Recently Mentioned Books

We saw this happen between the 1970s and the 1990s. American hippies built a genuinely bohemian counterculture. But as they got older they wanted to succeed. They brought their bohemian values into the market, but year by year those values got thinner and thinner and finally were nonexistent.

(By the way, I’ve been going around to many San Francisco book stores, and none of them carry the new Sarah Ruden translation of The Gospels , which is likely a significant work.  I could feel people looking down on me as I asked for it.  Part of me wanted to say “ But this is Sarah Ruden ,” but that would be making the problem only worse.  Since I did not feel tempted to say “ But this is God , ” perhaps I am part of the problem.)

The author is Roderick Matthews, and the subtitle is A New History of British India .  This book has been highly controversial for its supposed “whitewashing” of British rule in India, but so far I find it insightful and indeed revelatory.  It is to date my favorite book this year, most of all conceptual but also remarkably well-informed historically.  Here is one excerpt:

It is very good, in the problem-solving mode of The Martian, you can buy it here .  I can’t say more without giving away spoilers, though that means the book is full of suspense from the first moment on.  Here is my earlier 2017 Conversation with Andy Weir .

I will be covering this book more soon, you can pre-order it here .  And here Tim Harford does FT lunch with Kahneman , self-recommending.

Daniel Carpenter is one of the world’s leading experts on regulation and the foremost expert on the US Food and Drug Administration. A professor of Government at Harvard University, he’s conducted extensive research on regulation and government organizations, as well as on the development of political institutions in the United States. His latest book Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation , details the crucial role petitions played in expanding the franchise and shaping moder...

There is Niall Ferguson, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe , lots of bad news yes, but is he short the market?

Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth , is indeed…a defense of truth.

Tom Standage, A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next is a very good history of what it promises.

5. Tim Birkhead, The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology .  As I tweeted : “I am coming to the conclusion that the quality of books about birds is higher than about almost any other subject.”  Simple question: have you read a better book about the history of ornithology than this one?

4. Paul Betts, Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II .  The immediate aftermath of WWII was the last time the Western world was truly chaotic, and this book captures that time well, including its intellectual milieu.  Are you interested in how West and East German books of manners differed in the late 1940s and 1950s?  If so, this is your go-to book.

3. Jennifer Ackerman, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think .  A good and entertaining overview of some of the most interesting questions about birds, including bird intelligence.  “Extreme behavior in birds is more likely in Australia than anywhere else.”

2. Michele Alacevich, Albert O. Hirschman: An Intellectual Biography .  There can never be enough books on Albert Hirschman, noting this one focuses on his ideas rather than his life.

1. Marcel Proust, The Mysterious Correspondent: New Stories .  Yes they read like fragments, but Proust’s fragments are still better than almost anything else.

That is the new Alan Taylor book and the subtitle is A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 .  Excerpt:

I will be doing a Conversation with him, if you are unaware here is his Wikipedia page .  Here is his new book Values(s): Building a Better World For All .  So what should I ask?

She is a Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, and recently published a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid .  Here is the audio, visual, and transcript .  Here is part of the summary:

That is from the new book on this topic by Serhii Plokhy .  An excellent book, with much more on the Soviet side than any other source I am aware of.

By Ivan Gibbons, why can’t all non-fiction books be this good?  At 148 pp. brief and to the point, perfectly clear, full of substance, and a model presentation. You can buy it here , headed for this year’s “best of” list.

Here is the full Wired story , and here you can buy Julia’s new book .  I wonder if he is more rational in the Star Trek movies than in the TV shows, or how about in the fan fiction?  Exactly where is the demand for dramatic irrationality highest, and why?

Let me first say that if you are libertarian, and would like a libertarian response to the pandemic, and you find Alex and me not libertarian enough, read the Ryan Bourne book from the Cato Institute .  You may not agree with everything in there, but it has no “gross errors” and no “biomedical weirdness.”  And people, the Cato Institute really is libertarian.  They once hired David Henderson as chief economist.

The pdf of Your World Better is available to download in my blog for free.  Or you can buy a kindle version for 99 cents or a hard copy for $8.10.  Any author royalties from those sales will be donated to UNICEF.

Your World, Better is written for the smart and engaged middle school student.  It looks at how America and the World has changed since the reader’s parents and grandparents were young: what has happened to health and wealth, homes, school and work, rights and democracy, war and the environment, happiness and depression.   It talks about the things that have gotten better, the sometimes-intensifying challenges that remain, and what readers can do about them.  (Some of you might hear echoes of my...

Cameron Blevis, Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West , is a good book and on a more important topic than you might think.

How should you feel if you attentively finish Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment ?