Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6798 mentions, ordered by most recent.
That is from Matthew Goodwin in The Times , there is also Matthew’s book National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy . Remember how we used to praise parliamentary systems for their decisiveness?
That is from the new and interesting Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business , by Anja Shortland.
Ladders runs an excerpt from my book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero , here is one part:
4. “The Travis Corcoran novel (a sequel to last year’s winner) the moon colonists consult a “Cowen wiki” to figure out where to eat, and Corcoran says in the Afterword that this is a hat tip to you.” Or so I am told.
That is from the new and interesting Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream , by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson, two very eminent economists. And if you are wondering, I believe those numbers are referring to government efforts, not the private sector. I am myself much more optimistic about the economic prospects for the oceans than for outer space.
6. Guzel Yakhina, Zukeikha . Translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, a Tatar woman is sent into exile in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. This is one of the novels I enjoyed this year, several others I know concur.
5. Rucker C. Johnson and Alexander Nazaryan, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works . A good summary of what the subtitle promises, though I was hoping for more attention on the costs and losers from those arrangements.
4. Andrew Lambert, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict that Made the Modern World . Covers the Phoenicians, Venice, the Dutch Golden Age, the rise of the British empire, and more. Interesting throughout, but I most liked the final section on why there are no seapowers today, and why China and Russia never will be seapowers. Overall a nice integration of geopolitics and culture.
3. Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security . An important contribution to political science, expanding on their concept of “weaponized interdependence,” namely how the U.S. (and sometimes other political actors) uses access to international networks, such as SWIFT, to push other nations around. See #weaponizedinterdependence on Twitter for an introduction.
2. Jonathan Bate, How the Classics Made Shakespeare . “One key argument is that Shakespeare’s form of classical fabling was profoundly antiheroic because it was constantly attuned to the force of sexual desire.” Bate is very smart and this book shows it.
1. Ruby Warrington, Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Concentration Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol . Both the title and content make it self-recommending.
That is from David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present .
The book also covers Indonesia, Africa, Vietnam and Cambodia, Peru, Nepal, and more, all with an emphasis on China’s earlier foreign policy role. Every chapter is full of fascinating information with strong but not overreaching conceptual framings. Very strongly recommended, it comes out in America in September , I ordered my copy from the UK, available now and cheaper too . Here is a review from The Economist .
The book also covers Indonesia, Africa, Vietnam and Cambodia, Peru, Nepal, and more, all with an emphasis on China’s earlier foreign policy role. Every chapter is full of fascinating information with strong but not overreaching conceptual framings. Very strongly recommended, it comes out in America in September , I ordered my copy from the UK, available now and cheaper too . Here is a review from The Economist .
The subtitle is The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World , I enjoyed the book very much, you can order it here .
Marie-Janine Galic, The Great Cauldron: A History of Southeastern Europe seems impressive, though I have not had time to read much of it.
Marion Turner, Chaucer: A European Life . This one may not please the Brexiteers.
Uwe E. Reinhardt, Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care . Uwe is gone but not forgotten.
Thomas Milan Konda, Conspiracies of Conspiracies: How Delusions Have Overrun America .
Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner, and Henry M. Paulson, Firefighting: The Financial crisis and its Lessons : your model of this book is what this book is.
For prep for my Conversation with Knausgaard, I read a good deal of Ivo de Figueiredo, Henrik Ibsen: The Man & the Mask , and was impressed by how much new material he had uncovered.
5. The Bitter Script Reader, Michael F-ing Bay: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay’s Films . There aren’t enough enthusiastic, intelligent fanboy books, but this is one of them.
4. Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro, The Wealth of Religions: The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging . A good overview of their work together on economics and religion, and also more generally a take on what the social sciences know empirically about the causes and effects of religion (not always so much, I should add).
3. Marlon James, Black Leopard Red Wolf . While the author of this new budding fictional series seems quite talented, this is more a book to admire than to enjoy. I can’t imagine that people will read it fifteen years from now. I’ve also read a bunch of reviews which try to praise it, without every telling the reader it will hold their interest.
2. Allison Schrager, An Economist Walks into a Brothel, and Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk . My blurb: “Allison Schrager’s An Economist Walks Into a Brothel is the best, most readable, most informative, most adventurous, and most entertaining take on risk you will find.”