Recently Mentioned Books

That is from the new and excellent book Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance , by Stephan Malinowski.  This book builds on themes from Arno Mayer’s old and excellent The Persistence of the Old Regime .

That is from the new and excellent book Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance , by Stephan Malinowski.  This book builds on themes from Arno Mayer’s old and excellent The Persistence of the Old Regime .

And he has written the well-known and excellent book How to See .  He directed the Hollywood movie Search and Destroy , starring Christopher Walken.  So what should I ask him?

I have not had a chance to read Masaaki Shirawaka, Tumultuous Times: Central Banking in an Era of Crisis ; he was Governor of the Bank of Japan from 2008 to 2013.

I found rewarding Lily Collison and Kara Buckley, Pure Grit: Stories of Remarkable People Living with Physical Disability .

There is William L. Silber, The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War, and Business .

Andrew W. Lo and Stephen R. Foerster’s In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest is a good look at the development of portfolio theory, starting with Markowitz.

Adrian Woolridge’s The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World is absolutely correct.  It is remarkable how many deeply wrong books the world has been generating about this topic.

2. Alex Ferguson with Michael Moritz, Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United .  Short, but nonetheless one of the very best books on leadership and also talent search.  You also don’t have to know anything about soccer, or care about soccer.  Recommended, and this one supports my view that the best management books are about sports and music, not “business management” in the mainstream sense of that term.

2. Graham Johnson, Poulenc: The Life in the Songs .  An A+ book if …you give a damn.  Here is one song by Poulenc .  Compare it to this also beautiful recording .  And this one .  The book also serves as an excellent biography of the composer, the songs making up for the fact that his life did not see amazing amounts of action and dramatic tension.

1. Richard Lapper, Beef, Bible, and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro .  A very good country-specific book, it takes you from “Brazil is the country of the future and always will be” to “Brazil was the country of the future and maybe never will be again.”  Did you know that the Pentecostals and Evangelicals have five times the number of radio stations as does the Roman Catholic Church?

That is the new forthcoming Ross Douthat book , focusing on his struggles with Lyme disease.  It is very much a memoir, starting with talk of Connecticut, deer, and his family’s dream house, all leading to an unfortunate bite from a tick.  Visits to many doctors ensue, motivated by chronic pain and weakness.

Here are her pieces on scholar.google.com .  And I will take this chance to plug her new, forthcoming book Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity .

You can pre-order here , I got my copy from the UK .

4. Good Klein-Douthat dialogue .  By the way, here is Ross’s forthcoming book The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery .

Recommended, interesting throughout.  And again, here is Niall’s new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe .

I will be doing a Conversation with her, her forthcoming book The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is already making a big splash.  Here is an excerpt from her Wikipedia page :

Do note Andrew has a new book coming out, namely Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989-2021 .

I fear that by ceding this unique authority status to doctors we are making it easier for them to oversell us medical care, a major problem in the U.S. If your doctor suggests that you need a procedure done, it can be hard to say no, especially if you have been deferring to that person for years through the use of an honorific title. On the upside, perhaps all that deference has encouraged many people to get their vaccinations.

From the new memoir of Kaushik Basu :

That is all from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives , the autobiographical section, an excellent book more generally.  Progress Studies!

That is from Adeeb Khalid’s excellent Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present .

That is from Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries, Their obsessional, thirty-year love affair .

Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secrets to Healing Our Nation .  This is not a book written for me, but it is nonetheless good to see someone putting forward Enlightenment ideals as a solution to our problems.

Michael S. Malone, The Big Score: The billion dollar story of Silicon Valley is the new Stripe Press reprint.