Here's what I read this year, and what I thought of it. (Asterisk indicates unabridged audio book.)
Best book I read this year:
1. Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs by Wallace Matson
I adore Wallace, whose common sense, powerful, principled analysis, and skilled writing make his arguments vivid and persuasive. He cuts through the bull, in other words. This book is really his brief summation of his whole career. There's little here you wouldn't get from his other books, but it's all in one place , in a brisk little book that's almost completely persuasive.
Runners-Up:
2. The Terror Courts by Jess Bravin*
Such a disturbing, powerful, and intriguing book. The Bush Administration really had it in their minds that they could organize a new Nuremburg Trial...and then managed to prove how perfectly ludicrous it was to do that. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a disgrace that will shame our nation's history for generations.
3. The Wars of Reconstruction by Douglas Egerton*
A superb telling of one of the really unknown pieces of American history. And was there ever a period that deserved to be known more deeply? The only thing I did not like about this book was Egerton's bizarre habit of referring to the Reconstruction Republicans as "Progressives," which is just inaccurate and misleading, in that it makes it sound as though they were in some way related to the Progressives of the late 19th century, or to those who today use that term, when in fact, the truth is basically the opposite of that. Still, a great book.
Best new discovery:
4. Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum*
A superb analysis of the history of communism in Eastern Europe. Thoroughly researched and extremely well synthesized. I'd known of Applebaum from her reporting and from Gulag (which I still haven't read) but I see from this book why she earned a Pulitzer for the latter. And I was particularly pleased with how well this book fit with all my Arendt reading this year.
Best audio book this year
5. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen*
Very powerful and sweet, and somehow uplifting, story of a family's survival in the Soviet Union, told through recipes that von Bremzen and her mother cook together. I loved this book. And very well read. (I'm not tempted to try the recipes, though.)
Most thought provoking
6. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt*
After finishing Bravin's Terror Courts, I realized how little I knew about the post-WWII Nazi trials, so decided to learn some more. Eichmann in Jerusalem was my first stop, even though it's not about Nuremberg. What a fascinating book. Even if she's wrong about Eichmann himself (as a new book contends), her observations on the nature of evil and administration are extraordinarily insightful and thought provoking.
Most disappointing:
7. The Return of Lono by O.A. Bushnell
This could have been so good. But Bushnell chooses as his main character a guy who doesn't really do anything. He just observes things and writes down conversations. In some places, he acts completely unrealistically--as when they return to Hawaii and he does not immediately long for a reunion with the Hawaiian girl he's fallen in love with? Tries to be philosophical, and there's certainly the material for it in the Captain Cook story...but Bushnell fails to achieve it. Not that it's terrible--in fact, the prose style is quite good. He just set the whole story the wrong way for such a spectacular story. I might try Bushnell again, but this book was not good.
The rest:
8. Little Pink House by Jeff Benedict
Well told. Such a dramatic and awful and important story. Not that much here I didn't know already, but to see it told in a way that is accessible to people, and brings out the real flesh of the Kelo case, is good. How absurd that today's "Progressives" like to say that they're opposed to legal "formalism," when, as this book so effectively shows, it's rational basis decisions like Kelo that ignore the realities of daily life.
9. Heaven on Earth: A History of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik
Muravchik is exactly right to see socialism as a substitute religion. Sadly, he seems to think that the cure is to go back to the original disease, instead of just purging ourselves of the entire delusion. Still, it's a very interesting history, and it gets better as it goes. The parts on the British Labour Party and on Israeli kibbutzim were very interesting. Particularly this last, which was the gem of the book.
Meh. Surprised by how bland the descriptions are. But it was good enough for kids, I guess. Certainly way, way better than the awful movie.
11. The Soviet Tragedy by Martin Malia
An excellent, and spot-on analysis. It's hard to imagine any single volume on the USSR being better than this.
12. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddharta Mukherje*
I found the parts about mastectomies and the treatment of childhood cancer interesting enough, but I think it went on too long.
13. Bachelor Pad by Stephen Kampa
I think Kampa is a genius. His Cracks in The Invisible was my "Best Book" for 2013. This one, though still the work of a brilliant poet, wasn't quite up to that standard. Here Kampa focuses the whole book on a much more limited theme, of a lonely, single guy--whereas Cracks had a much broader range of spirital insight and technical skill. It's certainly a very solid book, but I think he can probably do better.
14. Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden*
A harrowing and compelling story. But the audio book is very badly read.
15. Paradise Lost by John Milton*
Went once more through one of my favorite works.
16. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum*
Eh. Interesting, I guess. I hadn't known that the whole "dream" frame is only in the movie, not the book.
17. The Classical Liberal Constitution by Richard Epstein
Superb. This book is obviously Epstein's reaction to Amar and others who are publishing single-volume overviews of their whole constitutional approach, and it's nice to have this one. I was surprised at how often I found myself disagreeing. But there's also a lot here that I learned from and that I found persuasive.
18. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins*
I was surprised that I found this rather boring. But it may just be that I've read so much Dawkins that I basically knew all this stuff already.
19. The Golden Globe by John Varley
I couldn't remember anything about this book, so I re-read it. It's much better than I recall it being.
20. I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane
Decided to try this because Rand liked Spillane's writing so much. It's okay. I guess I just don't get these kinds of thrillers. I was surprised by how extremely violent and sexual it is, even by today's standards. Must've really raised eyebrows in the '50s. But the mystery wasn't very compelling. It was more shocking and brutal than intriguing or suspenseful.
21. One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane
This book is just idiotic. I certainly can see why Rand liked the prose style--it's got its moments of real brilliance. But the whole story is so cloying. Honestly, it was like a satire of the McCarthy era. And yet it's not.
22. Responsibility & Judgment by Hannah Arendt
Excellent. The idea of the internal conversation as the sourtce of conscience--Socrates' idea tha tit is better to be at odds with all the world than with oneself--and the self-confrontation of Richard III fits very well with my own reading of these texts. I really enjoyed that.
23. The Jungle Book vol. 1 by Rudyard Kipling
Okay. Not as good as I'd hoped.
Always worth re-reading.
Almost always worth re-reading.
26. Nuremburg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph Persico
An excellent overview of the trials for those of us who know little about them. Quite readable.
27. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt*
A good re-read.
28. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Surprisingly good, and surprising how much the Daniel Craig film is true to the book. Also, I was interested by how much of the book is a meditation on masculinity. Certainly better than Spillane.
29. Live & Let Die by Ian Fleming
A dumb book, but I was surprised by how much the dumber film really is true to the book. I had always assumed nothing that dumb could actually be in the book.
30. Dark Lightning by John Varley
31. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Very good. Seems obviously the inspiration for CSNY's song "Wooden Ships."
32. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute*
A lovely, gentle book--though not without its suffering. A very sweet romance blended with a nice bourgeois business-heroine story.
33. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham*
In some ways, this is a great book. I was delighted that it responds directly to what I consider the heretical Federalist/classical republicanism revival that we've seen in recent years. On the other hand, Meacham's attempt to argue that Jefferson was motivated by "power" is either absurdly false, or (more accurately) uses the concept of "power" in a way so broadly as to deprive it of real meaning. Jefferson did not, in fact, pursue power for power's sake. He pursued it to achieve what he thought right. But don't we all do that? So in what sense is that "the pursuit of power"? It seems like trying too hard to find an original way of describing material that is, admittedly, pretty used. Yet Meacham really didn't need to go that far, because he actually presents a lot of good, new detail. A good book, if stripped of a little of its pretensions.
34. My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane
An enjoyable Star Trek adventure. Better, I think than Spock's World was.
35. A Matter of Principle by Ronald Dworkin
It took me forever to get through this book. There are parts that are very dense, much more than Law's Empire was. But I agree very strongly with some parts of it. I hope to write more on this in the future.
36. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis*
This book was kind of weird. But it certainly makes one reflect on what the world was like in the 1930s. In some ways, it's creepy how much Lewis predicted. In other ways, it's a relief to see that things did not turn out the way Lewis feared...in part because of Lewis, I suspect.
37. Discoveries by Norman Thomas
Part of my Captain Cook obsession. This is a pretty good book. Tries a little too hard to be politically correct, but it has some excellent passages. Still, this should not be the first book one reads on Cook, because it's more of a commentary on Cook than a straight out telling of the story.
38. James Madison: A Life Reconsidered by Lynne Cheney*
This was better than I expected it to be. There's more detail about Madison's mysterious illness than was previously published. But mostly it's nice to see a good, new, solid book on Madison. It's not as good as Ralph Ketcham, but I don't think anything could be. It is a very good introduction to Madison.
39. Dirge for An Imaginary World by Matthew Buckley Smith
Good, although perhaps a little too much sustained melancholy in this book of poems. "Priam's Dream" and "Late Aubaude" were particularly good. But I would have preferred the writing to be a little smoother.
40. A Theory of Rights: Toward Limited Government by Roger Pilon
A PhD dissertation that builds on the work of Alan Gewirth to argue a theory of natural rights. But it takes not the sort of biocentric approach of the Aristotelians, but a more analytic approach. "We need not, that is, appeal to moral sentiments that may or may not be there in order to sow that men have rights; it is enough that men act," because in doing so, they regard themselves as having the right to act, and must therefore, to be logically consistent, recognize others like themselves as having rights.
Gave up on (among others): L.A. Confidential by James Elroy (good lord, how I hated this!); Farther Than Any Man by Martin Dugard, The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, Noble House by James Clavell.
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