Books: Next Draft

1. Main Section

Relatively substantial entries, many with trailing lists of related books. When this section grows to 40 entries, I'll publish a post.


2. Secondary Section

Additional books to be included in a post, with very brief (or in most cases no) comments. There is no count limit here per post. It's possible I will write a further entry on these at a later date.


3. Draft Section

These are candidate for the main section, that are not yet finished or not yet prioritized to post. They may include sub-lists.

@Trump:

  • Alan Dershowitz: Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law (2023, Hot Books): Fourth (or sixth?) book the world's most opportunistically liberal lawyer has written defending Trump.
  • Cassidy Hutchinson: Enough (2023, Simon & Schuster): Trump White House aide, testified memorably to the Jan. 6 Select Committee (e.g., about Trump throwing food). [09-26]
  • Miles Taylor: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy From the Next Trump (2023, Atria Books): The "senior Trump administration official" who published A Warning in 2019.
  • Ali Velshi: The Trump Indictments: The 91 Criminal Counts Against the Former President of the United States (paperback, 2023, Mariner Books): Introduction plus documents. [09-25]
  • Bob Woodward: The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews With President Donald Trump (paperback, 2023, Simon & Schuster): Documentation for his books Fear (2018) and Rage (2020).

Elliot Ackerman: The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan (2022, Penguin): Former Marine, five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, worked for CIA, has written several well-regarded novels, returned for the end and didn't like what he saw. This is much touted as a powerful work that is critical of all US administrations -- bear in mind that's not exactly the same thing as critical of the war they created -- but it strikes me as impossible for someone so deeply embedded to be able to see much beyond the battle lines.

Sohrab Ahmari: Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty -- and What to Do About It (2023, Forum Books): Quasi-conservative intellectual, one of the few to focus more on the dangers of power held by capitalists than government. One result is that he gets favorable blurbs from Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley, James Galbraith and Slavoj Zizek, Michael Lind and John Gray.

Eric Alterman: We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel (2022, Basic Books): "This book is a history of the debate over Israel in the United States." But has there really been a debate? I suspect that much in this book will come as news even to the American Jews and Evangelicals (presumably the subject of the chapter "Alliance for Armageddon") who most reflexively and vehemently cheer Israel.

Gerard Baker: American Breakdown: Why We No Longer Trust Our Leaders and Institutions and How We Can Rebuild Confidence (2023, Twelve).

Brendan Ballou: Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage Plan to Pillage America (2023, Public Affairs): DOJ antitrust prosecutor, has spent the last years looking into private equity. [06-27]

Martin Baron: Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post (2023, Flatiron Books). [10-03]

Walter Benjamin: Radio Benjamin (paperback, 2021, Verso): Famous German literary critic (1892-1940), wrote and presented radio programs from 1927-33, bringing his insights and curiosity to the new medium. This gathers the surviving transcripts from his programs (424 pp).

Rachael Bitecofer: Hit 'Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game (2024, Crown). [2024-02-06]

Yonah Jeremy Bob/Ilan Evyatar: Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination -- and Secret Diplomacy -- to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East (2023, Simon & Schuster): Israelis, bragging.

Andy Borowitz: Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber (2022, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster): Satirist, for years now has paddled desperately trying to stay ahead of reality, but succumbs here, writing about "The Three Stages of Ignorance." Or, as he explains: "Over the past fifty years, what some of our most prominent politicians didn't know could fill a book. This is that book."

Ian Bremmer: The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats -- and Our Response -- Will Change the World (2022, Simon & Schuster): Consultant (Eurasia Group), so he's in the business of diagnosing problems he can sell solutions to.

Philip Bump: The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America (2023, Viking): So, what? The "baby boom" started in 1946 (a few months after WWII ended in August 1945, followed by a massive military demobilization), and "lasted until 1964" (seems pretty arbitrary, but one of the charts here shows births plateauing around 1955-62, then dropping off, more precipitously after 1964). Lots of charts here, as the author beats this abstraction into the ground.

Joy Buolamwini: Unmasking aI: My Mission Is to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (2023, Random House): Founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. [10-31]

Ben Burgis: Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left (2021, Zero Books): 136 pp. [05-01]

  • Ben Burgis: Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left (paperback, 2019, Zero Books): 128 pp.
  • Ben Burgis/Conrad Hamilton/Matthew McManus/Marion Trejo: Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson (paperback, 2020, Zero Books).

Deb Chachra: How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World (2023, Riverhead Books).

Steven Conn: The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is -- and Isn't (2023, University of Chicago Press).

Angus Deaton: Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality (2023, Princeton University Press). [10-03]

  • Ann Case/Angus Deaton: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (2020; paperback, 2021, Princeton University Press).

Fredrik deBoer: How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (2023, Simon & Schuster).

Kelly Denton-Borhaug: And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War Culture (paperback, 2021, Equinox).

Matthew Desmond: Poverty, by America (2023, Crown): Asks why, and concludes that people in power like it this way. It's not an obvious choice, but in a political system where power is largely determined by money, it shouldn't be surprising to find that money is largely determined by power. As Desmond notes, "poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice." Author previously wrote Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), specifically about Milwaukee.

Gary A Donaldson: America at War Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (2016, Carrel Books): Looks to be an update of a 1996 book, with only 24 pages "Post 9/11."

Joan Donovan/Emily Dreyfuss/Brian Friedberg: Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America (2022, Bloomsbury): This investigates at considerable depth how the right wing has weaponized social media, especially in their reduction of political argument to memes, where meaning is often reduced to tribal identity.

Sebastian Edwards: The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism (2023, Princeton University Press): [05-23]

Jonathan Elg: King: A Life (2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Big (688 pp) biography of Martin Luther King.

Henry Farrell/Abraham Newman: Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (2023, Henry Holt): "Reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control." The original idea for spying on business transactions everywhere was to fight terrorism, but the net effect was to gain leverage that can be used for things like policing sanctions.

Drew Gilpin Faust: Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury (2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Memoir by the historian, who grew up in the 1950s, "a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia," and "found resistance was necessary for her survival." That brought her into the civil rights and antiwar movements, and led her to become one of our more eminent historians of the Civil War: most famously for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008).

Zeke Faux: Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (2023, Crown Currency).

Jeff Flynn-Paul: Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World (paperback, 2023, Bombardier Books): Argues that colonialism was a blessing, that all of the "shameful sins and crimes against humanity" you've read about never happened, and the true story "is more inspiring than you ever dared to imagine."

George Friedman: The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond (2020, Doubleday; paperback, 2021, Anchor): Geopolitical forecaster, has a scheme that breaks American history up into 80-year cycles that start with strife, chaos, and upheaval -- the Revolution of 1776, the Civil War of 1861, the Great Depression/New Deal of 1933 and/or war of 1941, whatever you call what's happening now -- before we settle down and (usually) come out ahead. I have a somewhat similar scheme, but I'm skeptical about both his methods and conclusions: nothing in history works that mechanically. He also wrote:

  • George Friedman: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (paperback, 2010, Knopf): Includes two 2020 chapters: one on China ("Paper Tiger"), the other on Russia ("Rematch"), followed by "Crisis of 2030" and a world war circa 2050.
  • George Friedman: The Next Decade: Empire and Republic in a Changing World (2011, Doubleday; paperback, 2012, Anchor).
  • George Friedman: Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe (2015, Doubleday; paperback, 2016, Anchor).

Scott Galloway: Adrift: America in 100 Charts (2022, Portfolio): Professor of marketing at NYU and "serial entrepreneur," has written a number of books. This one promises a broad, statistical overview of the American economy since 1945.

Oded Galor: The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality (2022, Dutton): Big picture synthesis of all of human history plus what we know about pre-history, particularly interested in the growth of wealth and inequality.

James E Gierach: The Silver Bullet Solution: Is It Time to End the War on Drugs? (2023, Gaudium): Retired prosecutor turned drug policy reformer. [11-14]

Bruce Gilley: In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empower Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West (2022, Regnery): It's rather shocking that anyone could come up with a whole book of rationalizations for Germany's pre-WWI colonial empire, which is mostly remembered for its genocide of the Herero in what's now called Namibia. Also by Gilley:

  • Bruce Gilley: The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns's Epic Defense of the British Empire (2021, Regnery).

Colleen M Grogan: Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State (2023, Oxford University Press): "The US government has always invested federal, state and local dollars in public health protection and prevention. Despite this public funding, however, Americans typically believe the current system is predominantly comprised of private actors with little government interference."

Walter Hickey: You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything (2023, Workman): Stats nerd, covered culture for FiveThirtyEight, offers a "mix of research, deep reporting, and 100 data visualizations." Basic argument is not implausible, but methodology opens the door for all sorts of false correlations and silly causality guesses. [10-24]

Nate G Hilger: The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis (2022, The MIT Press): We expect children to learn more than ever before, basically because the world has gotten much more complicated. But we also demand exemplary character and social skills, and impose stiff penalties for failure. Schools only do some of this teaching, and often not well, at least for many students. Parents are expected not just to pick up the slack but to do much of the heavy lifting. Results are poor, partly because few parents have the skills and time, but also because in a competitive, individualist society more people

Elie Honig: Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It (2023, Harper): Former prosecutor, now CNN Legal Analyst, tells us something we already suspected, which is that the rich and famous enjoy huge advantages in America's so-called justice system. Granted, some of his famous examples (Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby) did wind up in jail, but only after extraordinary efforts. But his main example, Donald Trump, still wobbles free. Not sure how much deeper this book goes, but the advantages go very deep indeed.

CJ Hopkins: The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol III (2020-2021) (paperback, 2022, Consent Factory): Playwright and novelist, based in Berlin, sees the Covid-19 pandemic as a cynical power grab to force the world to conform to a new "pathologized-totalitarian ideology": the cover superimposes a swastika over a surgical mask. The book touts rave blurbs from Robert F Kennedy Jr, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, and Catherine Austin Fitts -- the middle two formerly valuable writers who once had a sharp eye for conspiracies but have wigged out over Covid-19. Earlier volumes:

  • CJ Hopkins: Trumpocalypse: Consent Factory Essays Vol I (2016-2017) (paperback, 2019, Consent Factory).
  • CJ Hopkins: The War on Populism: Consent Factory Essays Vol II (2018-2019) (paperback, 2020, Consent Factory).

Gerald Horne: The Counterrevolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of American Fascism (paperback, 2022, Intl Pub): 622 pp. Author has a number of books, including The Counterrevolution of 1776: Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, which stresses how independence saved slavery in what became the United States. In 1836, Americans who had infiltrated Texas staged a revolt against Mexico, which had abolished slavery on its independence from Spain, and immediately restored slavery in the independent Texas Republic. Cover pic adds a swastika to the Texas flag.

Jeff Horwitz: Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets (2023, Doubleday). [11-14]

Yasheng Huang: The Rise and Fall of the East: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline (2023, Yale University Press). Seems like an odd list, but the idea is that bureaucracy, which in China can be dated back to the introduction of civil service exams in 587 CE, values stability and stifles innovation, eventually leading to ruin, or decline, or something like that.

Julian Jackson: France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain (2023, Belknap Press).

Ramin Jahanbegloo: Nonviolence: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (paperback, 2023, Haus Publishing): 61 pp. [09-25]

Peniel E Joseph: The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century (2022, Basic Books): The civil rights movement that led to legal breakthroughs in the 1950s and 1960s is sometimes drescribed as a "second reconstruction" -- at least in terms of federal law enforcement to secure civil rights -- but do the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the paltry police reforms that followed in some places really rate that high? At this point, the most common thread running through "reconstruction" is how fragile efforts to change behavior are given widespread indifference.

