Recently Mentioned Books

Recommended, buy it here .

I have been pondering the world of classical music once again, mostly because of two new releases.  One is the late Beethoven string quartets by the Calidore Quartet, and the other is a six-CD Chopin box by Jean-Marc Luisada.

I have been pondering the world of classical music once again, mostly because of two new releases.  One is the late Beethoven string quartets by the Calidore Quartet, and the other is a six-CD Chopin box by Jean-Marc Luisada.

That is from Jeremy Jennings, Travels with Tocqueville: Beyond America , a new and excellent book that I will be covering again soon.

The author is Mikhail Zygar, and the subtitle is Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine .  I have to tell you the subtitle put me off and I nearly didn’t buy this one, as too many books in this area repeat the same (by now) old material.  But after some extensive scrutiny in Daunt Books, I decided it was for me.  And I was right.  It is by far the best book on the origins of the war, both historical and conceptual, and for that matter it gives the literary history as well....

Seth D. Kaplan, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time , forthcoming in October.

Vikash Yadav, Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism .

And Michael J. Bonner, In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present .

There is Alan S. Kahan, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism .

Simon Shorvon, The Idea of Epilepsy: A Medical and Social History of Epilepsy in the Modern Era (1860-2020) .  A remarkably thorough and intelligent treatment of a topic that now has a near-perfect stand-alone book.

Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women .  Do you judge books by their degree of insight, or based on whether you agree with where they end up?  This volume is a litmus test for that question, and I give it either an A or an F minus, depending on your standard.  In my view, Dworkin remains an underrated and intellectually honest (if overly consistent) feminist thinker.  This one is from 1978, still interesting albeit repulsive if you try to apply any moral judgment to it.  But don’t!  If you are lookin...

David O’Brien, Exiled in Modernity: Delacroix, Civilization, and Barbarism .  A very good book planting Eugene Delacroix — both his paintings and writings — squarely in a “progress studies” tradition.  Like so much other 19th (and also 18th) century art.  Good color plates too.

Maria Blanco and Alberto Mingardi have produced a very useful volume, Show and Biz: The Market Economy in TV Series and Popular Culture (2000-2020) , providing an updated look at the (somewhat) rising popularity of business and capitalism in U.S. popular culture.

Here is Jennifer Burns on Twitter .  Here is her home page .  Here is her soon to be released Milton Friedman biography .  Here is her 2009 Ayn Rand biography .  She is currently associate professor of history at Stanford.

Here is Jennifer Burns on Twitter .  Here is her home page .  Here is her soon to be released Milton Friedman biography .  Here is her 2009 Ayn Rand biography .  She is currently associate professor of history at Stanford.

From the Amazon summary of the forthcoming book Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend by Elizabeth King and W. David Todd:

That is from Major Thomas Skinner, Fifty Years in Ceylon , published in 1891, largely compiled in 1868.  Overall an interesting and forthright book, mostly about Ceylon of course.

The subtitle is A practical guide for highly-skilled immigrants to thrive in the United States , and the authors are Soundarya Balasubramani and Sameer Khedekar, just published.  Covers all of the main immigration options into the United States in clear, understandable language.  Even if you do not wish to come, this is perhaps the best and clearest attempt to explain a very muddled immigration system.  You can buy it here .  Here is the book’s website , with many resources, including on-line ma...

I have been reading two good books about Sri Lanka, namely K.M. de Silva’s Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE and also his A History of Sri Lanka .  Both would be very difficult to follow if I didn’t already have a decent sense of the place names, how the country “fits together,” and many other features of life here .  If I read about a 12th century Buddhist kingdom, in fact I absorb and retain much more of that knowledge if I have visited the ruins of said kingdom.  It is more intellectually ...

I am away from my review copy, so I am pleased that Matt Yglesias has offered ($) a good “standing on one foot” summary of the plan, as outlined in the new book We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care , by Amy Finkelstein and Liran Einav:

I will not right now have time to read Wang Hui, The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought , but it appears to be a major work of importance.

Soon to appear is Yasheng Huang’s The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline .  Here is my earlier CWT with Yasheng Huang .

Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham, Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces that Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health , is a Freakonomics-style look at what we can learn from controlled and also natural experiments in medicine.

Tara Isabella Burton, Self Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians is an interesting look at the earlier history of self-made celebrity images.

I can recommend Maurizio Isabella, Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions , mostly about the 1820s.