[[{“value”:”Fiona Maddocks, Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile. Captures the spirit of the man and his music, and a good addition to the growing literature on European cultural exiles in America. Readable and to the point. Kurt Weyland, Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat. This book has useful data, and perhaps it is a useful corrective to
The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
Fiona Maddocks, Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile. Captures the spirit of the man and his music, and a good addition to the growing literature on European cultural exiles in America. Readable and to the point.
Kurt Weyland, Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat. This book has useful data, and perhaps it is a useful corrective to the most extreme fears out there. But overall it does more to persuade me of the opposite conclusion, namely that populism is a real threat. the author himself writes: “In fact, wide-ranging statistical studies find that only in about one-third of cases have populist chief executives done substantial damage to democracy. and they have truly suffocated liberal pluralism only in approximately one-quarter of all instances…”
Richard J. Evans, Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. This very well-reviewed book does not seem to have either new data or new theory, as yes it does show a lot of the Nazis were “pretty ordinary people.” Yet it is so well-written and well-presented that it deserves a high recommendation nonetheless.
Tim Lankester, Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment: The Promise, The Failure, The Legacy, the author was on the scene in the Thatcher government.
Michael Huemer, Progressive Myths. Michael is a very smart philosopher, but this book seemed like a waste of time to me. Will it persuade anyone? Do we need Michael writing seven-page essays rebutting various claims of the BLM movement and the like?
Josephine Quinn, How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History is too chatty/friendly a book for me, but for many readers it is probably worthwhile.
Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English is great fun, either to read or to browse. I do for instance use some of these words: one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky.
Dana Gioia: Poet & Critic, edited by John Zheng and Jon Parrish, is a series of essays in honor of Dana and a very good introduction to his life and work. Here is my earlier CWT with Dana, information billionaire and aspiring information trillionaire.
Weep, Shudder, and Die: On Opera and Poetry, is Dana’s forthcoming book on opera. He claims that Sweeney Todd is one of the two greatest American operas.
The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Books, Uncategorized
Leave a Reply