What I’ve been reading

1. Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa.  This excellent book clarified many aspects of West African and also Nigerian history for me, most of all how it connects to the earlier North African civilizations.

2. Sheelah Kolhatkar, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.  I cannot vouch for the contents and allegations, which focus on Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund career, but this is a highly engaging and better researched than usual look at the legal case against him.

3. Mark R. Patterson, Google, Yelp, LIBOR, and the Control of Information.  Data fraud, data fraud, data fraud, welcome to 2016 yes you should be reading more books on this topic.

4. Kevin Vallier, Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation, “…public reason liberalism, properly understood, realizes foundational liberal values while according religion a prominent and powerful role in public life.  I claim that, in theory and practice, public reason liberalism is far friendlier to religion in public life than both its proponents and opponents believe.”  There is a Straussian reading of this book too.

5. Aurelian Craiutu, Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes.  A much-needed perspective these days, from a very thoughtful scholar.

6. Gary Taubes, The Case Against Sugar.  My intuitions agree with this argument, plus jelly donuts don’t taste that good anyway.