, that puts the faces and names behind the statistics of the Native American genocide in the 19th century American West.

It is the stories of the many Native American tribes such as the Cheyenne, Sioux, Dakota, Apache, Ute, and many others, including their famous chiefs and heroes such as the wonderfully named Little Crow, Big Eagle, Mankato, Tall Bull, Lone Wolf, Black Kettle, White Horse, Dull Knife, Kicking Bird, Two Moon, White Bear, Little Wolf, Crazy Horse, Bald Head Tatum, Big Tree, Little Robe, Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, Wabasha, and Black Bear.

The book shows how the Native Americans were living, the organization of tribes, the names, the heroes, the folklores. And how the White Settlers gradually grab power, created unequal laws (such as Manifest Destiny), displaced the Natives from their lands, and ended up conducting a mass-scale genocide towards them when they resisted.

It is the tail end of an already brutal history since Christopher Columbus arrived in the continent in the 15th century, which have seen approximately 56 million Natives slaughtered in North America alone. It is told through tales such as the Little Crow’s war, the war with the Cheyenne, the Powder River invasion, Red Cloud’s war, the rise and fall of Donehogawa, the story of Cochise and the Apache guerrillas, the war to save the buffalo, the war for the Black Hills, the flight of the Nez Perces, and the Cheyenne exodus, among others. All of which are really tough to read, so very heart breaking, and have no happy ending.

“During that time the culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed,” the author Dee Brown remarks, “and out of that time came virtually all the great myths of the American West—tales of fur traders, mountain men, steamboat pilots, goldseekers, gamblers, gunmen, cavalrymen, cowboys, harlots, missionaries, schoolmarms, and homesteaders. Only occasionally was the voice of an Indian heard, and then more often than not it was recorded by the pen of a white man.”

This book, however, is different. First published in 1970, it revealed history from the Native Americans’ point of view, how their ancestors’ land that have been handed down from many generations were not shared but systematically robbed, which clearly shows that the story of the Thanksgiving is actually a blatant lie.

But of course the reality is much more complicated than just a bloodlust massacre. The book shows how some friendships between the Natives and White Settlers were genuinely formed, how several trades were established, and occasional friendly games were also held. But nevertheless, the good bonds were all broken at one point or another, and they largely became a tale of broken promises, backstabbing, cheating, framing, raids, famine, diseases, and segregation of villages, with the mass killing conducted gradually through complicated truces, bogus new regulations and abuse of power.

Dee Brown then continues, “The greatest concentration of recorded experience and observation came out of the thirty-year span between 1860 and 1890—the period covered by this book. It was an incredible era of violence, greed, audacity, sentimentality, undirected exuberance, and an almost reverential attitude toward the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it.”

And the cherry on top? The United States of America has never officially admitted that they conducted a genocide. And almost nobody is demanding for any accountability.

4 million copies of this book have been sold since it was first published, and the book has been translated into 17 languages, as well as made into a movie with the same title. The book is so good of illustrating the genocide that it gives me a bitter aftertaste where I felt hopeless and powerless, towards a series of events that happened more than a century ago, over people that I did not even know existed.

“Letter to His Father” by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka had an unhappy life, filled with anxiety and hidden rage. And it’s not hard to figure out where the source of his misery was coming from: his overbearing father.

Hermann Kafka was a narcissistic strict disciplinarian who raise his children using emotional abuse, double-standard, hypocritical actions, threats, explosive temperament and sarcastic comments, which, in his own words, made Franz feels “rejected, put down, oppressed.”

But it was the father’s disapproval of his engagement to Felice Bauer that became the last straw for Franz, and prompted him to express his feelings towards his father in the best way possible for him, through writing. Something that his father disprove of.

And in this letter Franz pour it all out, at the age of 36, all the emotions that have been building up for the past 3 decades.

It’s amazing how by looking into this meticulously written letter we can see the inner thought and feelings of Franz Kafka and what makes him human. And we can unintentionally see the biography of his life, the occurrences in his childhood that made a mark on him, and what helped to create his Kafkaesque world view.

“My writing was about you,” Franz wrote in the letter, “indeed I was only confiding my troubles to a book because I could not confide in you.”

The letter was never read by his father, however, where Franz gave the letter to his loving mother but she never revealed it to Hermann.