Recently Mentioned Books

3. John Ferling, Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War .  A good and well-detailed book for putting the Revolutionary War and its battles into a broader perspective, explicable to both American and British perspectives.

2. Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery .  The kind of long novel that women on average will like much more than men do?  If someone said to me they thought it was excellent, I would not feel they had bad taste.  For me the narrative strayed too far from anything I cared about, other than fineries about the characters.

1. Florian Illies, The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey Through Time .  An excellent book, usually I am allergic to art history books that attempt to charm, but this one works.  Excerpt: “A question posed to the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk: ‘What makes the Monk by the Seashore so unprecedented?’ His answer: “It is the first picture of the dissolution of the subject in the substance.””  I had not known Friedrich also was an expert canary breeder.

It is wonderful on the politics of the time as well, for instance tracing out the rise of Bismarck, or how the rivalries between Prussia and Austria shaped so many issues at the time.  You can buy the book here .

The only topic was the Beatles, plus a bit on artistic collaboration more generally.  In any case this was one of the most fun episodes for me.  Definitely recommended, and again I am a big fan of Ian’s book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs .

That is from the new and interesting IntraTerrestrtials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth , by Karen G Lloyd.

That is from the new and interesting Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence , by Jens Ludwig.

That is from the new and excellent Benjamin E. Park, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism .  An excellent book, good enough to make the year’s best non-fiction list.

1. New Knausgaard novel coming .

6. New Helen Dewitt novel .

That is from the new Sam Wetherell book Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain .  All those plans ended, however, as the popularity of the car spread amongst Liverpool residents.

And there is James Grant, Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution .

Edward Tenner, Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences , collects many earlier essays by the master.  From The American Philosophical Society Press, a new venture.

And Jill Eicher, Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War .

There is Michael M. Rosen, Like Silicon from Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI .

Reviel Netz, Why the Ancient Greeks Matter: The Problematic Miracle that Was Greece . Uneven but periodically fascinating: “But science was but a small part of the Greek cultural sphere and it would be surprising if the overall contours of Greek cultural life could be explained through science alone. It seems much more promising to consider…what mattered the most to the Greeks themselves. This was their literary legacy: their canon.”

Diane Coyle has a new book coming out, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters .

David Sheff, Yoko: A Biography .  An excellent work, I view Yoko as a quite good visual and conceptual artist, a sometimes quite interesting but hard to listen to in any volume musical creator, and overall a pretty stunning woman.  Sheff has known Yoko well for decades, so you get a real sense of her from this book, even if you wonder that perhaps not all details are being reported.  I learned also that the same guy at Sarah Lawrence dated by Yoko and Sylvia Plath.

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He has a new book coming out, namely Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead .

Ezra is getting plenty of coverage for his very good and very on the mark new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance .  So far it is a huge hit after only a few days.  I figured this conversation would be most interesting, and add the most value, if I tried to push him further from a libertarian point of view (a sign of respect of course).  Here is the audio, video, and transcript .  Here is part of the episode summary:

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Chris is a managing partner at Andreessen-Horowitz, and has recently published Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet .  Here is Chris on Wikipedia .  Here is Chris on Twitter .  Chris has some writings on his home page .

I very much enjoyed Carl’s latest book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Air We Breathe .

There is Paul Bluestein, King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World’s Dominant Currency .

John McWhorter, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words .  Mostly about actual pronouns, not the PC debates.

5. Zaha Hadid, Complete Works 1979-Today .  Architecture, plus excellent preliminary sketches of the works. The Weil am Rhein works are my favorite of what I have seen by her.  Exactly the kind of picture book that will become more valuable in an age of strong AI.  Here are seventeen buildings by her .