Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6798 mentions, ordered by most recent.
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.)
5. Manjit Kumar, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality . A very good study of the developments of early 20th century physics, the parts about Rutherford and Planck being most novel to me.
4. Mary Robinette Kowal, The Calculating Stars: A Lady Astronaut Novel . Readable, with a clear and propulsive plot, but somehow it stopped being of interest to me about halfway through. It is the recent Hugo and also Nebula Award winner for best novel.
3. Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life . Definitely recommended, this is an excellent boxing book, race relations book, 1960s and 70s book, and much more.
2. Evan Thompson, Why I am Not a Buddhist . For every view, there should be a book “Why I am not X.” This gets us part of the way there. That said, I have simpler reasons for not being a Buddhist, namely I do not think it is true.
1. Richard J. Williams, Why Cities Look the Way They Do . Mostly interesting, think of this as a humanities-laden approach to cities, but without too much mumbo-jumbo. Excerpt: “As long ago as 1968, a British art critic, Lawrence Alloway, grasped something of this. Writing about the Biennial, he argued that Venice wasn’t a city, but should be better understood as a cultural medium, like an exhibition or a newspaper, ‘compounded of famous architecture, recurrent festivals, and tourist industri...
You can order the book here .
You can pre-order the book here .
COWEN: What is the Straussian reading of Babar the Elephant ?
3. Shame is perhaps Rushdie’s best novel, though it is super-rude, here is one overview .
Due out November 12, you can pre-order here .
More books should be like this, it actually tries to teach the reader something! And succeeds. Definitely recommended. Due out in January, you can pre-order here .