Recently Mentioned Books

There is Howard Husock, The Poor Side of Town, And Why We Need It .

5. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light .  The best book on Hitchcock, John Nye recommended it to me eight years ago.

4. Gordon Teskey, Spenserian Moments .  No one seems to care about poor old Edmund Spenser, yet there seem to be quite a few good books about him.

3. Elisabeth Anderson (not the philosopher), Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State .  Considers the political economy of child labor reform Germany, France, the United States, and the failed case of Belgium.  Pathbreaking, a major advance on the extant literature.  The explanations are messy rather than monocausal, but often focus on the success or failure of individual policy entrepreneurs.

2. Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah .  #2 in the Dune series, I disliked this one as a tot, but currently am marveling at its political sophistication.  Somewhat uneven, but better than its reputation. The Wikipedia page for the book also indicates that Villeneuve is likely to do a Dune 3 based on this story.

1. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage .  I read this as a kid, and was surprised how well my reread held up.  To the point, subtle, and with an economy of means.  I hope the new Paul Auster biography of Crane (which I will read soon) will revive interest in this classic.

An excellent book, the author is Robert Kanigel and the subtitle is The Making of a Scientific Dynasty .  It is strongest on the role of mentors and lineages in scientific excellence, the radically inegalitarian and “unfair” nature of scientific achievement and also credit, and it offers an interesting look at the early days of the NIH.  Here is one excerpt:

Author : Jerry Kramer , who grew up in Idaho and later played football for the Green Bay Packers.  I loved Instant Replay as a kid.  But is there a “real author” from Idaho?  Is it better or worse to be a “real author”?  Marilynne Robinson has never clicked with me.

3. Joanne Limburg, Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism .  One of the best books on autism, perhaps the best book on female autistics, and the best book on intersectionality I have read (out of few, to be clear).  Pithy and direct: “Eager to discover other women who had been misunderstood in their time, she writes a series of wide-ranging letters to four ‘weird sisters’ from history, addressing topics including autistic parenting, social isolation, feminism, the movement for disab...

2. Sophocles, Oedipus Trilogy , translated by Bryan Doerries.  I cannot judge the fidelity of the rendering into English, but it is the most readable translation of these works I have encountered and they are always worth a reread.

1. Catherine Nicholson, Reading and Not Reading the Faerie Queene .  A splendid book, take the title literally, and I very much liked these two sentences: “Others, however, pick it [Faerie Queene] up on impulse and find themselves helplessly enthralled, spurred by a devotion at once unsustainable and impossible to shake.  As C.S. Lewis put it, “I never meet a man who says that he used to like the Faerie Queene .”  Could it be the most underrated book of the Western canon?

Yes, I am talking about the new seven-volume set Architectural Guide to Sub-Saharan Africa .  I am now about halfway through volume II, and will read the rest, albeit slowly.  The books have plenty of text and also a lot of quality photographs.  While they are easy to read, they are not actually fast going.

1. Paul A. Offit, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation .  The stories and anecdotes are fun, most of all about the early history of the polio vaccine and how poorly some of the process went.  By the end of the book, however, it doesn’t add up to very much.  The underlying theme is that early innovation is fraught with risk, but Offit is unwilling to draw straightforward conclusions that we should be more tolerant of such...

Definitely recommended, there is also a segment about disabled veterans and their rights.  And again here is Stan’s new book Risk: A User’s Guide , co-authored with Anna Butrico.

I am looking forward to the six-hour movie nonetheless.  And I will (again) recommend the Laibach cover of Let It Be , one of the most underrated albums ever.  In the meantime, the price discrimination shall continue .

The Giles Martin remix of the Let It Be album is a step backwards.  He botches “The Long and Winding Road” by keeping the strings orchestration, and “Across the Universe” is worse too. The good version of “Road,” as approved by its creator, is on the “Naked” Let It Be release from about twenty years ago.  That one is the real contribution, and this release is not nearly as revelatory as the Esher demo tapes from the White Album .  Here is a good Pitchfork review .

The Giles Martin remix of the Let It Be album is a step backwards.  He botches “The Long and Winding Road” by keeping the strings orchestration, and “Across the Universe” is worse too. The good version of “Road,” as approved by its creator, is on the “Naked” Let It Be release from about twenty years ago.  That one is the real contribution, and this release is not nearly as revelatory as the Esher demo tapes from the White Album .  Here is a good Pitchfork review .

So what did I get for my $117 , other than six discs that could have been three or dare I say two?

There is also Kyle Harper, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History , long and comprehensive.

I am happy to see the publication of Calvin Duke’s Entrepreneurial Communities: An Alternative to the State, The Theories of Spencer Heath and Spencer MacCallum .

New out is Diane Coyle, Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be ; she is typically wise.

4. Howard W. French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World 1471 to the Second World War .  Think of this book as a retelling of some standard historical episodes, but with Africa at the center rather than as a recipient of European advances.  This is a useful reframing, and I enjoyed the read.  But perhaps by the end it was the New World that in my mind was upgraded as a more central spot for the rise of modernity?  Too frequently the relevance of Africa has to ...

3. Lawrence Rothfield, The Measure of Man: Liberty, Virtue, and Beauty in the Florentine Republic .  An excellent introduction to Florence, with some focus on issues of liberty and also civic leaderhip.  One should never tire of reading about this particular topic.

2. Arthur Herman, The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World .  Ignore the subtitle!  There have been a number of good books on the Vikings lately, and this is perhaps the most “popular” and big picture of the lot.  The early Vikings swept through Europe in a matter of decades, mixing conquest and trade.  King Canute was pretty impressive it seems.  Specialists may pick nits, but it is very readable and seems to me to give a good overview of the role of the Vikings in European histo...

1. Carole Angier, Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald .  Might Sebald be the only semi-recent writer who can hold a candle to Ferrante, Knausgaard, and Houllebecq?  This book is sprawling, and suffers somewhat from lack of access to the author’s family, but it is a true labor of love.  And Angier has a deep understanding of Sebald, and also brings out the Jewish-related themes in his work (though he was not Jewish himself).  It attempts to be a Sebaldian work itself, and even if it does not...