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William T. Vollmann

Rising Up and Rising Down Hardcover – November 1, 2003

by William T. Vollmann (Author)

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A labor of seventeen years, Vollmann's first book of nonfiction since 1992's An Afghanistan Picture Show is a gravely urgent invitation to look back at the world's long, bloody path and find some threads of meaning, wisdom, and guidance to plot a moral course. From the street violence of prostitutes and junkies to the centuries-long battles between the Native Americans and European colonists,Vollmann's mesmerizing imagery and compelling logic is presented with authority born of astounding research and personal experience.

Print length

3298 pages
Language

English
Publisher

McSweeney's
Publication date

November 1, 2003
Dimensions

10 x 7 x 11 inches
ISBN-10

1932416021
ISBN-13

978-1932416022
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This massive, unprecedented book, begun in the early '80s and mostly completed by 1998, is nothing less than "a critique of terrorist, defensive, military and police activity," along with an attempt to construct a moral calculus for the human use of violence. Focused on political violence--or force used to realign the ways in which power is distributed among and within groups and states--the book emerges out of several related questions that Vollmann (The Atlas, etc.) answers with historical and ideological analysis, phenomenological and physical description, reportage and quotation: when do people use violence for political ends, how do they justify it and at what scale do they undertake it given differing situations and ideas about them? Although Vollmann does not deal with the events of September 11 or their aftermath, the book could not be more timely, and, within certain limits, it is almost as successful as it is ambitious. The title refers to the rise and fall of states, empires, and militarized factions and groups. A "part-time journalist of armed politics," Vollmann is neither morbid ("I am not titillated by death") nor sentimental about means and ends. Yet he is also not quite a philosopher, historian (despite his Seven Dreams series of historical novels) or social scientist. The discussions of history and historical figures, which make up a great deal of the project, have a hard time competing with the contemporary interviews and photographs which are almost always gripping and immediate. As fans of his books on San Francisco skinheads, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and global prostitution will recognize, he is at his best when recording impressions of specific, unfamiliar situations and detailing the associations they trigger. His interviews (here including Taliban interior minister Abdul Razzak) are rendered with a dispassion that often matches that of The Executioner's Song. In his quest for the complete set of human motivations for violence, Vollmann travels to an astonishing range of places and sifts a monumental number of texts. The work begins in the Paris catacombs, lined with human remains ("my o's like death's heads, my i's and l's like ribs, my b's q's, p's and d's like ball-ended humeri broken in half"), and ends with an intense reportorial treatment of discrimination against the Buraku people in Japan--with the final volume "extracting" an actual moral calculus from the preceding six. In between, Vollmann tallies places, figures, organizations and writings including Aquinas; an Afghani woman named Anjillah; the Amazon Antiope; an Aryan Nations pamphlet; the group known as Black Organizing Power; the 19th-century U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Cicero; Columbine; the Democratic Republic of Congo; Gandhi; "General X" of the Khmer Rouge; Idrimi, king of the ancient Mideastern city of Alalakh; Lenin; Leonidas, king of Sparta; the northern magnetic pole; Montezuma; Robespierre; Saddam City; Zagreb--and many, many other figures and locales. In its length, this project equals Winston Churchill's somewhat similarly themed History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Conceptually, a better comparison is Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, though the present book is about three times as long, and violence has almost certainly directly killed many more people than melancholia. The photos work similarly to those in James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Proust's treatment of memory in In Search of Lost Time also makes sense as a comparison, but the people and places number far fewer there. Some will object that Vollmann's analyses and syntheses are not sufficiently systematic, but what keeps this book from full-on greatness is that it does not create a style or sensibility that is shocking in and of itself, and that finally holds its unwieldly contents together. Rather, at its best, its rigorous, novelistic, imaginative, sonorous prose treats a fundamental topic on a grand (and horrific) scale. And that is enough, since the book is designed to get ordinary people thinking about the role violence, even at a distance, plays in their lives, and what part even bystanders play in the world's calculus. Given the price of this slipcased edition, however, many will have to reserve it at the library.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ McSweeney's (November 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 3298 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1932416021
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1932416022
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 19.65 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10 x 7 x 11 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #6,850,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,254 in Violence in Society (Books)
- #25,108 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality
- #202,754 in World History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
43 ratings

About the author

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William T. Vollmann

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William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Europe Central. He lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife and daughter.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Øystein Vidnes (http://www.flickr.com/photos/oysteinv/160077312/) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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2 star		9%
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Peter C. Patton

One of the best books I have ever read!

