Recently Mentioned Books

You can order the book here .

You will find the (very interesting) tech segments all over the rest of the dialogue.  And I am happy to refer you all to the new paperback edition of Chris’s new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet .

COWEN: Of course, yes. Plato’s Dialogues; Quine, Word and Object ; Parfit, Reasons and Persons ; Nozick. Those are what come to my mind right away.

My notion of who is a philosopher has broadened extensively over the years.  I think of Patrick Collison , Camille Paglia , and the best Ross Douthat columns (among many other examples, let’s toss in the best Matt Y. sentences as well, and the best Peter Thiel observations), not to mention some art and architecture and music critics, as some of the best and most important philosophy of our time. The best philosophy of Agnes Callard (NYT) does not look like formal philosophy at all.  I know it is...

Other early philosophy readings, in high school, were Popper, Nietzsche, and Doseoyevsky, at the time considering Karamazov a kind of philosophy book.  Some Sartre, and whatever else I could find in the library.  Lots of libertarian philosophy, such as Lysander Spooner’s critique of social contract theories of the state.  I also read a number of books on atheism, such as by Antony Flew and George Smith, and a good deal of C.S. Lewis, such as God in the Dock.  Arthur Koestler on the ghost in the ...

5. John Cassidy, Capitalism and its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI .  John Cassidy of course is the New Yorker writer on economics.  Comprehensive and clearly written, I predict this book will find its audience, and no it does not discuss Nick Land.

4. Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment .  There is plenty one can say about this book and these views, but most of all I am struck how negative “the new Right” is about American institutions.  Even at whatever you might think is their most decrepit state (which year is that again?), they are some of the best institutions the world has seen.  Call that a low standard if you wish, but it is not an irrelevant standard.  Here are some other examples of people becoming far, far too pessimistic about th...

3. John Ferling, Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War .  A good and well-detailed book for putting the Revolutionary War and its battles into a broader perspective, explicable to both American and British perspectives.

2. Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery .  The kind of long novel that women on average will like much more than men do?  If someone said to me they thought it was excellent, I would not feel they had bad taste.  For me the narrative strayed too far from anything I cared about, other than fineries about the characters.

1. Florian Illies, The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey Through Time .  An excellent book, usually I am allergic to art history books that attempt to charm, but this one works.  Excerpt: “A question posed to the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk: ‘What makes the Monk by the Seashore so unprecedented?’ His answer: “It is the first picture of the dissolution of the subject in the substance.””  I had not known Friedrich also was an expert canary breeder.

It is wonderful on the politics of the time as well, for instance tracing out the rise of Bismarck, or how the rivalries between Prussia and Austria shaped so many issues at the time.  You can buy the book here .

The only topic was the Beatles, plus a bit on artistic collaboration more generally.  In any case this was one of the most fun episodes for me.  Definitely recommended, and again I am a big fan of Ian’s book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs .

That is from the new and interesting IntraTerrestrtials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth , by Karen G Lloyd.

That is from the new and interesting Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence , by Jens Ludwig.

That is from the new and excellent Benjamin E. Park, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism .  An excellent book, good enough to make the year’s best non-fiction list.

1. New Knausgaard novel coming .

6. New Helen Dewitt novel .

That is from the new Sam Wetherell book Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain .  All those plans ended, however, as the popularity of the car spread amongst Liverpool residents.

And there is James Grant, Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution .

Edward Tenner, Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences , collects many earlier essays by the master.  From The American Philosophical Society Press, a new venture.

And Jill Eicher, Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War .

There is Michael M. Rosen, Like Silicon from Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI .

Reviel Netz, Why the Ancient Greeks Matter: The Problematic Miracle that Was Greece . Uneven but periodically fascinating: “But science was but a small part of the Greek cultural sphere and it would be surprising if the overall contours of Greek cultural life could be explained through science alone. It seems much more promising to consider…what mattered the most to the Greeks themselves. This was their literary legacy: their canon.”

Diane Coyle has a new book coming out, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters .

David Sheff, Yoko: A Biography .  An excellent work, I view Yoko as a quite good visual and conceptual artist, a sometimes quite interesting but hard to listen to in any volume musical creator, and overall a pretty stunning woman.  Sheff has known Yoko well for decades, so you get a real sense of her from this book, even if you wonder that perhaps not all details are being reported.  I learned also that the same guy at Sarah Lawrence dated by Yoko and Sylvia Plath.