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
As If: Idealization and Ideals
Kwame Anthony Appiah Harvard University Press
Melancholy (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Laszlo F. Foldenyi Yale University Press
A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel (Sixth)
Tom Phillips Thames & Hudson
LITERATURE
Into the Cyclorama
Annie Kim Southern Indiana Review Press
Symphony for Human Transport
Lisa Samuels Shearsman Books
Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities' Red Dress Code: New and Selected Poems
Thylias Moss Persea
The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings
Juan Rulfo Deep Vellum Publishing
Homesick for Another World: Stories
Ottessa Moshfegh Penguin Press
The World Goes On
László Krasznahorkai New Directions
The Manhattan Project
László Krasznahorkai Sylph Editions
So Much Blue: A Novel
Percival Everett Graywolf Press
Katalin Street (New York Review Books Classics)
Magda Szabo NYRB Classics
Beasts Head for Home: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
Kōbō Abe Columbia University Press
Blackass: A Novel
A. Igoni Barrett Graywolf Press
The Essential Fictions
Isaac Babel Northwestern University Press
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr
John Crowley Gallery / Saga Press
Gap Gardening: Selected Poems
Rosmarie Waldrop New Directions
Judgment: A Novel (Northwestern World Classics)
David Bergelson, Sasha Senderovich, Harriet Murav Northwestern University Press
Found Life: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview (Russian Library)
Linor Goralik Columbia University Press
Remains of Life: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)
Wu Wu He Columbia University Press
I Was Trying to Describe What it Feels Like: New and Selected Stories
Noy Holland Counterpoint
Nest in the Bones: Stories by Antonio Benedetto
Antonio Di Benedetto Archipelago
Newcomers: Book One
Lojze Kovacic Archipelago
Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China
Xiaolu Guo Grove Press
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun Li Random House
Sisters of the Cross (Russian Library)
Alexei Remizov Columbia University Press
Frontier
Can Xue Open Letter
The Construction of the Tower of Babel
Juan Benet Wakefield Press
The War Nerd Iliad
Feral House
Drilling through Hard Boards: 133 Political Stories (The German List)
Alexander Kluge Seagull Books
Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922 (New York Review Books Classics)
Marina Tsvetaeva NYRB Classics
Balcony in the Forest (New York Review Book)
Julien Gracq NYRB Classics
Go, Went, Gone
Jenny Erpenbeck New Directions
Jane Bowles: Collected Writings (LOA #288): Two Serious Ladies / In the Summer House / stories & other writings / letters (Library of America (Hardcover))
Jane Bowles Library of America
The Collected Poems of Li He (Calligrams)
Li He New York Review Books
Chinese Poetic Writing (Calligrams)
Francois Cheng New York Review Books
The Complete Old English Poems (The Middle Ages Series)
University of Pennsylvania Press
The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
Fernando Pessoa New Directions
HUMANITIES
Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy & the Mind Sciences
Jennifer Radden Oxford University Press
The Warburg Years (1919-1933): Essays on Language, Art, Myth, and Technology
Ernst Cassirer Yale University Press
Dystopia: A Natural History
Gregory Claeys Oxford University Press
The Rift in The Lute: Attuning Poetry and Philosophy
Maximilian de Gaynesford Oxford University Press
David Jones
T Dilworth Jonathan Cape
The Messages We Send: Social Signals and Storytelling
G. R. F. Ferrari Oxford University Press
The Mind of the Book: Pictorial Title-Pages
Alastair Fowler Oxford University Press
The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841
Stephen Gaukroger Oxford University Press
Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno
Raymond Geuss Harvard University Press
Word of Mouth: Fama and Its Personifications in Art and Literature from Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages
Gianni Guastella Oxford University Press
Res Publica and the Roman Republic: 'Without Body or Form'
Louise Hodgson Oxford University Press
The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid
Nicholas Horsfall Oxford University Press
I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again
Béatrice Longuenesse Oxford University Press
Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos Yale University Press
Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity
Peter Olen Palgrave Macmillan
The Subject of Experience
Galen Strawson OUP Oxford
The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy (Emotions of the Past)
Curie Virág Oxford University Press
Hercules Segers: Painter, Etcher, A Catalogue Raisonn
nai010 publishers/Rijksmuseum
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Robert M. Sapolsky Penguin Books
The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe
Stephon Alexander Basic Books
After Digital: Computation as Done by Brains and Machines
James A. Anderson Oxford University Press
The Lazy Universe: An Introduction to the Principle of Least Action
Jennifer Coopersmith Oxford University Press
The New Science of Consciousness: Exploring the Complexity of Brain, Mind, and Self
Paul L. Nunez Prometheus
Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security
Brian Kernighan Princeton University Press
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Prisoners of Reason
S. M. Amadae Cambridge University Press
Unfinished Business: The Unexplored Causes of the Financial Crisis and the Lessons Yet to be Learned
Tamim Bayoumi Yale University Press
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
Paul Bloom Ecco
The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction
Richard Bookstaber Princeton University Press
The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett Princeton University Press
Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital
William Clare Roberts Princeton University Press
A Brief History of Economic Thought
Alessandro Roncaglia Cambridge University Press
Paths to Fulfillment: Women's Search for Meaning and Identity
Ruthellen Josselson Oxford University Press
The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead
University of Chicago Press
The Enigma of Reason
Hugo Mercier, Dan Sperber Harvard University Press
Shame: A Brief History (History of Emotions)
Peter N. Stearns University of Illinois Press
The Truth about Language: What It Is and Where It Came From
Michael C. Corballis University of Chicago Press
The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power
Joseph Turow Yale University Press
HISTORY AND POLITICS
Russia's Path toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500-1801
Gary M. Hamburg Yale University Press
Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.
