Recently Mentioned Books

I’ve only browsed Owen Matthews, An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent , but it seems to be based on a remarkable amount of original research.  I do not care so much about the history of spying, but for some of you this should be a very good book.

Gabriel García Marquez, The Scandal of the Century, and Other Writings .  His early journalistic pieces are a revelation, both for their connections to a Borges-Cortázar style, and for how they show the roots of his later more literary productions.  His best-known work is perhaps overrated, but his body of work as a whole is still considerably underrated, and this volume will add to your appreciation of him.

Swapan Dasgupta, Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political Beliefs of the Indian Right .  What do those people actually believe and why?  A summary and also a collection of original texts, strongly recommended for insight into one of the world’s most important nations and thus one of the world’s most important intellectual movements.

Vaclav Smil, Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities .  This book was too much a pile of facts for my taste — and facts I already know — but it is about the most important topic, namely growth and economic growth, so some of you should read it.  When you get right down to it, there are worse things than a pile of facts!

In any case, self-recommending, this book shows that Malcolm Gladwell remains on an upward trajectory.  You can pre-order it here .

The author is Charles Fishman, and the subtitle is The Impossible Mission That Flew us to the Moon .  Here is one excerpt:

Chris Sagers, United States v. Apple: Competition in America , is a useful look at the antitrust case over eBook pricing, though the actual book does not start until p.79 or so.

Fiona MacCarthy, Gropius: The Man Who Built the Bauhaus also has plenty of interesting information about Alma Mahler, beyond what is in the Tom Lehrer song .

Leah A. Plunkett, Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online , high time there has been a book with this message, and this is it.

4. John Brockman, editor, The Last Unknowns: Deep, Elegant, Profound UNANSWERED QUESTIONS About the Universe, the Mind, the Future of Civilization, and the Meaning of Life .  My nominated question was: “How far are we from wishing to return to the technologies of the year 1900?” NB : you get only the questions, not the answers.

3. Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI .  Everything you wanted to know about AlphaZero and already have been asking, lots of games and illustrations but also lots of plain text.  Definitely recommended, if you care that is.  AlphaZero, by the way, never plays 1. e4, mostly because it sees 1…e5 in response as giving Black nearly equal chances.

2. Neil Irwin, How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World: The Definitive Guide to Adapting and Succeeding in High-Performance Careers , is another excellent book by Neil Irwin, and it is both subtler and broader than the title alone would indicate.

1. Graeme D. Ruxton, Nature’s Giants: The Biology and Evolution of the World’s Largest Lifeforms .  Picture books are underrated!  They are like a better version of Wikipedia, and with glossy paper at that.

The author is Ana Fifield, and the subtitle is The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un .  I’ve never read a book that has so much actual information about Kim, most of all about his early time in Switzerland.  Or how about this?:

You can order the book here .  I think about the Balkans a great deal (and enjoy visiting there), if only because they are one simple alternate scenario for what the rest of world history will look like.

You can buy the book here , it has many notable contributors and other essays of interest.

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Own Business Culture .  It is the best book on business culture in recent memory, here is one bit:

The passage is from Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village .

The author is Robert Zubrin and the subtitle is How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility .  I found this book fun, ambitious, and informative, even if I was not entirely convinced.  Zubrin thinks big and bold in an exciting way, here is one bit:

That is the new book by Chris Arnade , insightful throughout and with excellent photos.  Excerpt:

Linda Yueh’s What Would the Great Economists Do? How Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today’s Biggest Problems , now out in paperback, is the closest we have come to producing a modern-day version of Robert Heilbroner’s book.  As with Heilbroner, it is from a somewhat “left” perspective.

I will not have time to read Anthony Atkinson’s Measuring Poverty Around the World , his final book, but as you might expect it appears to be a very serious contribution.

Gareth Williams, Unraveling the Double Helix: The Lost Heroes of DNA .  A good, detailed look at thought on DNA-related issues, before Crick and Watson published the solution.

Arthur M. Diamond, Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism is a good introduction to what the title and subtitle promise.

5. John Steinbeck, East of Eden .  At first I enjoyed this one, but after a while I grew bored.  If it came out today, by John Anonymous, how many people would think it was a great book?  (“Most of those who wrote the Amazon reviews” you might reply.  Maybe, but what other current books do they like?  Barbara Kingsolver?)  If Sally Rooney’s Normal People , or some time-synched version thereof, came out in the 1920s or 30s, how many today would claim it is an absolute masterpiece?  I am happy to ...