Recently Mentioned Books

Eric Schwitzgebel, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures .  Collected essays, interesting throughout, and among other points Schwitzgebel shows that ethicists do not in fact behave better than other human beings, higher rates of vegetarianism aside.

Also noteworthy is Richard Brookhiser, Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Essays , a kind of companion volume.  Can you beat the title, especially given world trends today?

C. Bradley Thompson’s America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It , is a beautifully written history of exactly what the title and subtitle claim.

4. The Jamaican diet and a number of good public health programs, contributing to the strength of potential Jamaican runners ( James C. Riley : “Between 1920 and 1950, Jamaicans added life expectancy at one of the most rapid paces attained in any country.”)

That is one chapter in Orlando Patterson’s new and excellent The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament .  One thing I like so much about this book is that it tries to answer actual questions you might have about Jamaica (astonishingly, hardly any other books have that aim, whether for Jamaica or for other countries).  So what about this question and this puzzle?

5. Ross Douthat on Watership Down (NYT).  And you can pre-order the new forthcoming Ross Douthat book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success .

Millions of people stay in Airbnb homes every night. It’s not trust which makes this possible. My pup is fearless when he sleeps with the door wide open, in a cottage in the woods. There are leopards around. Dogs here don’t live very long. He doesn’t trust leopards, but he knows they are afraid of humans. My pup sleeps on my bed, and so is well-protected from the vicissitudes of life. But I’m not the living proof that dogs can trust leopards. Dogs wouldn’t need humans to guard them if they could...

That is the highly controversial book by Frederick Martel, subtitled Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy .  For some time I had been resisting reading the book, as usually I find tales of corruption and scandal boring.  But I misunderstood the fundamental nature of the account.  It is not quite a homage, but Martel seems to admire the evolved culture of homosexuality (not my preferred word, but appropriate in this context) in the Vatican.  See this review : “The tone falters because Martel seems uns...

This is one of the very best books to read if you wish to think about writing more deeply.  You can pre-order it here .

7. The new Charles Murray book .

Paul Blustein, Schism: China, America and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System .  Given the import and timing on the topic, I am surprised this book has not received more attention .  It is “more boring” than Blustein’s earlier works, such as on Argentina, but full of facts and substance on every page.  For now it is the go-to book on this topic.

Jason Lyall, Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War .  Perhaps the most thorough look at how cohesion has made some armies and fighting forces stronger than others.  For instance there is a chapter “African World Wars: Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Modern Battlefield.”  I view this more as a cohesion story than an “inequality” story (current U.S. forces seem pretty sharp), in any case a good integration of military history with modern social s...

Cristiano Bianchi and Kristina Drapić, Model City Pyongyang .  An excellent picture book, mostly of architecture, presenting Pyongyang as yet another installment in the 20th century series of deeply weird cities.

Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent .  A very nice history of earlier post-war European migration, such as Turks and Greeks moving to West Germany, Cape Verdeans settling in Portugal, and so on.  Excellent background for the current debates.

Here you can buy The Stand for $8.30 , by the way I love Houllebecq but the new one isn’t very interesting, as sadly it reads like a parody of his earlier, superior work. Submission remains one of the truly great novels of recent times.

Here you can buy The Stand for $8.30 , by the way I love Houllebecq but the new one isn’t very interesting, as sadly it reads like a parody of his earlier, superior work. Submission remains one of the truly great novels of recent times.

Here you can buy The Stand for $8.30 , by the way I love Houllebecq but the new one isn’t very interesting, as sadly it reads like a parody of his earlier, superior work. Submission remains one of the truly great novels of recent times.

I still think Stephen King should get one.  I didn’t enjoy trying to read Tokarczuk, though I suspect she is a very good writer in Polish.  By Handke I can recommend his Sorrow of Dreams , a memoir of his mother dying, and also a book that influenced Knausgaard.  But mostly I am find him boring, pessimistic, and nasty, perhaps consistent with his support for Milosevic and the tyranny in Serbia.  I don’t think that disqualifies him from the prize per se , but neither do I see him as an author who...

And yes on overrated vs. underrated, you get Taylor Swift, Clint Eastwood, and Seinfeld, among others.  I highly recommend all of Ben’s books , but most of all his latest one Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic .

Here is his home page .  Here is Ted on Twitter , one of the very best follows.  Here is his latest book Music: A Subversive History , due out next week.  And there is more :

Christophe Jaffrelot, The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience .

Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country .

That is from the new Philip Mansel book King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV .

That is from the forthcoming and excellent book by Robert Bryce, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations .

1. “Cheap books make authors canonical.”  From a new study of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas .