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Books: Next Draft1. Main SectionRelatively substantial entries, many with trailing lists of related books. When this section grows to 40 entries, I'll publish a post. Andrew Bacevich: On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century (paperback, 2022, Haymarket Books): Conservative anti-militarist, head of Quincy Institute, collects a batch of essays initially written for TomDispatch from 2016-21. Donald Trump was president for most of that stretch, but without a coherent idea how to adapt American foreign policy after the broken hubris of the War on Terror, he mostly broke things, which was maddening for critics like Bacevich. Biden's solution was to revive the "obsolete past" Bacevich wants him to shed, so he's still not happy, but at least he has lots to critique.
Ha-Joon Chang: Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World (2023, Public Affairs): Korean economist, started studying developing economies, and came to suspect that much of what fellow economists were teaching on the subject didn't work, and more so, was wrong (see Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism). Since then, he's sought to debunk capitalist economics in a series of primers: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, Economics: A User's Guide. Here he tries a different tactic, using food for examples, and tossing in a few recipes. Christopher J Coyne/Abigail R Hall: Manufacturing Militarism: US Government Propaganda in the War on Terror (paperback, 2021, Stanford University Press): "The US government's prime enemy in the War on Terror is not a shadowy mastermind dispatching suicide bombers. It is the informed American citizen." They start by inflating threats, then frame them so that military force is the only option. Hence, we fund vast globe-spanning military networks to deal poorly with threats that pale in comparison to the wildfires, chemical spills, and other disasters that routinely occur. Coyne and Hall have been aware of this for some time. They are among the few who recognize that militarism directed abroad damages democracy and everyday life at home. Also:
Ron DeSantis: The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival (2023, Broadside Books): "He played baseball for Yale [while most were studying?], graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, and served in Iraq and the halls of Congress [not just Congress? he was a hall monitor?]. But in all these places, Ron DeSantis learned the same lesson: He didn't want to be part of the leftist elite." Nah, he wanted to be part of the far-right elite (although between Yale, Harvard, Iraq, and Congress, I doubt he met very many actual leftists. This, of course, is his campaign brief. (Amazon's "frequently bought together" offer adds Mike Pompeo's Never Give an Inch and Mike Pence's So Help Me God), so one would normally expect it to be long on homilies and short on details. Of course, his homilies are pretty dark, like "The United States has been increasingly captive to an arrogant, stale, and failed ruling class." And also: "Florida has stood as an antidote to America's failed ruling class." The table of contents not only includes chapters on "For God, for Country, and for Yale" and "Honor, Courage, and Commitment," but also "The Magic Kingdom of Woke Corporatism" and "The Liberal Elite's Praetorian Guard." And if you have any doubt that he's running, the books ends with "Make America Florida." All this in a succinct 286 pages. He's every bit as seductive as Satan. More campaign briefs (also see Mike Pompeo, separately):
Norman G Finkelstein: I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom (paperback, 2023, Sublation Media): A critique (544 pp) of "identity politics and cancel culture" and lament on "academic freedom" from a guy whose steadfast critique of Israel gets him canceled more than any self-proclaimed right-wing "victim" could imagine. On the other hand, the experience seems to be taking a toll, making him even more cranky. I've cited most of his books, but missed these:
Rebecca Giblin/Cory Doctorow: Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets, and How We'll Win Them Back (2022, Beacon Press): This deals with monopoly powers in books, music, etc., but chokepoints go back a fair ways -- my first thought was how Hewlett-Packard connived to force me to buy ink service for a printer I naively bought from them (never again!), but IBM was notorious for similar practices back in the 1950s. Giblin is an Australian lawyer involved in several interesting projects, and Doctorow is a science fiction writer with similar interests. Still, I'm pretty skeptical about that "how we'll win them back" line. Jason D Greenblatt: In the Path of Abraham: How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East -- and How to Stop Joe Biden From Unmaking It (2022, Wicked Son): Author worked for the Trump administration in negotiating the Abraham Accords, a project Jared Kushner has taken much of the credit for. The AA are a series of agreements between Israel, the US, and various Arab countries, where the latter normalizing relations with Israel, and therefore are allowed to buy more sophisticated arms from the US. This is basically just a continuation of the arrangement Carter negotiated with Egypt in the 1970s, and which Jordan signed on to in the 1990s. The resulting arms shipments (incuding from Israel) do nothing to secure peace in the region: they contribute to an arms race with Iran, and to internal conflicts like in Yemen. And the whole deal bypasses the more fundamental injustice Israel imposes within its own illegally-expanded borders on Palestinians, even on those nominally considered citizens of Israel. (On paper, there is also a "Peace to Prosperity" component for the Palestinians, but Israel has never shown any interest in it, and Trump's team are not the sort to get pushy.) The praise for Trump and the threat to Biden just proves that Greenblatt understands his fundamentally partisan role. In point of fact, Biden has no desire or need to roll back any of the Abraham Accords. The only "threat" he offers is that he might resurrect the JCPOA with Iran, which would end the potential threat Iran might poise to Israel, but would deprive Israeli leaders of an enemy they need to justify their militarism. Also:
Chris Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War (2022, Seven Stories Press): A former divinity student who once got his kicks as a war correspondent, seeking action everywhere from Central America to the Balkans through the Middle East and into Africa, he now offers "a blistering condemnation of war in all forms and for all reasons." I would say "about time," but it looks like he's collected these writings from a couple decades of columns. Still, those of us who consistently oppose war from the start rarely need to rewrite much. Michael Kazin: What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party (2022, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Broad strokes history of the Democratic Party's many struggles to win elections, starting with Jackson (or actually, his smarter alter ego Martin van Buren), and extending to the present. The title is a curious one, given that mostly Democrats didn't manage to win, often (1860, 1896, 1972) because the Party bigwigs preferred losing to Republicans over losing to other Democrats. (The Republicans returned the favor in 1912, giving us the mixed blessings of Woodrow Wilson.) Kazin favors the left wing of the Democratic Party, and has written several books about it:
Glory M Liu: Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (2022, Princeton University Press). Scottish author of economics ur-text The Wealth of Nations in the pivotal American year of 1776, a coincidence that some Americans have taken as manifest destiny. This focuses on American readings of Smith's book, especially how they've been weaponized for private gain. For instance: "the so-called Chicago School's distillation of Smith's ideas into a popular and powerful myth: that rational self-interest is the only valid premise for the analysis of human behavior, and that only the invisible hand of the market, not the heavy hand of government, could guarantee personal and political freedom." That "invisible hand" has often been taken as the magic that converts personal greed into public good: not the only time a joke has been taken as gospel. Mike Pompeo: Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love (2023, Broadside Books): Another campaign brief, this one from "the only four-year national security member of President Trump's Cabinet, he worked to impose crushing pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran, avert a nuclear crisis with North Korea, deliver unmatched support for Israel, and bring peace to the Middle East." Note that none of those things actually worked, as he left the world in worse shape than when he joined Trump. But also note that there are issues where he wants to distance himself from Trump, as when he explains "why Trump thought his Secretary of State was too tough on China," and why Trump needed to be tougher. The first blurb reads: "Mike is a real-life Tom Clancy American hero." Perhaps running for president isn't just an ego thing with him. Maybe he just wants to start World War III. Bernie Sanders: It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (2023, Crown): Not a typical political brief, and not just because it's unlikely he'll run for president in 2024 (although he does write about his run in 2020) -- more like because he has serious things to say. Sanders is not to my left on issues, but he sometimes strikes me as unnecessary taking risks with rhetoric, as when his 2016 stump speech wound up with a call for "political revolution." Even with the qualification, that struck me as risky, and not sufficiently clear. I've long been taking pains to stress that reforms would be just fine. Similarly, I'm inclined to accept that capitalism has some virtues, as long as it's sufficiently regulated, of course. But Sanders may be striking the right note here: after all, if you can't get angry enough, what chance do you have of putting those regulations (and other compensations) in place? Besides, there is no word more accurate: Ryan Cooper's How Are You Going to Pay for That? has lots of good ideas, but trying to dodge "capitalism" by complaining about "propertarianism" isn't one of them. Joanna Schwartz: Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable (2023, Viking): UCLA law professor, teaches courses on civil procedure, police accountability, and public interest lawyering. Police are very rarely held accountable for their prejudices, mistakes, judgment lapses, and unnecessary violence, as they are shielded by many layers, starting with their willingness to lie and cover for each other, their unions, administrators, lawyers (including prosecutors), judges, and enablers among the "law and order" politicians. Quinn Slobodian: Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (2023, Metropolitan Books): This is about the increase in the number of special zones, which are countries or enclaves which allow business to operate with little or no democratic accountability. Businesses can avoid taxes and other regulations by shopping for favored zones, and the more they have to choose from, the more leverage they have. The book opens with the long-established Hong Kong, but there are many more, some as local as the "innovation zones" being promoted by your local and state governments. Slobodian previously wrote Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, which seems like old hat compared to this. Greta Thunberg: The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions (2023, Penguin Press): At 15, she emerged as an iconic leader in the campaign to take climate change seriously. She has a couple previous books -- No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019), and Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis (2020) -- but one of the advantages of being a leader is you don't have to do it all yourself. She assembled, or at least put her name on (the word on the frontispiece is "created"), this mini-encyclopedia (464 pp) from the work of over 100 experts, with her own section intros. Also lots of pictures and graphs. More recent books on climate change:
Andrea Wulf: Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self (2022, Knopf): Asks the question: "when did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today?" Finds answers in 1970s Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, various Schlegels, Alexander von Humboldt), contrasting them to the more mundane revolutionaries of France. She's explored this terrain extensively before. Reminds me that in order to dominate nature, you first have to name it. Previously wrote:
2. Secondary SectionAdditional 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. Ro Khanna: Progressive Capitalism: How to Make Tech Work for All of Us (paperback, 2023, Simon & Schuster): US Representative (D-CA). Hardcover published as Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us (2022, Simon & Schuster). 3. Draft SectionThese are candidate for the main section, that are not yet finished or not yet prioritized to post. They may include sub-lists. 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. 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. 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] Lucas Bessire: Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (2021; paperback, 2022, Princeton University Press): On the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies a stretch of plains from the Texas panhandle to the Dakotas. 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. Ben Burgis: Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left (2021, Zero Books): 136 pp. [05-01]
Kelly Denton-Borhaug: And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War Culture (paperback, 2021, Equinox). 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. Tom Dunkel: White Knights in the Black Orchestra: The Extraordinary Story of the Germans Who Resisted Hitler (2022, Hachette): Even if "Black Orchestra" was a name given by the Gestapo to traitors within the ranks, this title seems more than a little loaded. Sebastian Edwards: The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism (2023, Princeton University Press): [05-23] Alex Epstein: Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas -- Not Less (2022, Portfolio): Founder of Center for Industrial Progress, which means he doesn't depend on royalties for his living. Previously wrote:
Orlando Figes: The Story of Russia (2022, Metropolitan Books): British historian, has written a number of books on Russia, with this one covering the most ground in the fewest pages (368 pp).
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:
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. John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992; 25th Anniversary Edition, paperback, 2017, New Society): Libertarian NYC teacher, eventually resigned, saying he no longer wished to "hurt kids for a living." Reminds me of Paul Goodman's classic Compulsory Miseducation (1964). For that matter, also reminds me of my own experience in the public schools, where I escaped the curses of indifference and dependency by radical insubordination. Admittedly, I've known a few people who responded well to school, who found it affirmative, and who built brilliant careers and lives on its foundation. And I know that most teachers don't mean to be ogres, and I doubt that even their supervisors have such malign intent, but rather have set up a system where the assumption of superiority makes the harm Gatto rails against all but inevitable. Gatto aso wrote:
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:
Pekka Hämäläinen: Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest of North America (2022, Liveright). Attempts to recast the history of North America from the vantage point of its indigenous inhabitants. Still, only two chapters set the pre-1492 stage, reflecting the lack of written records for the 11-12 thousand years between their arrival from Asia and Alaska and the invaders from Europe. After that, there's a lot of history to report, though it's hitherto usually been told from the standpoint of the conquerors.
