Recently Mentioned Books

6. Charter city > caravan .  And again, here is Reihan’s new book on immigration .

I thank all of you buyers and reviewers for making the opening week of Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals such a success.

That is from the new David W. Blight biography of Douglass , outstanding in every way, appearing to rave reviews , and slated for the top tier of the year’s “Best of 2018” non-fiction list.

5. Camille Paglia, Provocations .  At first I was discouraged by the notion of a recycled Paglia compilation, but the quality of these pieces is often high and many of them are not readily available elsewhere.  The now-classic Sexual Personae is still the best introduction to her work, but if you think you might be tempted by this one, you should buy it.  I would put the hit rate at about fifty percent (who else will give you running commentary on the main cinematic adaptations of Homer’s Odysse...

5. Camille Paglia, Provocations .  At first I was discouraged by the notion of a recycled Paglia compilation, but the quality of these pieces is often high and many of them are not readily available elsewhere.  The now-classic Sexual Personae is still the best introduction to her work, but if you think you might be tempted by this one, you should buy it.  I would put the hit rate at about fifty percent (who else will give you running commentary on the main cinematic adaptations of Homer’s Odysse...

4. Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny .  How does human psychological growth run in the first seven years, in particular how does it instill “culture” in us?  Tomasello address this question in a Belknap Press book by comparing us to chimpanzees and bonobos.  Most of all, how does the capacity for shared intentionality and self-regulation evolve in people?  This is a very thoughtful and also important book, but I’m not sure it finally succeeds into tying up all the pieces in...

3. Robert Alter, The Art of Bible Translation .  Alter is one of today’s most important doers, and his forthcoming Hebrew Bible translation is likely to be definitive and the most important act of publication this year.  This short volume presents his perspective on what he has done, most of all focusing on how to turn Hebrew into English.

2. Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road .  A good look at the new conflicts between China and its southeast Asian and central Asian neighbors.  Clear enough to be a good introduction, detailed enough to be useful to those who already know something about the topic.

1. Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom .  I hadn’t realized that so much was known about her life, or that she spent so much time in Canada, or that she fell into such obscurity during the early part of the twentieth century.  She died the same year Rosa Parks was born.  I liked this book very much.

That is the forthcoming Raghuram Rajan book, due out February 26, 2019 .

Here is the full story , via the excellent Benjamin Copan.  And if you don’t know his performances in The Killer , a John Woo film, now is the time to check it out.

That is from the very good book by William J. Cooper, The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics .

This was two and a half hours (!), and it is a special bonus episode in Conversations in Tyler, here is the text and audio .  The starting base of the discussion was my new, just today published book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision of a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals , but of course we ranged far and wide.  Here are a few excerpts:

Tomorrow is publication date for the book, you can order here , and here is some background on Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals .

From Maxim Gorky’s My Universities :

By Martin Gurri, due out November 13 .  I am reading this splendid book for the first time.  It basically explains why Brexit and Trump won, and what will happen next.  Due to social media, we are disillusioned with our elites, and that will prove hard to reverse.

That is all from the new book by Jay Sexton, A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History .

Possibly the shorter news cycles are also a result of greater general disillusionment with politics and especially with elites, a theme outlined in Martin Gurri’s forthcoming book “The Revolt of the Public.” The really fun stuff might instead be watching mixed martial arts, debating social norms about gender and browsing the Instagram feeds of your friends.

2. Next week: Ben Sasse has a new book out: Them: Why We Hate Each Other — And How to Heal .

3. My Spellbound podcast with Julian Smith .  Partly about Stubborn Attachments .

2. New volume of Camille Paglia collected essays to appear .

Overall I view bad pieces in the humanities as a potential profit opportunity, rather than something to just whine about.  You don’t like those troll-published pieces? Get to work !

4. Thomas J. Bollyky, Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways is a good history of public health advances, but also how they have led to what are now plague-prone poor megacities.  Here is the author’s piece in Foreign Affairs .

3. Can Xue, Love in the New Millennium .  Is she the Chinese writer most likely to next win a Nobel Prize?  “In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly.”  Much of the story is set in a brothel, with a rotating cast of characters.  Parts remind me of The Dream of the Red Chamber, in any case this is definitely a new fictional work of note.  Here is an atypical excerpt: “He and Xiao Yuan had ...

2. James Mustich, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List .  Paging through this book, from beginning to end, or just browsing it, and buying the attractive-sounding titles is in fact a good (but expensive) way to find new reading.  I see no reason why such volumes should be regarded as absurd.  Right now I am on “Bradley,” and while I don’t agree with all of the selections, they are unfailingly intelligent and at least plausible.