What I’ve been reading

1. Edwin Frank, Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel.  Very good short portraits of various classic novels, including Machado de Assis, Mann’s Magic Mountain, Dr. Moreau, Carpentier, Perec, and others.  At this point I am usually sick of such books but this one I stuck with as it is rewarding throughout.

2. Peter Doggers, The Chess Revolution: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age, is a good book, though it is mostly interior to my current knowledge set.

3. Rebecca Charbonneau, Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain.  This book fit well into my recent “Soviet science” reading program.  This is more of a “Cold War” book than a “UFO book.”  And I learned the full saga behind the Byrds song “C.T.A. – 102” for the first time.

4. Geoffrey Wawro, The Vietnam War: A Military History, is the single best book on its topic and is both intelligent and highly readable.

Coming in 2025 is David Spiegelhalter, The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck.

The Legacy of Robert Higgs, edited by Christopher J. Coyne, is a very good collection for those interested in the topics Bob worked on.

Louis Kaplow, law and economics professor at Harvard, rethinks merger analysis in Rethinking Merger Analyses.

I have not yet had a chance to start Agustina S. Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education.

John Cassidy has a forthcoming collection of readings, Capitalism and its Critics, A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI.