What I’ve been reading

I do not have time to read it now, but this appears to be an amazing and very high quality volume: David Biale, et.al., Hasidism: A New History, over 800 pp. but it does all appear to be well-written and also interesting, often gripping.

Shaun Walker, The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.  Most of all useful for the Russia-Ukraine recent history.

John C. Hulsman, To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk.  A consistently interesting history of political risk analysis, I most liked this sentence: “The chapters themselves are baroque in structure, a fond homage to the genius of the pioneering musician and peerless producer Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, particularly his work on his masterpiece Pet Sounds.”

Peter J. Dougherty, Confessions of a Scholarly Publisher (not yet on Amazon).  Peter was the director of Princeton University Press for many years, and these are his thoughts on the (much underrated) importance of university presses.  I would stress that Michael Aronson (of Harvard University Press) and Peter were two of the most important figures in my entire career.

Tim Rogan, The Moral Economists: R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism.  The subtitle says it all.  People talk less about Tawney these days, but his book is well worth reading if you don’t already know it.

I perused them only briefly, but these seemed attractive:

Joshua B. Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World.

Timothy Tackett, The Coming of Terror in the French Revolution.

Arrived in my pile and not yet scrutinized is:

Anne Fleming, City of Debtors: A Century of Fringe Finance.