Category: Books
*All the Kingdoms of the World*
The author is Kevin Vallier, and the subtitle is On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism. This is an excellent and important book, starting with its defense of classical liberalism over Catholic integralism and indeed illiberalism more generally. But do note that Kevin, although a professional philosopher is also a Christian (Eastern Orthodox), and he is writing from a Christian perspective. This is also an excellent book simply for learning what integralism is. Overall, perhaps this is analytic political theology!?
In the final chapter, Kevin considers illiberal strands within Chinese Confucianism and Sunni Islam as well.
To be clear, if you are interested in neither religion nor political philosophy, this is not for you. But it is likely to be one of this year’s books that turns out really to matter.
*The Conservative Futurist*
The author is James Pethokoukis, and the subtitle is How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised.
All excellent stuff…due out October 3rd…
What I’ve been reading
R.C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at St. Andrews in 1967-1969. Half of this volume is amazing, the other half meandering. The best parts are on Hinduism and Buddhism, and how they can best be understood in relation to Western religions. Zaehner has an amazing Wikipeda page, and I have ordered other books by him, the ultimate act of literary flattery.
James Stafford, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848. An excellent and well-researched books, most interesting on the Irish Union of 1800-1801 and how and why so many classical liberals favored it. What did they get wrong? Or did they? Consistently instructive on earlier Irish thought on trade as well.
Victoria Houseman, American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton. A good and fun book. I hadn’t known that she was very likely bisexual, or that she was good friends with Felix Morley and Robert Taft. Interesting throughout, and drives home the point about just how early Hamilton did her most important work on mythology. It remains widely read today.
Harvey Sachs, Schoenberg: Why He Matters. A very good introduction to a composer who truly matters. Also a good (short) portrait of Vienna at that time. Maybe it won’t “sell you” on Schoenberg, but it will make his advocates (I am one of them) seem far less crazy. It also admits that a lot of his work wasn’t that good, and helps you separate the better from the worse.
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy. This book in preprint form was well ahead of its time, and now it is coming out in a super-timely fashion.
Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Schubert: A Musical Wayfarer. Super-thorough, everything about Schubert and most of all his music.
I have not read the new novel by Bradley Tusk, namely Obvious in Hindsight, about the attempted introduction of flying cars and the regulatory obstacles that arose (among other dramatic events).
Lunana, A Yak in the Classroom is the only and also the best Bhutanese movie I have seen, ever. Recommended, gives you a real look at the country, both rural and urban [sic].
What should I ask Jacob Mikanowski?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him, here is Jacob’s self-description from his home page:
I’m a freelance journalist and writer based in Portland, OR. My academic training is in the history of Eastern Europe, but for over a decade, I worked as a critic and a science journalist. I write about art, books, movies, ancient history, anthropology, and – occasionally – food. I especially like to work on stories about the intersection of science and the humanities, photography, and people who are helplessly obsessed with whatever they’re doing.
For the past few years, I’ve been working on single project which combines all my interests: Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land – a book-length history of Eastern Europe, covering culture, politics, religion and ideology (essentially, everything which made Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe over the past 2000 years)…
I loved the book, and that led me to Jacob. Here are some of his articles. Here is Jacob on Twitter. Here is a good WSJ review of Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land.
That was then, this is now, concentration of notables edition
[John] Napier’s continental sojourn had embraced the years 1564 to 1571, the year of the Ridolfi Plot. During his absence Galileo, Shakespeare, Caravaggio and Kepler had been born, Michelangelo, Calvin, Nostradamus and Stifel had died, Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, had been forced to abdicate and was under comfortable house arrest in England, her infant son, James VI, had been made king, Edinburgh had suffered a terrible plague, his father had remarried, and Scotland had been thrown into civil war, with Merchiston playing a pivotal role.
A lot happened in the 1770s as well. That above paragraph is from Julian Havil’s quite good John Napier: Life, Logarithms, and Legacy. Napier of course also was obsessed with the Book of Revelation, in addition to being one of the discoverers of logarithms.
Twenty Years of Marginal Revolution!
Who would have guessed that after twenty years Tyler and I would still be writing Marginal Revolution! Thanks especially to Tyler, we have had multiple new posts every single day for twenty years! Incredible.
We had some idea when starting Marginal Revolution that it would provide the foundation for our eventual textbook, Modern Principles of Economics, but we didn’t imagine that it would also become the foundation for our online platform for economics education, Marginal Revolution University and Conversations with Tyler, Emergent Ventures and various other projects of Tyler and myself.
