Recently Mentioned Books

That is the new, interesting, and engaging book by Sean Carroll .  Some of it is exposition, the rest argues for a version of Many Worlds Theory, but with a finite number of universes.  Here is one excerpt:

That is from the new and interesting Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age , by Bear F. Braumoeller, which is largely a critique of Pinker on trends toward peacefulness (Pinker gives only the more optimistic data on Europe).  And from the text:

3. Author/novel : Daniyal Mueenuddin , In Other Rooms, Other Wonders .  I am not sure why this book isn’t better known.  It is better than even the average of the better half of the Booker Prize winners.  Why doesn’t he write more?

2. Qawwali performers : Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Sabri Brothers, and try this French collection of Qawwali music .

That is the new book by Paul Tough , I read it through in one sitting.  The back cover offers an appropriate introduction to the work:

Samantha Power has a new and excellent book out, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir , which I very much enjoyed.  And so a Conversation with Tyler was in order, here is the audio and transcript , here is one bit:

You can order it here , worthy of my year-end “best non-fiction of the year” list.

That is the new and fascinating book by Judith Grisel , unlike most neuroscientists on these topics she has been addicted to many of the drugs she writes about, or at least has tried them “for real,” furthermore her book integrates her personal and scientific knowledge in a consistently interesting manner.

That is from the new Pico Iyer book , pleasing throughout.  Here is an FT interview with Ayer about the book , and more.  Don’t forget:

I am an admirer of Yancey Strickler, of Kickstarter fame, he has a new book coming out This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World .

David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell & Universal Salvation , argues that from a Christian point of view all will be saved and none damned to eternal torment.  Not my framework, but I am not going to push back against what I take to be a Pareto improvement.

Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy covers how liberalism took egalitarian and Rawlsian turns in the 20th century.  The author makes this seem more natural than I would take it to be.

Eric D. Weitz, A World Divided: The Global Struggle for Human Rights in the Age of Nation-States , is indeed a history of human rights in theory but most of all in practice.

George Weigel, The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself & Challenged the Modern World to Reform .  Always fascinating to see there is a whole ‘nother world of politics you hardly know (or care) about.

Ethan Pollock, Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse . The title says it all, noting that without the banya I for one would not perish.

That is the opening passage from M. Norton Wise, Aesthetics, Industry, and Science: Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society .

Of course I’m not trying to sell you on music or for that matter on Dave Marsh.  What about reading Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity , accompanied by these videos ?  Might the possibility of YouTube combination make that the 37th best book of all time, displacing Braudel or Flaubert?

No, I don’t mean Proust, Cervantes, or the Bible.  I mean Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made .

That is from Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Werner von Siemens: Inventor and International Entrepreneur .

The new Stripe Press book is Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto, Get Together: How to build a community with your people, a how-to guide .

I started two very long novels — Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School and Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport , but neither clicked with me.  The former seems too simple/brutal/masculine for its 1300 pp. length, and the latter is a mix of American and obscure I don’t care about this kind of stuff.  Still, I will try them each again.

I started two very long novels — Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School and Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport , but neither clicked with me.  The former seems too simple/brutal/masculine for its 1300 pp. length, and the latter is a mix of American and obscure I don’t care about this kind of stuff.  Still, I will try them each again.

Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite , has gotten good press on Twitter, but it reminds me of Churchill on democracy.

Richard M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age 1000-1765 is a useful, non-partisan, and coherent take on exactly what the title suggests.

6. Kashmir: The Case for Freedom , with essays by A. Roy, Mishra, and others.  You may or may not agree with the pro-Kashmiri take of this book, but some issues you learn best by reading the partisans on each side, who offer clarity if nothing else, and then drawing your own conclusions.  I suspect the Kashmir crisis falls into that bucket.  (Learning when to apply this trick is one good way to make your reading more productive.)