Recently Mentioned Books

5. Jok Madut Jok, Breaking Sudan: The Search for Peace .  I’ve read a few books on South Sudan lately, to try to figure out, if only in broad terms, what is going on there.  This is the one that actually does a good job explaining things!  Above all else, I now have some sense of just how historically deeply rooted the current conflict is.  Recommended.

4. Arguments for Liberty , edited by Aaron Ross Powell and Grant Babcock.  I do not think the arguments in this book succeed as arguments for liberty, with the exception of some of the utilitarian arguments, noting that I am only a “2/3s utilitarian.”  Still, you get Eric Mack, Jason Kuznicki, Kevin Vallier, Neera Badhwar, Michael Huemer, and Jason Brennan, and so this is the rare edited volume that lives up to what you ideally might want it to be.

3. Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth .  This is a look at the significance of violence in American history, focusing on the Revolution itself, and it is a good way to remind foreigners how screwed up (and dynamic) we are.

2. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America .  Volume one of the Penguin History of the United States, this book is especially good at tying in “settlement issues” to later “governance issues.”  It is compulsively readable and has an excellent annotated bibliography.  Circa 1770, exports were about 10% of American gdp (p.311); today exports are a bit over 12% of gdp .

1. Erica Benner, Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli’s Lifelong Quest for Freedom .  A useful and readable introduction to the practical issues of Florentine politics and how they influenced the life and writings of Machiavelli.

George Steiner, with Laure Adler, A Long Saturday: Conversations .  Steiner is one of the most knowledgeable people, even into his 90s.  From these conversations I learned that he started working for The Economist as an economics reporter after WWII, computers drive us to a notion of “minimal language,” “God is Kafka’s uncle,” he recommends North , by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , and Ben-Gurion once told him “Only one thing matters: send me your children.”  By the way, “Malraux predicted that the re...

George Steiner, with Laure Adler, A Long Saturday: Conversations .  Steiner is one of the most knowledgeable people, even into his 90s.  From these conversations I learned that he started working for The Economist as an economics reporter after WWII, computers drive us to a notion of “minimal language,” “God is Kafka’s uncle,” he recommends North , by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , and Ben-Gurion once told him “Only one thing matters: send me your children.”  By the way, “Malraux predicted that the re...

Here is the Amazon link . This Rachel Donadio NYT review provides some very useful background knowledge.

…I interviewed Eric Schmidt of Google fame, who has been leading a civilian panel of technologists looking at how the Pentagon can better innovate. He said something I hadn’t heard before, which is that artificial intelligence helps the defense better than the offense. This is because AI always learns, and so constantly monitors patterns of incoming threats. This made me think that the next big war will be more like World War I (when the defense dominated) than World War II (when the offense did...

If you recall, Robert D. Putnam, in his last book , expressed surprise that Chetty and Hendren, et.al. (2014) did not find evidence of a decline in intergenerational mobility.  Putnam predicted that researchers would find such evidence soon enough.  After all, it seems the returns to education have been rising, geographic mobility has been falling, market concentration is up slightly, life expectancy is behaving in funny ways, and regional disparities seem to have grown. Chetty and Grusky, et.al...

Here is Lotta Moberg’s home page .  Here is a related article of hers on special economic zones .  Here is the Amazon link .

6. Derek Parfit, On What Matters, volume three, is now out .

I will be doing a Conversation with Tyler with her, podcast only no public event.  She is one of the best known historians, teaching at Harvard , the author of numerous books , and also writing a column for The New Yorker .  Much of her work is on 18th century America, though since then she has become an Americanist more broadly.  Perhaps her most popular book is on the history and origins of the Wonder Woman character .  Here is Wikipedia on Jill Lepore .

That is from the at times quite interesting Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming , by Andreas Malm.  It is most interesting on steam power and the history of energy, not the treatment of current environmental debates.

That is from the new (and recommended) book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea , by Jan Ruger.

We also can learn that “In 1969 output per head in the [Northern] region was still around one-fifth higher than in the Republic.”  And in 1984, living standards in Northern Ireland were about 25 higher than in the south.

That is from Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland , pp.348-349.  (By the way, this is one of the best books I’ve read in months.  It is a subtle treatment of politics, history, religion, and most of all political psychology; it is especially strong on why the Unionist movement in the north never has perished and why a formal reunification of the two Irelands would be so hard to pull off.)

8. New interview with Camille Paglia , who also has a new book coming out .

That is the new book by Lisa Feldman Barrett, and the subtitle is The Secret Life of the Brain .  I am not well-informed in this area, but here were some of my takeaways:

9. Theologian : C.S. Lewis, you could list him under fiction as well.  Here is a debate over whether he is British or Irish .  Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia covers Lewis, one of my favorite books from the last decade.

2. Novel/literature : Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels .  One of the very very best books for social science too, and one of my favorite books period.  After Joyce, there is also Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Lord Dunsany, John Banville ( The Untouchable ), William Trevor, and Elizabeth Bowen. Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland, but does she count?  More recently I have enjoyed Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Eimear McBride, Claire Louise-Bennett , with Mike McCormack in my pile t...

2. Novel/literature : Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels .  One of the very very best books for social science too, and one of my favorite books period.  After Joyce, there is also Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Lord Dunsany, John Banville ( The Untouchable ), William Trevor, and Elizabeth Bowen. Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland, but does she count?  More recently I have enjoyed Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Eimear McBride, Claire Louise-Bennett , with Mike McCormack in my pile t...

2. Novel/literature : Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels .  One of the very very best books for social science too, and one of my favorite books period.  After Joyce, there is also Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Lord Dunsany, John Banville ( The Untouchable ), William Trevor, and Elizabeth Bowen. Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland, but does she count?  More recently I have enjoyed Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Eimear McBride, Claire Louise-Bennett , with Mike McCormack in my pile t...

1. Poetry : I pick Joyce’s Ulysses , then Yeats and also Seamus Heaney, especially if the word “bog” appears in the poem.  A good collection is The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry , edited by Patrick Crotty.  Beyond the ranks of the super-famous, you might try Louis MacNeice , from the Auden Group, or perhaps Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill , who writes in Gaelic but has been translated by other superb Irish poets into English..

Here is one good review of the book .  You can buy it here .