Recently Mentioned Books

Caroline Burt and Richard Partington, Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State .  Very good to read in conjunction with the recent Helen Castor book .  Burt and Partington reach earlier in time by focusing on the Edwards, but you can compare their treatments of Richard II, and that is what I am starting with here.

Caroline Burt and Richard Partington, Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State .  Very good to read in conjunction with the recent Helen Castor book .  Burt and Partington reach earlier in time by focusing on the Edwards, but you can compare their treatments of Richard II, and that is what I am starting with here.

Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music .  This book covers Fairport Convention and its many folk offshoots, and ties it in to earlier British traditions of Vaughan Williams, Bax, Holst and so on, plus traditional song and yes The Wicker Man .  Much of that is not to my taste, but I am prepping for Joe Boyd and figured I should read a book on it.  This is the right book, and it is also a good way to try to understand Britain (a much written-up place) by unusual, roundabout...

Glenn Adamson, A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present .  A good book on futurology and its history, note the authors considers more than tech in the narrow sense so Marcus Garvey and Marinetti are in here too.  Sun Ra too.

Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 .  Excellent all around, clear and conceptual from the get-go.  In spite of the title, I find the sections on Confederate state-building most novel and illuminating.

Tirthankar Roy and K. Ravi Raman, Kerala: 1956 to the Present .  Short, nonetheless the best book I have read on why Kerala is (somewhat) special in the Indian context.  Stresses Kerala as part of a larger set of positive South Indian developments.  Overpriced though at $40, given the short length.

There is much more at the link.  Carl has a new book coming out, namely Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Air We Breathe , an in-depth look at the history of aerobiology.  So what should I ask him?

As for the end of the year surprise book, one of the very best from 2024, there is Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV .  I’ll be writing more about it in 2025.

So what is stopping you ?

Of interest to some is Oliver Keenan, Why Aquinas Matters Now .

Ann Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography fleshes out of our knowledge of the German Romantic period.

Marshall B. Reinsdorf and Louise Sheiner, The Measure of Economics: Measuring Productivity in an Age of Technological Change , is a very useful and well-reasoned book.

John Callanan, Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, The Wickedest Man in Europe , is a good treatment of an underrated and still under-read Dutch thinker.

Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People .  It is good to see more on Bergson in English.  I had not known that the best man at his wedding was Marcel Proust (they were cousins by marriage and Proust was not yet famous).  Still, the book did not convince me that I have been underrating Bergson.

Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Race, Liberty, and Equality, 1942-1945 .  A hitherto little-known corner of libertarian thought, these short essays are very good and could be a useful tonic for some of what has gone wrong.  Edited by David T. Beito and Marcus Witcher.

Africa: the Definitive Visual History of a Continent , Penguin Random House.  One of my favorite picture books of all time.  It teaches the broader history of Africa by region rather than by country.  First-rate maps and photos throughout.

Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV .  Despite its excellent reviews, I resisted buying this book for a while, because most books on TV are not good.  It is intrinsically difficult to write about the medium, and also many of the people who want to just aren’t that smart.  But the Nussbaum book is a true winner, the Candid Camera chapter alone makes it worth it.  Did you know that Richard Lewis was on the show at age 16? Recommended, both for its entertainment and its substan...

Here is Joe’s official website .  Joe has a new and remarkably thorough and polymathic book out And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music .  So what should I ask Joe?

That is from the new and very good book Martin van Buren: America’s First Politician , by James M. Bradley.  Later things were different:

By A.N. Wilson, an excellent book and worthy of being addended to the year’s best non-fiction list .  In addition to appreciating the work of Goethe, which one can never do enough of, Wilson argues (with reasonable evidence) that Goethe was bisexual, including with Jacobi (!).  Goethe also had, at the very least, alcoholic tendencies, at times drinking three bottles a day for extended periods of time.

1. FT lunch with Abhijit Banerjee .  And his new book .

The author is David A. Stockman, and the subtitle is Why the Reagan Revolution Failed .  This is for me a re-read, all DOGErs and aspiring DOGErs should give this book an initial read, as it covers why the Reagan attempts to pare back government largely failed.  Excerpt:

The author is Bartle Bull, and the subtitle is A 5,000-Year History of Iraq .  Excerpt:

I also very much enjoyed my read through the letters of Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann .  You can feel all the different stages of their relationship, without even necessarily knowing how the story develops.  Max Frisch and Nelly Sachs make cameo appearances.  The highlight perhaps is when she writes him a lengthy letter about how he is the one who is actually complicated and unhappy (and not she), and then decides not to send it.

There is a new translation by Joseph Luzzi, and I find it an order of magnitude better than the older treatments.  It somehow communicates the strangeness of this work in a new and unprecedented way.  You can order it here .