Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6798 mentions, ordered by most recent.
There are also books which I think very likely deserve to make this list, but I have not had time to read much of them. Most notably, those include the new biographies of Alain Locke , Thomas Cromwell , Gandhi , and Winston Churchill .
Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror .
Francesca Lidia Viano’s Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty .
David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History .
Emily Dufton, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America .
Allen C. Guelzo, Reconstruction: A Concise History .
Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .
Uwe Johnson, From a Year in the Life of Gessine Cresspahl . I haven’t read this one yet, I did some browse, and I am fairly confident it belongs on this list. 1760 pp.
Homer’s Odyssey , translated by Emily Wilson.
Anna Burns, Milkman , Booker Prize winner, Northern Ireland, troubles, here is a good and accurate review .
Madeline Miller, Circe .
Gaël Faye, Small Country . Think Burundi, spillover from genocide, descent into madness, and “the eyes of a child caught in the maelstrom of history.”
Soon I’ll offer up my longer lists for fiction and non-fiction, but let’s start at the top. My nomination for best book of the year is Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey . It is a joy to read, the best of the five translations I know, and it has received strong reviews from scholars for its accuracy and fidelity. I also would give a top rating to the book’s introductory essay, a mini-book in itself.
The author is Toby Green, and the subtitle is West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution . Here is one excerpt:
That is the new book by David Colander and Craig Freedman , here is one short bit:
Buy the book here .
That is from the new and excellent Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny . It is true of course that the fifty years prediction was off. Here is the Churchill essay .
Jacy Reese has a new book The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists are Building an Animal-Free Food System . It is overstated, but still better than the near-unanimous ignoring of these issues which goes on in the economics profession.
Adam Zamoyski, Napoleon: A Life I read only some parts of, and found very well-written and entertaining, but it wasn’t sufficiently conceptually innovative to hold my interest.
Daniel S. Hamermesh, Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resource is a good introduction to what economists know about the allocation of time, both evidence and theory.
3. Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs . An excellent history book in its own right, this is also one of the best sources for understanding the 19th century roots of our current dilemma. Reading everything by Daniel Walker Howe is in fact a good algorithm for proceeding in life.
2. Timothy Larsen, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life . Covers the evolution of religion in Mill’s life, and stresses that toward the very life he turned back to a religiously-oriented world view. Arguably all of the (< 12) people at Mill’s funeral were Christians. As a side benefit, the book has an illuminating treatment of the romance with Harriet Taylor. I’ve since ordered four other of Larsen’s books, the ultimate compliment.
1. Richard A. Arenberg, Congressional Procedure: A Practical Guide to the Legislative Process in the U.S. Congress . You know, this stuff matters a lot more than it used to.
That is from Arnold Kling reviewing Martin Gurri’s forthcoming The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium .
That is from the latest issue of American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , “ Discounting Disentangled ” by Drupp, Freeman, Groom, and Nesje. You will of course find a lengthy discussion of these issues in my own Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .