Recently Mentioned Books

3. Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves .  Highly intelligent, and today much needed.  Her opening sentence is: “Did you know there are at least four women named Judith who are internationally renowned experts on manners?”  I would say that Alexandra is one of my “dark horse” picks to become a leading classical liberal influencer, except maybe she isn’t a dark horse any more.

1. Eric Ambler, The Night-Comers .  (U.S. editions are sometimes titled State of Siege .)  Think of Ambler as a precursor of Le Carré.  I used to think he had one or two excellent works, now I am realizing his ouevre is much deeper than I had imagined.  Just long enough at 158 pp., this novel uses the Sundanese setting very well.  He was a favorite of Graham Greene’s, and I will read yet more by him.

That is from the new and quite interesting Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins , by Jacob L. Wright.  From the jacket copy: “…the Bible began as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community.”

Recommended, I will read every page.  You can order here , Norman’s other bios are great too.  And if you are wondering, a few of the most underrated George songs are the early instrumental “ Cry for a Shadow ,” “ Don’t Bother Me ,” and the much later “ You .”

By Rachel Reeves.  Here is the U.S. Amazon listing , but even the Kindle version is not actually available.  Here is the UK Amazon listing .  Here is a Times of London review of the book : “They [the book’s subjects] range from Beatrice Webb, who, as a founder of the LSE, is a natural choice, to Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary Marxist, and Dambisa Moyo, the international aid theorist elevated to the Lords by Boris Johnson.”  Note that Reeves is also Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and thus...

That is the new and excellent book by Uri Kaufman, and the subtitle is The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East .  Here is one excerpt:

Recommended, interesting throughout.  Again, here is Jacob’s new and excellent book Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land .

That is a forthcoming book by David Daokiu Li .  Perhaps it is the very best book explaining “how China works today?”

As for the students themselves, recent research indicates that sports performance makes former student athletes more valuable in the workplace. Former college athletes are much more likely to enter the high-earning fields of business and finance, relative to their non-athlete classmates. That can benefit the former students, their alma mater and the overall economy.

John has a new book coming out The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism .  So what should I ask him?

The author is Robert Boyers and the subtitle is Days & Nights with Susan Sontag & George Steiner , and the book appears to be an account of their friendship, and also rivalry.  Here is one early passage:

Shuchen Xiang, Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea .  Chinese cosmopolitanism, there was more of it than you might have thought.  Should we be asking “Where did it go?”  Or is it there more than ever?

Richard Campanella, Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans is one mighty fine book.

Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach: Unpublished Writings of Gary S. Becker .  I am honored to have blurbed this book.

J.M. Coetzee, The Pole .  Short, compelling, self-contained, again deals with older men who have not resolved their issues concerning sex.   Good but not great Coetzee.

Benjamin Labutut, The Maniac .  Chilean author, he has penned the story of von Neumann but in the latter part of the book switches to contemporary AI and AlphaGO, semi-fictionalized.  Feels vital and not tired, mostly pretty good, thoiiugh for some MR readers the material may be excessively familiar.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World .  Have you ever been confused by Naomi Klein vs. Naomi Wolf?  Intellectually they are both pretty crazy.  And they are both named Naomi.  Some might think they bear some resemblance to each other.  Well, here is a whole book on that confusion!  And it is written by Naomi Klein.  How much insight and self-awareness can one intellectually crazy person have about being confused for another intellectually crazy person?  Quite a bit, it turns o...

I do not go to Israel enough to have a strong opinion on this, but their thesis is consistent with my casual observation, and also with my intuition about negative bias in media.  The book comes out November 7 .

I thought Jonny Steinberg’s Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage was one of the very best books of the year, and most of all this is a book about South Africa.  Here is one excerpt:

1. Presale link for the new Coleman Hughes book .

The author is Brian Rosenberg and here is the Amazon listing .

That is the new book by Costin Alamariu , who also has self-identified as the very famous BAP .  It is a published version of his Yale doctoral dissertation on political theory.  It has been selling very well.

There is Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results .

Geoffrey M. Hodgson, The Wealth of a Nation: Institutional Foundations of English Capitalism , is a useful neo-institutionalist survey of some of the different factors behind the rise of England.

David Leonhardt is soon publishing Ours Was the Shining Future: The Rise and Fall of the American Dream .