While the world went mad this year, I retreated a bit and did more reading than I had in some time. I have seen the pendulum of public sentiment cycle from complacency to hysteria and back twice now, and I am more fatalistic than ever about such cycles having to take their course. (My description of Thomas Pynchon’s “decoherence events” applies just as well to the Trump presidency as it does to September 11, 2001.) Being part of the collective public discourse this year was unhealthier than in any time I have ever seen.
I believe all the titles below deserve attention. The top books have been chosen based on personal significance and relevance. Appiah’s As If is a plea for a cosmopolitan pluralism (of provisional viewpoints, not of truths) based on a reading of the great Hans Vaihinger. It is a theoretical work that has far more relevance to technology than it first appears, as I try to explain in my forthcoming Bitwise: A Life in Code. Földényi’s Melancholy is a Burton-inspired chronicle that bests a thousand other intellectual histories of its kind. It spoke to me of what it is to be the sort of person who feels the need and drive to read all these books in the first place, and of the intangible benefits I gain from them. And the purportedly final version of Tom Phillips’ A Humument is a thing of beauty, drastically different from its previous editions in many regards, and one of the deepest texts of our time, fifty years after its first publication.
The greatest novel I read this year was Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, the right novel for the right moment, but not one published in 2017.
In an attempt to provide a bit more apparent order, I have created a few subcategories for nonfiction. These are quite approximate; some books could have easily gone under a different heading. They are there to break the lists down into more manageable chunks.
When it comes to books, my eyes are bigger than my…eyes. Books under “Of Interest” are there either because (1) they are too out of my areas of knowledge for me to feel comfortable recommending them, (2) I have sufficient reservations about their content but feel they are too significant to ignore, or (3) I just haven’t read enough of them. I would feel terrible not noting Slezkine’s The House of Government, but I did not have time to read most of its 1100 pages.
Be well, read much, take care.
BOOKS OF MY YEAR
Melancholy (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Price: $35.00
15 used & new available from $22.33
LITERATURE
Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities' Red Dress Code: New and Selected Poems
Price: $29.95
12 used & new available from $19.66
Beasts Head for Home: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
Price: $26.00
36 used & new available from $3.65
Found Life: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview (Russian Library)
Price: $13.83
42 used & new available from $5.95
Remains of Life: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)
Price: $29.00
29 used & new available from $2.98
I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like: New and Selected Stories
Price: $18.14
46 used & new available from $3.78
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Price: $10.79
38 used & new available from $3.90
Drilling through Hard Boards: 133 Political Stories (The German List)
Price: $20.61
29 used & new available from $18.73
Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922 (New York Review Books Classics)
Price: $17.95
23 used & new available from $9.80
Price: $27.64
23 used & new available from $27.18
The Complete Old English Poems (The Middle Ages Series)
Price: $61.94
23 used & new available from $52.43
HUMANITIES
Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy & the Mind Sciences
Price: $32.02
13 used & new available from $27.39
The Warburg Years (1919-1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology
Price: $40.03
18 used & new available from $24.47
The Rift in The Lute: Attuning Poetry and Philosophy
Price: $69.78
14 used & new available from $36.01
The Messages We Send: Social Signals and Storytelling
Price: $36.95
16 used & new available from $23.34
The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841
Price: $48.86
13 used & new available from $44.88
Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno
Price: $27.49
35 used & new available from $21.47
Price: $71.17
13 used & new available from $71.17
Res Publica and the Roman Republic: 'Without Body or Form'
Price: $42.84
10 used & new available from $42.84
The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid
Price: $67.13
19 used & new available from $63.05
The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy (Emotions of the Past)
Price: $82.53
17 used & new available from $78.53
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe
Price: $6.23
28 used & new available from
After Digital: Computation as Done by Brains and Machines
Price: $31.93
7 used & new available from $31.51
The Lazy Universe: An Introduction to the Principle of Least Action
Price: $40.39
20 used & new available from $36.39
The New Science of Consciousness: Exploring the Complexity of Brain, Mind, and Self
Price: $10.99
1 used & new available from $10.99
Price: $13.77
1 used & new available from $13.77
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Unfinished Business: The Unexplored Causes of the Financial Crisis and the Lessons Yet to be Learned
Price: $6.95
29 used & new available from $6.29
The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction
Price: $29.95
65 used & new available from $4.05
The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class
Price: $13.90
52 used & new available from $4.25
Paths to Fulfillment: Women's Search for Meaning and Identity
Price: $29.25
27 used & new available from $20.29
The Truth about Language: What It Is and Where It Came From
Price: $30.00
30 used & new available from $7.96
The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power
Price: $18.26
46 used & new available from $1.90
HISTORY AND POLITICS
Russia's Path toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801
Price: $18.55
31 used & new available from $6.58
False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East
Price: $22.38
43 used & new available from $10.99
Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Price: $9.99
1 used & new available from $9.99
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
Price: $20.52
103 used & new available from $2.91
The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound?
