Recently Mentioned Books

5. U.S. edition now out for Cynthia Haven edition of Rene Girard essay volume .

That is from New History of South Africa , by Hermann Giliomee, Bernard Mbenga, and Bill Nasson, a very excellent book.  I found it to be one of the best single-volume histories of any country I have read.  The other South Africa book I found especially helpful was Understanding South Africa , by Carien du Plessis and Martin Plaut.  One of the best things about travel is you understand a country — through books — much better than before you went there.  Everything is more vivid, and you retain m...

That is from New History of South Africa , by Hermann Giliomee, Bernard Mbenga, and Bill Nasson, a very excellent book.  I found it to be one of the best single-volume histories of any country I have read.  The other South Africa book I found especially helpful was Understanding South Africa , by Carien du Plessis and Martin Plaut.  One of the best things about travel is you understand a country — through books — much better than before you went there.  Everything is more vivid, and you retain m...

The author is Charles Taylor (yes, the Charles Taylor) and the subtitle is Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment .  This book is a very good introduction to romanticism, and also to the poetry of romanticism, noting that its degree of originality may depend on how much you already know.  I liked the chapters on Rilke and Mallarme best, here is one excerpt:

Talk about “model this”!  Comparative thanatology edition, of course.  You can pre-order here .

You may recall that Roy wrote the earlier The Failure of Political Islam , which I also found very interesting.  So he is one of today’s top intellectuals, and still going strong at 74 years of age.  I still am not sure how many of his propositions I agree with, but I feel he is making real progress on the issues under question.

I have been reading Olivier Roy’s new book The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms .  It is the best book on culture in years, and if you enjoy Martin Gurri and Bruno Macaes you should try this one too.  This book actually got me excited at the theoretical level.

The subtitle is How Money & Markets Really Work .  I am a big fan of Kyla Scanlon (see the link for her other work), who is a force of nature.  She graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2019, and she has a new and very effective approach to how to talk.  I first learned of her through her explanatory videos, and it turns out she does one almost every day.

The author is Yuval Levin and the subtitle is How the Constitution Unified Our Nation — And Could Again .  Excerpt:

3. Kyla Scanlon now has a book .

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering , due out in October.

That is a reader query, I take it there is no point in my trotting through the obvious picks, starting with I, Robot and Her .  Sophisticates will ponder Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad , which very well understood the quirky and semi-religious potential in LLMs, even though he was writing in Communist Poland a very long time ago (those people loved to talk about cybernetics).

The author is Bjorn Lomborg, and the subtitle is The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises .  I missed this book when it first came out last year.  Here is what Lomborg presents as the twelve best global investments, in no particular order:

4. As a practical matter, the experiment shows us that you can do relatively well looking for talent in some new or unusual places.  I agree, and Daniel Gross and I pushed that theme in our book on talent .

In return for a referee report, I requested Chen-Pang Yeang, Transforming Noise: A History of Science and Technology from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955 .  This book is good background for understanding late Fischer Black, as ideas derived from Brownian motion lie behind both options pricing theory and Black’s essay “ Noise. “

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice is not a book for me right now (thus I haven’t read it), but the authors are very smart and thus it is worthy of mention.

4. Kunal Purohit, H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars .  If you are an outsider and looking for a good “micro-study” to understand India, this is a good place to start.  Trying to better understand a country typically should consist of both macro overviews and micro-studies, of course.

3. Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan, Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War .  Clear and to the point, the best book I know on this topic.  It is also especially clear on the roles of Eritrea and Somalia.

2. Cixin Liu, Supernova Era .  An A+ plot premise (I won’t spoil it), the story goes downhill somewhat but still worth reading.

1. Alexander C.R. Hammond, Heroes of Progress: 65 people who changed the world , with a forward by Steven Pinker.  Starts with Gutenberg, of course Norman Borlaug is included, don’t forget Cobden, Bentham, Frederick Douglass, and many others.  An Auto-Icon to those who spurred progress!  Who knew that Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, N.J.?  Well done.

The subtitle of this new and excellent book is How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Art of War .  It is written not by journalists but two insiders to the process, namely Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchoff .  Here you can read about Eric Schmidt, Brendan McCord, Anduril, Palantir, and much more.

Again, I am happy to recommend Benjamin’s latest book The Upside-Down World: Meetings with Dutch Masters .

The subtitle is Hw Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy .  I am happy to have blurbed this book, here is part of the Amazon description:

4. Henry Oliver’s Second Act is available in US now on Kindle, September in hardcover .

Two of those are really good!  They are from The Book of Predictions , by David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace.