Recently Mentioned Books

Davd Epstein, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better .  A good popular look at what the subtitle promises.

Partha Dasgupta, On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us , is a popular summary of some of his thinking on valuing the environment and natural resources.

Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat .  If you like her at all, you will be entranced by this one.  With a radical ending, as you might expect.

Robert Polito, After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace .  An informationally dense, rambling, and frequently insightful and obsessive book about the “late” career period of Bob Dylan.  When does his “late” period start?  1990 perhaps?  I remember thinking in 1990 that we were well into Dylan’s late career phase.  But that was thirty-six years ago!

Sean Mathews, The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East .  Anexcellent and original book, somewhere between a history and travel book.  Views Greece as part of “the Middle East.”  I found every page interesting.

Frank McLynn, Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution .  The best book on its topic, and one of the best books on Mexican history flat out.  Everything is explained with remarkable clarity.  By the way, the central government never really has controlled the entire country, or not for very long anyway.

The author is Sebastian Mallaby and the subtitle is Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence .  A very good and enjoyable book.

3. Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History is for me (by far) the best general history of the country.  I like the cover too.

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is the author of a forthcoming book on Weimar, namely Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe .  Note that much of the book considers the city of Weimar, mostly in Nazi times, and not just the Weimar era.  She also has published Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany , and Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 .  She is active in journalism, podcasting, and is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London.  Sh...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is the author of a forthcoming book on Weimar, namely Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe .  Note that much of the book considers the city of Weimar, mostly in Nazi times, and not just the Weimar era.  She also has published Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany , and Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 .  She is active in journalism, podcasting, and is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London.  Sh...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is the author of a forthcoming book on Weimar, namely Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe .  Note that much of the book considers the city of Weimar, mostly in Nazi times, and not just the Weimar era.  She also has published Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany , and Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 .  She is active in journalism, podcasting, and is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London.  Sh...

1. A paraphrase of Heidegger?

People, this volume is the best chance you are going to get.

That is the new book by Joe Studwell , my podcast with him should be coming out pretty soon.  Here is Oliver’s new review .  Excerpt:

The author is Brendan Greeley , and the subtitle is 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money .  A very well-timed book, excellent on the history of the dollar as it spans the centuries, I was happy to write a blurb for it.

That is the new Knausgaard book, excellent and moving.  Better than any Knausgaard work other than the first two volumes of My Struggle .  The ending is especially good and meaningful, revising much of what came before.  You can buy it here .

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is a Professor of History at Northwestern , specializing in Mexico and to some extent the Caribbean.  He has translated a Mexican book on Edgar Allan Poe .  I am learning a good deal from his new 700 pp. book Mexico: A 500-Year History , and I very much like his earlier work on Mexico and violence.  Here is an NYT review of the new book .

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is a Professor of History at Northwestern , specializing in Mexico and to some extent the Caribbean.  He has translated a Mexican book on Edgar Allan Poe .  I am learning a good deal from his new 700 pp. book Mexico: A 500-Year History , and I very much like his earlier work on Mexico and violence.  Here is an NYT review of the new book .

He has a recent book Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000-2000 , co-authored with Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini.

I do not think it is crazy to regard Celan as standing in the very top tier of poets, noting the poems must be read in the German language.  Who has more important topics at a comparable level of quality?  This is an excellent biography of him, from the origins in Romania to his affair with Ingeborg Bachmann to his eventual madness and suicide.  Recommended, pre-order it here .  Definitely slated for the best non-fiction books of the year list.

I am pleased to see the McKinsey version of Progress Studies in the new book A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come .

There is Richard Sandor and Paula DiPerna, Carbon Hunters: Reflections and Forecasts of Climate Markets in the 21st Century .  Much of this is simply interesting material about Sandor himself.

Roland Lazenby, Michael Jordan: The Life .  I learned much more from this book than I was expecting, it is flat out an excellent biography.  Full of information and insight, and with a coherent narrative.

Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette, My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music .  Classical music is a wonderful area to read books in, much like World War II.  Most of the books are written by very smart people, such as Fleisher, a top pianist in his time (try Fleisher-Szell for the Beethoven piano concerti).  And they are written for very smart people.  You can always, with profit, just keep on reading books about classical music.

Jack Weatherford, Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China .  A fun and good book, think of it as explaining how Kublai Khan beat Song China but subsequently lost to Japan.  The Ainu play a role in a wide-ranging and still historically relevant story.