2024 Bibliography
Another year of reading
Here are all of the titles I read this year roughly chronological order.
1. Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life, by Caroline Moorhead (2003) (Hardcover)
A biography of a remarkable woman. Martha Gellhorn, an American born in St. Louis, traveled the world and wrote about it, mostly as a war correspondent, but also as a novelist. She covered the Spanish Civil War along with Ernest Hemingway, a notorious macho blowhard whom she married (and soon divorced). Notably, in 1944, while in London both she and Hemingway awaited permission to join the Normandy invasion force to report on it. Neither were granted access, so Gellhorn went to one of the invasion ports in Southern England and talked her way on board a landing craft thus beating Hemingway into combat.
Gellhorn’s story is an inspirational tale of a determined, intelligent, brave, ambitious and sometimes-erascible woman who took command of her amazing life. She lived around the world, including China, Rome, Cuba, London, Wales, Mexico, and — in her eighties — alone in Nairobi. She was personal friends with contemporary luminaries such as HG Wells, Robert Capa, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Eleanor Roosevelt, and General James Gavin.
I read this biography as history, but you might enjoy it as just an amazing life story.
2. American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, by Jared Yates Sexton (2020) (Audiobook)
A retelling of American history without the rose-tinted glasses. As Tamorah Shareef Muhammad said, “The number one reason why America never learns from its history is because America never teaches its real history.” This book is real history.
3. The Future is History, by Masha Gessen (2017) (Hardcover)
After the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the archetype of the communist state, the world wondered what would emerge from the rubble. Gessen, a brilliant historian of the era and the players, walks us through the emerging of the new oligarchy that formed after the fall.
4. The Race for Paris, by Meg Waite Clayton (2015) (Hardcover)
A novel about women war correspondents covering the Allied advance from Normandy to the liberation of Paris. All of the women I loaned the book to loved it. I thought it was good. Vive la difference!
5. The Two-Headed Eagle, by John Biggins (1993) (Audiobook)
Otto Prohaska is one of my favorite fictional characters. Biggins tells his story with erudite history and battle stories that, while verging on the farcical, are all firmly based in fact. I love this book and this is about the third time I’ve read it. Prohaska, a submarine sailor in the Austro-Hungarian navy, is falsely accused of sinking an allied ship. The accusation arrives shortly after he is awarded the Habsburg’s highest medal of valor for something he in fact did do. TPTB can’t court martial a hero, so they banish him for a semester to the Austro-Hungarian air force. Hilarity ensues (This is actually the second book (in a series of four) but, whatever).
(I have all of Biggins’s books in hardcover but I wanted to hear them read aloud)
6. Beaver in California: Creating a Culture of Stewardship, by Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman (2020) (Paperback)
Essentially a pamphlet describing the success the authors and their colleagues have had reintroducing one of the most important animal species into California, where they once lived in abundance and helped to shape the landscape and its plants and animals.
7. The Economic Consequences of the Peace, by John Maynard Keynes (1919) (Hardcover)
John Maynard Keynes was arguably the greatest economist who ever lived. He was an influential advisor to British Prime Ministers in the early decades of the 20th century. He is justifiably famous for his foundational work on the shape of the post-World War Two economic growth, which was remarkably successful. But decades before, in the wake of World War One, he was named to the team of statesmen who devised the terms of surrender for the defeated Central Powers, primarily Germany. But his advice to that team was roundly rejected, and Germany was saddled with punitive and unachievable demands. As Keynes foresaw, those demands led directly to the muscular rise of fascism and the disaster of the Second World War. Upon completion of the misguided Treaty of Versailles in 1919, a disgusted Keynes wrote this book. He wanted to explain just how stupid, petulant, and unreasonable were the victorious parties, and just how inevitably it would lead to further mass death and destruction.
This book, while dry as dust, is probably the most chilling Cassandra ever written. Just about every history book refers to it and I thought it high time that I read the original. It has long been out of copyright and in the public domain, so the new, hardbound edition that I purchased is pure white with plain black text; no graphics, no images, no author’s biography, no blurbs from other authors. Just a simple line drawing of a dove with an olive branch in its beak. After a bible quote, Keynes very last words in the book are these:
We have been moved already beyond endurance, and need rest. Never in the lifetime of men now living has the universal element in the soul of man burnt so dimly. For these reasons the true voice of the new generation has not yet spoken, and silent opinion is not yet formed. To the formation of the general opinion of the future I dedicate this book.
8. The Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System, by Ryan J. Reilly (2023) (Hardcover)
After the 6th of January, 2021, law enforcement was slow to respond to the blatant coup attempt on the United States government. Not so the honest citizens of America. This book chronicles the actions of hundreds of individuals who did the basic research eschewed by justice officials to bring hundreds of criminals who invaded our nation’s capitol to justice.
9. Rumours of War, by Allan Mallinson (2004) (Paperback)
More adventures of cavalryman Matthew Hervey.
10. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carré (1974) (Hardcover)
I first read Le Carré’s Smiley trilogy in the early 80s when I purchased an omnibus edition containing all three novels (noted here separately). It was entitled The Quest for Karla, and I decided it was time to read them again.
The trilogy tells the story of a — fictionalized but true — Soviet double agent who had risen to the highest position within the British Intelligence services.
The first novel is a nail-bitingly good story of British spy George Smiley tracking down and capturing the Soviet “mole” originally recruited by a mysterious Russian named Karla.
11. The Honorable Schoolboy, by John Le Carré (1977) (Hardcover)
The second novel wanders far afield, telling in detail the story of one of the minor characters from the first book. Once the mole has been captured, the Circus, as the author calls the British intelligence agency, is run by very conservative men who don’t want to rock the boat or offend their American colleagues, in front of whom they have been terribly embarrassed. This new, weak leadership ends up unnecessarily killing a good-hearted agent.