Johann Hari: Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention -- and How to Think Deeply Again (2022, Crown): Superficially, this seems to fit into the tradition of anti-media screeds like Amusing Ourselves to Death, although the self-help bit wedged into the title adds a bit of the marketing the book is surely railing against. But the table of contents enumerates twelve causes, leaving scant room for solutions. But how deeply do we want to think, anyway?
Mehdi Hasan: Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking (2023, Henry Holt): British-American journalist, started with Al Jazeera English, has moved in more respectable circles recently, and yes, he's a very erudite and penetrating interviewer. Still, seems a bit odd to frame this as a self-help book for pundits who care more about winning arguments than finding the best answers. Still, like Machiavelli's Prince, you can probably flip this around and see it as an exposé of people who win arguments with cheap tricks. Some time back, I read a book that purported to have every known sales close technique. then noted that if you don't want to buy, just list the techniques just used on you, and the salesperson will be defeated. 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:
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. Wes Jackson/Robert Jensen: An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity (paperback, 2022, University of Notre Dame Press): Short (184 pp), Jackson is an important agriculture reformer in Kansas, and Jensen is a journalism professor whose concern for the planet led him to write a book about Jackson. Title plays on Al Gore's 2006 book and film An Inconvenient Truth, but Gore's title fit together into something profound, whereas this title has a whiff of irony and desperation: sure, the situation is graver now, but apocalypse is still a bit hyperbolic, and being nonchalant about it doesn't help. Hard to tell whether this goes beyond rote alarmism.
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. Brian Kilmeade: The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraha Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul (2022, Sentinel): "Fox & Friends" co-host, like Bill O'Reilly has a sideline of writing politically correct histories for his smug followers. Four of his previous tomes have been conveniently boxed as America's Heroes and History: A Brian Kilmeade Collection (2021). 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). Dahlia Lithwick: Jonathan Martin/Alexander Burns: This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future (2022, Simon & Schuster): Covers the 2020 election and the first year of the Biden presidency, still focused on the subject they'd rather be writing about: Trump.
Eric Metaxas: Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life (2021, Salem Books): Autobiography. Everything I read about him spells "huckster," albeit a rather clever and successful one, with his syndicated radio show, his bestsellers, and his constant stroking of common religious conceits in America, while trying to reclaim moral and intellectual high ground (against slavery, against Nazism, for American liberty, for science; miracles never cease).
China Miéville: A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto (paperback, 2022, Haymarket Books): British writer, started writing speculative fiction (novels, stories, comic books), branched out into criticism (Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, 2009) and history (October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, 2017). Here he re-reads 1848's The Communist Manifesto, both in light of the history it inspired and the history we wound up with today, where he finds it surprisingly resonant. 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. Andrew Morton: The Queen: Her Life (2022, Grand Central): The British monarchy has been dead weight since . . . well, as an American, let's start with George III . . . but few monarchs have retreated into their useless world more gracefully than Elizabeth II. Morton is a hack who does "celebrity biographies" (Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Madonna) when he's not riding piggyback on the tabloid monarchy, but he scored one career-defining coup in getting Princess Diana to spill her guts into the book he subtitled "Her True Story -- In Her Own Words." My best guess is that this book has been lurking in his cabinet, waiting the Queen's inevitable death for an element of timeliness (it's not as if he didn't have other wares to flog). Still, it's handy enough to hang a few more slices of royal gossip (and this barely scratches the surface):
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). Naomi Orkeskes/Erik M Conway: The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (2023, Bloomsbury): Authors have some experience in cases where businesses sought to manipulate public opinion for their own profit, having written Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. 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.
