My top pick is not surprising. Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, László Krasznahorkai’s self-declared completion to his life’s work, is a monumental portrait of catastrophe, and though published in Hungarian in 2016, it feels absolutely of the moment, a depiction of a scattering world in which everything is devalued and no one has the resources to make sense of things. I wrote about it at great length for Music & Literature, and while I avoid the present trend of deeming any and every work of writing to be essential and crucial, I do think that Krasznahorkai’s quartet of novels will endure.
Otherwise, it seemed a bit of a lean year for books compared to the riches of 2018, and some of the best books below, like the two Laura Ridings from Ugly Duckling Presse, actually date from 2018. It’s wonderful to see another book from the always-brilliant Barbara Maria Stafford, and some very strong archival work in philosophy and classics appeared. (Sara Humphreys’s book on Athenian kinship is magisterial.) Melanie Mitchell’s book on artificial intelligence is perhaps the best survey of the state of the field I have read and is strongly recommended to all.
Many powerful forces encourage us to devalue knowledge, and to devalue even the very pursuit of knowledge. In an age of fear and encroaching chaos, this pressure grows stronger. It is my article of faith that whatever meaning can be gleaned from life nonetheless resides in expanding our epistemological horizons as far as they can go, and confronting the new frontiers even if we tremble in so doing. It is the only antidote to the myopia of lived experience.
Book of the Year
Literature
Love in the New Millennium (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Price: $25.00
32 used & new available from $2.86
The Penguin Book of Oulipo: Queneau, Perec, Calvino and the Adventure of Form
Price: $29.02
16 used & new available from $19.05
All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo: 1963 - 2018
Price: $32.00
3 used & new available from $14.95
R. A. Lafferty: Three Great Novels: Space Chantey, Fourth Mansions, Past Master
Price: $19.34
8 used & new available from $6.05
The Labyrinth of Tender Force: 166 Love Stories (The German List)
Price: $41.40
18 used & new available from $13.01
World-Changing Rage: News of the Antipodeans (The German List)
Price: $21.90
14 used & new available from $16.00
Rock, Paper, Scissors: And Other Stories (New York Review Books Classics)
Price: $13.88
48 used & new available from $2.94
The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny
Price: $24.99
19 used & new available from $24.99
Price: $61.27
11 used & new available from $53.59
Dante's Divine Comedy: Part One: Hell. Decorated and Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray
Price: $16.63
23 used & new available from $12.08
Price: $14.59
39 used & new available from $8.75
Krishna's Lineage: The Harivamsha of Vyasa's Mahabharata
Price: $107.00
3 used & new available from $101.76
Humanities
Ribbon of Darkness: Inferencing from the Shadowy Arts and Sciences
Price: $30.00
17 used & new available from $19.01
Catastrophizing: Materialism and the Making of Disaster
Price: $27.84
15 used & new available from $17.16
Price: $33.60
21 used & new available from $26.97
Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind
Price: $33.20
1 used & new available from $33.20
Price: $30.95
15 used & new available from $11.48
Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions
Price: ---
1 used & new available from $0.00
Sophocles: A Study of His Theater in Its Political and Social Context
Price: $48.91
29 used & new available from $19.59
I, the Poet: First-Person Form in Horace, Catullus, and Propertius
Price: $56.54
18 used & new available from $42.00
Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century
Price: $44.95
23 used & new available from $40.95
Price: $93.43
27 used & new available from $62.72
The Essence of Tsongkhapa's Teachings: The Dalai Lama on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path
Price: $14.95
13 used & new available from $9.40
Archilochus: The Poems: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary
Price: $140.00
9 used & new available from $111.92
Rudolf Carnap: Early Writings: The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap, Volume 1
Price: $105.00
17 used & new available from $93.92
Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons
Price: $34.95
22 used & new available from $27.44
How to Be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Price: $19.99
1 used & new available from $19.99
Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1965-1981 (The MIT Press)
Price: $30.00
22 used & new available from $10.43
Brahms's Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture (Music in Context)
Price: $79.24
13 used & new available from $79.24
Price: $81.49
25 used & new available from $53.38
Kinship in Ancient Athens: Two-Volume Set: An Anthropological Analysis
Price: $345.55
10 used & new available from $333.28
Price: $82.00
14 used & new available from $77.16
The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation
Price: $35.00
23 used & new available from $24.48
The Roots of Platonism: The Origins and Chief Features of a Philosophical Tradition
Price: $13.30
1 used & new available from $13.30
Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece: Selected Essays
Price: $107.26
27 used & new available from $46.70
Science
The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
Price: $13.99
1 used & new available from $13.99
Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society
Price: $19.23
22 used & new available from $16.75
Brains as Engines of Association: An Operating Principle for Nervous Systems
Price: $44.56
24 used & new available from $28.65
The Reality of Time Flow: Local Becoming in Modern Physics (The Frontiers Collection)
Price: $89.99
12 used & new available from $85.37
Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory (Princeton Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy Book 19)
Price: $17.99
1 used & new available from $17.99
The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
Price: $28.45
1 used & new available from $28.45
This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
Price: $16.30
58 used & new available from $2.73
Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire"
Price: $32.49
32 used & new available from $23.05
Social Sciences
Price: $23.95
24 used & new available from $13.98
Price: $69.99
19 used & new available from $56.36
Price: $72.46
16 used & new available from $53.99
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World
Price: $26.95
56 used & new available from $15.56
Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America
Price: $14.83
30 used & new available from $10.94
To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture
Price: $37.00
16 used & new available from $31.49
Price: $9.99
1 used & new available from $9.99
History
Price: $25.20
29 used & new available from $20.20
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
Price: $18.29
72 used & new available from $12.51
Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires
Price: $26.01
33 used & new available from $6.29
Iran Rising: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic
Price: $4.16
66 used & new available from $3.55
The Postwar Moment: Progressive Forces in Britain, France, and the United States after World War II
Price: $40.00
41 used & new available from $4.34
Price: $26.68
18 used & new available from $20.38
Price: $15.59
66 used & new available from $8.25
Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750
Price: $34.95
32 used & new available from $23.94
The Global Age: Europe 1950-2017 (The Penguin History of Europe)
Price: $14.99
1 used & new available from $14.99
Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present (The Wiles Lectures)
Price: $22.02
48 used & new available from $11.83
The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age
Price: $155.01
13 used & new available from $8.72
Comics
George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat”. The Complete Color Sundays 1935–1944
Price: $194.80
21 used & new available from $149.99
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918
Price: $25.07
30 used & new available from $16.95
The Arab of the Future 4: A Graphic Memoir of a Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992
Price: $17.49
50 used & new available from $10.72
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