12. Smiley’s People, by John Le Carré (1979) (Hardcover)
In the third novel, a tiny voice comes forward from Eastern Europe hinting that Karla may have inadvertently exposed some weakness. Smiley exploits this weakness to eventually capture his nemesis: Karla, the elusive Soviet intelligence chief. The victory, of course, is pyrrhic.
By the way, years ago the BBC produced two superb mini-series called Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People, starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. They are still available on YouTube. They are among the best spy movies ever made, Guiness is superb, and I recently re-watched them after re-reading the books.
In 2011 there appeared a slick feature-length movie of Tinker starring Gary Oldman as Smiley. Despite Oldman’s talent, I do not recommend this film (However, Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb in the recent series Slow Horses and both he and the series are excellent).
13. The Emperor’s Colored Coat, by John Biggins (1995) (Audiobook)
This is the Biggins’s third Prohaska novel. Young Otto Prohaska is learning to fly, and on a training flight his airplane breaks down — back then airplanes were made from balsa and string and none too reliable — and he is forced to crash land. Unfortunately he crash lands on a royal hunting party, destroying the elegant tents and tables of none other than the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Archduke is furious, except that the Archduke’s honored guest at the hunting party is Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany — the Kaiser — and the Kaiser is quite pleased that Prohaska has provoked the inflated Archduke. The Kaiser, being much older and outranking the Archduke, wheedles a commitment out of him to attach Prohaska to the Archduke’s staff. Many adventures — and much history — proceeds from this event.
14. Escape from Freedom, by Erich Fromm (1941) (Paperback)
I wish I could have read this book. The challenge to understand what freedom is and what it means is worthy, but this book depends too much on dated cultural assumptions and clumsy philosophy. The language was archaic and stultifyingly passive. The ideas seemed interesting, and many contemporary authors reference this work. I tried.
15. The Little Drummer Girl, by John Le Carré (1983) (Hardcover)
The author tackles the conflict between Palestine and Zionists. There are no good guys in this novel but lots of fascinating spycraft. The book is prescient in light of the 2024 battles between hard-line Israelis and Hamas.
16. Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, by Kim Kelly (2022) (Hardcover)
An overview history of union activism in the United States. We meet many brave activists who led the growth of the labor movement over the decades. There’s lots of good stories here, but I’d kinda rather read just one great story about the labor movement.
17. Words Will Break Cement: the Passion of Pussy Riot, by Masha Gessen (2014) (Paperback)
Pussy Riot was more about performance art than about music. In a drab gray repressed post-communist world, dressing outrageously and quoting anarchical poetry is not only revolutionary, but gets you tossed into the gulag. Gessen sympathetically tells their story, mostly about their legal troubles and pointless incarceration.
18. Kingdom of Brunel, by Paul Jamison (2019) (Audiobook)
This audiobook was an exceedingly brief and shallow biography of the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the foremost engineer of the new industrial age. Evidently, it was the sound track of a cheaply made film for British television.
19. American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History, by Casey Michel (2021) (Audiobook)
Yup. When oligarchs, criminals, and dictators need a way to legitimize the money they have extorted or stolen they come to the best marketplace for laundering money in the world: the Yew Ess Ay.
20. An Act of Courage (Hardcover)
I like Matthew Hervey, but I’m not sure where his story is going. Also, I find Mallinson’s writing to be less than crystal clear.
21. The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, by Alicia Garza (2020) (Audiobook)
In 2013, in the midst of the uproar over the killing of Trayvon Martin, author Garza accidentally created a meme; she tweeted that black lives matter. This book is quite well-written and inspiring. Garza weaves her own life story with the ongoing fight for civil rights in the 21st century. It’s good to hear a young voice speak so eloquently.
22. Company of Spears, by Allan Mallinson (Hardcover)
British Light Dragoon Matthew Hervey campaigns against the Zulu in South Africa.
23. Who Owns this Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, by David Bellos and Alexandre Mantagu (2024) (Hardcover)
This is an excellent and timely book. As an writer, speaker, software author, and product inventor in the heart of the computer business since about 1974, intellectual property has played a significant role in my professional life. Way back in the last century when I was just starting out, I depended on copyright to protect me against the ravages of big companies. Today, copyright is the primary tool of those same big companies to ravage the rights of individuals and startups. As the authors explain, the tools for maintaining justice have become the tools for maintaining injustice.
There’s a lot to like in the humble book, from its even-handed treatment of the subject to its clever front cover.
24. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, by Adam Jentleson (2021) (Audiobook)
A history of the filibuster in the United States Senate and why it was created to suppress civil rights and how it continues to do so.
25. Asked to Officiate: Your Complete Guide to a Perfect Ceremony, by American Marriage Ministries and Bethel Nathan (2018) (Paperback)
A strong-willed, good friend selected me to officiate at her wedding. Nominally, she “asked” me to officiate, but one does not say “No” to Alex. I politely declined, claiming ignorance, inexperience, fear, lack of gravitas, atheism, age, ennui, pretty much any excuse I could muster. She ignored them all and said, “Oh, you’ll do fine” and thus the matter was settled. Mostly, I was in denial about the whole thing for months leading up to her nuptials.
Finally, as the big day approached, I forced myself to face my fate. I needed to know more about the happy couple, so I interviewed Alex and her fiancé, learning more about their history, hopes, and dreams. I found clear character traits and compelling metaphors and soon, to my surprise, I had a speech. Neither Alex nor her fiancé needed advice or religion, so I felt my task was to reinforce what they believed about themselves and each other while amusing the crowd, their family and friends.
I’m pleased to say that the ceremony went off without a hitch. It was a glorious Spring day in the wine country Redwoods. They liked my little speech, the crowd liked it, her Father liked it (that was very important), and we dotted the eyes and crossed the tees for the State of California so the thing was legal and official.
In order to for me to be able to make it legal I first needed to become an ordained minister. I did so by taking a rigorous examination which consisted of my answering truthfully that I was over 18 and a resident of California, and sending along seventy-five bucks to the American Marriage Ministries. By return post I received a fancy certificate and this paperback book, Asked to Officiate that answered all of my questions about the little details of hitching people.
The book was actually very helpful. I can’t say it was a page-turner, but then, that’s not its job. I’m pleased that I was able to help Alex and her family, and I’d be happy to never have to do that again.
26. The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story, by Sam Wasson (2023) (Hardcover)
Sam Wasson loves Hollywood and moviemakers. This latest book on the subject is a biography of Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola is a force of nature and a fascinating character. He gambles with his career, has crazy notions about what makes movies great, and he has most generously launched a thousand careers in the movie business.
At this point I will read anything Wasson writes. And Coppola: OMG!
27. Man of War, by Allan Mallinson (Hardcover)
The continuing saga of Matthew Hervey, light dragoon.
28. Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, by Serhy Yekelchyk (2007) (Audiobook)
A historical survey of modern Ukraine, including the Orange Revolution of 2004. When Adolf Hitler justified his war of expansion in the 1930s and 1940s, he spoke of the need for lebensraum, or room to live. What he meant by this euphemism was the enormously productive steppe of southern Ukraine. This rich agricultural region fed the ancient Greeks, then much of Eastern Europe, and today it feeds Africa. The great battles of World War II — Kursk, Kiev, Smolensk — were all fought on Ukrainian soil. The Soviets coveted the fertile Ukrainian lands just as much as Hitler did, and after the war they took it. Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union after much of their country was devastated and millions of their people killed. To the Ukrainian people, the Soviet presence was less a partnership than it was an occupation. Largely, the Ukrainians saw themselves as a European nation rather than an Asian one. In the early years of the 21st century, as the gross failure of the bolshevik experiment became visible to all, Ukraine, like so many other captive Soviet states, sought independence. This struggle is ongoing.
29. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, by Mary Roach (2013) (Hardcover)
Mary Roach has carved a literary niche for herself and fills it admirably. She writes about the macabre and disgusting parts of everyday life. In this book she gives us popular science about our digestive system, starting at the mouth and ending at the obvious other extremity. Her writing is simultaneously funny and edifying. I am glad to know the details of my two different types of saliva and how much was learned from war wounded veterans with holes exposing their guts to the outside world. There’s much of interest to learn here including food faddists, enema fanatics, and about how Elvis died from constipation.
30. Warrior, by Allan Mallinson (2008) (Hardcover)
I know I’m giving short shrift to this excellent series of historical novels, but they all tend to blend into one continuous story. It’s not a series that your average reader would plow through, but those who are fascinated by history and military history will find them all packed with both.
In this volume, our protagonist ventures to colonial southern Africa and meets Shaka Zulu, the brilliant indigenous warrior king.
31. Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II, by James Holland (2018) (Audiobook)
In February 1944 the combined aerial forces of America and Great Britain launched an all-out assault on Germany. Holland chronicles the bloody week while using it as a vehicle to tell the history of Allied air power.
32. The Women Who Wrote the War, by Nancy Caldwell Sorel (1999) (Hardcover)
This is a great book and I only regret that it took me a long time to discover it. A tiny event involving correspondent Lee Carson chronicled in a book by Ben MacIntyre (Prisoners of the Castle) got me interested in women war correspondents. Should you be interested in reading on the subject, this is by far the best place to start.
Focusing on World War II, the book is an intertwined series of biographical sketches and anecdotes in rough chronological order. We are given insightful views of such luminaries as Marjorie “Dot” Avery, Margaret Bourke-White, Iris Carpenter, Lee Carson, Virginia Cowles, Catherine Coyne, Martha Gellhorn, Marguerite Higgins, Helen Kirkpatrick, Lee Miller, Eleanor Packard, Sigrid Schultz, Mary Welsh and many others.
The war was truly worldwide and women played their parts around the globe. While America’s role in the war only lasted five years, for many the war was decades long. The experiences of early China hands like Emily “Mickey” Hahn and Shelley Mydans and others are described.
While this book is primarily about the women war correspondents in World War II, the author makes sure to show that women already filled that role a hundred years earlier by giving us glimpses of women in the trenches in the Italian uprisings of 1848 and the Greco-Turkish war of 1897.
33. Funny Story, by Emily Henry (2024) (Audiobook)
Like me, my wife reads quite a lot also, but only occasionally do we find books we both like. When we go on long car rides together we like to listen to audiobooks and that is how we discovered this one. It’s a simple rom-com set in rural Michigan. Daphne, the protagonist, gets involved with the ex-boyfriend of the woman who stole her (Daphne’s) fiancé. Hilarity (and romance) ensue. Mostly nice people doing nice things together. With a happy ending.
34. Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence, by Yaroslav Trofimov (2024) (Hardcover)
According to Google, Yaroslav Trofimov is a Ukrainian-born Italian author and journalist who is chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. In this book, he comes across as a young war correspondent willing to take personal risks to report on what might be the most important story of the 21st century: the Russian attempt to destroy Ukraine in an effort to rebuild their tsarist empire.
A young friend of mine who, like me, has Ukrainian ancestors, asked me to recommend some relevant books. I gave him two: this one and Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom. Snyder’s is the view from an intellectual historian while Trofimov’s is the view from the trenches.
35. A Salty Piece of Land, by Jimmy Buffett (2004) (Hardcover)
I’ve never been much of a country music fan but I’ve always been a big fan of Jimmy Buffett. While strongly country-influenced, his music is something…more elevated. In particular, Buffett is a good lyricist, and I love good lyrics. In his own words, he is a “hard-drinking calypso poet.” Jimmy died in September of ’23, so for my birthday this year Sue bought me a hardcover copy of A Salty Piece of Land, not realizing that it matched the other hardcover copy of the book that I had bought and read and shelved twenty years ago (I have all of Jimmy’s books). Anyway, I decided to reread the book.
