Category: Books
What should I ask Theodore H. Schwartz?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. He is a famous brain surgeon and author of the recent and excellent book Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery.
Here is his Wikipedia page, and an opening excerpt:
Theodore H. Schwartz (born May 13, 1965) is an American medical scientist, academic physician and neurosurgeon.
Schwartz specializes in surgery for brain tumors, pituitary tumors and epilepsy. He is particularly known for developing and expanding the field of minimally-invasive endonasal endoscopic skull base and pituitary surgery and for his research on neurovascular coupling and propagation of epilepsy.
Here is his home page. So what should I ask him?
What should I ask Ross Douthat?
Ross has a new (and very good) book coming out Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious. I will be doing a Conversation with him, mostly about the book although not entirely. Here is my first and second Conversation with Ross. Here is my earlier exchange with Ross about belief in God, scroll back through the links.
So what should I ask him?
Another hypothesis why building aesthetics have declined in quality
I have been reading Coby Lefkowitz’s Building Optimism: Why Our World Looks the Way It Does, and How to Make it Better. I am most interested in chapter five “Why Does Everywhere Look the Same?” That is another way of restating the puzzle that, at some point after WWII, the aesthetic quality of a lot of buildings and neighborhoods seemed to plummet. Even though we are much wealthier today.
With increasing returns to scale, we produce these buildings and neighborhoods en masse, and although they are comfortable and affordable, they just aren’t that pretty. Quite simply they are mass produced.
The increasing returns to scale hypothesis explains a few facts:
1. Why we find this trend almost everywhere.
2. Why there are some exceptions to the trend in striking individual buildings (Guggenheim Bilbao?), but very few exceptions on larger scales involving many buildings together.
3. Why the trend does not end.
4. Why interiors can be so lovely when exteriors are so mediocre. The interior of course is very often “created” by the individual family living there, rather than bought en masse.
By no means is the increasing returns to scale hypothesis for mediocre buildings entirely new. You can find versions of it in many other writers. But perhaps Lefkowitz states it the most clearly?
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.
Asimov Press has a new kind of book
Today we launched our second Asimov Press book…The book’s theme is “technology,” and so we encoded a complete copy of the book into DNA, and are making those DNA copies available to consumers for the first time.
We worked with three companies (CATALOG, Plasmidsaurus, and Imagene) to make 1,000 copies of the DNA and package them into stainless steel capsules under an inert atmosphere, thus preserving the nucleotides for tens of thousands of years.
Announcement: https://www.asimov.press/p/technology-book
X: https://x.com/NikoMcCarty/status/1874859187676852636
Website: https://press.asimov.com/books
Marc Andreessen on Atlas Shrugged
Excellent clip from longer interview.
What should I ask Carl Zimmer?
Yes, I will be having a Conversation with him. Here is Wikipedia on Carl:
Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University‘s Morse College and adjunct professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. Zimmer also gives frequent lectures and has appeared on many radio shows, including National Public Radio‘s Radiolab, Fresh Air, and This American Life…He is the only science writer to have a species of tapeworm named after him (Acanthobothrium zimmeri).
There is much more at the link. Carl has a new book coming out, namely Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Air We Breathe, an in-depth look at the history of aerobiology. So what should I ask him?
My Shakespeare and literature podcast with Henry Oliver
Here is the audio and transcript, here is the episode summary:
Tyler and I spoke about view quakes from fiction, Proust, Bleak House, the uses of fiction for economists, the problems with historical fiction, about about drama in interviews, which classics are less read, why Jane Austen is so interesting today, Patrick Collison, Lord of the Rings… but mostly we talked about Shakespeare. We talked about Shakespeare as a thinker, how Romeo doesn’t love Juliet, Girard, the development of individualism, the importance and interest of the seventeenth century, Trump and Shakespeare’s fools, why Julius Cesar is over rated, the most under rated Shakespeare play, prejudice in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare as an economic thinker. We covered a lot of ground and it was interesting for me throughout.
Excerpt:
Henry No, I agree with you. The thing I get the most pushback about with Shakespeare is when I say that he was a great thinker.
Tyler He’s maybe the best thinker.
And:
Henry Sure. So you’re saying Juliet doesn’t love Romeo?
Tyler Neither loves the other.
Henry Okay. Because my reading is that Romeo has a very strong death drive or dark side or whatever.
Tyler That’s the strong motive in the play is the death drive, yeah.
Henry and I may at some point do a podcast on a single Shakespeare play.
Updating the best of 2024 lists
Here are my additions to the year’s “best of” movies list:
All We Imagine as Light
A Real Pain (didn’t think I would like it, but it is very good)
Green Border
A strong finish, yes?
I’ve also been listening to Two Star & the Dream Police, and Mount Eerie’s Night Palace, not recommended for most of you but very good nonetheless.
As for the end of the year surprise book, one of the very best from 2024, there is Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. I’ll be writing more about it in 2025.
