One Fiction and One Nonfiction

To Govern the Globe by Alfred McCoy and

 The Maid by Nita Prose

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and today - the day after Thanksgiving - is known to retailers everywhere as “Black Friday”. Happy crazy mad shopping day to all who celebrate. 🙂 

I’ve tackled two books this week, one fiction and one nonfiction. I should say here that, other than the fact that I finished both books this week, they don’t really have a lot in common with each other.

To Govern the Globe is the most recent book by University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy. The subtitle is “World Orders and Catastrophic Change”.

In this book McCoy tackles the history of empires from the end of the plague years - the Black Death - in the late 1400s up until today, and the world orders they create that often last longer than the empires themselves.

The book tracks the interplay of sovereignty - the rights of nations or peoples, individual’s human rights, and the different sources of energy used to power empires over the last 600 years.

The book starts with the premise that examining these things will help us understand what may be coming next. The author sees the current moment as likely an end to the relatively short period of the post-World-War-II American global order, and the possible rise of a new China-centered world order.

The book is fantastic as a concise world history but doesn’t effectively advance a coherent notion of what “global order” may came next. Or perhaps more correctly, the author doesn’t make a convincing case that we are at an inflection point that will usher in a new world order.

He does make the case that China is currently following in the footsteps of historic empires, particularly with its rising naval capabilities and the international influence of its Belt and Road initiatives throughout Asia, Africa and Europe, and also with its lead in green energy tech. He sees China as gaining international power and influence on a path to dominance. But he quickly counters his own hypothesis by saying that climate change poses such a threat that it may well quash China’s hopes. He sees the potential for desertification and rising temperatures as having an inordinate effect on China itself (a country can’t escape its geography), forcing it to turn its attention inward.

All in all a very well researched and engaging history, but one that doesn’t really sell its initial predictive premise.

NOTE: I read a review copy of this book courtesy of the author and publisher Haymarket Books. The book was first published in November of 2021, with the paperback version available this past June.

I am late to join the masses who have read this next best-selling book. The Maid is the 2022 debut novel of Nita Prose, a Canadian author who has written a cozy mystery with a twist.

The maid of the title is Molly, who works in an upscale boutique hotel in an unnamed big city (though I presume it’s Toronto). Molly is socially awkward and naive. She has a tendency to misread verbal cues and body language. She often takes things that other people say literally rather than understanding the intent behind the words.

Molly has relied on her grandmother to help her interpret the world for much of life, but unfortunately “Gran” has passed away a few months before the book begins.

This is a fairly typical murder mystery in that the murder takes place early on and the clues are slowly revealed as the book moves along, with enough red herrings thrown in to keep you guessing.

But Molly’s quirky personality, and the nature of the slowly revealed dirty business happening at the fine establishment at which she works add a more modern flavor to the book.

If I were to make an elevator pitch for the book, I’d say that it’s an Agatha Christie premise, with a nod to the methods of TV’s Columbo, as revealed by an unreliable first-person narrator (as in Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On the Train).

There’s nothing earth shatteringly new about The Maid, but it is an entertaining and quick read that has you guessing at the murderer’s identity right up until the end, which would account for much of its best seller success. The fact that the movie rights were announced before the book was published probably accounts for the rest.

If this sounds like your kind of book, you might also be interested to know that there is a sequel to The Maid called The Mystery Guest that will be published next Tuesday.

NOTE: I picked up a copy of this book in Toronto on a family trip.