Recently Mentioned Books

That is from Charles Kenny’s new and excellent The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease , which was started well before Covid.

That is the new, forthcoming book from Deirdre McCloskey.  Due out in April, Amazon link here , home page here .  The introduction and TOC is here .

He was an indigenous, Nahuatl-speaking Mexican painter in the “Naive” tradition, working on board, amate paper, and ceramics.  Some of you will know that I was his biographer , along with his two brothers Marcial Camilo and Juan Camilo, both painters as well.  I spent many hours interviewing Felix Camilo (and his friends and relatives) about the events of his life, so it is especially sad for me to see such a tragic final episode, namely death by Covid in his mid-sixties.  He simply was not able...

3. Lara Lee, Coconut and Sambal: Recipes from my Indonesian Kitchen .  Yes, I have been learning how to cook Indonesian food, a natural extension of my previous interest in cuisines from India, Malaysia, and Singapore.  This is an excellent book for several reasons, and a better book yet for a pandemic.  First, you can fold it open easily on the kitchen counter.  Second, the pages can take some wear and tear.  Third, the key ingredients are readily storable.  Galangal, turmeric, and narrow red c...

2. The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 .  It is striking how quickly in his life Eliot is corresponding with very famous people, including Bertrand Russell, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, Julian Huxley, Herbert Read, Wyndham Lewis, and others, all before Eliot himself is renowned.  I also enjoy the 23 March 1917 letter to Graham Wallas where Eliot boasts about his new job at Lloyds, praises the extraordinary nature of banking work, and roots for a salary boost.  Later Hermann Hesse and Jam...

1. Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 .  One of the best books on the history of Enlightenment science, in addition to the core material it focuses on how the leading researchers went about creating public audiences for their investigations and for the scientific questions that interested them.  Indirectly, it is also a good book for understanding the importance of social media today.  And unlike many books of science, it properly places th...

That is the new book by Tim Harford , due out February 2.

And here is Sarah on Twitter .  Here is her very useful bio page .  Here is her book Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes the Past .  So what should I ask her?

6. Emmanuel Kreike, Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature .  Might this be the most important topic that most smart, very well educated people have never read a book on? And this treatment is excellent and engaging, covering the attacks on Dutch water systems in the 17th century, various Spanish attacks on indigenous American environments, the late 19th century conquest of Aceh, Indonesia, the colonial conquests of Angola and Namibia, and more.  Recommended...

5. Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations . A good and clearly written look at that approach to growth and macroeconomics.

4. Chinmay Tumbe, The Age of Pandemics: 1817-1920, How They Shaped India and the World .  Across 1817-1920, India lost an estimated eight million lives to cholera.  In 1907 alone, India lost an estimated one million lives to the plague.  So there should be many more books on this topic. In the meantime,this is a good introduction to the basic outlines of what happened.

3.Allan Chapman, England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution . Of all the books on Hooke, this one seems to be best (most of what I’m reading I never cover on MR ), most of all for showing the unity of his contributions and situating them within the 17th century English milieu.  Microscopes and air pumps and chemistry and barometers and the motion of bodies and helping to rebuild London, and more!

2. Jonathan Cohn, The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage .  This is the book by the person who should have written this book.  Whether you will choose to read a book on this topic, at this point, is perhaps the question. But if you do…

1. David M. Friedman, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrell, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever .  This book doesn’t seem so well known, but it should be essential reading for those obsessed with life extension.  It helps explain why the idea has not been historically popular for some time, and why it might stand in tension with certain liberal values.

I have not had time to read Rachel Holmes’s Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel , about the suffragette movement and one of its leaders, but its 840 pp. would appear to be a major achievement with no comparable competitor.

I have not had time to read Sean McMeekin’s Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II , but it is of possible interest.

I have read the first one hundred pages of Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War , a lengthy book due out in April, and my physical review copy just arrived.

4. Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 .  This tome offers 780 pp. about the Enlightenment, how unhappy can you be?  This book is a well-done introduction, yet perhaps for my knowledge level it spends too much time regurgitating general truths.  I am happy to recommend it to people less interested than I am in reading the primary sources.

3. Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science .  A better book than it subtitle indicates, it has very good treatments of the role of Humphry Davy in British chemistry, William and Caroline Herschel, and the overall import of Joseph Banks for many decades, among other related topics.

2. Abigail Tucker, Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct .  These days this science has an inevitably politically incorrect feel, in any case this is a good book for anyone contemplating or experiencing motherhood, or otherwise tied up in that whole set of issues.  That includes social scientists, too.

1. Tim Lee, Jamie Lee, and Kevin Coldiron, The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis .  If you are looking for the most current version of Austrian Business Cycle theory, this is it.  Doesn’t mean it is right.

That is from Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s recent and really quite good The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan .

I have been reading the galleys, I will blurb it, it will be one of the best non-fiction books of 2021, more in due time you can pre-order here .

And she has a new book coming out on Isaac Newton .  So what should I ask her?

That is from Jonathan Zimmerman’s quite interesting The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America .