Recently Mentioned Books

1. Martin Amis, Inside Story: A Novel .  Except it is a memoir rather than a novel, definitely fun, and has received excellent reviews in Britain, less so in the U.S.  Does not require that you know or like the novels of Amis.  Christopher Hitchens plays a critical role in the narrative.  Idea-rich, but somehow I don’t quite care, and this one feels like it would have been a much better book twenty years ago.

Zachary is first and foremost the author of the New York Times bestselling The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes .  Here is part of a broader bio:

You can pre-order here .

I am very happy to recommend this book, especially to MR readers, the full title is The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag , by Peter Burke.

His Capitalism and the Permissive Society is now but a shell of a listing on Amazon, but I can recall Roy Childs excitedly telling me about the book.  Back then, it seemed like the way forward for liberalism, a way to develop a truly emancipatory vision of free market capitalism.  Now all that seems so long ago.

That is the new book by Kevin Davies, and the subtitle is The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing .  So far I am on p.74, but it is one of the best science books I have read in some while, maybe the best this year.  Excerpt:

Here is Wilson’s book on non-linear pricing : “What do phone rates, frequent flyer programs, and railroad tariffs all have in common? They are all examples of nonlinear pricing. Pricing is nonlinear when it is not strictly proportional to the quantity purchased. The Electric Power Research Institute has commissioned Robert Wilson to review the various facets of nonlinear pricing.”  Yes, he is a business school guy.  Here is his survey article on electric power pricing , a whole separate directio...

That is from Paul Levy’s book Moore: G.E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles .  Here is more on Titi , also known as Hortense, who studied with Bartok and received numerous letters from him.  And here is Scott Sumner on Hawtrey , one of the great monetary economists.

Overall, it is striking to me just how much substance there is in this book per page — a rarity to be treasured!  You can order it here .

First, I don’t think “liberals” is exactly the right word here, but I’m not going to relitigate that one now. Second, as I’ve argued in my The Age of the Infovore (and in some forthcoming writings you haven’t seen yet), I don’t think “mental health condition” is appropriate in this context.  Furthermore, what are called “mental health conditions” often are sources of insight and can be positively correlated with talent.

Due out November 17 , I am pleased I paid the extra shipping costs to get it from the UK .

There is also Harriet Pattison, Our Days are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn , a lovely romance with nice photos, sketches, and images as well, very nice integration of text and visuals.

I am closer to the economics than the politics of Casey B. Mulligan, You’re Hired! Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President , but nonetheless it is an interesting and contrarian book, again here is the excellent John Cochrane review .

Robert Litan, Resolved: Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save Our Democracy : “…incorporate debate or evidence-based argumentation in school as early as the late elementary grades, clearly in high school, and even in college.”

Jonathan E. Hillman, The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century , is a good introduction to its chosen topic.

6. Sean Scully, The Shape of Ideas , edited and written by Timothy Rub and Amanda Sroka.  Is Scully Ireland’s greatest living artist?  He has been remarkably consistent over more than five decades of creation.  This is likely the best Scully picture book available, and the text is useful too.  Since it is abstract color and texture painting, he is harder than most to cancel — will we see the visual arts shift in that direction?

5. Laura Tunbridge, Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces .  Smart books on Beethoven are like potato chips, plus you can listen to his music while reading ( heard Op.33 Bagatelles lately ?).  In addition to some of the classics, this book covers some lesser known pieces such as the Septet, An die Ferne Geliebte, and the Choral Fantasy, and how they fit into Beethoven’s broader life and career.  Intelligent throughout.

4. History, Metaphor, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader , edited by Bajohr, Fuchs, and Kroll.  I love Blumenberg, but the selection here didn’t quite sell me.  Better to start with his The Legitimacy of the Modern Age , noting that book is a tough climb for just about anyone and it requires your full attention for some number of weeks.  Might Blumenberg be the best 20th thinker who isn’t discussed much in the Anglo-American world?  And yes it is Progress Studies too.

4. History, Metaphor, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader , edited by Bajohr, Fuchs, and Kroll.  I love Blumenberg, but the selection here didn’t quite sell me.  Better to start with his The Legitimacy of the Modern Age , noting that book is a tough climb for just about anyone and it requires your full attention for some number of weeks.  Might Blumenberg be the best 20th thinker who isn’t discussed much in the Anglo-American world?  And yes it is Progress Studies too.

3. Michael D. Gordin, The Pseudo-Science Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe .  A somewhat forgotten but still fascinating episode in the history of science, extra-interesting for those interested in Venus.  I had not known that Velikovsky pushed a weird version of a eugenicist theory stating that Israel was too hot for its own long-term good, and that its inhabitants needed to find ways of cooling it down.

2. Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeulen, Law & Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State .  Self-recommending from the pairing alone, there is a great deal of interesting content in the 145 pp. of text.  It is furthermore an interesting feature of this book that it was written at all on the chosen topic .  Perhaps the administrative state is under more fire than I realize.  And might you consider this book a centrist version of…maybe call it “state capacity not quite libertarianism”?

1. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) .  A fun look at the Free Town project as applied to Grafton, New Hampshire: “During a television interview, a Grafton resident accused the Free Towners of “trying to cram freedom down our throats.””

The author is David Edmonds, and the subtitle is The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle .  I very much enjoyed this book, and found its direct style refreshing, and I hope it will serve as a model for others.  The author actually tells you what you want to know!

That was about 236,000 people, and that is from Alan Taylor’s excellent Thomas Jefferson’s Education .  In 1785, by the way, the state legislature unanimously rejected a proposal from evangelicals to free the state’s slaves.

Here is the video, audio, and transcript .  Of course Alex has a new book out Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music , which explores the complicated legacy of Wagner and music more generally.  We learn Alex’s nomination for the greatest pop album ever made, but many of my questions focused on progress in music and musical performance, the nature of talent, the power of culture, and also cancel culture, Wagner of course having been a frequent target for a long time.  Here is one exce...