We never imagined that Marginal Revolution would one day be archived by the Library of Congress or become one of the world’s nexus points for debating and understanding events like the Financial Crisis and the Covid Pandemic. It was a shock when the first undergrad told us that they had been reading MR since the age of 12. Today, there are multiple PhD economists who grew up reading Marginal Revolution.
In this conversation, with David Perell, we reflect on 20 years and talk about our process of writing and working together. Tyler is very funny. Tyrone makes an appearance or two, albeit never announced. (Apple podcast, Spotify).
We also thank our many readers and the commentators. You all make MR better (ok, most of you make MR better).
We are still excited to write about economics every day and we don’t think we have peaked! Let’s see what happens over the next 20 years. Thank you all.
*Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America*
Again, that is the new book by Jeremy Jennings, here is another excerpt:
These grave misgivings [about travel] have persisted. “I have been reading books of travels all my life,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “but I have never found two that gave me the same idea of the same nation.” Those who “travel best,” he added, “travel least,” and, in Rousseau’s opinion, they travelled not by coach but on foot. Others have agreed. Writing at the end of the eighteenth century, Xavier de Maistre (brother to the more famous Joseph) resolved only to journey for forty-two days around his own room, “safe from the restless jealousy of men.” “We will travel slowly,” he wrote, “laughing as we go at those travellers who have visited Rome and Paris.” Heading north, Maistre discovered his bed. On this view, one travelled best by moving hardly at all. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill displayed a similarly dismissive attitude. “In travelling,” he wrote, “men usually see only what they already had in their own minds.”
From another segment of the book:
Gustave de Beaumont not only travelled to America with Tocqueville but accompanied him on trips to England and Ireland and to Algeria. No one was better able to assess how Tocqueville travelled. Tocqueville’s way of travelling, Beaumont wrote, was “peculiar.” Everything was “a matter for observation.” Each day Tocqueville framed in his head the questions he wanted to ask and resolve. Every idea that came into his mind was noted down, without delay, and regardless of where he was. For Tocqueville, Beaumont continued, travelling was never just a form of bodily exercise or simply an agreeable way to pass the time. “Rest,” Beaumont wrote, “was foreign to his nature.” Whether or not his body was actively employed, Tocqueville’s mind was always working. Never could he undertake a walk as a simple distraction or engage in conversation as a form of relaxation. The “most agreeable” discussion was the “most useful” discussion. The worst day was “the day lost or ill-spent.” Any loss of time was an inconvenience. Consequently, Tocqueville travelled in a “constant state of tension,” never arriving in a place without knowing that he would be able to leave it.
Recommended, buy it here.
Don’t Doubt: Saint Thomas in India
Christianity in India has roots at least as old as in Italy. Millions of Christians in Kerala today believe that their tradition traces back directly to Thomas, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus, who traveled to India in the first century AD. According to the Acts of Thomas, the apostles divided the world and drew lots to decide their respective regions for spreading the gospel. Thomas, drew India but, ever the doubter, he demurred. “It’s too hot and the food isn’t kosher”, he said, more or less. Jesus appeared to Thomas, however, and bade him “go to India!” Amazingly, he still demurred–what a doubter!–but by a minor miracle just as this was happening an Indian merchant arrived in Jerusalem calling for a master architect and builder to return with him to India. Finally, with this sign, Thomas’s doubts were allayed and his India adventures began.
For a long time, The Acts of Thomas were considered to be more of an unreliable fantasy novel than a historical account and of course the Acts does contain fantastical stories. Nevertheless, the Acts of Thomas have gained credence over time as certain names and places mentioned in the Acts and once thought to be purely imaginary, turned out to be accurate historical references. As William Dalrymple writes in an excellent piece:
…a series of remarkable discoveries have gone a long way to prove that the story contained in the Acts seems to be built on surprisingly solid historical foundations. First, British archaeologists working in late 19th-century India began to find hoards of coins belonging to a previously unknown Indian king: the Rajah Gondophares, who ruled from AD19 to AD45. If St Thomas had ever been summoned to India, it would have been Rajah Gondophares who would have done it, just as the Acts had always maintained.
The fact that the Acts had accurately preserved the name of an obscure Indian rajah, whose name and lineage had disappeared, implied that it must contain at least a nucleus of genuine historical information. Archaeological discoveries have since confirmed many other details of the story, revealing that maritime contacts between the Roman world and India were much more extensive than anyone had realised.
