Recently Mentioned Books

2. RIP Luis Fernando Verissimo . Borges and the Eternal Orangutans is a very fun book for me.

The subtitle is The Scientist as Public Intellectual , and the author is my very good friend Jim Olds, who works at George Mason University.  A very timely topic, here is one excerpt:

2. Two Edward Yang movies have been released by Criterion .

There is Carl Benedikt Frey, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations .

Pablo A. Pena, Human Capital for Humans: An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of the People , is a good popular-level introduction to human capital theory.

Bernd Roeck, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance .  934 pp. of text, covers too many topics in too desultory a fashion?

Andrew Sean Greer, Less: A Novel .  I do not like much in contemporary American fiction, but so far I am quite enjoying this one.

Bench Ansfield, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City .  Whenever a book demonstrates what people in New Jersey have known for decades, usually it is a good book.

Edmund Phelps, My Journeys in Economic Theory .  A fascinating memoir, I had not known he was so obsessed with Rawls and Nagel.  He also loved the tenor Franco Corelli, and was a Birgit Nilsson fan too.  Recommended, for those who like this sort of thing, and who already are familiar with the cast of characters.

David Woodman, The First King of England: Aethelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom .  An excellent work.  One of the best books on early English history, and also one of the best books on how the Dark Ages morphed into early Medieval times.  Usually I find treatments in both areas difficult to follow, but this one produces a coherent and also non-exaggerated narrative.  It also will make you want to visit Northumbria.

John has a new book coming out, namely It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders .  So what should I ask him?

This 1103 pp. book reflects a great deal of learning, and it is often interesting to read.  It is well-written.  So virtually everyone can absorb interesting things from it.  In that sense I am happy to recommend it.

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  David recently published Saudi Arabia: A Modern History , a very good and useful book.  He has numerous other books on Wahhabism, the history of the Gulf region, and also Syria.  Currently he teaches at Dickinson College .

The author is Samuel Scheffler, and the subtitle is The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment .  He is one of America’s leading philosophers, and proves it once again here.

Yes, I will be having another Conversation with him.  Much of it will focus on Steven’s forthcoming book When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows…Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life .

And there is Samuel Arbesman, The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World — and Shapes Our Future .

There is Thomas Piketty, Equality is a Struggle: Bulletins from the Front Line, 2021-2025 .  Columns in favor of democratic socialism and higher taxes.

The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Immigration , edited by Sahar Akhtar,  is the best collection on its topic.

Jo Ann Cavallo, editor, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor .  There is even an essay by David Gordon (!) in here.

Bill McGowan, and Juliana Silva, Speak, Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience , is a good and useful book.

5. Alexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke .  “Schnittke really lies between two traditions, with German rationalism on one hand and Russian irrationalism on the other.”  Lately I have been listening to the Psalms of Remembrance and the violin sonata #2.  I had not known that Schnittke grew up speaking Volga German.

4. Ian Penman, Erik Satie Three Piece Suite (Semiotext(e)/ Native Agents .  A hard book to explain.  A kind of devil’s dictionary of terms related to Erik Satie, interesting and witty throughout, at least if you know something of early modernism and its culture.  Recommended, for those who care.

3. Barry Mazor, Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story .  I’m not going to pass this one up, as Macca once said: “The biggest influence on John and me was the Everly Brothers.  To this day I just think they’re the greatest.”  In addition to the very famous songs, “Roots” is an incredible and now neglected album.  This book however is good not great, as it never quite brings them to life.  But it is now the main biography, and in that sense is self-recommending.

2. Neal Bascomb, The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less than Four Minutes to Achieve It .  While the major focus is on Roger Bannister, there is plenty on the other runners of his time as well, most of all the Australian John Landy, who rapidly broke Bannister record after it was achieved.  Many smart people do not read enough books about the history of sports.  Yet the genre is very good, as often both the readers and the authors (!) actually really care about the content of the m...

1. Hamid Keshmirshekan, Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives .  I get tired of reading through the same old histories of Persia/Iran, and how they tell the same old tales of the rise and fall of the Shah, etc.  So how else might you try to understand contemporary Iran better?  Books like this are a very good place to start, plus they are fun to page through.  If anything, the works seem to get better and more original post-1979?  And you can see continuing currents of the non-Islamic under...