Patrick Collison on classic novels
Read it here. Recommended. Excerpt:
For me the clear standouts are Middlemarch, Bleak House, Karenina, and Life and Fate. I would enthusiastically reread any of them. If I had to choose just one to go to again, I would probably select Middlemarch. There’s something memorably compelling in Eliot’s affection and empathy for almost all of her characters. If Succession is a show with no likable personalities, Middlemarch is the opposite. Bleak House is a close second. Life and Fate is quite different to the others: it’s not exactly entertaining (or even notably well-written), but it is true and profound.
And this:
Today’s scientific papers are far harder to read, and jargon-replete, than those of 1960. However, the novels of the 19th century use significantly more sophisticated construction (and vocabulary) than those of today. What should we make of the countervailing trends? To me, both seem suboptimal.
Do go and digest the whole thing.
Merry Christmas!
Wishing all our readers a wonderful day and New Year!
What I’ve been reading
Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. Despite its excellent reviews, I resisted buying this book for a while, because most books on TV are not good. It is intrinsically difficult to write about the medium, and also many of the people who want to just aren’t that smart. But the Nussbaum book is a true winner, the Candid Camera chapter alone makes it worth it. Did you know that Richard Lewis was on the show at age 16? Recommended, both for its entertainment and its substance value.
Africa: the Definitive Visual History of a Continent, Penguin Random House. One of my favorite picture books of all time. It teaches the broader history of Africa by region rather than by country. First-rate maps and photos throughout.
Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Race, Liberty, and Equality, 1942-1945. A hitherto little-known corner of libertarian thought, these short essays are very good and could be a useful tonic for some of what has gone wrong. Edited by David T. Beito and Marcus Witcher.
Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People. It is good to see more on Bergson in English. I had not known that the best man at his wedding was Marcel Proust (they were cousins by marriage and Proust was not yet famous). Still, the book did not convince me that I have been underrating Bergson.
John Callanan, Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, The Wickedest Man in Europe, is a good treatment of an underrated and still under-read Dutch thinker.
Marshall B. Reinsdorf and Louise Sheiner, The Measure of Economics: Measuring Productivity in an Age of Technological Change, is a very useful and well-reasoned book.
Ann Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography fleshes out of our knowledge of the German Romantic period.
Of interest to some is Oliver Keenan, Why Aquinas Matters Now.
What should I ask Joe Boyd?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. Here is from Wikipedia:
Joe Boyd (born August 5, 1942) is an American record producer and writer. He formerly owned Hannibal Records. Boyd has worked on recordings of Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, R.E.M., Vashti Bunyan, John and Beverley Martyn, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Billy Bragg, James Booker, 10,000 Maniacs, and Muzsikás. He was also one of the founders of the highly influential nightclub venue UFO…
Boyd was responsible for the sound at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan played a controversial set backed by electric musicians.
And:
Boyd returned to the United States at the end of 1970 to work as a music producer for Warner Bros. with special input into films, where he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the sound track release of A Clockwork Orange. Boyd also contributed to the soundtrack of Deliverance, directed by John Boorman, where he supervised the recording of “Dueling Banjos“, which became a hit single for Eric Weissberg.
Here is Joe’s official website. Joe has a new and remarkably thorough and polymathic book out And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music. So what should I ask Joe?
Jefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this is now)
Jefferson swiftly undid twelve years of Federalism. He allowed the Sedition Act to expire and adopted a more catholic naturalization law. He reduced the federal bureaucracy — small even by today’s standards — particularly in the Treasury Department (a slap at Hamilton, who had been Secretary under Washington), slashing the number of employees by 40 percent and eliminating tax inspectors and collectors altogether. He cut the military budget in half, which was then 40 percent of the overall federal budget. He eliminated all federal excise taxes, purging the government of what he called Hamilton’s “contracted, English, half-lettered ideas.” Reluctantly he kept the First Bank of the United States, but paid off nearly half the national debt. “No government in history,” the historian Gordon S. Wood has observed, “had ever voluntarily cut back on its authority.”
That is from the new and very good book Martin van Buren: America’s First Politician, by James M. Bradley. Later things were different:
Martin van Buren went into office deermined to avoid Andrew Jackson’s fateful staffing mistakes. The backbiting and intrigue wasted two years of Jackson’s presidency. This van Buren could not afford.
And a wee bit later:
Then the voters had their say. The November elections in New York were an absolute bloodbath for the Democrats. There were 128 elections for assembly in 1837, and the Whigs won 101 of them.
The book is well-written.
*Goethe: A Faustian Life*
By A.N. Wilson, an excellent book and worthy of being addended to the year’s best non-fiction list. In addition to appreciating the work of Goethe, which one can never do enough of, Wilson argues (with reasonable evidence) that Goethe was bisexual, including with Jacobi (!). Goethe also had, at the very least, alcoholic tendencies, at times drinking three bottles a day for extended periods of time.
Of course there are the extensive Nicholas Boyle volumes (in the works) as well, fortunately you do not have to choose. Recommended, noting that many of Goethe’s best works make sense only in German. Here is a Henry Oliver podcast with Wilson.