Aside from the Acts, a considerable amount of oral history and circumstantial evidence suggests that by AD 50-52, Thomas arrived on the Malabar coast of what is today Kerala and he began converting an older Jewish population as well as Hindus to Christianity. Indeed, the evidence is strong that the followers of Thomas in India have preserved one of the oldest versions of Christianity. Dalrymple again:
If St Thomas had carried Christianity to India, it is likely that he would have taken a distinctly more Jewish form than the Gentile-friendly version developed for the Greeks of Antioch by St Paul and later exported to Europe. Hence the importance of the fact that some of the St Thomas Christian churches to this day retain Judeo-Christian practices long dropped in the west – such as the celebration of the solemn Passover feast.
Hence also the significance of the St Thomas Christians still using the two earliest Christian liturgies in existence: the Mass of Addai and Mari, and the Liturgy of St James, once used by the early Church of Jerusalem. More remarkable still, these ancient services are still partly sung in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and St Thomas.
The more you investigate the evidence, the more irresistible is the conclusion that whether or not St Thomas himself came to India, he certainly could have. And if he didn’t make the journey, it seems certain that some other very early Christian missionary did, for there is certainly evidence for a substantial Christian population in India by at least the third century.
Not only is there is a substantial presence of Christians in India from at least the third century, many early Western and Eastern Christian sources attest that it was Thomas who was sent to India. Kurikilamkatt writes:
From the third century onwards it had become an undeniable and incontrovertible tradition and belief in the Christian world that Thomas preached in India. And these Fathers and early writers had no doubt that the Thomas they speak about was the apostle who declared for the first time in history that his master was the Lord and God.
Historians tend not to trust oral history but to me it’s the oral histories, the genealogies of Indians who trace their lineage back to someone who was personally converted by Saint Thomas, and the songs that are most convincing. Indians have orally preserved the vedas for some four thousand years so I trust them on Saint Thomas. In the 4th or early 5th century, Saint Jerome wrote that “Christ lives everywhere. With Thomas in India and Peter in Rome.” And of the two, I’d put more money on Thomas.
After founding seven churches in Kerala, Thomas journeyed to the eastern region of the Indian peninsula, near present-day Chennai. Here Thomas’s mission was ended when he refused to bow down to Kali and was killed. Even so he was held in such reverence that his place of death was marked and his body kept and entombed. Fifteen hundred years later the Portuguese built a cathedral over his tomb, both of which you can still visit today as I did recently. Even for those not of Christian faith or any religious affiliation, connecting with 2,000 years of history and considering the distances Thomas traveled is quite moving, especially when it happens in a place which stills seems far from the Christian world.
That was then, this is now — the culture that is Swiss edition
Tocqueville’s notes on the Swiss constitution confirm the poor impression he had quickly formed. There were cantons, he remarked, but no Switzerland. In most of these, he continued, the majority of people lacked any sense of “self-government”; the Swiss habitually abused freedom of the press; they saw associations much as the French did, as a revolutionary means rather than as “a slow and quiet way to arrive at the rectification of wrongs”; they had no sense of the benefits derived from “the peaceful and legal introduction of the judge into the domain of politics”; and, finally, “at the bottom of their souls the Swiss show no deep respect for law, no love of legality, no abhorrence of the use of force, without which there cannot be a free country.”
That is from Jeremy Jennings, Travels with Tocqueville: Beyond America, a new and excellent book that I will be covering again soon.
*War and Punishment*
The author is Mikhail Zygar, and the subtitle is Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. I have to tell you the subtitle put me off and I nearly didn’t buy this one, as too many books in this area repeat the same (by now) old material. But after some extensive scrutiny in Daunt Books, I decided it was for me. And I was right. It is by far the best book on the origins of the war, both historical and conceptual, and for that matter it gives the literary history as well. Here is one excerpt:
…the Clinton administration’s approach is even blunter: Washington will not discuss anything with Kyiv until Ukraine gives up its Soviet-inherited nuclear arsenal: 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, able to carry 1,272 nuclear warheads and 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons. True, Ukraine cannot actually fire them: all the control systems are located in Russia. But Clinton and his diplomats echo the same mantra: any economic aid to Ukraine is contingent on all nuclear weapons being relocated to Russia. Kravchuk tries to resist, demanding compensation and security guarantees, in return. In the end, Kravchuk gets the promises he wants.
