Recently Mentioned Books

The author is Sam Bloch, and the subtitle is The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource .  An interesting book on a neglected topic, here is one excerpt:

For thinkers of note there were Hans Blumenberg, Habermas, Peter Weiss, Gadamer, late Heidegger and late Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck, the underrated Klaus Theweleit , Niklas Luhmann, and perhaps you value some of the other members of the Frankfurt School.

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  And he has a new book coming out Six Math Essentials .  So what should I ask him?

By Egana Djabbarova of Azerbaijan.  A wonderful short novel, and as described by Olga Grjasnowa “An extraordinary novel that translates corporality and estrangement into language.”  Here is the Amazon link .

The author is Omri Ben-Shahar, and the subtitle is How Privacy Panic Led Tech Regulation Astray — and How to Fix It .  I would describe this book as bracing, and full of substantive engagement.  Basically the author wishes to give privacy considerations less weight in social decisions.  Excerpt:

And Branko Milanovic, The Great Global Transformation: The United States, China, and the Remaking of the World Economic Order .  I find his concept of National Market Liberalism useful.

Matthew Botvinick, AI & Political Freedom: The Risk to Democracy and How to Respond , contains plenty of analysis and social science.  The author is now with Anthropic.

Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who is Really Rich in America and How They Got There .  Not a b.s. whiner sort of book, based on real data and written by real economists.

There is Ed Conway, Trade World: The Ties that Bound Our Past and May Unravel Our Future .

5. Robert Alter, The Language of Fiction: The Craft of Writing and the Pleasures of Reading .  A wonderful short take on why reading fiction is so worthwhile.  As one might expect, Alter has exquisite taste.  The last two pages of the work are marred by some not very good comments about LLMs, but overall this is excellent.

4. Anton Jä g er Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences .  I am sorry, but this book just isn’t very good.  The title and subtitle are spot on, but the author just does not have enough accurate factual knowledge about the world.

3. Jeanna Smialek, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth: How a Nineteenth-Century Novelist Taught the World Economics .  Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish writer and novelist, Castle Rackrent being my favorite book by her.  This study of her work is excellent and much-needed.

2. Ben Buchanan and Tantum Collins, The Bitter Struggle: Superintelligence, Superpowers, and the Fate of the World .  This will become the standard source on the history of chip bans, the surrounding technological developments, and chip and AI policy under the Biden administration.  Written by the people who were there.

1. Constance Reid, Hilbert .  We should all be reading more mathematics these days, right?  Because the field is “on fire.”  Hilbert is not a bad place to start, and I found this book clear and biographical in a good way.  It is less on the math and more closely tied to broader German history.  Soon to come is Jeremy J. Gray, The Hilbert Challenge.

That is from the new and very stimulating The Opposite of Happiness: How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us , by George Loewenstein.  A very Smithian book I might add.  Reading this book, one also wonders if the researchers who do behavioral economics are more depressed than average?  (“I’ve met many depressive characters in my life, but one of the most reliably miserable people I’ve ever known is my friend and collaborator Matthew Rabin.”)

Interesting throughout, and we debated pomegranate juice as well.  I enjoyed reading Jared’s new book Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?

Kevin of course has a new book coming out, namely The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence .  I have yet to read it, but I expect it to be gripping.

The author is Calvin Korponai, and the subtitle is From Macchu Picchu into Bolivia in search of the Garden of Eden .  Bolivia is a fantastic country to visit, more original than most people are expecting, and this is the book to tell you why.  Excerpt:

Bachmann has poetry in German, and a new edition of her short stories is coming out this fall in English.

And so I have been looking into Bachmann more.  Her volume of letters with Max Frisch, her lover and the leading Swiss novelist of his time, is the best “letters book” I know.  After four hundred pages, with another 180 or so to go, I still am not bored.  It is called “Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht.” Der Briefwechsel .  (This November coming out in English …and probably the letters work well in English?)  Overall, it is remarkable how many ups and downs a relationship can have and persist.  It ...

5. New Fuchsia Dunlop book due out October 20 .

Recommended, interesting throughout.  And I am very happy to recommend Michael’s new book Ausländer: One Family’s Story of Escape and Exile .

That is from Czeslaw Milosz’s Visions from San Francisco Bay .

That is all from the quite good The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire , by Mustafa Aksakal.

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She has a new and very interesting book coming out, namely The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time―and How to Fix It .  More generally, from Wikipedia :