Recently Mentioned Books

3. Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life .  “Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz’s own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought.”

2. Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World — and Globalization Began .  Worth reading, my favorite part was the discussion of how Cahokia in Mississippi was connected to the Mayans.  And Chichen Itza is probably the world’s best preserved city from the year 1000.

1. Ethan Sherwood Strauss, The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty .  On top of everything else this is an excellent book on management, and the random events along the way to making a team (the Warriors once wanted to trade both Curry and Thompson for Chris Paul).  Kevin Durant ends up as the fall guy, recommended to those who care.

I am also a big fan of her forthcoming book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit , which is one of my favorite books of the year .

5. Anne Enright, Actress: A Novel . A subtle Irish story of a woman telling the tale of her now-departed famous, charismatic mother and her career in the theater.  Unpeels like an onion as you read it, and reveals successively deeper layers of the story, it would make my “favorite fiction of the year” list pretty much any year.  But please note it has not have the “upfront attention-grabbing style” that many of us have been trained to enjoy.

4. Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites .  Remarkably fair-minded and substantive, here is my blurb: “”Who are the Never Trumpers, what do they want, and what are their stories? Robert P. Saldin and Steven Teles have produced the go-to work on a movement that will likely prove of enduring influence in American politics.”  Here is a relevant Atlantic article by Saldin and Teles .  Recommended.

3. John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health .  A little boring, and not conceptual enough, but is anything on this topic entirely boring at the current moment in time?  Nonetheless this is a very useful overview and survey of public health issues in American history, and so I do not hesitate to recommend it.

2. Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell, Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp and Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995 . Imagine a book with both Vannevar Bush and Maurice Hilleman as leading and indeed intersecting characters.  How is this for a sentence?: “Hilleman had spent his boyhood on a farm on which the German-American tradition was to “work like hell and live by the tenets of Martin Luther.””

1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 , quite a good book.

I am a fan of her two latest novels Station Eleven (about a post-pandemic world) and The Glass Hotel , and many other smart people like them too.  Here is the audio and transcript .  Here is the CWTeam summary:

I am a fan of her two latest novels Station Eleven (about a post-pandemic world) and The Glass Hotel , and many other smart people like them too.  Here is the audio and transcript .  Here is the CWTeam summary:

During World War II, the NDRC accomplished a lot of research very quickly. In his memoir , Vannevar Bush recounts: “Within a week NDRC could review the project. The next day the director could authorize, the business office could send out a letter of intent, and the actual work could start.” Fast Grants are an effort to unlock progress at a cadence similar to that which served us well then.

Recommended, you can pre-order here .

As for older books, I very much liked Paul A. Offitt, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases , a biography of Maurice Hilleman .  How soon we forget that in the early 1960s — when I was born — the measles virus was killing about eight million children a year. Even in 2018 it was 140,000 deaths a year.  Also excellent is Kendall Hoyt, Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense , a paradigmatic example of Progress Studies.

As for older books, I very much liked Paul A. Offitt, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases , a biography of Maurice Hilleman .  How soon we forget that in the early 1960s — when I was born — the measles virus was killing about eight million children a year. Even in 2018 it was 140,000 deaths a year.  Also excellent is Kendall Hoyt, Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense , a paradigmatic example of Progress Studies.

Jennifer A. Delton, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism .  Manufacturing is one of the topics du jour, and this book gives good background on one particular angle of that story.

John Guy, Gresham’s Law: The Life and World of Queen Elizabeth I’s Banker .

Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Alev Scott and Andronike Makres, Power & the People: Five Lessons from the Birthplace of Democracy .  Due out in September, a useful look at how politics worked in ancient Athens.

Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa: a novel , about a high school teacher abusing one of his students, effective if you are wishing to read a story with this plot line.

Kevin Peter Hand, Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space .  A remarkably under-written and under-booked topic, I am delighted to see this book in particular.

Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters .  How to be a better listener — get the audiobook!

Jia Lynn Yang, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965 .

That is a recent book by Ahmet T. Kuru , published in August.  All books should have a (non-Amazon) abstract, and here it is for this book:

Definitely recommended, a very fun CWT with lots of content.  And again, here is Ross’s (recommended) book The Decadent Society: How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success .