Recently Mentioned Books

I will not soon have time to get to Joseph Torigian, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping , but it looks excellent.

5. Tom Arnold-Foster, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography .  With so many forms of liberalism in semi-collapse, Lippmann is suddenly relevant again.  He had faith in experts, and also was not crazy.  But somehow is not deep enough to hold my interest?  Still, this book is very well done.

4. Renaud Camus, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings .  Interesting enough, and if you can read the French lefties why not this guy too?  That said, he could be more specific on “the Great Replacement.”  The most likely scenario is a France that is about twenty percent Muslim, wracked with periodic ethnic issues, but doing more or less OK.  In any case you should not be afraid to read this book, even though for a while it was considered cancel-worthy .

3. Philip Shenon, Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church .  A very well-written and useful book, I cannot say I have a stance on the issues per se .  It is one of my defects that I cannot care enough about the politics of the Catholic Church — I feel there are already too many separate countries with their own politics.  Nor do I feel close to either “the liberals” or “the conservatives” in this debate.  I do think the current American Pope — who seems “pilled...

2. Futurism & Europe: The Aesthetics of a New World , Fabio Benzi and various editors.  “By their aesthetics ye shall know them!”  What were the aesthetics of the futurist movement in the early 20th century?  Should we approve of those aesthetics?  This book is a good starting point for asking that question.  Nice color plates.

1. Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm .  Are all his books so good?  So far yes.  With very simple means he redefines what it means to be a good writer of thrillers.  Very English, written and set in Italy 1937, with a foolish Englishman who could be out of a Hitchcock movie.  They still called it Laibach back then, the menace of the pending war casts the proper shadow over the whole novel.

6. Lamorna Ash, Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion , coming out in July.

That is an excerpt from Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Buddhism: A Journey through History , an excellent book.  Maybe the best book on the history of Buddhism I have read?  And one of the very best books of this year.

There is a new book by Tom S. Clark, Adam N. Glynn, and Michael Leo Owens, called Deadly Force: Police Shootings in Urban America .  Here are a few of the conclusions:

You can buy it here on Amazon .

Recommended.  And I am happy to also recommend Ken’s new book Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead .

I very much liked her book Nuclear War: A Scenario .  Do read the Wikipedia entry for a full look at what she has written.  So what should I ask her?

You can order the book here .

You will find the (very interesting) tech segments all over the rest of the dialogue.  And I am happy to refer you all to the new paperback edition of Chris’s new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet .

COWEN: Of course, yes. Plato’s Dialogues; Quine, Word and Object ; Parfit, Reasons and Persons ; Nozick. Those are what come to my mind right away.

My notion of who is a philosopher has broadened extensively over the years.  I think of Patrick Collison , Camille Paglia , and the best Ross Douthat columns (among many other examples, let’s toss in the best Matt Y. sentences as well, and the best Peter Thiel observations), not to mention some art and architecture and music critics, as some of the best and most important philosophy of our time. The best philosophy of Agnes Callard (NYT) does not look like formal philosophy at all.  I know it is...

Other early philosophy readings, in high school, were Popper, Nietzsche, and Doseoyevsky, at the time considering Karamazov a kind of philosophy book.  Some Sartre, and whatever else I could find in the library.  Lots of libertarian philosophy, such as Lysander Spooner’s critique of social contract theories of the state.  I also read a number of books on atheism, such as by Antony Flew and George Smith, and a good deal of C.S. Lewis, such as God in the Dock.  Arthur Koestler on the ghost in the ...

5. John Cassidy, Capitalism and its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI .  John Cassidy of course is the New Yorker writer on economics.  Comprehensive and clearly written, I predict this book will find its audience, and no it does not discuss Nick Land.

4. Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment .  There is plenty one can say about this book and these views, but most of all I am struck how negative “the new Right” is about American institutions.  Even at whatever you might think is their most decrepit state (which year is that again?), they are some of the best institutions the world has seen.  Call that a low standard if you wish, but it is not an irrelevant standard.  Here are some other examples of people becoming far, far too pessimistic about th...

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.