Jimmy is a storyteller more than an author. The story is interesting, bouncing between historical insight and goofy plot twists, but literature it is not. Definitely not. On balance, it’s not a good book, unless you are a big Buffett fan and then you’ll like it, especially all of the hidden references to song lyrics.
(It’s easy for me to disparage Buffett’s writing skills, but he is one of the few authors to not only have multiple New York Times bestsellers but to have them in both fiction and non-fiction categories. Respect)
36. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, by Zachary D. Carter (Audiobook)
A biography of the famous economist.
37. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, by John D’Emilio (2003) (Paperback)
A chance comment on the internet provoked my interest in Bayard Rustin, saying words to the effect that “all of Martin Luther King’s good ideas came from Bayard Rustin.” Whether true or not, it suggested that Rustin would be of interest. And interesting he certainly is.
The fight for racial justice and peace in the United States (and around the world) has had no more ardent activist and thinker than Bayard Rustin. From his prison term for his conscientious objection to the violence of World War II to his study of Ghandi’s effective method of active, articulate, and non-violent protest actions formed his foundation as an organizer, communicator, and leader of the civil rights movement in the latter half of the 20th century.
Arguably his most important contribution was introducing Martin Luther King to Ghandi’s non-violent methods, which King used to great effect in the civil rights battles of the 50s and 60s.
Rustin was gay at a time when homosexuality in America was treated either as grounds for ostracism, violence, or as a crime to be prosecuted. As a black, gay activist, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover worked diligently to destroy Rustin, and nearly succeeded. While MLK is universally known, Rustin’s name is largely forgotten. The anti-gay persecution of Rustin forced him to stay in the background of the civil rights movement, letting others take the credit for his work.
Incidentally, in 2023 a movie entitled Rustin was released that provides a glimpse into Bayard Rustin’s life and career. The movie focuses primarily on his unsung role as the creator of the hugely successful 1963 March on Washington DC where MLK gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.
38. The Ardennes, 1944: The Battle of the Bulge, by Antony Beevor (2015) (Hardcover)
Beevor is arguably the best popular historian of World War II writing today. His battle histories provide a broad overview of the military forces while breathing life into them by relating the telling detail of men in extremis.
The German Winter Offensive in the Ardennes, the battle the American’s called the Battle of the Bulge, was a desperate, last-ditch effort by the German Army to break through the Allied lines in Western Europe to reach the sea. They failed to do so.
The surprise attack came on the 16th of December, 1944, in the frozen, forested hills of the Belgian hinterlands. The Americans considered this sector to be utterly unsuited for offensive operations, so they defended it with raw, inexperienced and ill-trained soldiers just arrived in Europe, and a few exhausted veterans of the long push from Normandy through France. Achieving utter surprise, the cream of the German SS Panzer divisions (diverted from the Russian Front) smashed this sleepy defensive line to pieces. Entire divisions (a division has about 12,000 troops) dissolved into panic and chaos.
Individual acts of stubbornness and heroism forced German delays, and ultimately, after a month of some of the toughest and bloodiest fighting of the war, the Germans retreated.
After finishing the book I recalled that Edward Carlick, my father-in-law, fought in the Bulge as a lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. Ed passed away over twenty years ago so he can’t testify, but I recalled that about 40 years ago, knowing that I was interested in the war and deciding that I wasn’t going to abandon his daughter, he gave me books published by the intelligence department of the 1st Division, saying that he thought I’d find them interesting. After a brief search I located these books and finally brought them out to read.
39. Selected Intelligence Reports, Volumes I (6 Dec 1944) & II (6 June 1945), by HQ 1st US Infantry Division, US Army (Hardcover)
I remember, when Ed first gave them to me, being struck by the boring officialese in these two slim booklets and I quickly shelved and forgot about them. But after a thorough reading of Beevor’s Bulge book, I decided to take a deeper look.
Entitled Selected Intelligence Reports, that’s exactly what they are. It appears that, at year end, the military analysts in the Intelligence section reviewed their written output from the past year and chose the most interesting bits to collect and publish under hardcovers as a gift to the divisional officer corps. It seems they were a bit of self-congratulations for a tough fight done well, and a bit of self-promotion for an often unsung staff job.
Volume I covers the advance through France from Normandy to the approach to Germany itself. Volume II covers the Bulge through to the cessation of hostilities. As you might expect, the tone of the two volumes differs significantly, as Volume I begins with the awesome D-Day invasion while Volume II begins with the bloody punch in the nose the Division received in the icy forests of the Belgian mountains.
The proud inscription in the flyleaf of both volumes, says “Edward Carlick 1st Lt. Co. D, 26th Inf.” Ed never really talked about his wartime service, so this inscription allowed me to place him more accurately on Beevor’s battle maps. It turns out that Co D of the 26th Regiment of the 1st Division was part of the American line on Elsenborn Ridge where their stubborn defense of the little town of Dom Bütgenbach deflected the axis of attack of the elite SS Panzer Kampfgruppe Peiper southwards and away from critical American supply dumps. Sue and I are proud to own Ed’s war medals and keep them in a frame on the wall. There’s a Bronze Star, and a Presidential Unit Citation for the 1st Infantry Division, and the much prized Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It’s nice to know that Ed played a part.
40. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder (2018) (Hardcover)
Timothy Snyder is a top-notch historian. As such, he sees the larger patterns of the day-to-day events that most of us get lost in. This book answers the question many of us pondered after Donald Trump’s first ascension to the American Presidency, “How the hell did we get here?”
I strongly recommend this book.
41. Thunderstruck, by Erik Larson (2006) (Hardcover)
Generally, I like Larson’s work, but I thought this was his weakest effort. He likes to tell the story of two opposing personalities, where their juxtaposition gives insight to both. In this case it’s Guglielmo Marconi and Hawley Crippen, the inventor of the radio and a quack doctor, respectively. While Marconi’s story is interesting, I don’t think the pairing worked.
42. I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter (2007) (Hardcover)
When Hofstadter’s first book, Gödel, Escher, Bach, came out in 1979 I abandoned my attempt to read it although I can’t quite remember why. That book was a huge bestseller and I have always felt my inability to complete it a personal failing. Then I read something (probably on the stupid internet) that said even Hofstadter thought he had missed the mark with that book, but that he nailed it with I Am a Strange Loop. Seeing this as a chance to redeem my failings as a reader, I purchased a new, hardcover copy (cheaper than an ebook!). I then forced myself to read it, cover to cover.
I loved this book! I hated this book! The author’s stories, metaphors, and tangents sparkle with intellectual brilliance. Those some stories, metaphors, and tangents gave me an almost uncontrollable urge to slap Hofstadter right across his brilliant, brainiac face.
The book attempts to define what “I” is. What is human consciousness and how does it work? It actually does a pretty good job at doing that. But I can do it with a one sentence joke: I don’t know who discovered water but it wasn’t a fish!
The one (painfully, annoyingly) extended metaphor that really worked for me was the brownian motion of metaphors, but YMMV.
The BFL* is that I learned…something…and instead of feeling deficient for not reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, I feel clever and prescient!
* Bottom Fucking Line
43. Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine, by Mark Galeotti (2024) (Audiobook)
According to those who study geopolitics, Russia is geographically indefensible (the exact opposite of the United States, blessed with 3000-mile-wide moats on both sides). In order to feel militarily secure, Russia must protect itself with buffer states. In order to yoke buffer states it must fight wars. Many wars.
44. The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life), by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison (2024) (Hardcover)
Neoliberalism is one of those economic philosophies that is as self-evidently ridiculous as is “originalism” is for law. Neoliberalism is essentially libertarianism with a college degree. For decades the right wing has adopted neoliberalism as its own. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were both very effective in changing the way we framed our economic thought, and in the 90s President Bill Clinton infamously joined them.
45. Possess the Air: Love, Heroism, and the Battle for the Soul of Mussolini’s Rome, by Taras Grescoe (2019) (Paperback)
This is the first book that I have read by Taras Grescoe, and he is now one of my favorite authors.
This book is non-fiction but reads like a novel, which is my favorite kind of book. It tells of the journey of a gifted young aristocrat, Lauro de Bosis, from louche privilege to determined resistance. But largely — and from the very first paragraph — the book is an encomium to pre-Mussolini Rome. The author indulges us in numerous loving descriptions of the Eternal City before it was ravaged by industrialization and fascist megalomania. Many of these segments are presented in the context of mini-biographies of contemporary, quirky, and notable observers of the scene; artists, actors, novelists, poets, sculptors, scientists, raconteurs, and foreign visitors. Each player is presented in situ, in the streets and hills of Rome and the surrounding pastoral Campagna. Alongside these observers are the up and coming fascists, including the brutal Amerigo Dumini who assassinated Giacomo Matteotti, the head of the socialist opposition, and veteran Gabriele d’Annunzio, an astonishing fascist renegade who single-handedly captured the city of Fiume.
The book was published in 2017, and just inside the front cover, almost as an afterthought, before the title page, the copyright page, and the author’s dedication page, there’s a simple, untitled, one page note that is clearly aimed at the alarming rightward turn of American politics. Here’s most of it:
“The events described in Possess the Air begin in Italy one hundred years ago, when war, corruption, and economic uncertainty had shaken a people’s confidence in the fundamental institutions of democracy.
“At a crucial time, Benito Mussolini rose to power by promising to make Italy great again. Before declaring himself dictator, though, Mussolini was democratically elected to the Italian parliament. His success was enable by elites — both Conservative and Liberals — who chose to remain silent, or to maintain their power by cutting deals with a man they knew advocated division, winked at brutality, and exalted war. Mussolini became Il Duce because too many Italians undervalued the free institutions underlying the modern democratic state — institutions the previous generations had battled to establish and defend, often at the cost of their lives. The willingness to trade liberty for a spurious promise of security, prosperity, and glory allowed an opportunistic autocrat to implement the tenets of Fascism, an ideology that would visit unspeakable terror and bloodshed on Europe and the world.”
46. Point of No Return, by Martha Gellhorn (1948) (Paperback)
After reading a couple of biographies of the remarkable war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, I thought it high time that I read some of her contemporaneous work.
Somewhat to my surprise, I found this book readable and relevant. The language seemed very contemporary to my ears, and not particularly dated. As the war was drawing to a close, Gellhorn personally visited Dachau and was greatly affected by what she saw there. This novel is her attempt to convey the scale of the outrage of the Nazi death camps.
It’s a simple story about a unprepossessing American soldier, Jacob Levy, a driver for a middling officer. Gellhorn lets us learn about Levy’s rather stoic character over the course of the book and how his competence brings the at-first anti-semitic officer to a more tolerant stand. But, Levy transforms after he witnesses the horror of the camps.
47. Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (2016) (Hardcover)
A book full of stories and commentary about how race still enslaves the American soul. It most certainly still does.
48. The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple (2017) (Hardcover)
A very readable series of brief histories of Presidents of the United States since Richard Nixon. It’s Oval Office inside baseball and every anecdote, every observation gives the reader more insight into how the sausage of government is actually made. Whipple is very apolitical and quite even-handed as he describes how the various Presidents construct their staff and Cabinet. An easy and enlightening read.
49. Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of HEAVEN’S GATE, by Steven Bach (1985) (Hardcover)
Lately I’ve been reading about American filmmaking. In particular, about that period in Hollywood between the era of the big studios and the present era of corporate ownership-driven blockbuster-mania, roughly the 1970s and early 1980s. Author Steven Bach was a senior production executive at United Artists during that time, and he was ultimately responsible for the making of the movie Heaven’s Gate. That movie, released in 1980, went three times over budget and bombed spectacularly in cinemas. The failure was so massive that it took United Artists into bankruptcy, along with the destruction of many executive careers. This book is Bach’s play-by-play of how the disaster was created.
In 1978 director Michael Cimino’s Vietnam war epic The Deer Hunter was released to acclaim. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won five of them, including Best Picture and Best Director. But The Deer Hunter, while visually stunning, left no significant impression. The metaphor of Russian Roulette, so shocking on screen, didn’t really contribute to the story. After a few months, the critics who had lauded it began to call it the Emperor with no clothes.
The big studios, on the hunt for the next blockbuster, were very interested in Cimino. United Artists signed him up and gave him complete artistic freedom, which he then abused in legendary amounts. When he finally delivered the film, months late, it was five hours long, and the studio was in a bind. They finally cut it down to three hours, but by doing so it just became a flabby western instead of a genre-defining artistic triumph. The community of film critics, who had initially hailed The Deer Hunter as a breakthrough, took this opportunity to redeem themselves by dumping enthusiastically on Heaven’s Gate. The film was a bomb of biblical proportions.
50. We Are Legion: We Are Bob, by Denis E. Taylor (Audiobook)
I enjoyed this book, the first of a series, and I expect I’ll enjoy the rest of them. It’s a simple science fiction tale of a young man who becomes a computer program, is installed in a spaceship, and instructed to go forth to a) find new Earth-like planets for colonization, b) replicate yourself, and c) repeat forever.
51. Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath, by Bill Browder (2022) (Audiobook)
Bill Browder is a capitalist with a strong sense of justice. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, many American and European capitalists saw the former states of the USSR as a ground floor opportunity for investment, and Browder was one of them.
Browder’s investment firm, Hermitage Capital, was exceptionally successful. It focused on exposing and removing fraud in Russian companies and then investing in them. Vladimir Putin retaliated by kicking Browder out of the country and shutting down Hermitage. After a year or so, the defunct Hermitage name was used to commit a 230 million dollar tax fraud which was then pinned on Browder. Via his attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, Browder tried to fight the charge. Magnitsky was arrested and murdered in a Moscow jail. Browder then altered his professional focus from investing to getting justice for Magnitsky, and this book tells the story.
52. American Peasant, Christopher Schwarz (2024) (Hardcover)
Schwarz is a wood worker, and one of my very favorite practitioners and thinkers about the subject. He isn’t an enemy of power tools, but he prefers hand tools. Over the last 50 years or so, much of the wisdom of how to use hand tools has been lost, so about 15 years ago Schwarz set out to find good sources so he could learn the old ways. These include the rare, lone, anachronistic crafter, actual centuries-old examples, and ancient texts. He got so good at this that he formed a publishing company to resurrect some of these long-out-of-print texts. It’s called Lost Art Press, located in the little town of Covington Kentucky. Being a meticulous crafter in wood, you would expect that his publishing, binding, and printing standards are equally fine, and you would be correct. For any bibliophile it’s a pleasure just to hold a Lost Art Press book.
Besides the work of the ancients and semi-ancients (there’s a lot of good woodworking wisdom from the first half of the 20th century), Schwarz occasionally publishes his own writing, and American Peasant is the latest example. He has a knack for discovering overlooked but important craft genres that are invisible to most casual observers, and this book describes the design and construction of beautiful, practical, everyday wooden objects produced primarily in Central and Eastern Europe. The objects are simple to make because they were made by ordinary people for use by themselves and their families.
53. The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey, by Richard Whittle (2010) (Hardcover)
Work began on the development of a military tilt rotor aircraft starting sometime in the early 1970s. The culmination of that effort, the V-22 Osprey, didn’t become fully operational until almost 35 years later. The full story of the labyrinthine development process is all here, including the infamous three fatal crashes that sowed much doubt about the aircraft.
As a maker, I can testify that building complex products can’t be done quickly. That’s because the product must be built, tested, re-designed and re-built multiple times. Only grueling testing and actual field usage can reveal unforeseen problems, and correcting those problems often introduces new ones.
To justify building an innovative, complex, and expensive weapon system, it must be capable of handling different missions by different service branches. But the implications of satisfying such a broad range of capabilities means that every subsystem grows in complexity.
What’s more, the military procurement process is equally fraught, primarily because it’s political. Senators might back a new weapon system if the factories are in their state. A Representative might oppose a system if they are accidentally insulted by a vendor’s staffer. And nobody wants to be associated with a lousy product.
Making the Osprey was an archetype of the multi-service, multi-role, new technology, new design, new doctrine, new everything weapon system that pushed every practical and political boundary. This book lays it all out in detail.
54. Earth to Moon: A Memoir, by Moon Unit Zappa (2024) (Audiobook)
This was fascinating, in the same way that a gruesome pile-up on the freeway is fascinating. I’ve long been a fan of Moon’s father Frank Zappa, particularly his early work, but this book did not make him look good. Moon paints herself as a victim who tried but failed to rise above the intentional and inadvertent abuse heaped upon her by her self-absorbed, selfish parents. Her father was in another world and her mother was jealous of Moon. But then, this is an autobiography, so who’s to say what really happened?
55. The Owl: A Biography, by Stephen Moss (2023) (Hardcover)
Evidently the author is a big wheel in the world of English broadcasting botanists. He’s written several books about birds, so this is one of a series. I’m no bird expert. I just like birds and there’s quite a variety of them where I live, including multiple species of owl. And owls are the most interesting of birds and I learned much about them here.
56. Nothing Is True, and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev (2014) (Hardcover)
The author, born in Kyiv in the USSR, was a year old when his parents escaped with him to London. His parents were politically active broadcasters who fled from persecution. Educated in London, he returned to Russia for most of the first decade of the 21st century while he worked in Russian broadcast media. This book is a kaleidoscopic view of his sometimes-surreal professional experiences in those years.
Russian television is Russian propaganda. But not your father’s propaganda of stodgy, didactic lectures from droning political commissars, but far more contemporary and hip. “The task is to synthesize Soviet control with Western entertainment.”
That is, it’s about the creation of lies that are compelling, reassuring, defensible, exciting, distracting, beguiling, and have every outward appearance of normal, quotidian reality. As such, it attracts some exceptionally fantastic and grotesque characters who perform on both sides of Pomerantsev’s camera. We meet them all in this book.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1992, Russia spent a decade as a lawless, gangster hell. Eventually, there were losers and winners. The losers were dirt poor, locked up, or dead while the winners became oligarchs. In the decade of the oughts the oligarchs laundered their money, bought real estate and exoticars, hired bodyguards and beautiful mistresses, and lived the fast, glamorous, and cheesy nouveau riche lifestyle. There was plenty of raw material for a TV producer charged with making this all look like a successful country.
Pomerantsev is culturally a Russian and was raised by Russian emigres but has an outsider’s distance, so he is uniquely positioned to give us an insider’s look at the New Russia. This is worth reading to get a hint of what the USA will likely soon become.
(A coda) Last year I read a novel by Martin Cruz Smith (Independence Square) published in 2023. The main reason that I disliked it was because of a long sequence detailing an unbelievable performance by a Hell’s Angels styled motorcycle gang doing political theatre for Vladimir Putin. I thought it was an unrealistic crazy vision that had no place in a quality novel. To my astonishment, Pomerantsev describes at length an actual Russian motorcycle gang called The Night Wolves who do exactly the kind of over-the-top daredevil state-sponsored propaganda spectacle described by Smith in his novel. I owe Smith an apology. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
57. James, by Percival Everett (2024) (Hardcover)
It’s safe to say that every American has read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Part of the American canon, it’s the story of young Huck escapeing down the Mississippi River on a raft accompanied by an escaped slave named Jim. Lately, racist revisionists have tried to ban the book because it shows how slaves were mistreated. They prefer the untrue and unhistorical — and frankly unbelievable — notion that slaves were content with their status.
In a clever turnabout, accomplished author Everett retells the story from Jim’s point of view. Everett calls him James, and gives him a bright intellect and rich, literate persona unlike the sad, shambling, illiterate Jim of Twain’s original. The retelling is in many ways more satisfying than the original.
58. Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds, by Hetty Lui McKinnon (2023) (Hardcover)
I’ve been trying to make my diet more plant-forward lately so I asked a friend for a recommendation for a book on vegetarian cooking. This friend is a local restaurateur known for her skills with vegetables. She recommended Tenderheart. It’s a cookbook, so you can’t really read it from cover to cover (although I tried), but I read enough to get the gist. I wasn’t that impressed. The author has vegetables she likes, and she tells how she likes to prepare them, but on the topic of why one might want to use those particular vegetables in their cooking, she fell back on unhelpful, personal reasons, like, her grandmother liked them. I was hoping for less focus on recipes and more focus on ways to think about vegetarian cuisine. I’ll keep looking, and any recommendations from others are appreciated.
59. The Surprising Design of Market Economies, by Alex Marshall (2012) (Hardcover)
I’m always looking for interesting books. I read a blurb, or I see a mention in my social media, or a friend recommends one, and I’ll make a note. A few weeks later I’ll move something on my desk and uncover the note. I’ll look it up on Better World Books and put it in my shopping cart, but let it sit a few weeks until I’ve accumulated enough to earn free shipping. A few days after I finally press the BUY button a stack of books arrives. I’ll put them on my To Be Read shelf, groaning from the weight of enticing titles, until — like a fine wine — it is time to consume it. Some books will sit on that shelf for months or even a couple of years before I’ll read them, while some irresistible titles are devoured immediately.
This book, with its unprepossessing flowchart-on-graph-paper cover and “dismal science” subject matter sat on that shelf for well over a year before I finally, reluctantly gave it a read.
What a surprise! The book was not only a pleasant read, it was chock full of history, brilliant insight, and interesting people. I recommend this book highly!
The author’s basic premise is that the concept of the “free market” is a canard, and for two salient reasons: 1) it’s not free, and B) there is not just one but a multitude of markets.
Markets aren’t ever “free” because all markets are created by people with laws, conventions, rules, and enforcement. There are a multitude of markets because there are a multitude of goods and services exchanged throughout the world. There’s a market, for example, for Olympic medals. The rules are that you have to be a world class athlete to earn one. You cannot purchase one. The market for alcoholic beverages in the USA varies from state-to-state and even from county-to-county depending on the day of the week, the time of day, the age of the buyer, and the alcoholic content of the product. The market is made of rules that people agree upon. There is generally a mechanism to enforce those rules. These are my examples, but the author’s are better, more varied, and more fully developed, and give rise to more interesting speculation.
The primary take-away from this book is that all markets are sets of man-made rules and, as such, the rules can be changed. As much as economists would have us think, the laws of markets are not like the laws of physics. They are not inevitable, not unchanging, and not rational. We are their masters and not vice versa.
60. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, by Simon Winchester (2021) (Hardcover)
This is one of Winchester’s better outings. It’s a broad survey of how civilizations regard the land they are on. Topics that he addresses include:
Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere generally believed that owning the land was as ridiculous a notion as owning the breeze or the clouds. Manifest Destiny changed that.
In England before the English Civil War, all of the land was owned by the King. The King allowed some of his favored subjects to control a portion of that land and collect rent from the yeoman farmers who worked it. But as these favored subjects grew richer they grew more powerful and forced the King to allow private ownership. Thus began the infamous process of “enclosure” where priests and nobles claimed the land as theirs and evicted the tenants (the nobles could make more money running sheep than they could renting to small farmers). These dispossessed refugees from the land sought sustenance in the cities, which gave rise to the Dickensian hell of 18th and 19th century English urban life.
His discussion of the role of measurement in the shaping of the United States of America is a particularly fascinating story. He frequently quotes the work of another fine author, Andro Linklater. I just finished reading his brilliant book Measuring America and I can agree with Winchester (it will be included in my 2025 bibliography).
61. Steel Boat, Iron Hearts: A U-boat Crewman’s Life Aboard U-505, by Hans Goebeler with John Vanzo (2008) (Audiobook)
Many years ago I became a fan of author Daniel V. Gallery, known for his humorous tales of the US Navy in the Saturday Evening Post. But what gives his stories verisimilitude is that, during World War II, while in command of an aircraft carrier squadron, Gallery’s men boarded and captured an enemy ship on the high seas, the first to do so since 1815. That ship, of course, was the U-505. So, knowing the story from Gallery’s point of view, I was interested to learn what a sailor on the submarine thought about it.
Hans Goebeler is an archetype of a naval seaman. He is stoic and undemanding, but has a strong character and strives for excellence in his work. In this memoir, he tells of his youth, indoctrination, and commitment to the life of a Nazi sailor. Goebeler was a lucky man; the likelihood of a sailor on a U-boat surviving the war was tiny. All sailors are infamous for carousing on shore between voyages, and submariners are no exception. But sailors in wartime take this to an extreme, and sailors in wartime in a country they are occupying tend to push the bounds of civility and the author certainly did.
The actual U-505 has been on public display since 1954 at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
62. Chenneville: A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance, by Paulette Jiles (2023) (Hardcover)
The subtitle says this book is about sad and violent events, but not really. Set in the days immediately after the American Civil War, the protagonist, Union veteran John Chenneville, seeking vengeance, goes looking for the man who murdered his sister. But on his long journey he becomes a different man, finding friends, finding love, and finding himself. The book is really about personal transformation beautifully told by extremely talented author Jiles. This is a good one.
63. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor (2009) (Hardcover)
Another excellent World War II history book by the consistent Beevor. I’ve read many books on D-Day and this one is unique because it devotes only about a third of its 500-plus pages on the landings themselves. The remainder of the book covers the subsequent consolidation of the beachhead and the bloody breakout into open French countryside. The post D-Day battle for Normandy may not have had the technical and logistical sparkle of the amphibious landings but it was every bit as difficult, deadly, and fraught as they were. The latter story has never — I feel safe to say — been treated so well, so coherently, in one volume.
64. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, by Niall Ferguson (2002) (Hardcover)
I suspect that this large format, generously illustrated hardcover book was published to accompany a BBC mini-series on British colonial history. That notwithstanding, it’s actually a very readable, reasonably even-handed treatment of the subject. At the height of the British Empire, England controlled one quarter of the planet’s land mass and one quarter of its human population. British colonial rule is rightly despised for its many economic and civil rights offenses, while it is also praised for the civilization-building role its foreign service played. I suspect that Englishman Ferguson wants us to believe that, on balance, Britain’s influence around the world was positive. That is a point that would be denied by many, and I’m certainly not qualified to judge, but the author does make some good points in England’s favor. It all makes me want to learn more about English history.
65. Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love and International Intrigue in a Doomed World, by Taras Grescoe (2016) (Hardcover)
After having been entranced by Grescoe’s Possess the Air, I purchased this book and it did not disappoint. It chronicles the brief period in the 1920s and 1930s when the Treaty Port of Shanghai waxed prominently as a cultural and economic center. Decades before, the Chinese government, wary of the West but desirous of trade, and under bullying pressure from outside, created these isolated enclaves that allowed Western nations — primarily Great Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, and America — to establish a trading toehold on the mainland. Shanghai was the largest and best known of these.
In a structure similar to Possess the Air, the book is a true-life drama of several amazing Westerners while showcasing their locale en passant. There’s the rich English aristocrat Victor Sassoon, Mickey Hart, the bold and beautiful writer for the New Yorker, and Zau Sinmay, a cultured, Western-educated Chinese poet, along with dozens of other fascinating, larger-than-life minor characters. All of this takes place under the Sword of Damocles in the form of the looming Japanese conquest.
It’s books like this that make history come alive. If I had read books like this in high school instead of the dry-as-dirt approved texts, I might have become a historian instead of a simple computer programmer.
66. The Lives of Lee Miller, by Antony Penrose (1985) (Paperback)
My ongoing quest to learn about women war correspondents naturally introduced me to the remarkable Lee Miller. I finally got a fuller account of her life in Sorel’s book (#32 above). I was searching the Web for more books on Miller when I discovered that other people had also found her story interesting. English actress Kate Winslet was one of them. Making a biopic about Lee Miller became her personal project, a movie she would both produce and star in. Winslet’s movie (it’s quite good) is largely based on Penrose’s book, and it was scheduled to be released in cinemas next week!
Miller’s life was truly astonishing and her talent was exceptional, both as a photographer and writer. She was a Vogue magazine fashion model who became a Vogue correspondent who became a Vogue war correspondent. She learned photography from her father who was a skilled amateur. Later, she lived and worked with surrealist photographer Man Ray in Paris for three years. They worked closely together exploring the boundaries of photography as an art form. She was a muse to artists such as Paul Eluard, Picasso, and Max Ernst. Before the war she was much in demand as a portraitist. During the war her photographs were striking visual compositions that included some of the most iconic images from that conflict, including her famous self-portrait nude in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub.
67. Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany, by Uwe Schütte, (2020) (Paperback)
This book starts out well but ultimately disappoints. It begins by outlining the creative impact the German synthesizer band had on music in general and even on German culture. I expected that it would then talk about how they made their music, but no. The rest of the book was really fan worship masquerading as scholarly biography.
The problem with reading so many books throughout the year is that the task of writing my year-end bibliography becomes that much greater. Thus I am late once again this year. We are so deluged with transitory writing (and I certainly read my share) that — I believe strongly — it behooves us to read the long form.
You can read several years worth of my previously bibliographies on this blog. Here is last year’s.
