Recently Mentioned Books

Ronald H. Spector, A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955 .  This book is an excellent way to pick up knowledge on a critical period that most Westerners do not know enough about.  Most interesting to me were the sections on how many people thought the Indonesians would gladly return to Dutch colonial rule. Narrator : They didn’t.

Johan Fourie, Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History .  An unusual narrative take on the broad sweep of economic history, Africa-centered, original, unusual, broken up into different stories.  The author is professor of economics and history at Stellenbosch, here is his home page .

Michael Strachan, The Life and Adventures of Thomas Coryate . Coryate was an intrepid traveler from 17th century England.  He walked along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Persia and Afghanistan, and into the heart of the Moghul empire.  He was the first Englishman to visit India “for the heck of it,” and he walked.  Quite possibly he introduced the table fork to England, and the word “umbrella” to the English language.  Non-complacent from top to bottom, he died at age forty, of ...

I am happy to recommend my earlier book Average is Over on these and other developments.

Later in the 1990s I read Frederick Turner write that Indian classical music was one of humanity’s greatest spiritual and aesthetic achievements, and around the same time I chatted a bit with Turner too.  I had never quite heard anyone claim that before, but instinctively I realized I very much agreed with him.  I decided that I believed that too.

I consider The Mare , Veronica , and Lost Cat (among others) to be some of the best and most insightful American fiction of recent times.  She is um… frank , and has held a series of actual jobs in her lifetime, including stripper and sex worker.  She was also a teenage runaway.

I consider The Mare , Veronica , and Lost Cat (among others) to be some of the best and most insightful American fiction of recent times.  She is um… frank , and has held a series of actual jobs in her lifetime, including stripper and sex worker.  She was also a teenage runaway.

I consider The Mare , Veronica , and Lost Cat (among others) to be some of the best and most insightful American fiction of recent times.  She is um… frank , and has held a series of actual jobs in her lifetime, including stripper and sex worker.  She was also a teenage runaway.

Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise .  A good look at the essential continuity in Chinese history between the Maoist period and the “capitalist” period.  Of course the main thesis no longer seems so crazy as it might have ten years ago.

Celia Paul, Letters to Gwen John I found a moving set of (imaginary) letters from one living female painter to another first-rate deceased female painter, both having lived through some similar situations.  Excellent color plates too.

Samuel Gregg, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World is a useful corrective to some recent attempts to overrate the import of industrial policy, especially in an American context.

There is also Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence , which I have not yet read.

Thomas H. Davenport and Steven M. Miller, Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration .  Actual examples!

Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, How to be a Founder: How entrepreneurs can identify, fund and launch their best ideas .  Do you have it in you to be a founder?  If you are asking that question, this book is maybe the best place to start looking for some answers.

Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology .  I liked this book and found it useful, though I wished for more on Taiwan and more recent times, and for less on the earlier years.  Just my subjective preference.

Frances Spalding, The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between the Two Wars .  Wonderful text, quality images, and the whole subject area remains underrated, so this book was a big plus for me.  The history of modernism is not just cubist and abstract art on the continent.

That is from the forthcoming Richard V. Reeves book , one of the most important of this year, perhaps the most important.

Due out September 6th in the United States , I loved Hamnet and so have pre-ordered.  Here is (gated) Times of London coverage .

Yes the composer John Adams, not the Founding Father.  I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Here is his Wikipedia page .  He is also an excellent conductor, wrote a thoughtful and substantive autobiography , and much more.  He has a premiere of Antony and Cleopatra — a new opera — coming to San Francisco.

Snigdha Poonam is a 38-year-old journalist and author from Delhi. She has written about identity politics, income inequality, tech culture, and crime.  Her first book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World , won 2018’s Crossword Award for nonfiction. She received an EV grant to travel across India to for her investigative work on scams and fraud in the contemporary Indian political economy.

Three volumes, $281.57 , totally worth it.  Picture books!  Asia only, the vanishing part of course.  Very wide coverage of various regions, including parts of western Asia such as Georgia.  And yes this is the same Kevin Kelly who is a Hayekian, tech commentator, and much more.  It is thus one of the most conceptual picture books, noting the text is minimal and descriptive.

Fascinating throughout.  Don’t forget Will’s excellent new book What We Owe the Future .

Out this week, I am looking forward to reading my copy, you can order it here .

That is from Tim Harford at the FT .  There will be more in Clifton’s forthcoming book Blind Spot .

Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great .  I only read part of this book, as it had more detail than what I was looking to consume, but it is clearly a major and very useful source on its topic.  It focuses on the progress, science, and state-building sides of the reign of Peter.