Robert D Kaplan: The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, From the Mediterranean to China (2023, Random House). At his best with historically-informed travel writing, at his worst "explaining the hidden complexities of geopolitics."

Peachy Keenan: Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War (2023, Regnery): Pearls of wisdom like: "babies are good, more babies are better; two sexes are plenty; your career is overrated; feminism is how the unpopular and undateable cope with life; mainstream American culture destroys families." Solution is parents have to reclaim their role as "bosses of their kids."

Steve Krakauer: Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People (2023, Center Street): That about sums it up, but note that nearly all the people they collected blurbs from are well ensconced on the right (Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, Mollie Hemingway; Glenn Greenwald these days doesn't make for much of an exception).

Matt K Lewis: Filthy Rich Politicians: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling-Class Elites Cashing in on America (2023, Center Street). Named one of the "50 Best Conservative Columnists" 2013-15, bit the hand that fed him with 2016's Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went From the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump, but looking to make amends here by depicting the other guys -- "latte liberals, ivy league populists, insider traders, trust-fund babies, and swamp creatures" -- as the ones who are insatiably corrupt, all the while insisting "this is not an 'eat the rich' kind of book."

  • Gerard Baker: American Breakdown: Why We No Longer Trust Our Leaders and Institutions and How We Can Rebuild Confidence (2023, Twelve).

Michael Lewis: Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (2023, WW Norton): A profile of FTX founder ("crypto's Gatsby") Sam Bankman-Fried. [10-03]

Dahlia Lithwick: Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America (2022, Penguin): Legal correspondent for Slate, has long been an acute observer of the courts, profiles several stories by and about women.

Greg Lukianoff/Rikki Schlott: The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All -- but There is a Solution (2023, Simon & Schuster): Foreword by Jonathan Haidt, who co-wrote The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. No doubt this ignores the basic paradox, which is that while conservatives do the most complaining about "cancel culture," they're also the ones doing most of the cancelling. [10-17]

William MacAskill: What We Owe the Future (2022; paperback, 2023, Basic Books): Philosopher of "effective altruism," which had a moment with futurist billionaires. I wrote about this book when in 2022, but got the title wrong.

  • Minouche Shafik: What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society (2021; paperback, 2022, Princeton University Press).

Rachel Maddow: Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism (2023, Crown): Popular left-of-center newscaster, but she's been super annoying ever since she got Putin stuck in her craw during the 2016 election and never managed to either swallow or spit it out. But I have to ask: who writes these books? And why does she put her name on the cover? I mean, I can sort of imagine her writing Drift in 2012 to show she's really a warmonger at heart, and then Blowout -- well, she totally cornered the "blame Russia" niche for three years up to 2019 -- but why write a book about Spiro Agnew during the 2020 election season? And now this, about how Nazi sympathizers in 1941 got rejected and some kind of comeuppance? Title suggests that we can also stand up to fascists today, but it's not that simple, because we're not the same us, and they're not the same them. Blurring those distinctions may sell whatever, and that's clearly the level she wants to work at, but it hardly solves anything. [10-17] Nazis are a perennial theme, so here are more recent books:

  • Michael Benson: Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America (2022, Citadel).
  • David De Jong: Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties (2022, Mariner Books).
  • Kathryn S Olmsted: The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler (2022, Yale University Press): As WWII approached, these six American and British moguls praised Hitler and sought to keep their countries neutral and friendly towards Nazi Germany.
  • Susan Ronald: Hitler's Aristocrats: The Secret Power Players in Britain and America Who Supported the Nazis, 1923-1941 (2023, St Martin's Press).

Brook Manville/Josiah Ober: The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives (2023, Princeton University Press): Fancy degrees, a stellar background in academia and business, runs his own consulting firm after being a partner at McKinsey, the sort of guy who reeks of elitism, whose commitment to democracy is pro forma because he's not worried it might change anything.

Daniel McDowell: Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlasah Against the Dollar (paperback, 2023, Oxford University Press). The US is uniquely able to impose economic sanctions on other countries because the dollar is so widely used for transactions. But when the US imposes sanctions, targets and their business partners look for ways around, and that may include alternatives to the dollar.

Matthew McManus: A How to Guide to Cosmopolitan Socialism: A Tribute to Michael Brooks (paperback, 2023, Zero Books): [10-01]

Brian Merchant: Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (2023, Little Brown): The history of the Luddites, who organized guerrilla raids in early 19th-century England to smash machines.

Luke Mogelson: The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible (2022, Penguin): Reporter used to covering the War on Terror decided the real action was back in the USA in 2020, reporting on the Michigan militias and their anti-lockdown protests/crimes, police violence both before and after the George Floyd killing, and so forth up to January 6.

Brankop Milanovic: Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War (2023, Belknap Press): Economist, has written several books on capitalism and inequality, moves here from the evidence of such to the realm of philosophy, focusing on what six important economists said about inequality: François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, and Simon Kuznets.

Susan Neiman: Left Is Not Woke (2023, Polity): Philosopher who identifies as left picks apart the intellectual roots of "wokeism."

David Neiwert: Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us (2020, Prometheus): Author has more experience writing about crazies on the right -- e.g., Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (2010, with John Amato).

Frederic L Paxson: History of the American Frontier: 1763-1893 (paperback, 2022, Houghton Mifflin).

Aakar Patel: Price of the Modi Years (paperback, 2021, Westland): On the effects of the rise of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi's rise as prime minister of India.

  • Gautam Chikermane: Reform Nation: From the Constraints of P.V. Narasimha Rao to the Convictions of Narendra Modi (2022, Harper Collins).
  • Christophe Jaffrelot: Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy (2021, Princeton University Press; paperback, 2022, Westland).

Alison Place, ed: Feminist Designer: On the Personal and the Political in Design (2023, The MIT Press).

Mark Pomerantz: People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account (2023, Simon & Schuster): Author spent a year-plus in the New York County DA's office investigating possible criminal charges against Donald Trump. When he found some, and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg declined to prosecute them, Pomerantz and another attorney resigned. The investigation ultimately led to charges against the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg, and the file on Trump is still open (though more likely for civil fraud cases).

Heather Cox Richardson: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023, Viking): Historian, has written several important books on the Republican Party and Reconstruction. Recently, she's become a prolific blogger, attempting to understand contemporary events in the context of history.

Thomas E Ricks: Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (2022, Farrar Straus and Giroux): I've read Ricks' first book on the Bush invasion of Iraq, where he was embedded with the general command but took long enough to craft his rah-rah reporting into book form that he wound up calling it Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Hobnobbing with generals is what he knows, so one can appreciate why he thought he could get away with recasting the civil rights movement as military strategy, but that's bound to mess up much more than the occasional insight he produces.

Carol Roth: You Will Own Nothing: Your War With a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back (2023, Broadside Books): TV pundit, self-described as a "strategic advisor and C-level consigliere." Critique could come from the left, but as an advocate for "small business, small government, and big hair" she lands on the right, meaning that her "fight back" solutions are hopeless.

Nouriel Roubini: Megathreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them (2022, Little Brown): Worth listing: The Mother of All Debt Crises; Private and Public Failures; The Demographic Time Bomb; The Easy Money Trap and the Boom-Bust Cycle; The Coming Great Stagflation; Currency Meltdowns and Financial Instability; The End of Globalization?; The AI Threat; The New Cold War; An Uninhabitable Planet? Ends with two versions of "Can This Disaster Be Averted?" Roubini got a lot of credit as one of the first economists to predict the crash of 2008.

Ganesh Sitaraman: Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It (paperback, 2023, Columbia Global Reports): [11-14]

Kate Soper: Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism (paperback, 2023, Verso): English philosopher, has a previous book from 1990, possibly more. Adds to post-capitalist literature. Previously wrote:

  • Katie Soper: Troubled Pleasures: Writings on Politics, Gender and Hedonism (paperback, 1990, Verso).

Brian Stelter: Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy (2023, Atria/One Signal): Previously wrote Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth (2020). [11-14]

Stuart Stevens: The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy (2023, Twelve): Previously wrote It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (2020). [10-10]

Rory Stewart: How Not to Be a Politician (2023, Penguin Press): Wrote a book about hiking in Afghanistan, just after the Taliban fled. Wrote a book about being a British civil servant in Iraq, shortly after Bush and Blair invaded. Went back to England and wrote another book about how none of that worked. Decided to try his hand at politics, so he ran for a Tory MP seat, and won. Then he ran for party leader/prime minister, and lost. So by now, he figures he's failed enough he can write a memoir about it all. In the UK, he more optimistically called this book Politics on the Edge. For America, however . . .

Chris Stirewalt: Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back (2022, Center Street): Former Fox News political editor, so he's contributed to the rage he writes about, and no doube observed much more (and worse); senior fellow at AEI, which keeps him safely on the right, although he can try to pose that as balanced.

Jonathan Taplin: The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto (2023, Public Affairs): Having previously written a book about how Facebook, Google, and Amazon have affected our economy and culture, here he turns to the political, the peculiar mix of libertarianism and techno-utopianism that gets fused together by egos backed with many billions of dollars. Starts with profiles of Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, and Elon Musk -- "the biggest wallets paying for the most blinding lights."

  • Jonathan Taplin: Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Reality (2917, Little Brown).
  • Jonathan Taplin: The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock-and-Roll Life (2021, Heyday).

Nathan Thrall: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy (2023, Metropolitan Books).

Jeffrey Toobin: Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism (2023, Simon & Schuster): Lawyer turned journalist, his bestselling books divided between the courts (The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court) and infamous criminals (OJ Simpson, Donald Trump), adds one to the latter column.

Clay Travis: American Playbook: A Guide to Winning Back the Country From the Democrats (2023, Threshold Editions): Admits that Republicans are "in a losing period," but promises "new ways to win elections and attract enthusiastic voters," using "a surefire gameplan inspired by winning strategies in sports."

Cenk Uygur: Justice Is Coming: How Progressives Are Going to Take Over the Country and America Is Going to Love It (2023, St Martin's Press).

Sander van der Linden: Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (2023, WW Norton).

Michael Waldman: The Fight to Vote (2016; paperback, 2022, Simon & Schuster).

Michael Waldman: The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America (2023, Simon & Schuster).

Benjamin Weber: American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (2023, New Press). [10-03]

Susan Williams: White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonialization of Africa (2021; paperback, 2023, PublicAffairs): CIA involvement started in the 1950s, as the prospect of independence from Britain, France, Belgium, etc., opened up the prospect of struggle that could damage business interests left behind by the former colonizers. The cover pic shows Kennedy and Johnson, and the story focuses on their plots to gain the upper hand in Ghana and Congo. But rest assured that the CIA never left Africa, even as the military has taken to larger scale intervention, with its AFRICOM. Related:

  • Stuart A Reid: The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination (2023, Knopf). [10-17]
  • Leo Zeilig: Lumumba: Africa's Lost Leader (paperback, 2015, Haus Publishing).

Peter H Wilson: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500 (2023, Belknap Press): Big subject, big book (976 pp). Author specializes in the earlier period (see books below), before Prussia started pushing everyone else around.

  • Peter H Wilson: The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy (2009; paperback, 2011, Belknap Press).
  • Peter H Wilson: Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire (2016; paperback, 2020, Belknap Press).
  • Peter H Wilson: Lützen [Great Battles] (2018, Oxford University Press): Major battle in 1632, a critical turning point in the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics in what was then the Holy Roman Empire.

