Recently Mentioned Books

3. Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography .  The most interesting material concerns Khaldun’s history as a Sufi.  Which brings me to Alexander Knysh’s Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism , which I enjoyed.  Overall I find this a fruitful area to study, and I benefited from some parts of Alexander Bevilacqua’s The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment .

3. Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography .  The most interesting material concerns Khaldun’s history as a Sufi.  Which brings me to Alexander Knysh’s Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism , which I enjoyed.  Overall I find this a fruitful area to study, and I benefited from some parts of Alexander Bevilacqua’s The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment .

2. Michael E. Hobart, The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide .  I wanted to love this book, and I still think it is quite important and worthy, but I don’t love reading this book.  Yet here is the first and marvelous sentence of the preface: “This book uses the history of information technology — in particular, the shift from alphabetic literacy to modern numeracy — to narrate and explain the origins of the contemporary rift between science and religion.”  After that...

1. Kathryn Lomas, The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars .  A very thorough, reasonable, and well-researched account and synthesis of what we know about the origins of the Roman empire.  By my standards it is insufficiently concerned with generalizations, but I do understand how many might consider that an advantage.

If you say “I don’t know much about Algeria.  I should read Alastair Horne on the country, watch Battle of Algiers, and try to speak with some Algerians,” you are again organizing knowledge, and your quest for knowledge, in terms of place.

5. Political thinker : Czesław Miłosz , The Captive Mind , about the capitulations of artists to communism, though subtler than just an anti-state polemic.  He once stated: ” I have never been a political writer and I worked hard to destroy this image of myself.”  I do not feel I can judge his poetry, though last year’s biography of him was a good book.

1. Novel : Stanislaw Lem, Solaris , all about identity and erotic guilt.  Next in line would be any number of Isaac Singer novels, I don’t have a favorite offhand.  Soon I will try The Family Moskat .  Gombrowicz is probably wonderful, but I don’t find that it works for me in translation. Quo Vadis left me cold.

1. Novel : Stanislaw Lem, Solaris , all about identity and erotic guilt.  Next in line would be any number of Isaac Singer novels, I don’t have a favorite offhand.  Soon I will try The Family Moskat .  Gombrowicz is probably wonderful, but I don’t find that it works for me in translation. Quo Vadis left me cold.

1. Novel : Stanislaw Lem, Solaris , all about identity and erotic guilt.  Next in line would be any number of Isaac Singer novels, I don’t have a favorite offhand.  Soon I will try The Family Moskat .  Gombrowicz is probably wonderful, but I don’t find that it works for me in translation. Quo Vadis left me cold.

The above passage is from the highly useful and deeply comprehensive The Great Rent Wars: New York, 1917-1929 , by Robert M. Fogelson.  Note that back then both rent control and “building more” won.  As for today, Megan has a relevant column .

The author of the book is Evan Osborne and the subtitle is How Society Gains When We Govern Less .

Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity .

Benn Steil, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War .

Robert Wuthnow tries his hand at The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America .

Matthew Engelke, How to Think Like an Anthropologist , is a very good introduction to exactly what the title promises.

Michela Wrong, I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation , is in fact, as a number of you had suggested, probably the best book on Eritrea.

Jeremy Bailenson, Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do . Usually I am allergic to “general summary about some new topic in tech” books, but this one is quite good.

Self-recommending, and I am delighted to again express my enthusiasm for Charles’s new The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World .  Here is Bill Easterly’s enthusiastic WSJ review of the book .

Soon I will be having a conversation with Robin Hanson — the Robin Hanson.  What should I ask him?  The jumping-off point will be his new book with Kevin Simler , but of course we won’t stop there.

Bryan Caplan’s new book is now out!

As I’ve already mentioned, the author is Ann Hulbert and the subtitle is The Hidden Lives and Lessons of America’s Child Prodigies .  This is an excellent book, and so far I am overwhelmed by the high quality and quantity of books coming out this January (in comparison to last year’s near drought).  You don”t have to care about prodigies per se, I would recommend this to anyone in Silicon Valley or finance who thinks about how to find and recruit talent, or anyone interested in the history of ar...

That is from Vlad Tarko’s new and very useful biography of Ostrom .  Of course in 2009 she was both the first political scientist and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics.

2. “Interestingly, some prodigies may actually do better when their eccentricities are seen by loving adults as disabilities first — and talents second.”  Here is a good NYT review of Ann Hulbert’s Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of America’s Child Prodigies .

Timothy Tackett, The Coming of Terror in the French Revolution .

Joshua B. Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World .