Recently Mentioned Books

Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 .  A very good and well-written look at Scottish views on the Union over the centuries.  Explained conceptually in a nice way, not just a catalog, and tied to religion as well.

I have read only about 30 pp. so far, but this is clearly one of the best science books I have read, ever.  It is clear, always to the point, conceptual, connects advances in math to the broader history, explains the math, and full of interesting detail. By Reviel Netz .  Here is a brief excerpt:

6. There is a great deal of available trip prep material for Italy in the form of movies, fiction, and history.  Most of all, however, you should focus on using picture books to have an advance sense of the art and architecture.  The classic book on Italy, Luigi Barzini’s The Italians , is still worth reading.  And often the postwar fiction, or even Manzoni , are better trip prep than the very famous classics such as Dante and Petrarch (though you should read them anyway, but for other reasons).

6. There is a great deal of available trip prep material for Italy in the form of movies, fiction, and history.  Most of all, however, you should focus on using picture books to have an advance sense of the art and architecture.  The classic book on Italy, Luigi Barzini’s The Italians , is still worth reading.  And often the postwar fiction, or even Manzoni , are better trip prep than the very famous classics such as Dante and Petrarch (though you should read them anyway, but for other reasons).

The subtitle is The Making and Remaking of the Irish World , and the author is Sean Connolly.  Excerpt:

David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and his Mission to Save Morality .  I’ve already told you I love this book, due out April, definitely one of the books of the year.

I have not yet read Mark Calabria’s Shelter from the Storm: How a Covid Mortgage Meltdown was Averted , Cato Institute book.

Charles Dunst, Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman .  Full of true claims, common sense, and a needed dose of optimism.

Murray Pittock, Enlightenment in a Smart City: Edinburgh’s Civic Development 1660-1750 is an excellent book on how the built environment of Edinburgh, and its building reforms and improvements, shaped the Scottish Enlightenment.  Gives a better sense of the Edinburgh of the time than any other book I know.  I don’t mean the thinkers in the city, I mean the city itself.

Peter Frankopan, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History .  Long, full of information, and well written, but somehow lacks a central organizing thesis to hold it all together.

Rainer Zitelmann, In Defense of Capitalism: Debunking the Myths .  A very good pro-capitalism book, broadly in the Milton Friedman tradition.

Jeanna Smialek, Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis , is a good, readable, non-technical introduction to the Fed, focusing on personalities and internal mechanics, rather than macroeconomic theories.

4. Lucy Wooding, Tudor England: A History .  A good book, but most of all a very good book to read with GPT-4 as your companion.

3. Carmela Ciuraru, Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages .  I hadn’t even known Patricia Neal was married to Roald Dahl.  Overall I enjoy intellectual/romance gossip books, and this is a good one.  Full of actual facts about the writings, not just the affairs and the marriages and divorces.  Moravia/Morante was my favorite chapter.  Here is a Guardian review , superficially you might think there is no real message in this book, but then again…

2. John A. Mackenzie, A Cultural History of the British Empire .  “A vital characteristic of polo was that since it lacked immediate physical contact it could be jointly played by British and Indians, which of course meant elite Indians, inevitably associated with the princely states.”  A very good book on both a) early globalization, and b) actually understanding the British empire.  I hadn’t known that during the 1930s and 40s, maximum years of resistance to the British empire, cricket tournam...

1. Judith A. Green, The Normans: Power, Conquest & Culture in 11th-Century Europe .  A very clear and to the point book on a complex topic.  This is a good one to read with GPT-4 accompaniment for your queries.  In Sicily, near Palermo, the Normans produced one of my favorite sites in all of Europe .

His Out of Control is a wonderful Hayekian book.  His three-volume Vanishing Asia is one of the greatest picture books of all time.  His new book (I haven’t read it yet) is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier .  Here is Kevin on Twitter , here is his home page .

His Out of Control is a wonderful Hayekian book.  His three-volume Vanishing Asia is one of the greatest picture books of all time.  His new book (I haven’t read it yet) is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier .  Here is Kevin on Twitter , here is his home page .

From Taylor C. Sherman’s useful Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths :

Ashoka Mody has published the quite pessimistic India is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today .

And Nicolas Spencer, Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion .

There is Peter Baldwin’s Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should be Free for All .

3. Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? How Hegelian should our understanding of Christ be?  The book is written as a confrontational dialogue, and to its benefit.  You do need to be able to stomach sentences such as: “Do the three main versions of Christianity not form a kind of Hegelian triad?” (SZ)  In any case, the smartness of the authors makes it worthwhile.  Once you move past their immediate (and extreme) fan bases, both are in fact considerably...

2. Jens Heycke, Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire: Multiculturalism and the World’s Past and America’s Future .  Argues that ethnic divisions should be made less rather than more focal: “When I visited Rwanda, I asked Rwandans of various backgrounds whether they thought distinguishing people by race or ethnicity ever helped anyone in their country.”  An effective presentation of facts, though only one side of the story and it does not take sufficiently seriously the question of how tolerant ...

1. Tezer Özlü, Cold Nights of Childhood .  A Turkish novella, originally published in 1980, newly translated into English and the first English-language book by her.  I give this one an A/A+, mostly emotional drama and narrative, I can’t tell you more without spoilers.  Here is more on the author .  Only 76 pp.  When will her suicide book be published in English?