Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6685 mentions, ordered by most recent.
That passage is from a Leah Price review of Lucy Lethbridge’s new book Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain From the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times .
4. John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven . One of the world’s greatest Bach conductors is also one of the greatest Bach writers, with an emphasis on the vocal music and also what we know about Bach’s life. Especially noteworthy is the lengthy case for the John Passion and the discussion of the B Minor Mass. Definitely worthy of the “best books of the year” list and perhaps in the top tier too. I’m not going to liberate this volume, I am going to keep it.
3. Iain MacDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future . A clear and conceptually argued account of Ferguson’s thought, which will convince you he is not the lightweight of the Scottish Enlightenment. Starting with a comparison with Montesquieu, MacDaniel emphasizes Ferguson as a critic of the idea of progress and a historical pessimist, focusing on issues of war and martial virtue. This book is also useful for understanding the subtleties of Smith ...
2. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain . An engaging and well written book about Thomas Macaulay’s father Zachary and then Thomas himself, focusing on themes of slavery, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and empire, not to mention the education of children. A good read on why some strands of liberalism hit such a dead end when confronted with the realities of the British empire.
1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720 , edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller. A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text. Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly , “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.” Recommended...
I loved the documentary In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey , although perhaps it is for fans only.
In Another Country , Korean and French juxtaposed.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceacescu , “is mesmerizing, like watching one of the great silent films of the past, and the scenes where the Chinese communists praise the Romanian communists are some of the best ever filmed.”
Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House .
Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia gets rave reviews, although I have not yet read my copy. From the UK I’ve ordered the new Holland translation of Herodotus and Richard Overy’s The Bombing War and have high expectations for both.
From books “close at hand,” I very much liked John List and Uri Gneezy , Virginia Postrel on glamour , Lant Pritchett, The Rebirth of Education , and Tim Harford on macroeconomics .
Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: An Authorized Biography, from Grantham to the Falklands .
Clare Jacobson, New Museums in China . Good text but mostly a picture book, stunning architecture, no art, full of lessons.
Rana Mitter, China’s War With Japan 1937-1945 , the US edition has the sillier title Forgotten Ally . The return to knowing some background on this conflict is rising.
Rana Mitter, China’s War With Japan 1937-1945 , the US edition has the sillier title Forgotten Ally . The return to knowing some background on this conflict is rising.
I liked Neil Powell, Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music and also Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century .
I liked Neil Powell, Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music and also Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century .
Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief .
I very much enjoyed this book , which also gave me an excuse to dig out old Rolling Stones albums and listen to them again (“Dear Doctor” is perhaps my favorite Stones song, an odd choice). If it were a 2013 publication this memoir would make my best books of the year list. Here is p.167:
Joseph H. Carens, The Ethics of Immigration .
William Nordhaus, The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World .
He is one of my favorite pianists, try his Chopin Preludes . The blog Ionarts reports :
The author is Walter A. Friedman and the Amazon link is here . It is a good and readable look at a neglected corner of the history of economic thought, covering Roger Babson, Irving Fisher, John Moody, Warren Persons, Wesley Mitchell, and others. Here is one bit:
Elizabeth Gilbert and Donna Tartt produced decent plane reads, but I wouldn’t call them favorites. The new Thomas Pynchon I could not stand more than a short sample of. I sampled many other novels but didn’t like or finish them. I read or reread a lot of Somerset Maugham, which was uniformly rewarding. The Painted Veil may not be the best one, but it is a good place to get hooked. I reread quite a bit of Edith Wharton and it rose further in my eyes. Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence are m...
5. Kathryn Davis, Duplex: A Novel . Non-linear, not for all.