Michael Wolff: The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty (2023, Henry Holt): Author of three insider-ish books on Trump, goes after the big fish this time. [09-26]

Robert Wright:

  • Robert Wright: Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information (1988; Times Books; paperback, 1989, Harper Collins).
  • Robert Wright: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (1994, Pantheon; paperback, 1995, Vintage Books).
  • Robert Wright: Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (1999, Pantheon; paperback, 2001, Vintage Books).
  • Robert Wright: The Evolution of God (2009, Little Brown; paperback, 2010, Back Bay Books).
  • Robert Wright: Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (2017; paperback, 2018, Simon & Schuster).

Tara Zahra: Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars (2023, WW Norton): The world shortly before World War I was supposedly a golden age of laissez-faire, open to mass migration as well as unfettered trade. I'm skeptical of those claims, especially given that a big part of the rationale for overseas empires was to exploit the colonies. But the growing nationalism behind the war carried over into the 1920s, and turned even more bitter after the 1929 depression. This picks out a couple dozen events in the US and Europe as examples, mostly early in the period (up to 1933, with just two later, one each from 1936 and 1939).


4. Noted Section

These are candidate for the secondary section, that are not yet prioritized to post.

Jonathan A Rodden: Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (2019, Basic Books).

Ran Abramitzky/Leah Boustan: Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (2022, Public Affairs).

John Abramson: Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It (2022, Mariner Books).

Michael Albert: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (paperback, 2021, Zero Books).

Alon Arvath: The Battle for Your Computer: Israel and the Growth of the Global Cyber-Security Industry (2023, Wiley).

Sumaya Awad/Brian Bean, eds: Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (paperback, 2020, Haymarket Books).

David Baddiel: Jews Don't Count (2021, TLS Books): Short (144 pp), argues antisemitism is overlooked or underappreciated.

Jonathan B Baker: The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy (2019, Harvard University Press).

Thomas J Baker: The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy (2022, Bombardier Books): Actually, the FBI was always a threat to democracy. [12-06]

Fritz Bartel: The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism (2022, Harvard University Press).

Elizabeth Popp Berman: Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy (2022, Princeton University Press). @@@

Paul Betts: Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II (2020, Basic Books).

Nigel Biggar: Colonialilsm: A Moral Reckoning (2023, William Collins).

Edward H Bonekemper III: The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won (2022, Regnery).

Michael Booth: The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (2015; paperback, 2016, Picador).

Michael Booth: Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking (paperback, 2010, Vintage).

Elena Botella: Delinquent: Inside America's Debt Machine (2022, University of California Press).

Michael Brooks: Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right (2020, paperback, Zero Books). 96 pp.

David Brooks: How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023, Random House). [10-24]

Dorothy A Brown: The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans -- and How We Can Fix It (2022, Crown).

Stephen Brown: The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire (2020, Doubleday).

Oliver Bullough: Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World (2019; paperback, 2021, St Martin's Press).

Jennifer Burns: Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux). [11-14]

Anthea Butler: White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (2021, The University of North Carolina Press): 176 pp.

Julia Cagé: The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do About It (2020, Harvard University Press).

Jonathan Calvert/George Arbuthnott: Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus (2021, Mudlark).

Andy B Campbell: We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism (2022, Hachette Books).

Bruce Clarke/Sébastien Dutreuil, eds: Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock & Lynn Margulis (2022, Cambridge University Press). [11-10]

Claude A Clegg III: The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama (2021, Johns Hopkins University Press).

Jon Clifton: Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It (2022, Gallup Press).

Chuck Collins: Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good (paperback, 2016, Chelsea Green).

Chuck Collins: Is Inequality in America Irreversible? (paperback, 2018, Polity).

Chuck Collins: The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions (paperback, 2021, Polity).

Tressie McMillan Cottom: Thick: And Other Essays (paperback, 2019, New Press).

Cynthia Cruz: The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class (paperback, 2021, Repeater).

Ashley Dawson: Extinction: A Radical History (paperback, 2016; paperback, 2022, OR Books).

Agathe Demarais: Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests (2022, Columbia University Press).

Laura DeNardis: The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World With No Off Switch (2020, Yale University Press).

Robin DiAngelo: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm (2021, Beacon Press).

Matthew Dicks: Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Chang Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling (paperback, 2018, New World Library).

Marco Dondi: Outgrowing Capitalism: Rethinking Money to Reshape Society and Pursue Purpose (2021, Fast Company Press)

Rob Dunn: A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species (2021, Basic Books).

Kathryn J Edin/H Luke Schaefer/Timothy J Nelson: The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America (2023, Mariner Books).

Kathryn J Edin/H Luke Schaefer: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015, Houghton Mifflin; paperback, 2016, Mariner Books).

Liran Einav/Amy Finkelstein/Ray Fisman: Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It (2023, Yale University Press).

Jon D Erickson: The Progress Illusion: Reclaiming Our Future From the Fairytale of Economics (paperback, 2022, Island Press): Author is a "Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy." [12-01].

Federico Finchelstein: From Fascism to Populism in History (2017; paperback, 2019, University of California Press).

Max Fisher: The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022, Little Brown).

Emily Flitter: The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America (2022, Atria/One Signal). [10-25]

Clyde W Ford: Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth (2022, Amistad).

Peter Foster: What Went Wrong With Brexit: And What We Can Do About It (2023, Canongate Books).

Max Fraser: Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class (2023, Princeton University Press).

Nancy Fraser: Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It (2022, Verso).

Oded Galor: The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality (2022, Dutton).

Justin Gest: The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (paperback, 2016, Oxford University Press).

Adom Getachew: Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (paperback, 2020, Princeton University Press).

