Recently Mentioned Books

Molly Worthen, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History From the Puritans to Donald Trump is a very good book on an underexplored topic.  In some ways tech has mattered less than you might think.

There is Gregor Craigie, Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis .

Richard Overy, Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan is a short but very good and substantive look at the non-nuclear and also nuclear bombing campaigns.

Charles Callan Tansill, The Purchase of the Danish West Indies .  Who would have thought that this 1966 volume, and Tansill, would be making a comeback?  The biggest lesson for me here was how much the purchase was a live issue as early as 1867.  And as the final purchase approached in 1917, the other European powers were by no means happy.

Stuart A. Reid, The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination .  For whatever reason, there are more good books about the Congo than most other parts of Africa.  This is one of them.  From 2023, but good enough to make a “best of non-fiction” list for a typical year.  Very cleanly written as well.

Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism .  A very good short book, defending “left wing modernism,” a much maligned target on the right these days.  Hatherley himself is a much underrated figure, a commie who came along at the wrong time but a very good writer and thinker about aesthetics.

You can order the book here .

Scott was a great man and scholar, and this book reminds you that many such people are really quite weird, in the good sense of course.  You can pre-order it here .

Self-recommending, you can pre-order here .

Joe has an encyclopedic knowledge of so many areas of music, and I was honored to do this episode with him.  Interesting throughout.  Again I will recommend Joe’s new and extraordinarily thorough book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music .

By Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato .  As you might expect, I am in synch with the basic message of this book.

I would say my views on some of these issues are different.  In my vision, Socrates is a weak interlocutor and Plato is the real genius.  Plato also does not identify with Socrates per se, but rather is teaching us how to deal with a multiplicity of perspectives.  In any case, this is the latest — and the best in a long time — case for leading a philosophic life, which to Callard means a life centered around philosophic dialogue with others.  It also will start a whole new and much needed dialog...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is a famous brain surgeon and author of the recent and excellent book Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery .

Ross has a new (and very good) book coming out Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious .  I will be doing a Conversation with him, mostly about the book although not entirely.  Here is my first and second Conversation with Ross.  Here is my earlier exchange with Ross about belief in God, scroll back through the links.

I have been reading Coby Lefkowitz’s Building Optimism: Why Our World Looks the Way It Does, and How to Make it Better .  I am most interested in chapter five “Why Does Everywhere Look the Same?”  That is another way of restating the puzzle that, at some point after WWII, the aesthetic quality of a lot of buildings and neighborhoods seemed to plummet.  Even though we are much wealthier today.

4. Bill Gates memoir, about his early years, coming out soon .  Would gladly do a CWT podcast on this book, if you are reading!  Just have someone contact me.

There is Tim Congdon, The Quantity Theory of Money: A Restatement , a good introduction.

Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848-1861 .  Walker’s three-volume biography of Liszt is one of the very best biographies, ever.  I like it better than most of what you hear people talk about on Twitter in the way of biography.  Soon I will start volume three, the final years when Liszt becomes an Abbe.  You do need some familiarity with the music of Liszt to grasp these books, but it suffices to listen along while you read, you do not have to be an expert.

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?