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). David Quammen: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus (2022, Simon & Schuster): Natural science writer, his book on evolution (The Song of the Dodo) is a classic, but he's also ventured into diseases, with books on AIDS and Ebola, as well as (most presciently) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, so his tackling the Covid-19 pandemic is not unexpected. 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. Kim Stanley Robinson: The High Sierra: A Love Story (2022, Little Brown): Science fiction novelist, fresh from solving the climate crisis in The Ministry for the Future, writes what appears to be a combination memoir and travel guide, with more than a little science mixed in. 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. 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:
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. Margaret Sullivan: Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) From an Ink-Stained Life (2022, St Martin's Press): Longtime journalist, eventually made journalism itself her beat as "public editor" for the New York Times and "media columnist" for the Washington Post. Jeremi Suri: Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy (2022, Public Affairs). "Worries about a new civil war in America are misplaced because the Civil War never fully ended. Its lingering embers have burst into flames at various times, including during our own." Much of this story has been told in Heather Cox Richardson's How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, but the neo-Confederate wins from Jim Crow into the 1950s haven't stood unchallenged either, as we see in the still ongoing struggle to remove Confederate monuments, or the appearance of Confederate flags in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Jonathan Taplin: The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto (2023, Public Affairs): Profiles of Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, and Elon Musk. [09-05] Marian L Tupy/Gale E Pooley: Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet (2022, Cato Institute): Basically, abundance is the product of population times freedom, where the latter is plain laissez-faire capitalism. Given the latter, population is the variable, and the more the merrier. Never mind the naysayers, with their cant about finite resources, as our planet (or whatever planet these two think they live on) is "infinitely bountiful." This is, of course, extremely stupid, and as I scan down the list of raving blurbs, I can cross most of the names from the list of people to take seriously (names I recognize: George Gilder, Paul Romer, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, Jason Furman, George Will, Matt Ridley, Lawrence Summers, Michael Schellenberger). A customer caught the spirit and quoted Ronald Reagan: "There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams." That's a nice line, but the actual political system it ushered in not only slowed growth but made sure it was ever more inequally shared. And while I wouldn't say that abundance is an unimaginable goal, I will say that it only matters if it is widely distributed, which cannot happen under the political regime the Cato authors serve. Marcus M Witcher: Getting Right With Reagan: The Struggle for True Conservatism, 1980-2016 (2019, University Press of Kansas): Emphasizes how roundly criticized Reagan was by conservatives for never being as right-wing as they wanted. Robert Wright:
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). Mary Ziegler: Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment (2022, Yale University Press): I've long felt that the Republican establishment embrace of anti-abortion extremism was purely cynical: they wanted to break Catholics away from the Democratic Party, and saw abortion as a wedge issue, in addition to race (aka, crime), also finding the issue(s) also resonating with evangelical protestants. Ziegler ties the issue to campaign finance regulation, arguing that the anti-abortion faction came to dominate the Republican Party due to their financial prowess. I'm not so sure there ever was a monolithic Republican establishment (Mark Hanna may have come closest), but this seems to be conflating two things: the ideological purity the anti-abortion movement has successfully demanded; and the division of party power among its now unlimited elite donors and a base that is almost totally shaped by Fox and its splinter media competitors. 4. Noted SectionThese are candidate for the secondary section, that are not yet prioritized to post. John Abramson: Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It (2022, Mariner Books). Sarah Adams/Dave Benton: Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy (2022, Askari Global): Written by two former CIA officers. Michele Alacevich: Albert O Hirschman: An Intellectual Biography (2021, Columbia University Press): Second biography I've seen, after Jeremy Adelman: Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O Hirschman (2013), reportedly stronger on Hirschman's economic theories. Michael Albert: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (paperback, 2021, Zero Books). Martín Arboleda: Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism (paperback, 2020, Verso). Nona Willis Aronowitz: Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution (2022, Plume). 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 Ageny 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). Michael D Bess: Planet in Peril: Humanity's Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them (2022, Cambridge University Press). Paul Betts: Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II (2020, Basic Books). Katherine Blunt: California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric -- and What It Means for America's Power Grid (2022, Portfolio). 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: Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan (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). HW Brands: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution (2021, Doubleday). HW Brands: The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America (2022, Doubleday). [11-01] Douglas Brinkley: Silent Spring Revolution: John F Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening (2022, Harper). [11-15] Michael Brooks: Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right (2020, paperback, Zero Books). 96 pp. 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). Holly Jean Buck: Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough (paperback, 2021, Verso). Oliver Bullough: Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World (2019; paperback, 2021, St Martin's Press). Margaret A Burnham: By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners (2022, WW Norton). 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). Charles Camic: Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics (2020, Harvard University Press). 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). James C Cobb: C Vann Woodward: America's Historian (2022, The University of North Carolina 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). Frank Costigliola: Kennan: A Life Between Worlds (2023, Princeton University): Major (648 pp) biography of George F Kennan, founder and critic of the Cold War. Tressie McMillan Cottom: Thick: And Other Essays (paperback, 2019, New Press). Stan Cox: The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic (paperback, 2021, City Lights). Neta C Crawford: The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of US Military Emissions (2022, The MIT Press). [10-04] 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). [11-15] 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). Sandrine Dixson-Declève/Owen Gaffney/Jayati Ghosh/Jorgen Randers/Johan Rockström/Per Espen Stoknes: Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (paperback, 2022, New Society): "A Report to the Club of Rome (2022) Fifty Years After The Limits to Growth (1972)." Marco Dondi: Outgrowing Capitalism: Rethinking Money to Reshape Society and Pursue Purpose (2021, Fast Company Press) Justin Driver: The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind (2018, Pantheon; paperback, 2019, Vintage Books). Dinesh D'Souza: United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It. (2020, All Points Books). 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). Liran Einav/Amy Finkelstein/Ray Fisman: Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It (2023, Yale University Press). Robert Elder: Calhoun: American Heretic (2021, Basic Books). Roland Ennos: The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization (2020, Scribner). 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]. Noah Feldman: The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America (2021, Farrar Straus and Giroux; paperback, 2022, Picador). [11-01] Niall Ferguson: Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (2021, Penguin Press). 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). Nancy Fraser: Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It (2022, Verso). Richard M Fried: A Genius for Confusion: Joseph R McCarthy and the Politics of Deceit (2022, Rowman & Littlefield). Beverly Gage: G-Man: J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (2022, Viking). [11-22] 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). Rebecca Giblin/Cory Doctorow: Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back (2022, Beacon Press). Joanne Samuel Goldblum/Colleen Shaddox: Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty (2021, BenBella Books). Anand Giridharadas: The Persuaders: At the Front lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (2022, Knopf). David Graeber: Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia (2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux): "Graeber's final posthumous book." [2023-01-24] Victor Davis Hanson: The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (2021, Basic Books). Malcolm Harris: Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (2023, Little Brown): 720 pp. David Harvey: A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse (paperback, 2023, Verso). 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). Jon Hilsenrath: Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval (2022, Harper Business). [11-01] 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. 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. David Horowitz: I Can't Breathe: How a Racial Hoax Is Killing America (2021, Regnery). 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). Annie Jacobsen: Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins (2019, Little Brown). 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). 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] Harvye J Kaye: The British Marxist Historians (1984; paperback, 2022, Zero Books): Foreword by Eric Hobsbawm, with a new preface by the author. Patrick Radden Keefe: Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021, Doubleday). Steve Keen: The New Economics: A Manifesto (paperback, 2022, Polity). Cody Keenan: Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America (2022, Mariner Books): Obama speechwriter, focuses on the speeches of 10 days in June 2015. Keith Kellogg: War by Other Means: A General in the Trump White House (2021, Regnery). Sarah Kendzior: They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (2022, Flatiron). Perri Klass: A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future (2020, WW Norton). 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). Michael G Laramie: Queen Anne's War: The Second Contest for North America, 1702-1713 (2021, Westholme). Charles Leerhsen: Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain (2022, Simon & Schuster). Bruno Leipold/Karma Nabulsi/Stuart White, eds: Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (2022, Oxford University Press). Marc Levinson: The Box: How a Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (2nd edition paperback, 2016, Princeton University Press). Marc Levinson: Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed From Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas (2020, Princeton University Press). 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). 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). Matthew C MacWilliams: On Fascism: 12 Lessons From American History (paperback, 2020, Griffin): Stephen A Marglin: Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory (2021, Harvard University Press): 928 pp. 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). John Mattingly: 12 Seconds in the Dark: A Police Officer's Firsthand Account of the Breonna Taylor Raid (2022, DW Books). 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] Rafael Medoff: The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S Wise, and the Holocaust (2019; paperback, 2021, Jewish Publication Society). Ben Mezrich: The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees (2021, Grand Central). Casey Michel: American Kleptocracy: How the US Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (2021, St Martin's Press). 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. 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). Forrest A Nabors: From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction (2017, University of Missouri). Scott Reynolds Nelson: Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World (2022, Basic Books). Tom Nichols: Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy (2021, Oxford University Press): Professor at US Naval War College. 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). Mike Pence: So Help Me God (2022, Simon & Schuster): 560 pp. [11-15] 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). David Pietrusza: Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR's 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal (2022, Diversion Books). 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). Diana Preston: The Evolution of Charles Darwin: The Epic Voyage of the Beagle That Forever Changed Our View of Life on Earth (2022, Atlantic Monthly Press). Jon Roy Price: The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider's Perspective on Nixon's Surprising Social Policy (2021, University Press of Kansas). 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). Michael Pye: Europe's Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp's Golden Age (2021, Pegasus Books). William Quinn/John D Turner: Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles (2020; paperback, 2021, Cambridge University Press). Alissa Quart: Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselvs From the American Dream (2023, Ecco). Executive director of Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit founded by Barbara Ehrenreich. [03-14] Jennifer Raff: Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (2022, Twelve). Assaad Razzouk: Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit: What They Don't Tell You About the Climate Crisis (paperback, 2022, Atlantic Books). [12-01] Adolph L Reed Jr: The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives (2022, Verso). 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. James Rickards: Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy (2022, Portfolio). [11-29] Denver Riggleman/Hunter Walker: The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th (2022, Henry Holt): Former Congressman (R-VA). Peter Robison: Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing (2021, Doubleday; paperback, 2022, Anchor). Kermit Roosevelt III: The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story (2022, University of Chicago Press). Julio Rosas: Fiery (But Mostly Peaceful): The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America (2022, DW Books): Sees ANTIFA under every rock. Tara Ross: Why We Need the Electoral College (paperback, 2019, Gateway Editions). Mike Rothschild: The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything (2021, Melville House). Dave Rubin: Don't Burn This Country: Surviving and Thriving in Our Woke Dystopia (2022, Sentinel). Kohei Saito: Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degworth Communism (paperback, Cambridge University Press): Argues that Marx had a long-suppressed ecological critique of capitalism. Previously wrote:
Elaine Scarry: Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom (2014, WW Norton). Stacy Schiff: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (2022, Little Brown). Jack Schneider/Jennifer Berkshire: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (2020, New Press). 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). Klaus Schwab: Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet (2021, Wiley). Ben Shapiro: The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent (2021, Broadside Books). 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] Jeff Sharlet: The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War (2023, WW Norton). [2023-03-21] Craig Shirley: April 1945: The Hinge of History (2022, Thomas Nelson): Wrote Newt Gingrich's authorized biography. 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). Ronald H Spector: A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955 (2022, WW Norton). Covers the same terrain as the author's In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia (2007). 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 (). David Stasavage: The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History From Antiquity to Today (2020, Princeton University Press). Greg Steinmetz: American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune (2022, Simon & Schuster). James B Stewart/Rachel Abrams: Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy (2023, Penguin Press): The struggle for succession at Paramount Global. 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). Matt Taibbi/Anonymous: The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing: An Almost True Account (2021, OR Books). 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). Gönül Tol: Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria (2023, Oxford University Press). [2023-01-15] Nina Totenberg: Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships (2022, Simon & Schuster): NPR legal affairs correspondent schmoozes with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Rebecca Traister: Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (2019, Simon & Schuster). Owen Ullmann: Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen's Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All (2022, Public Affairs). Nikki Usher: News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism (2021, Columbia University Press). Studying recent trends in newspapers, including the New York Times. Maurizio Valsania: First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity (2022, Johns Hopkins University Press). 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] Gabriel Winant: The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America (2021, Harvard University Press). Martin Wolf: The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023, Penguin 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). Katie Worth: Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America (paperback, 2021, Columbia Global Reports). 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 BooksI 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 BooksThese 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). Michael Tomasky: Left for Dead: The Life, Death, and Possible Resurrection of Progressive Politics in America (1996; paperback, 2013, Free Press). 7. Music BooksSome 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). 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 BooksSome day I should do a food book post (mostly cookbooks). These are things I've run across: Book counts by list section:
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