Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6798 mentions, ordered by most recent.
She is Rene Girard’s biographer , and has other interesting books as well, including on Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky, and she is an expert in poetry and the humanities more broadly. Here is one biography (how can she not have her own Wikipedia page?). Here is her blog . Here is Cynthia on Twitter . To her credit, she has done all this without the benefit of a formal, tenured university post. She also runs her own “conversations,” and is working further on Girard. So what should I ask ...
James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington also serves as a better than average general history of the city.
Rainer Zitelmann’s Hitler’s National Socialism is a very thorough, detailed look at Hitler’s actual views.
Matthew Continetti, The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism is interior to my current knowledge set, but clear and I suspect for many readers useful.
John E. Bowit, Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia’s Silver Age . The early twentieth century, basically. Beautiful plates, good exposition, and if nothing else a lesson in just how far aesthetic deterioration can run. A picture book!
Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics considers the broader implications of Smith’s thought from a “freedom as non-domination” perspective.
4. Kevin Lane, The Inca Lost Civilizations . Short and readable and with nice photos, maybe the best introduction to this still underrated topic?
3. Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville . A self-recommending biography of one of the greatest social science thinkers. Easy to read, and good for both the generalist and specialist reader. Note that it is a complement to reading Tocqueville, in no way a substitute.
2. Declan Kiberd, Irish Classics . One of the very best books on Ireland and Irish ideas, and more broadly I can recommend virtually anything by Kiberd. Do note, however, that much of this book requires you have read the cited Irish classics under consideration. Nonetheless there is insight on almost every page, recommended.
1. Susanne Schattenberg, Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman . Can you have an interesting biography of a life and man that was fundamentally so… boring ? Maybe. He ruled the world’s number two power for eighteen critical years, so surely he deserves more attention than what he has received. “Nevertheless, Brezhnev had dentures and only stopped smoking in the mid-1970s because his doctors told him his false teeth would fall out at some point if he didn’t.” And “Analysis of why Brezhnev’s ch...
The main title is Barred , and the author is Daniel S. Medwed. The book has many interesting points, here is one excerpt:
The author is Mark Bergen and the subtitle is How YouTube Conquered the World . This is that rare (only?) case where “conquered the world” in the subtitle actually is true!
That is from the new and excellent Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success , by Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan.
Circa 1941, that is from the very good Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 . Do not arrive too readily at conclusions about the current situation in Ukraine! And Merridale books are in general a good place to read about Russian history.
Also, it is not contemporary but I weakened and bought the 30-CD Fela Kuti box .
Michael Hurley, The Time of the Foxgloves .
Courtney Barnett, Things Take Time, Take Time .
Brittany Howard, Jaime .
Finneas, Optimist .
Iceage, Seek Shelter .
Poppy, I Disagree .
The author is Richard Overy and the subtitle is The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 . There are two categories of Richard Overy books, the good and the tremendously good. So far this book falls into the latter camp, noting that some of the introductory material (while fine) was excessively familiar to me. The eventual focus is on North Africa, the Turkey-Persia region and the Caucasus, how Japan ran its new colonies, how the British empire started collapsing, and much more along those lines. Th...
The subtitle is How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It , and here is one bit:
That is from the forthcoming Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life . From such reasoning you can divine the relative import of genetic factors for success in various sports. Here are the derived calculations, with the number indicating “Percent of Same-Sex Siblings Who Are Identical Twins” (when both make the Olympics, or achieve some other status):
The author of the book is Peter Neumann, and the subtitle is The Republic of Free Spirits . It is not captivating (Germanic style, then translated), but I found it valuable nonetheless. Which other contemporary work covers this remarkable assemblage of talent?