Julian Gewirtz: Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Ecnomists, and the Making of Global China (2017, Harvard Univerity Press).

Julian Gewirtz: Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s (2022, Belknap Press).

Joanne Samuel Goldblum/Colleen Shaddox: Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty (2021, BenBella Books).

Jonathan Healey: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 (2023, Knopf).

Jacob Helberg: The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Strugle for Power (2021, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).

David Helfand: A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind (paperback, 2017, Columbia University Press).

Michael Heller/James Salzman: Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (2021, Doubleday).

Mollie Hemingway: Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections (2021, Regnery).

Rebecca Henderson: Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (2020, PublicAffairs).

Linda Hirshman: The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation (2022, Mariner Books): Studies of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrisonn, and Maria Weston Chapman.

Maha Hilal: Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 (2022, Broadleaf Books).

Alex Hochuli/George Hoare/Philip Cunliffe: The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century (paperback, 2021, Zero Books).

Frederic C Hof: Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a Syrian-Israeli Peace (2022, USIP Press): US ambassador, mediator of 2009-11 peace talks, which were scuttled by Obama's turn against Assad in the Arab Spring.

Bob Hoffman: ADSCAM: How Online Advertising Gave Birth to One of History's Greatest Frauds and Became a Threat to Democracy (paperback, 2020, Type A Group).

Rowan Hooper: How to Save the World for Just a Trillion Dollars: The Ten Biggest Problems We Can Actually Fix (paperback, 2022, The Experiment): Science writer thinks big, but list doesn't look all that attractive, let alone possible.

Sabine Hossenfelder: Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2022, Viking).

Evan Hughes: The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup (2022, Doubleday).

Louis Hyman: Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits, & Job Security (2018, Viking; paperback, 2019, Penguin).

Michelle Jackson: Manifesto for a Dream: Inequality, Constraint, and Radical Reform (paperback, 2020, Stanford University Press).

Trevor Jackson: Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (2022, Cambridge University Press).

Simcha Jacobovici/Sean Kingsley: Enslaved: The Sunked History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2022, Pegasus Books).

Dahr Jamail/Stan Rushworth, eds: We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices From Turtle Island on the Changing Earth (2022, New Press).

Destin Jenkins: The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (2021, University of Chicago Press).

Yang Jisheng: Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962 (paperback, 2013, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Yang Jisheng: The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (2021, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Robert P Jones: The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future (2023, Simon & Schuster).

Sebastian Junger: Freedom (2021, Simon & Schuster).

Blair Kamin: Who Is the City For? Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago (2022, University of Chicago Press). [11-17]

Steve Keen: The New Economics: A Manifesto (paperback, 2022, Polity).

Kim Kelly: Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (2022; paperback, 2023, One Signal).

Marjorie Kelly: Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crises (paperback, 2023, Berrett-Koehler). [09-12]

Sarah Kendzior: They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (2022, Flatiron).

Adam Kinzinger: Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country (2023, The Open Field): Former Representative (R-IL), voted to impeach Trump, served on House Jan. 6 Committee. [10-31]

Perri Klass: A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future (2020, WW Norton).

Mark Koyama/Jared Rubin: How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (paperback, 2022, Polity).

Tony Kushner: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures (paperback, 2023, Theatre Communications Group). [10-10]

Jeremy Kuzmarov/John Marciano: The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (paperback, 2018, Monthly Review Press).

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Obama's Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (paperback, 2019, Clarity Press).

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Warmonger: How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the US Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (paperback, 2023, Clarity Press).

Hélène Landemore: Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (2020, Princeton University Press).

Richard Lapper: Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro (2021, Manchester University Press).

Sung-Yoon Lee: The Sister: North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World (2023, Public Affairs).

Eviane Leidig: The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization (paperback, 2023, Columbia University Press).

Bruno Leipold/Karma Nabulsi/Stuart White, eds: Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (2022, Oxford University Press).

Steve Levitsky/Daniel Ziblatt: Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023, Crown). Authors of How Democracies Die (2018). [09-12]

Max Liboiron: Pollution Is Colonialism (2021, Duke University Press).

Bilyana Lilly: Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West (2022, Naval Institute Press).

Peter H Lindert: Making Social Spending Work (2021, Cambridge University Press).

Nancy Lindisfarne/Jonathan Neale: Why Men? A Human History of Violence and Inequality (2023, Hurst). [12-01]

Wendy Liu: Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism (paperback, 2020, Repeater).

Julie Livingston/Andrew Ross: Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt and Carcerality (paperback, 2022, OR Books).

Andrew Lownie: Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor (paperback, 2022, Pegasus). [11-08]

Michael Patrick Lynch: Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture (2019, Liveright).

Heather Mac Donald: When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (2023, DW Books).

Matthew C MacWilliams: On Fascism: 12 Lessons From American History (paperback, 2020, Griffin):

Christopher Marquis/Kunyuan Qiao: Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (2022, Yale University Press). [11-15]

Roland S Martin/Leah Lakins: White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds (2022, BenBella Books): 160 pp.

Daniel Martinez Hosang/Joseph E Lowndes: Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right Politics of Precarity (paperback, 2019, University of Minnesota Press).

Clara E Mattei: The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (2022, University of Chicago Press).

Tara Dawson McGuinness/Hana Schank: Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology (2021, Princeton University Press).

John McWhorter: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021, Portfolio).

Jon Meacham: And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (2022, Random House): 720 pp. [10-18]

Laura Meckler: Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity (2023, Henry Holt).

Rafael Medoff: The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S Wise, and the Holocaust (2019; paperback, 2021, Jewish Publication Society).

Casey Michel: American Kleptocracy: How the US Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (2021, St Martin's Press).

Max Miller: Tasting History: Explore the Past Through 4,000 Years of Recipes (2023, Simon & Schuster).

Ashoka Mody: India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today (2023, Stanford U niversity Press).

