Recently Mentioned Books

1. Anne Serre, The Beginners .  What is it like for a woman to go from loving one man to another?  This newly translated French novel was fun enough, insightful enough, and direct and short enough for me to finish.

You can buy it here .

You can buy it here .

Highly recommended, you can buy it here .

When it treatment of secondary topics is better than what you can find anywhere else.  For instance I am reading Alexander Mikaberidze’s The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History .  Just in the span of a few pages, his treatment of Dessalines and his plan to rule Haiti is excellent.  Then his discussion of the French motivations for allowing the Louisiana Purchase is amazing. Yet a page later his take on the evolution of the Swiss confederation, while offered only in passing, is more instructive tha...

That is from the new and noteworthy Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption , by Rafia Zakaria.  Or how about this:

That is from Jonah Lehrer’s Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, a Solution , just published by Simon and Schuster.

He has a new book out with David Cutler, namely Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation .

He has a new book out with Ed Glaeser, namely Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation .

5. Trevor Rowley, The Normans: A History of Conquest .  As I understand the author, he presents the Normans as an essential part of what fed into the creation of modern Europe, also serving to spread those practices and norms.  I hadn’t known that Tocqueville was in part originally a Scandinavian name, deriving from “Toki’s ville,” the Scand name tacked onto the Norman suffix.

4. Matthew Affron, et.al. Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art .  Clustered discoveries are one of the best areas to read about, whether they be scientific or artistic.  There will be many overlapping treatments, biographies, and so on.  And the people who write about these areas may do so with a certain amount of passion.  The rise of abstract art early in the twentieth century is one of the most remarkable of such clusters, as in so many countries top-rate ar...

3. Max Siollun, What Britain did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule .  It is hard to find good books on Nigeria that are easy to follow and not just for specialists.  This new one is maybe the best overall treatment I know?  The British conquest of Nigeria took seventy-seven years to accomplish.  Siollun also stresses the role of missionaries in bringing literacy to Nigeria, noting that what you might call Nigerian literacy skills, for instance in native scripts, were longstanding ...

2. John B. Thompson, Book Wars: The Digital Revolution .  Thompson’s Merchants of Culture was surprisingly excellent, now the quality is no longer a surprise.  This book covers the Kindle revolution (now dominated by romances), Google books, how electronic publishing rights evolved, crowdfunding books, the ascent of Amazon, and much more.  In all or most of these areas he offers you more substance and more inside scoops than the other discussions you might have read, thus recommended.

1. M.J. Ryan and Nicholas Higham, The Anglo-Saxon World .  I’ve been reading more books in this area, even though data limitations make it difficult to form an accurate picture of what was happening.  Here is Wikipedia on King Alfred , plenty of facts, broader context often difficult to recreate.  (What exactly would they have debated on Twitter, and why?)  I would put this as one of the two or three best Anglo-Saxon books I have seen, and with excellent visuals and photos.

You can buy the book here .

That is the title of a new and excellent book by Alison K. Smith .  I have watched other people eat this food for eighteen years, and now I am beginning to understand:

Reading the new Nicholas Wapshott book and also Krugman’s review (NYT) of it, it all seemed a little too rosy to me. So I went back and took a look at Paul Samuelson the macroeconomist. I regret that I cannot report any good news, in fact Samuelson was downright poor — you might say awful — as a macroeconomist.

Interesting throughout.  And again, here is Andrew’s new book Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989-2021 .

It does not make sense for me to read Emily Oster’s The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision-Making in the Early School Years , but it is very likely more reliable information than you are likely to get from other sources.

Peter Kinzler, Highway Robbery: The Two-Decade Battle to Reform America’s Automobile Insurance System is a useful look at where that debate stands and how it ended up there.  Here is a good summary of the book .

4. N.J. Higham, The Death of Anglo-Saxon England .  In 1066, five different individuals were recognized as de facto King of England — how did that come to pass?  Why was Aethelred the Unready not ready?  (He was only 12 when he assumed the throne, though much of the actual criticism concerned the later part of his reign.)  I find this one of the most intelligible and conceptual treatments of Anglo-Saxon England out there.  I don’t care what the Heritage Foundation says , beware Danish involvemen...

3. Jamie Mackay, The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean History .  While it was less conceptual than I might have preferred, this is perhaps the single best general history of Sicily I know of.  Short and to the point in a good way.

2. Nicholas Wapshott, Samuelson Friedman: The Battle over the Free Market .  Quite a good book, though it is interior to my current knowledge set and thus better for others reader than myself.  Contrary to what I have read elsewhere, Wapshott points out that Samuelson did not support Nixon’s wage and price controls, but this LA Times link seems to suggest Samuelson thought they were a good idea?

1. Richard Zenith, Pessoa: A Biography .  942 pp. of text, yet interesting throughout.  Brings you into Pessoa’s mind and learning to a remarkable degree.  (Have I mentioned that the world is slowly realizing that Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet is one of the great works of the century?)  His favorite book was Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, and he very much liked Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus .  This biography is also interesting about non-Pessoa topics, such as Durban, South Africa in 1900 (Pessoa did li...

1. Richard Zenith, Pessoa: A Biography .  942 pp. of text, yet interesting throughout.  Brings you into Pessoa’s mind and learning to a remarkable degree.  (Have I mentioned that the world is slowly realizing that Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet is one of the great works of the century?)  His favorite book was Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, and he very much liked Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus .  This biography is also interesting about non-Pessoa topics, such as Durban, South Africa in 1900 (Pessoa did li...