Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6684 mentions, ordered by most recent.
That is the new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, with the subtitle Data-Driven Answers to Basketball’s Biggest Questions . Most notably, it was written in thirty days with the help of GPT-4.
42 minutes long , Henry and I are both big Mill fans. And here is Henry’s forthcoming and very good book Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life .
That is from Nikhil Krishnan, A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy and War at Oxford 1900-1960 . Another recent book dealing with both philosophy and war at Oxford is M.W. Rowe’s very thorough J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer . Here is that book’s best weird philosopher anecdote:
That is from Nikhil Krishnan, A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy and War at Oxford 1900-1960 . Another recent book dealing with both philosophy and war at Oxford is M.W. Rowe’s very thorough J.L. Austin: Philosopher & D-Day Intelligence Officer . Here is that book’s best weird philosopher anecdote:
As for a useful, and well-written text, there is Karol J. Borowiecki, Charles M. Gray, and James Heilbrun, The Economics of Art and Culture , now in its third edition.
6. Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh, The Swedish Theory of Love: Individualism and Social Trust in Modern Sweden . A fascinating book about how the Swedes pursue a kind of “statist individualism,” namely that they value personal independence very highly, and are happy to use state action to pursue that kind of freedom. They don’t like being so obligated to help each other, thus enter a large welfare state.
5. Paul Vallely, Philanthropy: from Aristotle to Zuckerberg . Too much of this book is interior to my knowledge set, but for many people this is an excellent overview. 743 pp. of text, and it is pretty comprehensive.
4. Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II . The real topic of this book is the decision to use the atomic bomb twice against Japan. Riveting, and provides plenty of detail on the Japanese side, even if some of the interpretative choices are controversial. The author also makes a good point about ending the war sooner, namely it saved a large number of Southeast Asian lives, arguably about 250,000 a month, due to the tyrannical Japanese occupatio...
3. Hawon Jung, Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights Worldwide . A good and sobering look at one side of Korean culture. This is also (I hope) an especially effective book to hand to anti-feminist types, since the examples are not coded to standard left-wing vs. right wing American disputes.
2. Robert Darnton, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 . Perhaps my expectations were too high with this one. I don’t see anything wrong with it, and it is beautifully written. But somehow it didn’t add much to my picture of those events, given I have read many other Darnton books.
1. Isabel Kershner, The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul . An interesting look at Israeli society on the eve of the current war.
3. You can now pre-order Henry Oliver’s excellent Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life .
And yes he does propose concrete solutions, most of all at the level of the law. The whole thing is only 84 pp., and this is one of the books that comes closest to diagnosing what is wrong with our country. The subtitle is Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society .
Age 99, the reissue of his Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger is due out December 5 from Stripe Press. And my planned CWT with him will have to be rescheduled …
Age 99, the reissue of his Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger is due out December 5 from Stripe Press. And my planned CWT with him will have to be rescheduled …
Ches Smith and We All Break, Path of Seven Colors . From the year before, but I discovered it this year, a blend of Haitian vodou and jazz.
Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles .
Irreversible Entanglements, Protect Your Light . From a free jazz collective, still vital.
Cecile McLorin Salvant, Mélusine . Her track record (and consistency) at this point is simply staggering, and you can put her on a par with the very greatest of female jazz vocalists.
Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily, Love in Exile .
Paul Simon, Seven Psalms . Now he is partly deaf, and he was already singing about dying.
Christine and the Queens, Paranoia, Angels, True Love . Three CDs, weird, still growing on me. By some French person.
Boygenius, The Rest . Four songs, twelve minutes.
Yaeji, With a Hammer . A mix of English and Korean, house and hip hop. She lives in Brooklyn.
Lankum, False Lankum . Claims to be Irish folk music, but has ambient textures and is designed to alienate its core audience.