Recently Mentioned Books

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 .

In the last two weeks I’ve heard the new George Harrison box set mentioned so often on channel 26 Sirius satellite radio — accompanied by the playing of Harrison songs — that I’ve concluded some form of payola is going on.  In its early days, satellite radio was critical of the mainstream radio stations for this practice, but now it’s jumped on board.  And you know what — no one cares!  Even on the internet, there is hardly anyone complaining .  Hard to believe, I know, but that is maybe one ind...

The author is Gary Kasparov and the subtitle is Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins .  I am honored to have had the chance to write a blurb for this book.  It is everything I wanted from this author and title, and it also contains the inside scoop — with some truly interesting and deep revelations — about the match with Deep Blue.

One of the most rewarding parts of preparing for my chat with Malcolm Gladwell earlier this week was discovering the autobiographical memoir of his mother , Joyce Gladwell, published in 1969.  It covers growing up in Jamaica, women’s rights and recognition, a mixed-race marriage in the England of the 1960s, and a Christian journey through this world.  The most striking passages are the account of a sexual assault on a ship and a stranger in the street hurling a racial epithet at her and her sons...

Shahab Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam , “…the early Muslim community believed almost universally that the Satanic verses incident was a true historical fact.”

Nathan B. Oman, The Dignity of Commerce: Markets and the Foundations of Contract Law .  An interesting blend of “moral foundations of capitalism” and analysis of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice .

After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality , edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum, is a very useful collection of writings on Piketty-related themes, including Solow and Krugman.

4. Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers .  Compelling throughout, and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in media and media policy.  Ellsberg, of course, was closely connected to Thomas Schelling and made significant contributions to the theory of choice under uncertainty.

3. Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History .  I’ve read only about a fifth of this 720 pp. book, but it seems to be a highly useful history on a topic hardly anyone knows anything about.

2. Arundhati Roy and John Cusack, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said , Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden are part of the book too.  The two main authors conversing with Snowden is in fact the strongest argument against Snowden I’ve seen.  Maybe he is just being polite, but it’s the only time I’ve heard him sound like an idiot.

1. Ian McEwan. The Children Act .  The main story line pretends to revolve around a Jehovah’s Witness who won’t take a blood transfusion, but I think it was meant as a book about Islam and he was afraid to say so.  The resulting mix doesn’t quite work.

You can buy the book from Barnes&Noble here , Amazon here , signed edition here , Apple here .  Amazon reviews are welcome too!

“Matchers gain, strivers lose,” he [Cowen] writes in a new book, “ The Complacent Class .”

Stephen D. King has a new book coming out on the reversal of globalization, namely Grave New World: The End of Globalisation, The Return of History .