Recently Mentioned Books

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.

Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: The Second Exile, France and America 1934-1971 .  Yes, it made me order and want to read the first volume as well.  This is likely the best biography of Stravinsky and his musical times.

James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries .  Eccentric, published long ago, not correct, yet full of vitality and insight.  So many of the key pieces of the West already were in place by that time.  So recommended, this one just has been reissued.  How was the Giotto chapel in Padua possible?  Parsival?  This book gives you a start on those questions.

By Anil Ananthaswamy, an excellent book , it will make the end of year best non-fiction list.  It focuses on machine learning and its offshoots, and you can read it for the story even if you don’t followall of the matrix algebra and the calculus.  It is also the best book I know on how science advances by laying different “bricks,” and later bringing them all together toward a practicable solution.  Recommended.

In my pile is Anthony Gregory, New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State .

Jack Weatherford, Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China is a good follow-up to his earlier work.

I enjoyed Susan Tomes, Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives , but it is too skimpy on the moderns.  No coverage of Uchida or Ursula Oppens or Angela Hewitt?