1. Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World. Analysis of human culture that is broad, deep, and bold. In a functioning academic world, graduate students in many social science disciplines would be mining this book for dissertation topics. My review could not do it justice.
2. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories. A must-read on the intellectual foundations of the Woke movement. My review suggests ways it might have been better executed.
3. Kevin Davies, Editing Humanity. Tells the stories of the scientists involved in the discovery and development of the gene editing technology known as CRISPR, two of whom were awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry the week that the book came out. The book is history of science reported with maximum melodrama, which makes for an entertaining and informative read.
4. Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump. A look at the way that conservative intellectuals agonized over Mr. Trump. My review shows where I agree with them and where I part company.
5. Peter Zeihan, Disunited Nations. Zeihan has strong opinions about the way that demographics and resources affect the way nations operate in the world. As my review says, I find his opinions very provocative, even though he does not subject them to rigorous testing the way Henrich does his ideas.
Read 3 of the 5 on the list, most likely after having read your reviews, and enough about the other two to have probably a good idea of what they have to say, I am thinking this will be one of the better if not best, book lists I am likely to encounter this year. Nevertheless, none of the books listed would make my personal list mainly as a matter of taste. Looking back over my purchases for the year, I see I sent copies of TLP twice as gifts to political friends. Also, can say that I read Merle Kling’s A Mexican Interest Group in Action which was interesting but dry and unfortunately not something I can in good conscience recommend to the general reader.
Leaving out the classics written before 1900 which I personally find to be most interesting, my favorite 5 nonfiction books of the year were:
(1). The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution by Rachel Foxley, of which has been written “Rachel Foxley’s book should be widely discussed in the academic circles which are its main audience. But its arguments also deserve wider circulation. Foxley notes that the Levellers retain a place in the popular imagination sustained by events like the annual Levellers’ Day event in Burford and Caryl Churchill’s play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (pp. 2-3). And whatever might be said about the romanticism that attends such popular cultural transmissions they have in some respects pictured the Levellers more accurately than the more extreme revisionist historians. Foxley’s book has the capacity to reset the debate about Leveller thought and restore it to a critical role in the history of the English revolution. It is an understatement to say that this book is long overdue. It deserves to be the benchmark post-revisionist study of Leveller political thought.” Highly readable, it enticed me into reading several great primary source works including Overton’s under-appreciated An Arrow Against All Tyrants.
(2.). The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthsman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration Until the War with the Thirteen Colonies. One of those towering classic masterworks one is expected to have read if prone to babbling about the history of political thought that I finally got around to at this late date. Lives up to its reputation and hype. Very readable.
(3.). The Great Debate by Yuval Levin. Have had for a few years but really engaged with and dipped into related primary sources this year. Great fun and who doesn’t love reading about Burke and Paine?
(4.). The Unelected: How an Unaccountable Elite is Governing America by James R. Copland. Title speaks for itself. Readable, unfortunately unlikely to persuade anyone not already sympathetic.
(5.). Power Without Knowledge by Jeffrey Friedman . Difficult reading but rewarding. The title does not necessarily suggest a bad thing. If you have enjoyed Friedman’s earlier critiques of Bryan Caplan or want a nice framework with which to evaluate Garrett Jones’s claims, this is for you.
Interesting suggestions. I only realized after my father had died that the “Mexican interest group” was not what he thought it was. He classified it as a business pressure group, when if you look at the names and the rhetoric of the organization it was clearly libertarian, like the Foundation for Economic Education.
The Instituto was definitely libertarian and I especially enjoyed Chapter 9, Political Life: images of conflict in which he wrote “Hence the Instituto, in keeping with its rigid disapproval of all governmental control and subsidies, frowns on protective tariffs. An entire Hoja of the Instituto has been devoted to a list of taxes imposed by the Mexican Government, with the implication that the taxes are too numerous and excessive; and the list includes taxes on imports and exports. The president of the Instituto has voiced his displeasure with tariffs in general, and specifically with the import and export taxes to which his company […] is subject. Yet the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the parent company […] has been an outspoken advocate of protective tariffs. [… …] And the Instituto staff recognizes the discrepancies between its own orthodoxies and the perception of interests held by officials of the home corporation of the president of the Instituto.”
Fascinating how such tensions are endlessly repeated.
A well done case study.
Apologies, the previous was intended as a response to Dr Kling’s comment.
I had a Wash U connection growing up in that my mother started working on a night school bachelors degree there while I was in high school. She would from time to time have to work late and rather than miss class would send me to take notes. Unfortunately she never took a class from your father so I never had the opportunity to see him in action.
Here’s what on my reading list for 2021 (and beyond)…
Bo Winegard Title: tbd Date: tbd Topic: an intellectual defense of conservatism
[he has mentioned that he is writing this book in his Twitter feed and in at least one article]
John McWhorter Tilte: tbd Date tbd Topic: his thoughts on everything woke.
[he mentioned he was writing this and may have finished the manuscript on several podcasts over the summer/fall]
Jason Riley Title: Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell Date: 05/21.
Bill Gates Title: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need Date: 02/21
Anything else that should be on my list? What have I missed?