Recently Mentioned Books

John Ma, Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity .  I didn’t read much of this book, mostly because it is too good for me to understand just how good it is.  Que triste!  It is like those GPT “advanced reasoning” answers that also can be too good to digest fully.  A small number of you, however, should read this book very carefully and perhaps you already have.

That is the new book by Marty Makary .  Since Makary has been nominated to head the FDA, I am surprised this work is not receiving more attention.

Sally Rooney, Intermezzo .  Here is a good Henry Oliver review .

Guadalupe Nettel, La hija única , or Still Born

Richard Flanagan, Question Seven .

Karen Jennings, Crooked Seeds .

Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow .

The author is Theodore M. Schwartz and the subtitle of this excellent book is A Biography of Brain Surgery .  Excerpt:

Alisa Lozhkina, The Art of Ukraine .

Harriet Baker, Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rosamond Lehmann .  What is it like to be an unusual woman writer, with unusual proclivities, and have to build up or rebuild your work life in the countryside?  There is now a whole book on this topic.  Does it really mean you have to write down a complete inventory of all household possessions? (apparently)  Beautifully written, very British, will frustrate those who seek generalization but recommended...

Carlos Scarpa, The Complete Buildings .

One of the problems with an RFK Jr. ascendancy is that his core views, which run strongly against vaccines and pharmaceuticals, make it unlikely that any of these reimbursement revisions will be done in a rational or scientific way. The best evidence indicates that pharmaceuticals are a relatively cost-effective ways of saving lives, and conversely that many costly surgical procedures are not very effective . One of the main drawbacks of the US health-care system is often described as overtreatm...

The author is Patchen Barss, and the title is The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius .  I liked this book very much, and feel there should be more works like this.  It was made with the full cooperation of Penrose himself, though he had no veto over the final work.  Here is one bit:

By Wolfgang Münchau, this book is the best and most detailed account of the German economic decline to date.  Excerpt:

By Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber, a new Stripe Press book .

I very much enjoyed Neal’s new book Polostan .  And here is my first Conversation with Neal Stephenson .

John Cassidy has a forthcoming collection of readings, Capitalism and its Critics, A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI .

I have not yet had a chance to start Agustina S. Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education .

Louis Kaplow, law and economics professor at Harvard, rethinks merger analysis in Rethinking Merger Analyses .

The Legacy of Robert Higgs , edited by Christopher J. Coyne, is a very good collection for those interested in the topics Bob worked on.

Coming in 2025 is David Spiegelhalter, The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck .

4. Geoffrey Wawro, The Vietnam War: A Military History , is the single best book on its topic and is both intelligent and highly readable.

3. Rebecca Charbonneau, Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain .  This book fit well into my recent “Soviet science” reading program.  This is more of a “Cold War” book than a “UFO book.”  And I learned the full saga behind the Byrds song “ C.T.A. – 102 ” for the first time.

2. Peter Doggers, The Chess Revolution: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age , is a good book, though it is mostly interior to my current knowledge set.

1. Edwin Frank, Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel .  Very good short portraits of various classic novels, including Machado de Assis, Mann’s Magic Mountain, Dr. Moreau, Carpentier, Perec, and others.  At this point I am usually sick of such books but this one I stuck with as it is rewarding throughout.