You can also see the skeleton of the book proposal very transparently in the text bc each section has a sentence along the lines of "If (x activity) is what makes us human, (y commodity) is key to doing (x)." I am probably extra annoyed by this bc I just think "what makes us human" is not an interesting question but it's annoying!
Hahahahaha I was looking up past bylines by this author and in 2018 he wrote an op-ed for the Sunday Times titled "Jeremy Corbyn Has No Right to Judge My Background" basically saying that talking about class is "divisive"!! this explains how an economics editor can write a book that provides an incorrect definition of capitalism and barely acknowledge colonialism in COMMODITY HISTORY
To be clear it doesn't seem as though Corbyn actually outed this guy as "posh" or uh, personally judged him, feel like the defensiveness here is saying a lot
The thing is there is actually a really good critical book on commodity trading by an extremely posh British journalist (guy literally named RUPERT who went to HARVARD) but he used his posh credentials to basically get industry assholes to tell on themselves?? It can be done!!
@ingrid I 100% share this frustration
@ingrid Currently looking at a recent interview I did and the number of times “we” crept in there and feeling pretty sheepish.
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@sparks it is usually not a big deal except when it is lol
I've absolutely been prey to lazy "we" language in previous work and I get the appeal but it also feels wildly arrogant in a book about histories of commodities that draws heavily on prior pop science and history writing. Saying that "we" don't really think much about salt and then citing a bestselling book about salt by a James Beard Award winner is sloppy!