George Monbiot: Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet (paperback, 2022, Penguin).

Stella Morabito: The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer (paperback, 2022, Bombardier). Cover photo of Anthony Fauci, pasted into a very old television.

Joshua Alan Morris: Thrive in the Coming Dark Age: How to Build the Ultimate Survival Homestead (paperback, 2023, independent).

Yascha Mounk: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure (2022, Penguin Press).

Kristy Nabhan-Warren: Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (paperback, 2021, University of North Carolina Press).

Tom Nichols: Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy (2021, Oxford University Press): Professor at US Naval War College.

Jenni Nuttall: Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words (2023, Viking).

Ijeoma Oluo: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (paperback, 2021, Seal Press).

Bradley Onishi: Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism -- and What Comes Next (2023, Broadleaf Books).

Vicky Osterwell: In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action (2020, Bold Type Books).

Fintan O'Toole: The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism (2019, Liveright).

Fintan O'Toole: Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (2019, Liveright).

Fintan O'Toole: We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland (2022, Liveright).

Matt Palumbo: The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros (paperback, 2022, Liberatio Protocol). Another right-wing hatchet job on George Soros.

Morris Pearl/Erica Payne: Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer (paperback, 2021, New Press).

Nicole Perlroth: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2021, Bloomsbury).

Paul Pettitt: Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins (2023, Thames & Hudson).

Shreerekha Pillal, ed: Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices Against State Violence (paperback, 2023, University of Illinois Press).

Peter Pomerantsev: This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (2019, PublicAffairs).

Ethan Porter/Thomas J Wood: False Alarm: The Truth About Political Mistruths in the Trump Era (paperback, 2019, Cambridge University Press): 80 pp.

Maarten Prak/Jan Luiten van Zanden: Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800 (2022, Princeton University Press). [12-13]

Eyal Press: Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America (2021, Farrar Straux and Giroux; paperback, 2022, Picador Press).

Jon Roy Price: The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider's Perspective on Nixon's Surprising Social Policy (2021, University Press of Kansas).

Prabit Purkayastha: Knowledge as Commons: Towards Inclusive Science and Technology (paperback, 2023, LeftWord).

Derecka Purnell: Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom (paperback, 2022, Astra House).

Nomi Prins: Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever (2022, Public Affairs).

William Quinn/John D Turner: Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles (2020; paperback, 2021, Cambridge University Press).

Jennifer Raff: Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (2022, Twelve).

Charles Renwick: All the Presidents' Taxes: What We Can Learn (and Borrow) from the High-Stakes World of Presidential Tax-Paying (2023, Lioncrest): Short (180 pp), some but not all on Trump.

Denver Riggleman/Hunter Walker: The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th (2022, Henry Holt): Former Congressman (R-VA).

Tara Ross: Why We Need the Electoral College (paperback, 2019, Gateway Editions).

Elaine Scarry: Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom (2014, WW Norton).

Jenny Schuetz: Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems (paperback, 2022, Brookings Institution Press).

Klaus Schwab: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2017, Currency).

Klaus Schwab: Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018, Currency).

Klaus Schwab/Thierry Malleret: Covid-19: The Great Reset (paperback, 2020, Agentur Schweiz).

Klaus Schwab/Thierry Malleret: The Great Narrative: For a Better Future (paperback, 2021, Schweizer Buchhändler).

Dan Senor/Saul Singer: The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World (2023, Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster). [11-07]

Klaus Schwab: Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet (2021, Wiley).

Patrick Sharkey: Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence (paperback, 2019, WW Norton).

Troy Senik: A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (2022, Threshold Editions).

Jared Yates Sexton: The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis (2023, Dutton). [2023-01-17]

John Sides/Chris Tausanovitch/Lynn Vavreck: The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy (2022, Princeton University Press).

Clint Smith: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (2021, Little Brown): Journalist, takes a tour of historic sites, from Monticello to Angola Prison, to examine how slavery is remembered at each one.

Justin EH Smith: The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning (2022, Princeton University Press).

Mychal Denzel Smith: Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream (2020, Bold Type Books).

Michael Sonenscher: Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word (2022, Princeton University Press).

Walter Stahr: Salmon P Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2022, Simon & Schuster): 848 pp. Previously wrote Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man () and Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary (), as well as John Jay: Founding Father ().

Farah Stockman: American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears (2021, Random House).

Tyler Stovall: White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (2021, Princeton University Press).

Mark Synnott: The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest (2021, Dutton).

Olúfemi O Táiwò: Reconsidering Reparations (2022, Oxford University Press).

Olúfémi O Táiwò: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (paperback, 2022, Haymarket Books).

Brynn Tannehill: American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy (2021, Transgress Press).

Shashi Tharoor: An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (2016, Aleph).

Shashi Tharoor: Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017, OKThings; paperback, 2018, Scribe).

Helen Thompson: Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (2022, Oxford University Press).

David K Thomson: Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union (paperback, 2022, University of North Carolina Press).

Kat Timpf: You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We're All in This Together (2023, Broadside Books): Gutfeld! co-host and Fox News contributor.

Gönül Tol: Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria (2023, Oxford University Press). [2023-01-15]

Alberto Toscano: Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (paperback, 2023, Verso). [10-24]

Rebecca Traister: Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (2019, Simon & Schuster).

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: The Undocumented Americans (paperback, 2021, One World).

Ali Vitali: Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet (2022, Dey Street Books): NBC correspondent, covered 2020 presidential race, starting with Elizabeth Warren, then on through the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with backward glances at other women who have run for president or VP, most obviously the failed Hillary Clinton campaign(s).

Kenji Yoshino/David Glasgow: Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identify, Diversity, and Justice (2023, Atria Books).

Harsha Walia: Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021, Haymarket Books).

Jesse Wegman: Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (2020, St Martin's Press).

Alex Wellerstein: Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (2021, University of Chicago Press).

