Recently Mentioned Books

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?

As for the end of the year surprise book, one of the very best from 2024, there is Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV .  I’ll be writing more about it in 2025.

So what is stopping you ?

Of interest to some is Oliver Keenan, Why Aquinas Matters Now .

Ann Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography fleshes out of our knowledge of the German Romantic period.

Marshall B. Reinsdorf and Louise Sheiner, The Measure of Economics: Measuring Productivity in an Age of Technological Change , is a very useful and well-reasoned book.

John Callanan, Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, The Wickedest Man in Europe , is a good treatment of an underrated and still under-read Dutch thinker.