Among many other sections, I enjoyed the discussion of how revolutionary the 1770s were:
But an even more transformative decade is the 1770s, which sees the birth of the global political and geographical structure as we know it today, the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the laying of the foundations of the modern economy. James Watt invents the steam engine; Adam Smith writes An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Captain James Cook reaches the shores of Australia and New Zealand. Curiously at the same time a new type of political confrontation emerges — the struggle not for one’s homeland or monarch but also abstract values. It is the 1770s that give rise to both populism and the liberal idea.
Definitely recommended, this will make my best non-fiction of the year list.
What I’ve been reading
Maria Blanco and Alberto Mingardi have produced a very useful volume, Show and Biz: The Market Economy in TV Series and Popular Culture (2000-2020), providing an updated look at the (somewhat) rising popularity of business and capitalism in U.S. popular culture.
David O’Brien, Exiled in Modernity: Delacroix, Civilization, and Barbarism. A very good book planting Eugene Delacroix — both his paintings and writings — squarely in a “progress studies” tradition. Like so much other 19th (and also 18th) century art. Good color plates too.
Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women. Do you judge books by their degree of insight, or based on whether you agree with where they end up? This volume is a litmus test for that question, and I give it either an A or an F minus, depending on your standard. In my view, Dworkin remains an underrated and intellectually honest (if overly consistent) feminist thinker. This one is from 1978, still interesting albeit repulsive if you try to apply any moral judgment to it. But don’t! If you are looking for reductios in support of reactionary points of view, this is the best place to start. Better yet is to drop all the consistency requirements and end up somewhere in between.
Simon Shorvon, The Idea of Epilepsy: A Medical and Social History of Epilepsy in the Modern Era (1860-2020). A remarkably thorough and intelligent treatment of a topic that now has a near-perfect stand-alone book.
There is Alan S. Kahan, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism.
And Michael J. Bonner, In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present.
Vikash Yadav, Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism.
Seth D. Kaplan, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time, forthcoming in October.
The Jennifer Burns Milton Friedman biography, and what should I ask her?
It is a wonderful book which I felt compelled to read in a single sitting on a long plane ride. Full of surprises and revelations, and fascinating in its portrait of a rather catty and spiteful economics profession in earlier days. And who knew that Aaron Director and Mark Rothko were good childhood friends? Definitely one of the best books of the year.
Here is Jennifer Burns on Twitter. Here is her home page. Here is her soon to be released Milton Friedman biography. Here is her 2009 Ayn Rand biography. She is currently associate professor of history at Stanford.
I will be doing a Conversation with her. So what should I ask her?
That was then, this is now (sacred robot edition)
From the Amazon summary of the forthcoming book by Elizabeth King and W. David Todd:
An abundantly illustrated narrative that draws from the history of art, science, technology, artificial intelligence, psychology, religion, and conservation in telling the extraordinary story of a Renaissance robot that prays.
This volume tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose holy corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain’s crown prince as he lay dying in 1562.
In tracking the origins of the monk and its legend, the authors visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. They identified seven kindred automata from the same period, which, they argue, form a paradigmatic class of walking “prime movers,” unprecedented in their combination of visual and functional realism. While most of the literature on automata focuses on the Enlightenment, this enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.
Ross Douthat, telephone! (I did, of course, pre-order the book.)
Happy Birthday Singapore!
Singapore is a wonderful instance of the advantage of the unrestricted enterprise of free trade: so late as the year 1822 there was scarcely a native hut, certainly not one European habitation on the island; in eight years it had not only grown into the most important settlement in the whole of the Malay Archipelago, but was the emporium of more trade than the whole of the other ports put together. The trade is almost exclusively one of barter, the English merchant procuring profitable exports in exchange for English goods. The annual value of importations in 1830 was five millions sterling.
The advantages the native merchants experience in finding free trade established at Singapore has withdrawn the whole commerce from the neighboring Dutch ports. On my subsequently going to Batavia I found the harbour there perfectly denuded between 300 and 400 at anchor bringing produce from every island in the archipelago.
The society of Singapore was tolerably extensive, and most hospitable, and conviviality and good fellowship reigned pre-eminent.
That is from Major Thomas Skinner, Fifty Years in Ceylon, published in 1891, largely compiled in 1868. Overall an interesting and forthright book, mostly about Ceylon of course.
Markets in everything, hockey romance edition
Posters gravitate to players who remind them of their favorite book boyfriends, and one popular choice is Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg. His team initially courted BookTok with posts and hashtags in the same style, and flew out a popular creator for a playoff game…
Within the subcategory of sports romance, hockey dominates. Right now, all 10 of the top sports romances on Amazon involve hockey.
Here is the full story.