Price: $26.78
20 used & new available from $22.78
The Killing Wind: A Chinese County's Descent into Madness during the Cultural Revolution
Price: $34.95
21 used & new available from $25.00
One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
Price: $20.23
55 used & new available from $6.99
What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home
Price: $25.75
51 used & new available from $1.77
Politics in the Roman Republic (Key Themes in Ancient History)
Price: $56.12
14 used & new available from $56.12
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right
Price: $12.76
56 used & new available from $7.70
Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China
Price: $51.50
14 used & new available from $46.98
Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History)
Price: $99.00
9 used & new available from $84.00
Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928
Price: $9.99
1 used & new available from $9.99
COMICS
Olympians: Artemis: Wild Goddess of the Hunt (Olympians, 9)
Price: $9.19
58 used & new available from $4.25
Price: $20.49
22 used & new available from $15.40
Price: $29.99
16 used & new available from $14.36
Price: $40.24
5 used & new available from $40.24
OF INTEREST
Philosophy in the Islamic World: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 3
Price: $39.95
18 used & new available from $20.80
Price: $19.64
32 used & new available from $10.88
The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume One: The Patron Author
Price: $37.90
12 used & new available from $37.90
The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume Two: The Reader-Writer
Price: $106.69
25 used & new available from $102.63
A History of European Literature: The West and the World from Antiquity to the Present
Price: $120.76
24 used & new available from $49.98
Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe
Price: $120.00
4 used & new available from $120.00
Herder's Hermeneutics: History, Poetry, Enlightenment
Price: $24.00
1 used & new available from $24.00
Price: $10.33
49 used & new available from $3.47
The Sociocultural Brain: A Cultural Neuroscience Approach to Human Nature
Price: $59.99
1 used & new available from $59.99
Price: $23.45
19 used & new available from $12.95
Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
Price: $20.50
61 used & new available from $1.12
Pompey, Cato, and the Governance of the Roman Empire
Price: $43.87
13 used & new available from $43.87
The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost
Price: $28.59
38 used & new available from $17.51
A History of Law in Europe: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century
Price: $102.87
22 used & new available from $98.87
Price: $32.00
1 used & new available from $32.00
Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond
Price: $22.14
60 used & new available from $2.44
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
Price: $26.19
69 used & new available from $5.86
Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (The History of NYC Series)
Price: $35.99
45 used & new available from $24.00
Price: $23.54
27 used & new available from $9.99
No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–1984
Price: $61.64
8 used & new available from $32.59
The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848
Price: $28.67
33 used & new available from $6.88
The Sorcerer's Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales
Price: $12.80
46 used & new available from $2.42
22 December 2017 at 07:31
Thomas Pynchon is always great. I loved Bleeding Edge, which I read twice (your article is outstanding and I’m glad to having read it). FOr “Mason & Dixon” I’m waiting for a better state of mind.
Your definition of the world does fit very well. And the pendulum of complacency and hysteria is a good description of what’s been going on also in other countries. I write from Italy and we live in a bubble of mystification from every point of view (including food hysteria, but this is another point…). I hope to read “Melancholy” soon – on the theme I have read Jean Starobinsky in Italian some time ago, it’s devoted to melancholy in literature and Burton is quoted everywhere. I look forward to reading your article Bitwise.
23 December 2017 at 00:21
Nice, I’ve gotten some good recommendations from you in the past and am sure I will again. I’ve only read a handful of these (Amadae, Abe, Nagle and The Manhattan Project) so far.
Liked Beasts Head for Home but man, we really need a full translation of Kabe, not just the excerpt in Beyond the Curve. Look forward to reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s last two books, McGlue is one of my favorites of the decade so far.
Prisoners of Reason was a slog (repetitive and esoteric in its thoroughness) but well worth it. I think Amadae’s criticism of the conceptual fuzziness surrounding neoliberalism somewhat misses the point (my inexpert opinion is that its distinction from neoclassicism is fuzzy because both responded to the collapse of the thirty-year compromise over new deal policies and the subsequent party realignment. Her focus also leaves little role for the backlash against the civil rights movement). Relatedly her intellectual history often feels more like straight up philosophy, for example where she takes at face value that NUTS won out over MAD as policy mostly because its internal logic was stronger. (I’m sorry if these critiques seem random, for a comparison when I read Objectivity Is Not Neutrality it always struck me that Haskell consistently took philosophers seriously while remaining firmly grounded in doing history and historiography.) On the other hand there’s a lot to be said for really getting inside the theory to take it apart. The central thesis, about the importance of Cold War Grand Strategy and its underlying assumptions about rational agency to the current condition of the state and the social contract, is convincing and as far as I can tell, original.
One thing I found very interesting is how little she talks about libertarianism. At first I suspected that this is partly because Amadae herself identifies as a (lower case) classical liberal and wants to save her heavy ammunition for the authoritarian implications of modelling everything as a prisoner’s dilemma, but my current reading is that she’s left a lot of ground for a reassessment of what libertarianism actually is, apart from how it’s often represented by its followers. Maybe this work has already been done and I just don’t know about it yet, but I for one had previously mostly taken it at face value when libertarian or an-cap acquaintances and writers identified as “Classical Liberals” while largely subscribing to the homo strategicus concept of rationality. I can no longer do that, thanks to this book.
One last thing, her dismantling of Richard Posner is my favorite part, and is no less devastating for how polite she is.
7 January 2018 at 12:52
You read all these?! Front to back?! You are my hero; can we be friends? So our reading of the past year didn’t actually overlap that much, but damn we’re in the same ballpark. Thoroughly enjoying second volume of AR Ammons Collected Poems right now. But David Jones’Dillworth, Krasznahorkai, Everett, Erpenbach, Pessoa (in that great new edition)…and now I have War Nerd Illiad book and Tower of Babel one back on my ‘must look at’ list. Can I urge you to look at Trebuchet by Danniel Schoonebeek, and Prose Architectures by Renee Gladman?