Bøker av Dan Hicks

A call for western museums to wash their hands of colonial blood

Some historians write about the past as if they were erecting a monument, trying to breathe everlasting life into heroes. Such books often blend the subject with the author's self-image, ratchetting and embedding old prejudices, as if each hagiographic turn of phrase is the turn of another steel screw sunk flush to fix a commemorative plaque that bears the name. Part Frankenstein, part Pygmalion, but rendered as words not things, such vicarious monuments to the author's position and privilege, to their vision of civilisation anchored in the past, anchored in the bones of the dead, are executed not as if carving letters onto a tombstone or reading a eulogy, but as if slaughtering villagers in Afghanistan, starving millions in Benghal, fire-storming Dresden. They are written by tapping at the keyboard as if not just silencing the past, but speaking over the voices of the past. Voices the author wants the reader neither to hear nor to remember, blanked out in the lingering supersize shadow of the high-explosive narrative.Every Monument Will Fall does the very opposite. It revitalises the genre of biography by producing the written equivalent of pulling down a statue - digging through the life of the Victorian archaeologist General Augustus Pitt-Rivers, dismantling the whole idea that whiteness is culturally superior.

God seems always to be giving us tests. Each exam we pass makes us a better person, but getting there can be a major struggle. That's the way it is when alcohol overwhelms a person's life. Overcoming such an addiction is one of God's toughest tests to pass. But by placing him in the center of our lives, faithfully attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, working through AA's Twelve Steps, and exploring our inner selves, it becomes possible to overcome alcoholism. This book suggests ways to achieve sobriety, one day at a time, by quoting recovering alcoholics, books, online articles, and AA's Big Book. What started out as a daily blog has been turned into a book intended to help readers pass one of God's tough life tests.

"Understanding Economics: A Work of Science Fiction" by Dan Hicks is an accessible and thought-provoking book that makes economics relatable for a broader audience. By merging the worlds of economics and science fiction, Hicks achieves writing a text that is both enlightening and genuinely enjoyable to read."- Leath Al Obaidi, The Society of Professional Economists The human economy might be the most complex thing in the known universe. It is comprised of millions or billions of self-directed human beings, their technologies, and institutions, each continuously acting and interacting within an already ridiculously complex natural world. To navigate this complexity, economists, like science fiction writers, must start with what they know and try and fill in the many gaps in their knowledge with calculated guesses, conjecture, and a little bit of fantasy. In fact, it is when we forget how complex the economy is, when we are confident without justification of the impact our changes will have - that's when we tend to really mess things up.With the help of aliens, androids, Dr. Spock and Darth Vader, Understanding Economics: A work of science fiction takes an in depth look at the factors that make economics so difficult to understand and explain and, aware of these limitations, tries to explain them anyway.THE FIGHTIt might not seem apparent as we sit quietly on the bus, do our taxes or wait patiently in line to order our coffee, but the foundation of the human economy is an organism whose ancestors have scavenged, fought, killed and died to enable us to come into existence. This organism, with all its fears and desires, strengths and weaknesses, remains at the centre of economics today.FAITHWithout faith we are nothing - but not in a religious sense. Without faith in each other, in our institutions, our governments and our financial system we would literally have only a fraction of the wealth and comforts we enjoy today. We might sometimes fantasize about a post-apocalyptic world with no rules, where we're left to our own resources, but in reality, most of us wouldn't even survive.THE MACHINESForget about the impending AI apocalypse, the machines rose up and took control a long time ago. Our institutions are a technology of our own making that control our lives and our economy in ways that that we have much less control over than we might like.CHAOS & CONTROLAn economy is a precarious balance of chaos and control. When chaos reigns we lose the benefit of people working together to solve their problems. Excessive controls constrain the experimentation and variation through which an economy and its participants come up with new and highly effective solutions to its problems.NO SUPERHEROESThere are no superheroes who can save us. There aren't even superheroes who can consistently determine right from wrong. What there is, if we're lucky, is a process that ensures that our system of government is subject to continuous change intended to benefit those who are being governed.THE MATRIXOur economic world exists within a virtual reality of money and finance which facilitates things that couldn't be done without them. But it also distorts reality, making it hard to distinguish between fact and fiction and smart, or not so smart economic decisions.DEFAULT SETTINGSWhatever freedom we may perceive we have to direct our economy, we are constrained by our physical, cultural and political realities as well as the predominant intellectual theories of our time. For good and bad, our economies are defined by these default settings.BETTER REPLICANTSOur understanding of economics is informed by complex theoretical models, but no matter how advanced these models might be, they are a long way from being able to replicate our incredibly complex economic reality.

Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology 3This study uses the perspectives of what might be termed the 'empirical tradition' of British landscape archaeology that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in industrial archaeology, to explore the early modern history of the 'garden' landscapes formed by British colonialism in the eastern Caribbean, and their place in the world. It presents a detailed chronological sequence of the changing material conditions of these English-/British-owned plantation landscapes during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, with particular reference to the origins, history and legacies of the sugar industry. The study draws together the results of archaeological fieldwork and documentary research to present a progressive account of the historical landscapes of the islands of St Kitts and St Lucia: sketching a chronological outline of landscape change. This approach to landscape is characterised by the integration of archaeological field survey, standing buildings recording alongside documentary and cartographic sources, and focuses upon producing accounts of material change to landscapes and buildings. By providing a long-term perspective on eastern Caribbean colonial history: from the nature of early, effectively prehistoric contact and interaction in the 16th century, through early permanent European settlements and into the developed sugar societies of the 18th and 19th centuries, the study suggests a temporal and thematic framework of landscape change that might inform the further development of historical archaeology in the island Caribbean region. The broader aim of the study relates to exploring how archaeological techniques can be used to contribute a highly detailed, empirical case study to the interdisciplinary study of postcolonial landscapes and British colonialism. In order to achieve this goal, the study draws upon the techniques of what has been called the 'empirical tradition' of landscape archaeology.

A candid memoir by a much-loved singer and songwriter, the late, great Dan Hicks, best known for the songs 'I Scare Myself and 'Canned Music , recorded with His Hot Licks. Elvis Costello has indeed written a foreword for it!