"Christian Hair," a review by Miri Rubin, reviewing Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism by Magda Teter. This book traces how the doctrine of Christian supercession—and the ensuing idea that Christians were essentially fated to "supercede" and replace Jews—provided the scaffolding for later forms of racism, i.e., white supremacy. This doctrine gave Christians, Catholic and Protestant, the concepts of "hierarchy and worth [that] informed the economic and political desires of nations and empires across the world." Specifically, it gave them a concept of biological difference that was later instrumental in scaffolding slavery and later forms of racism.
"The Rise and Fall of Warhorses," a review by Wendy Doniger, reviewing Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires by David Chaffitz. Horses wee a vital strategic resource for four thousands years of empires—the book, according to Doniger, traces the role of horses from the moment of domestication, up through World War I, when horses were supplanted by new automotive technologies. What I found interesting was the nuance that "it was not merely that the horse made conquest possible; the horse came to symbolize conquest through its own natural imperialism." Horses need a lot of space, and they tear up the land in their wake. If you have a large army of horses, you need more land for those horses to live on. And to get that land, you need an army of horses. On and on and on.
This focus on strategic resources took me to "Planet Ooze," a review by Jonathan Mingle, reviewing The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance, by Dan Egan. Daniel Immerwahr showed in How to Hide an Empire that the United States retreated from "traditional" territorial empire once it could synthesize or replace the raw materials that motivated imperial conquest: no more conquests in search of rubber when you have laboratories to make synthetic alternatives. Yet phosphorus, along with oil, is one natural resource that cannot be replaced. And, Mingle writes, "we are absurdly profligate with this precious element." Phosphorus, mined in huge quanitties to make fertilizer, ends up, like so much fertilizer, in agricultural runoff. But what happens when we run out? There is a limit, this review shows, to what we can replace with technological and synthetic innovations. But if governments took steps to curb the negligent waste of phosphorus, it could lead to curbing other climate harms as well.