Danielle S. Allen Liveright
The Water Kingdom
Philip Ball Vintage
False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East
Steven A. Cook Oxford University Press
Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Lauren-Brooke Eisen Columbia University Press
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
Frances Fitzgerald Simon & Schuster
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
Jesse Eisinger Simon & Schuster
The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound?
Azar Gat Oxford University Press
A History of Judaism
Martin Goodman Penguin Press
The Killing Wind: A Chinese County's Descent into Madness during the Cultural Revolution
Tan Hecheng Oxford University Press
One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
Andrea Pitzer Little, Brown and Company
The Habsburg Empire: A New History
Pieter M. Judson Harvard University Press
What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home
Mark Mazower Other Press
The Transformation of American Liberalism
George Klosko Oxford University Press
Politics in the Roman Republic (Key Themes in Ancient History)
Henrik Mouritsen Cambridge University Press
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right
Angela Nagle Zero Books
Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China
Johanna S. Ransmeier Harvard University Press
Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford Studies in Medieval European History)
Alice Rio Oxford University Press
Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
Victor Sebestyen Vintage
Classical Greek Oligarchy: A Political History
Matthew Simonton Princeton University Press
Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928
S. A. Smith OUP Oxford
The Cold War: A World History
Odd Arne Westad Basic Books
COMICS
Poppies of Iraq
Brigitte Findakly, Lewis Trondheim Drawn and Quarterly
Satania
Fabien Vehlmann NBM Publishing
It Don't Come Easy
Philippe Dupuy, Charles Berberian Drawn and Quarterly
The Green Hand and Other Stories
Nicole Claveloux New York Review Comics
Voices in the Dark
Ulli Lust New York Review Comics
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
Emil Ferris Fantagraphics Books
Pascin
Joann Sfar Uncivilized Books
Beanworld Volume 4: Hoka Hoka Burb'l Burb'l
Larry Marder Dark Horse Books
The Interview
Manuele Fior Fantagraphics Books
Yvain: The Knight of the Lion
M.T. Anderson Candlewick
Demon (4 Book Series)
Jason Shiga
Olympians: Artemis: Wild Goddess of the Hunt
George O'Connor First Second
The Customer is Always Wrong
Mimi Pond Drawn and Quarterly
The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
Thi Bui Harry N. Abrams
Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: "The Lost Crown Of Genghis Khan" (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 16) (Vol. 16) (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library)
Carl Barks Fantagraphics Books
Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "The Secret Of Hondorica" (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 17) (Vol. 17) (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library)
Carl Barks Fantagraphics Books
Walt Disney Uncle Scrooge And Donald Duck The Don Rosa Library Vols. 7 & 8: Gift Box Set
Don Rosa Fantagraphics Books
OF INTEREST
Philosophy in the Islamic World: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 3
Peter Adamson Oxford University Press
Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson: Volume 1: Becoming Samuelson, 1915-1948 (Oxford Studies in History of Economics)
Roger E. Backhouse Oxford University Press
The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume One: The Patron Author
Warren Boutcher Oxford University Press
The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe: Volume Two: The Reader-Writer
Warren Boutcher Oxford University Press
How the Mind Comes into Being: Introducing Cognitive Science from a Functional and Computational Perspective
Martin V. Butz, Esther F. Kutter Oxford University Press
A History of European Literature: The West and the World from Antiquity to the Present
Walter Cohen Oxford University Press
Making Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe
Matthew Frank Oxford University Press
Herder's Hermeneutics: History, Poetry, Enlightenment
Kristin Gjesdal Cambridge University Press
A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (The Penguin History of the United States)
Steven Hahn Viking
The Sociocultural Brain: A Cultural Neuroscience Approach to Human Nature
Shihui Han OUP Oxford
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World)
Kyle Harper Princeton University Press
Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake Princeton University Press
The Quantum Revolution in Philosophy
Richard Healey Oxford University Press
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941
Stephen Kotkin Penguin Press
Pompey, Cato, and the Governance of the Roman Empire
Kit Morrell Oxford University Press
The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost
Cathal J. Nolan Oxford University Press
A History of Law in Europe: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century
Antonio Padoa-Schioppa Cambridge University Press
The Cambridge History of Communism: Volume 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917-1941
Cambridge University Press
Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond
Gideon Rachman Other Press
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
Yuri Slezkine Princeton University Press
Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (The History of NYC Series)
Mike Wallace Oxford University Press
The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)
Richard White Oxford University Press
No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976-1984
Matthew Worley Cambridge University Press
The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848
Jonathan Israel Princeton University Press
The Sorcerer's Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales
Princeton University Press
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?