Recently Mentioned Books

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 .

2. Michael McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R.J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism .  Another very good book no one told me about, somehow I stumbled on it browsing Amazon.  You can make Rushdoony sound like a nut, but you also can make him sound like one of the most influential figures in the 20th century history of American conservatism and also libertarianism.  Would the modern home schooling and Christian home schooling movements exist without him?  And yet he believed in extre...

1. August Strindberg, The People of Hemsö .  Hardly anyone (non-Swedish?) reads this classic novel any more, but it holds up as one of the more compelling creations of its time.  Direct and compelling.  Swedish people on an island, but will this marriage work?  Why has it so faded from our attentions?  I’ve long loved Strindberg, so why did it take me until so late in life?

That is from p.202 of Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 .  That is by the way an excellent book, gripping throughout despite its length.

Andrew O’Hagan, Caledonian Road .  This is the British novel that now everyone there is reading and talkinig about.  A “cast of characters” and “biting portrait” sort of thing, reflecting modern Britain, most of all London, today.  I read about fifty pages, found it highly engaging, and then decided the rest would be a waste of my time.

Douglas Porch, Resistance and Liberation, France at War 1942-1945 .  Too detailed for my purposes, so I stopped reading it.  But this volume seems to be a major historical achievement, and a must read for at least some subset of humans.

Sulmaan Wasif Khan, The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between .  I’ve been following this issue for a long time, so I don’t feel I learned much from this book.  But for most people, especially younger people, it is a very good introduction to the longer history.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies , offers a scientific look at how fatherhood and raising children changes the minds, bodies, and behaviors of men.

Rochelle Gurstein, Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art .  On the importance of classics, and common standards for classics, if art is going to challenge and improve us.  The book is also sufficiently appreciative of Canova, one of the most impressive artists of all time but somehow these days underdiscussed.