Dorothy Wickenden: The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights (2021, Scribner): On Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright.

Jocko Willink/Leif Babin: Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win (2017, St Martin's Press): Two ex-SEALS exploit their credentials to leadership skills classes to wannabe assholes.

Peter H Wilson: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500 (2023, Belknap Press): 976 pp. [2023-02-14]

Ward Hayes Wilson: It Is Possible: A Future Without Nuclear Weapons (2023, Sticky Notes).

Gabriel Winant: The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America (2021, Harvard University Press).

Colin Woodard: Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (2020, Viking).

Baynard Woods: Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness (2022, Legacy Lit).

Donald Yacovone: Teaching White Supremacy: America's Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity (2022, Pantheon).

RJ Young: Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History of the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (2022, Counterpoint). [11-01]

Alexander Zaitchik: Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine From Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines (2022, Counterpoint): Important book on the problem of patents in pharmaceuticals.

Peter Zeihan: The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder (2014; paperback, 2016, Twelve).

Peter Zeihan: The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America (2017, Zeihan on Geopolitics).

Peter Zeihan: Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (2020, Harper Business).

Peter Zeihan: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization (2022, Harper Business).

Kate Zernike: The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023, Scribner).

Kim Zetter: Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (paperback, 2015, Crown).


5. Paperbacks of Previously Noted Books

I used to published these regularly, but haven't been collecting them systematically lately.

Sarah Chayes: On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake (2020, Knopf; paperback, 2021, Vintage Books).

Anand Gopal: No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes (2014, Metropolitan; paperback, 2015, Picador).

6. Old Books

These are books that I probably should have listed at some point in the past, but are no longer "current" for purposes of these posts. Not sure how to handle these: most likely at each post I'll move these quietly into the archive file.

David Hackett Fischer: Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historial Thought (paperback, 1970, Harper & Row).

David Hackett Fischer: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989; paperback, 1991, Oxford University Press).

Anand Giridharadas: India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking (2011, Times Books; paperback, 2012, St Martin's Griffin).

Anand Giridharadas: The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014; paperback, 2015, WW Norton).

Al Gore: Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992; revised, 2000, Houghton Mifflin; paperback, 2006, Rodale).

Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming (2006; paperback, 2007, Viking).

Arthur Herman: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (2012; paperback, 2013, Random House): AEI "scholar," claiming for the private sector what the government paid a premium for.

Albert O Hirschman: The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (paperback, 1991, Belknap Press).

Albert O Hirschman: The Essential Hirschman (2013; paperback, 2015, Princeton University Press).

Gilbert King: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012, Harper).

George Lipsitz: Class and Culture in Cold War America: "A Rainbow at Midnight" (1981, Praeger; paperback, 1983, Bergin & Garvey).

George Lipsitz: A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (1988; paperback, 1995, Temple University Press).

George Lipsitz: Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990; paperback, 2001, University of Minnesota Press).

George Lipsitz: Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Cuture in the 1940s (paperback, 1994, University of Illinois Press).

George Lipsitz: Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (1994; paperback, 1997, Verso).

George Lipsitz: American Studies in a Moment of Danger (paperback, 2001, University of Minnesota Press).

George Lipsitz: Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music (paperback, 2007, University of Minnesota Press).

George Lipsitz: How Racism Takes Place (paperback, 2011, Temple University Press).

Jedediah Purdy: For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (1999, Knopf).

Adolph Reed Jr: Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (2000; paperback, 2001, New Press).

Heather Cox Richardson: Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010; paperback, 2011, Basic Books).

Michael L Ross: The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (paperback, 2013, Princeton University Press).

Philip Short: Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (2006; paperback, 2006, Henry Holt).

Philip Short: A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterand (2014, Henry Holt).

Philip Short: Mao: The Man Who Made China (1975; paperback, 2001, Henry Holt; revised, paperback, 2017, IB Tauris).

Richard Slotkin: Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (paperback, 1998, University of Oklahoma Press).

Richard Slotkin/James K Folsom, eds: So Dreadfull a Judgement: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War 1676-1677 (paperback, 1999, Wesleyan University Press).

Richard Slotkin: Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (paperback, 2000, University of Oklahoma Press).

Richard Slotkin: Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Criris of American Nationalism (paperback, 2006, St Martins Press).

Richard Slotkin: The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (paperback, 2013, Liveright).

Richard Slotkin: Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (paperback, 2017, University of Oklahoma Press).

Michael Tomasky: Left for Dead: The Life, Death, and Possible Resurrection of Progressive Politics in America (1996; paperback, 2013, Free Press).

7. Music Books

Some day I should do a music book post. These are things I've run across:

Jonathan Abrams: The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop (2022, Crown): 544 pp.

Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022, Simon & Schuster).

Gillian G Gaar/Martin Popoff/Richie Unterberger/Matt Anniss/Ken Micallef: In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution (2023, Motorbooks). [10-31]

Kristina R Gaddy: Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden Hisory (2022, WW Norton).

Greil Marcus: Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs (2022, Yale University Press): "Blowin' in the Wind" (1962); "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1964); "Ain't Talkin'" (2006); "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1964); "Desolation Row" (1965); "Jim Jones" (1992); "Murder Most Foul" (2020).

Susan Rogers/Ogi Ogas: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You (2022, WW Norton).

Paul Sexton: Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts (2022, Harper).

Jann S Wenner: Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir (2022, Simon & Schuster).

8. Food Books

Some day I should do a food book post (mostly cookbooks). These are things I've run across:


Book counts by list section:

  • Type 1 [main section]: 1
  • Type 2 [secondary section]: 0
  • Type 3 [partial drafts]: 90
  • Type 4 [noted drafts]: 206
  • Type 5 [paperbacks]: 2
  • Type 6 [old books]: 32
  • Type 7 [music books]: 8
  • Type 8 [food books]: 1