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2013

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I started with the one-volume abridgement and was so impressed I bought copies for several friends and family members and then bought the original seven-volume edition which I am now reading. The author's writing skills are impressive and engaging and his scholarship is formidable. Unlike Kant who started with a theoretical ethical calculus based on reason alone and then reasoned top-down to his deontological ethical imperatives, Vollmann starts with concrete historical actors (and their victims) and reasons bottom-up to a series of highly contextual (but not merely relativistic) moral calculi. He occasionally does a Plutarch-like "parallel lives" presentation of two historical actors. The one on Lenin and Lycurgus is excellent but the one on Trotsky and Lincoln is a jewel. I have been teaching Ethics to graduate students for years and present some of the same situations this author does but without his rich historical context and finesse. Reading this book will greatly enhance my teaching not only of Ethics to graduate students but also Classical Literature, and Western Civilization to undergraduates. I did my doctorate in Germany and must compliment the author not only for his outstanding "anmarken Wissenschaft" but also for his "Sitzfleisch;" that is, his erudition, intellectual focus, and time-investment for gifting his readers with this magisterial seven-volume work.
Keep up the good work, William.
Prof Peter C. Patton
Oklahoma Christian University
Edmond, Oklahoma

12 people found this helpful

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J. P Spencer

Extraordinary but disjointed in the abridged version

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2017

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Let me start by being clear that my review is based entirely and is directed solely at the abridged version of RURD. As such I’ve bounced between 2 and 5 stars. Vollman’s writing is for me fantastic and his approach to thinking about violence and its justification is mind expanding in way few things I’ve ever read. (Most specifically by virtue of his discussion of specific conflicts through his conversations with fairly ordinary people stuck in those conflicts. ). On the other hand, I think the abridgment has gutted the work of its coherence. What I will say (and this is ultimately my reason to give this 4 stars) is that while I had thought that as much as I like Vollman’s other books, I never would have believed I would read the full seven volume version. Now it is in my bucket list for sure.

2 people found this helpful

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thirdtwinTop Contributor: Batman

Wish The Full Work Were More Readily Available

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2016

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Intriguing premise but in this abridged version too many of the 3000 pages of the original multivolume set are removed. The good point is this volume does contain the table of contents for the full set- so you have some idea what you're missing but even at 720 pages this single volume just doesn't compare to the original set; too much is left out to be a useful reference.

4 people found this helpful

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Peter C. Smernoff

William T. Vollmann's magnum opus

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2016

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The most significant book in Vollmann's career, which makes it one of the most important books of all time.
Challenging, frightening, profound--a visionary masterpiece.

3 people found this helpful

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Tim

Not the "Official" Version, but still interesting

Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2012

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What you should know before buying the one-volume version of the book is that it is a heavily condensed edition of a work that is seven volumes long. When asked, the author said he allowed this short version to be published, "for the money," but that it's not the real version (at least that's what it says on Wikipedia).
That said, this book is a whole lot cheaper (and a quicker read, of course) than the seven-volume version, and it was a pretty interesting read, and I would still probably recommend it. Just something to be aware of before you buy.

3 people found this helpful

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A. Student

One of a kind

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2005

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THis book was receommended in a blog that was debating the morality of force when collateral damage to non-combatants was a real possibility. To my shocked surprise, I found an intense, serious study of violence, freedom and "urgent means" (a euphemism for 'when nothing but force will do'). This is a single volume abridgement of a huge set of books and tends to be wordy and academic in places but well worth the time invested in reading. Examining the use of force in situations ranging from Napoleon to Stalin to the US War Between the States, the author explores the question of under what circumstances the use of violence may be justifiable. Even the advocates of non-violence such as Gandhi are not neglected in the discourse. There are no easy answers here and some of the discussion is frankly disturbing (as it should be, given the subject) but it is a masterful examination of why humans kill and the "moral calculus" they use to justify their actions.

17 people found this helpful

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Zachary Turpin

The 7 Volume Set

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2007

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Vollmann's work is expensive, sprawling, beautiful, and sterilizingly heavy. It's historical analysis, personal anecdote, philosophical inquiry, ethical manifesto, war journalism (his), photography and drawings (mostly his), and thumbnail illustrations. And it's worth the price to get one of the few remaining sets. You'll become intimately acquainted with Trotsky, Cortes, Lincoln, Plato, John Brown, Stalin, Leonidas, Gandhi, the Unabomber, de Sade, Hitler, Montezuma, the Ik, Napoleon, and Mikhail Bakunin, among others. Will you run across an occasional typo or forced metaphor? Sure. But considering the product, who cares? It's brilliant and very, very readable. Two things particularly please me about this work. First, Vollmann never pretends to objectivity. RURD is an "essay" in the original sense of the word, and provokes plenty of discussion. Second, McSweeney's typography and binding are breathtaking, so that each volume is a pleasure to see and hold, much less read. If you enjoy the abridgment, the set is worth all 50,000+ pennies, or whatever the last sets are going for.

5 people found this helpful

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99999jj

This abridged version is a mistake. In the back ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2015

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This abridged version is a mistake. In the back of the abridged version appears a table of contents of the unabridged version. The organization of the unabridged version makes sense. This condensed, disorganized abridged version doesn't. At least to me. There is nothing about this version compelling me to dive into such a large, deep book. With the full version, at least you can pick apart sections which are organized by topic and that seems very interesting. I read somewhere that the author was against the abridged version - me too. If anyone wants my copy of the abridged version, let me know. I am in the boston area.

One person found this helpful

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