Recently Mentioned Books

The author is James Pethokoukis, and the subtitle is How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised .

Lunana, A Yak in the Classroom is the only and also the best Bhutanese movie I have seen, ever.  Recommended, gives you a real look at the country, both rural and urban [sic].

I have not read the new novel by Bradley Tusk, namely Obvious in Hindsight , about the attempted introduction of flying cars and the regulatory obstacles that arose (among other dramatic events).

Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Schubert: A Musical Wayfarer .  Super-thorough, everything about Schubert and most of all his music.

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy .  This book in preprint form was well ahead of its time, and now it is coming out in a super-timely fashion.

Harvey Sachs, Schoenberg: Why He Matters .  A very good introduction to a composer who truly matters.  Also a good (short) portrait of Vienna at that time.  Maybe it won’t “sell you” on Schoenberg, but it will make his advocates (I am one of them) seem far less crazy.  It also admits that a lot of his work wasn’t that good, and helps you separate the better from the worse.

Victoria Houseman, American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton .  A good and fun book.  I hadn’t known that she was very likely bisexual, or that she was good friends with Felix Morley and Robert Taft.  Interesting throughout, and drives home the point about just how early Hamilton did her most important work on mythology.  It remains widely read today.

James Stafford, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848 .  An excellent and well-researched books, most interesting on the Irish Union of 1800-1801 and how and why so many classical liberals favored it.  What did they get wrong?  Or did they?  Consistently instructive on earlier Irish thought on trade as well.

R.C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at St. Andrews in 1967-1969 .  Half of this volume is amazing, the other half meandering.  The best parts are on Hinduism and Buddhism, and how they can best be understood in relation to Western religions.  Zaehner has an amazing Wikipeda page , and I have ordered other books by him, the ultimate act of literary flattery.

I loved the book , and that led me to Jacob.  Here are some of his articles .  Here is Jacob on Twitter .  Here is a good WSJ review of Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land .

A lot happened in the 1770s as well.  That above paragraph is from Julian Havil’s quite good John Napier: Life, Logarithms, and Legacy .  Napier of course also was obsessed with the Book of Revelation, in addition to being one of the discoverers of logarithms.

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.