Recently Mentioned Books

Matthew Barrett, The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church .  A lengthy and highly detailed polemic arguing that Protestantism is the true universal church, rather than a dissent per se.  These are not my issues, but some people will like this book a good deal.

Florian Illies, 1913:The Year Before the Storm , considers what the leading German and Austro-Hungarian cultural figures were doing in that year, right before disaster struck.

Rory Naismith, Making Money in the Early Middle Ages is a historically important work about the significant of coined money in dragging the Western world out of the Dark Ages.

Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849 .  The new go-to book on this topic, magisterial on the lead-up causes and later on the international influences and contagions.  Will make the year’s best non-fiction list.

That is the new Patrick J. Deneen book, with the subtitle Toward a Postliberal Future .  I would say that reading and trying to review this book most of all raises the question of what a review is for.  As you might expect from Deneen, the book is well-written and comes across as highly intelligent.  The question is what one should make of the actual claims and content.

The author is David Blackbourn, and the subtitle is A Global History 1500-2000 .  The focus is on Germany’s global influence abroad and no I don’t mean the Battle of Stalingrad, though that era is covered.  Here is one excerpt:

Due out in November .  Here is my first CWT with Fuchsia , here is my second , there will be a third.

That Richter is excerpt is from Sonenscher’s new and interesting book After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought .  One unique feature of Richter’s account is that Christ is the one bearing the news that God is dead.  There are so many complainers about the Enlightenment these days, but how many go to the now-grossly underrated source of Richter?

The key here is the subtitle The Making of the Chicago Monetary Tradition, 1927-1960 .  Have you wondered about the oft-underrated macroeconomics of Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Lloyd Mints, Paul Douglas, Clark Warburton, and many more?  By no means did monetarism start with Milton Friedman, and this is the new go-to book on the topic.

Of course most of the rest of the book covers the rather different directions that we taken.  You can buy it here .

The author is Aditya Balasubramanian and the subtitle is Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India .  Amartya Sen’s blurb says the following:

Edited by Cynthia L. Haven, self-recommending, buy it here .

You can pre-order it here , I picked up my copy in London at Daunt.

The author is Jacob Mikanowski and the subtitle is An Intimate History of a Divided Land .  Might this be the best overall book on how Eastern Europe ended up so different (but not entirely different) from Western Europe?  I’ll be doing a CWT with him later this fall (hold your suggestions for now, and I’ll hold further commentary as well), but though I would flag this book for you in the meantime.  I hope it gets some good publicity as the release date is approaching.

Interesting throughout, this one will make the year’s “best of non-fiction” list.  You can buy it here .

Recommended.  And the new edition (much revised) of Peter’s Animal Liberation is now out.

I enjoyed his new book How Westminster Works…And Why It Doesn’t .

Recommended, interesting throughout.  And here is Seth’s new book The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams .

Patrick Mackie, Mozart in Motion: His Work and his World in Pieces is a good introduction to what the title promises.

Kelly Smith offers his account of Prenda micro-schools in his A Fire to Be Kindled: How a Generation of Empowered Learners Can Lead Meaningful Lives and Move Humanity Forward .

And also Angus Deaton, Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality .

There is Markus K. Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis, A Crash Course on Crises: Macroeconomic Concepts for Run-ups, Collapses, and Recoveries .

Norman Lebrecht, Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in One Hundred Pieces .  A good introduction to Ludwig van, even if some parts do rush by too quickly.  Also a good introduction for how to think about different recorded versions of the same piece.

David Schleicher, In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises .  An important, unfortunately timely, and very intelligent book on how the federal government has responded to state and local insolvency in the past.  My main complaint is that at 171 pp. of text it is far too short.

Charles Horsnby, Kenya, A History since Independence is a very good long treatment of everything up to about 2010, conceptual too.