Recently Mentioned Books

4. Simone Weil: An Anthology , and Gravity and Grace . Gravity and Grace is the early work.  Its ten best pages are superb, but reading it is mostly a frustrating experience, due to the diffuse nature of the presentation (to be clear, overall I consider that a relatively high reward ratio).  The former collection is the best place to start, noting again there is a certain degree of diffuseness, but as with Žižek there are insights you just don’t get anywhere else.  A good question for any talent...

4. Simone Weil: An Anthology , and Gravity and Grace . Gravity and Grace is the early work.  Its ten best pages are superb, but reading it is mostly a frustrating experience, due to the diffuse nature of the presentation (to be clear, overall I consider that a relatively high reward ratio).  The former collection is the best place to start, noting again there is a certain degree of diffuseness, but as with Žižek there are insights you just don’t get anywhere else.  A good question for any talent...

3. Howard Brotz, editor, African-American Social & Political Thought 1850-1920 .  A fascinating selection from the debates of the time, reprinting Douglass, Booker T., Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Delany, and others.  Douglass holds up best, including his critique of colonialism.  The weakest argument in the volume was “Haiti is working out fine, so Liberia will succeed as well.”  Of greatest interest to me was the extent to which the African-American debates of that time overlapped with opini...

2. Diary of Anne Frank .  It seems inappropriate to call this a “good” or even “great” book.  I had not read it since high school, I will just say it deserves its enduring status, and the reread was much more rewarding and interesting than what I was expecting.

1. Brent Tarter, Virginians and Their Histories .  The best book I have read on the history of Virginia, by an order of magnitude.  And in turn that makes it an excellent book on race as well, and also on broader American history.  If I have to spend the whole year in this state, I might as well read about it.  I learned also that 21,172 Virginians have identified themselves as American Indians, and that this movement is more active than I had realized.

I will be doing a Conversation with him, based in part on his new forthcoming book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger .  While I have not yet read it, I strongly expect it will be excellent.

It used to be called The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution , but the later title was Return of the Primitive .  It was published in 1971, but sometimes drawn from slightly earlier essays.  I wondered if a revisit might shed light on the current day, and here is what I learned:

It used to be called The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution , but the later title was Return of the Primitive .  It was published in 1971, but sometimes drawn from slightly earlier essays.  I wondered if a revisit might shed light on the current day, and here is what I learned:

The subtitle is How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet .

Richard W. Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn is the latest Stripe Press blockbuster.  Here is more information about the book .

There is also Jim Tankersley, The Riches of This Land: The untold, true story of America’s middle class .

I have not yet read Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt , but in general I enjoy his works and find them smart.

4. R. James Breiding, Too Small to Fail: Why some small nations outperform larger ones and how they are reshaping the world .  A very useful book expanding on the theme that smaller nations have the potential to be much better governed and thus to have smarter policy and greater accountability.

3. Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary .  A very good and readable biography of exactly what it promises, also manages to avoid hagiography.

2. Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History .  An elegantly written book, offering an optimistic take on human nature and cooperativeness.  I am not sure there is anything fundamentally new in here, but I did in fact read and finish it.

1. Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea .  Yes compelling, and a sufficiently influential book that you should read it.  But aren’t you ever tempted to ask: has anyone ever behaved like that?

Recommended, you can pre-order it here .

There is also Paul Matzko, The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built and Modern Conservative Movement .  I don’t listen to (non-satellite) radio, but some of you should find this interesting.

John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History is both a good introduction and deep enough for those well-read in this area.

3. Henry M. Cowles, The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey .  Argue that the true scientific method did not develop until the mid-to late 19th century.  A good book, although perhaps more for historians of ideas than students of science per se.

2. Paul Preston, A People Betrayed: A History of Corruption, Political Incompetence and Social Division in Modern Spain .  A highly detailed but also analytical account of how Spanish political economy became so screwed up.  Runs from the 1830s up through the financial crisis, and focuses why Spain was backward in nation-building.  Maybe too detailed for some but I believe there is no other book like it.

1. Jon Elster, France Before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime .  A useful historical introduction to the period, but most notable for taking canons of good social science explanation seriously throughout each step of the analysis.  For one thing, it helps you realize how few people do that, but at the same time you wonder how much restating events in terms of social science mechanisms actually helps historical explanation.  A smart book and very well-informed book in any case.

To buy the book, here is the Amazon link .  Here is the Barnes and Noble link .

That is from Daniel Todman’s Britain’s War 1942-1947 , a book I already have reviewed positively .  Reading further, it remains excellent and interesting on every page, is still grossly under-reviewed by MSM, and would make the top five or even top three non-fiction books of the year list since I have started blogging.

That is the new, excellent, and timely book by Hollis Robbins, the title is descriptive, here is one excerpt: