Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6684 mentions, ordered by most recent.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments , social science, color , the elements , water , water in China , Chartres Cathedral, music , and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works : A User’s Guide to the New Biology . Philip, welcome.
On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy . I just heard it is out today, of course I ordered my copy immediately…
4. Pre-order the new Houllebecq .
3. Bioy Casares on Borges, translated into English, at least in part, you can now pre-order . One of the great Spanish-language books, hitherto unavailable in English.
I am a big fan of his forthcoming book We Have Never Been Woke , which I have blurbed. Here is Musa’s home page , do read his bio . Here is Musa on Twitter .
1. This DVD/Blu-Ray of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt is one of the best performances I have seen, ever .
Speaking of Kraftwerk, I also enjoyed the new Simon Reynolds book Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow’s Music Today Reynolds is very good at covering parts of music history that other people ignore.
Jordan Ott’s Back to the Future: How to Reignite American Innovation is exactly that.
Self-recommending is Dana Gioia, Poetry as Enchantment, and Other Essays . The essays on Frost, Auden, and Bradbury are some of my favorites.
6. Michael H. Kater, After the Nazis: The Story of Culture in West Germany . Another excellent work. From this book I took away the (unintended?) conclusion that the German written and cinematic contributions have not aged well, due to excessive (but understandable) preoccupations with Naziism and the Second World War. The greatest German postwar cultural contributions in fact are Richter, Beuys, Kiefer, Baselitz, Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, and Can. The less literal artistic forms dealt with th...
4. Oren Kessler, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict . A good look at the festering problems in place before 1948. Among other things, it shows how many of the current arguments and debates have very deep roots, and just how far back the lack of trust goes.
3. Michael Haas, Music of Exile: The Untold Story of the Composers Who Fled Hitler . A detailed, well-organized and captivating look at this story. My conclusion, though, is that the Germanic compositional scene already was starting to reach dead ends in terms of quality and innovation?
2. Daniel Tammet, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum . This is probably the best book of profiles of high-achieving autistics, with the chapter on Dan Ackroyd especially interesting. Do note that the writing style is autistic, which you may consider either a plus or a minus. And “Are we there yet?”
Capital: Critique of Political Economy, volume 1 . Translated by Paul Reitter, published by Princeton, promises to be an event. Just arrived on my doorstep.
The title is Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs . This is a difficult book to review. For instance, it has passages like the following:
By Yaroslav Hrytsak , I found this to be one of the very best overviews of Ukrainian history and certainly the most conceptual. This passage concerns the 1914-1945 period and the frequency of change:
The author is Harald Jähner, and the subtitle is The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany 1918-1933 . I quite enjoyed this book, which focuses on elements such as the dance, or the growing prominence of the automobile, as essential elements of Weimar. Here is one good passage:
The author is Cormac Ó Gráda, the renowned Irish economic historian, and the subtitle is Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars . This is a first-rate and also horrifying of a still underdiscussed topic. Here is one excerpt:
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything . It is great fun, and has something real or interesting on every page. If I haven’t covered it more, that is because I have a CWT coming with Nate, 100% on the book itself (alas no Paul McCartney or “which is the best white creme in Central America?” questions, but I do ask about Luka). In the meantime I just wanted to give it this plug.
I have not yet been able to start Jeffrey Ding, Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition .
Justene Hill Edwards, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedmen’s Bank is a good contribution to economic history and also black history.
Paul Cooper, Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline covers classic themes with intelligence.
5. Marina Münkler, Anbruch der Neuen Zeit: Das Dramatische 16. Jahrhundert . An excellent analytical overview of the 16th century, which of course is what set the stage for so much of what was to follow. Not surprisingly, has more of a Central European emphasis than many Anglo works on the same period.
4. Paul Collier, Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places . Spoiler: he does not say “tax them so people leave.” If I had a nickel every time he misrepresented the views of Milton Friedman and market economics… We are told that shock therapy failed in Russia, but not that it succeeded in Poland, which followed through with it consistently and ran less corrupt privatizations. Somehow each subsection in this book is too short. He ends up in a sensible state capacity view, but it woul...
3. Dawn Ades and David F. Hermann, Hannah Höch . As part of my attempt to brush up on the Weimar period, I have been reading and browsing through this excellent picture book of works by one of Germany’s most famous dada artists. Here are some images .