What I’ve been reading

Tirthankar Roy and K. Ravi Raman, Kerala: 1956 to the Present.  Short, nonetheless the best book I have read on why Kerala is (somewhat) special in the Indian context.  Stresses Kerala as part of a larger set of positive South Indian developments.  Overpriced though at $40, given the short length.

Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877.  Excellent all around, clear and conceptual from the get-go.  In spite of the title, I find the sections on Confederate state-building most novel and illuminating.

Glenn Adamson, A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present.  A good book on futurology and its history, note the authors considers more than tech in the narrow sense so Marcus Garvey and Marinetti are in here too.  Sun Ra too.

Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music.  This book covers Fairport Convention and its many folk offshoots, and ties it in to earlier British traditions of Vaughan Williams, Bax, Holst and so on, plus traditional song and yes The Wicker Man.  Much of that is not to my taste, but I am prepping for Joe Boyd and figured I should read a book on it.  This is the right book, and it is also a good way to try to understand Britain (a much written-up place) by unusual, roundabout means.  I do by the way like Richard and Linda Thompson.

Caroline Burt and Richard Partington, Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State.  Very good to read in conjunction with the recent Helen Castor book.  Burt and Partington reach earlier in time by focusing on the Edwards, but you can compare their treatments of Richard II, and that is what I am starting with here.

Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848-1861.  Walker’s three-volume biography of Liszt is one of the very best biographies, ever.  I like it better than most of what you hear people talk about on Twitter in the way of biography.  Soon I will start volume three, the final years when Liszt becomes an Abbe.  You do need some familiarity with the music of Liszt to grasp these books, but it suffices to listen along while you read, you do not have to be an expert.

There is Tim Congdon, The Quantity Theory of Money: A Restatement, a good introduction.