Books to read

March 28, 2025 • 11:21 am

Between reading science stuff that I’m going to write about elsewhere, and my pleasure reading of a mammoth book (not one about the woolly mammoth!), I don’t have many books to report on. In fact, I’m about to be at a loss for books to read, and thus will tell you what I’ve read as a way of extracting suggestions from readers.

For a while I was on a Holocaust kick, and (as I think I mentioned earlier) I read The End of the Holocaust, by Alvin Rosenfeld, which you can get from Amazon by clicking below. His thesis is that the true horror of the Holocaust has been lessened by everyone using the word to mean “any bad thing that happened to a lot of people.” The book is especially concerned with Anne Frank, who, he says, was just one of a number of young victims who wrote about their situation, and somehow the attention devoted to her alone lessens the experience of other victims. Well, you can argue about that, but I think the book is worth reading now that words like “genocide,” “concentration camp,” and “Holocaust” are being thrown around willy nilly in a way that distorts their original meaning.

After that I read another short but very famous book about the Holocaust, Night, by Elie Wiesel. Click below to see the Amazon link:

Wiesel, a Romanian-born Jew, was taken to the camps with his family when he was young, and managed to survive two of them, writing several books about his experiences (this one, like the others, is either partly fictional or completely fictional but Night is mostly true). Wiesel was separated from his mother and sisters at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and they did not survive (they were probably gassed). Throughout the book he tries to stay with his father and keep him alive, but the father finally expires on a forced, foodless march through the snow as the prisoners are marched to another camp by the Germans as the Russians approach. Wiesel survived, but just barely.

After the war, Wiesel dedicated himself to writing and lecturing about the Holocaust, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.  Night is one of the best books about the Holocaust, at least in conveying its horrors, and was recommended by Rosenfeld in the book above. I too recommend it highly, and, at 120 pages, it’s a short read.

Here’s a photo of Buchenwald five days after its liberation by the Red Army, showing the arrangement of bunks and the skeletal nature of those still alive. Wiesel is in the photo; I’ve circled him next to one bed post. What better proof can you have that you really did experience what you wrote about?

Buchenwald concentration camp, photo taken April 16, 1945, five days after liberation of the camp. Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left, next to the bunk post. From Wikimedia Commons

And below is the behemoth I just finished, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Circle Award in 2009. Click the cover to go to the Amazon site.

Several people recommended this book highly, and while I think the 730-page monster was very good, I didn’t find it a world classic. It recounts the life of Thomas Cromwell, who started life as the son of a blacksmith but worked his way up to being the head minister of Henry VIII. It deals largely with the intrigues and relationships of Henry’s court, which reminds me of Trump’s America.  Henry was sometimes amiable, but would ruthlessly order the death of those who crossed him, including Anne Boleyn, who met her end simply because she couldn’t provide Henry with a son that could be his heir.  Sir Thomas More is a prominent character, and he too meets his end for refusing to affirm that Anne Boleyn was the lawful queen. Everyone tiptoes around in constant fear of the KIng.

The book is quite involved, and has a big list of characters which are listed on the first page and to which one must constantly refer. It is the convoluted plot and surfeit of characters that made the book hard for me to read. Perhaps I’m getting old and my concentration is waning.  But the dialogue is fascinating, and parts of the book are quite lyrical, with the prose style changing quickly from conversational to rhapsodic. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Mantel’s writing of the book, and the effort shows.

Mantel said she spent five years researching and writing the book, trying to match her fiction to the historical record. To avoid contradicting history she created a card catalogue, organised alphabetically by character, with each card containing notes indicating where a particular historical figure was on relevant dates. “You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can’t have him in London if he’s supposed to be somewhere else,” she explained.

In an interview with The Guardian, Mantel stated her aim to place the reader in “that time and that place, putting you into Henry’s entourage. The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgment from the lofty perch of the 21st century when we know what happened. It’s to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case, moving forward into a future that is not pre-determined but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role.”

The book (part of a trilogy) was made into a mini-series for t.v., and here’s the trailer. It feature Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, Anne Boleyn, and Henry VIII. Has anyone seen it?

So that’s my reading. Now I ask readers to recommend books for me—and other readers. They can be fiction or nonfiction, so long as they’re absorbing.  I’m not sure I’m yet ready now for another 700-page novel (Amazon’s version says only 600-odd pages, but I have an older edition).  Please put your recommendations, as well as the subject of the book, in the comments.

103 thoughts on “Books to read”

  1. For Xmas I asked for and got Marc Morris’s The Norman Conquest. It is excellent. I particularly like the way he explains the various sources (and lack thereof) for the period. Because I liked it so much, I got his The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066. I already know that I am now going to have to get a book on Roman Britain.

    From other reading I discovered this book, Humbugs of New-York: Being a Remonstrance Against Popular Delusion; Whether in Science, Philosophy, Or Religion (1838), which I am looking forward to.

  2. I was very impressed by Claire Keegan’s short novel, “Small Things Like These”. It is about a man confronting a local injustice in an Irish town and the choice he must make in response. A very moving and beautifully written book.

  3. How about a satire? “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty. It won the Man Booker Prize. It’s about a Black guy who wants to reinstate slavery and segregation. The first line is hilarious: “This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything.”

    As for nonfiction, just days ago I finally got around to getting a book I’ve been meaning to read for years (it comes with a blurb by Pinker): “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” by Richard Wrangham.

  5. Yes, I’ve seen both “Wolf Hall” TV series. The first is among the best historical dramas ever made. The second is almost as good, slightly marred by the unavailability of a couple of actors from the first series, and by the fact that wokeness now demanded “diverse” casting (no, there weren’t any black Privy Councillors in Tudor Britain, nor was there a black sister of a Queen, though there might have been an occasional black ship hand working in the docks; in everything else they go to great lengths to attain historical accuracy).

      1. But there won’t be a third series, will there, what with Cromwell having popped his clogs at the end of Series 2? The article you quote is about the financial issues surrounding Series 2.

        But I agree that Series 1 and 2 were a riveting watch, possibly the last full-dress historical drama the Beeb will be able to afford.

  6. One further recommendation. Professor Coyne says he was on a Holocaust kick, and he may not want to continue with it. But if he hasn’t read Primo Levi “If This Is A Man”, it is a book that will stay with the reader forever. This book, and Levi’s other books, reflect his depth of thought on humanity. I think especially of Levi describing what it is to take in someone’s humanity, and describing what it is to deny that humanity.

      2. Another late book by Levi that I’d highly recommend (I think perhaps the last he wrote) is “The Drowned and the Saved”, a more thematic meditation on his experiences at Auschwitz rather than a narrative, and of course tremendously powerful, moving, and disturbing.

        I haven’t yet read the Mantel trilogy but can very highly recommend the mini-series — I’d say it was the best 12 hours of drama TV the BBC has made this century.

  8. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

    The title sums up this excellent non-fiction book about the doomed voyage of 8 British Naval Ships that set out in 1740 with about 1900 sailors. Only about 500 make it back in 1744. For the biologists, you will be interested in how they “treated” scurvy in the 1740’s

      1. I read it last year on your recommendation and it was absolutley an incredible story, very absorbing

  9. Up From Slavery
    Booker T. Washington
    1901
    (Free eBook available!)

    If you think you know about slavery and Black thought and experience in the United States – read this. IMHO essential American literature – that’s not just my opinion – it’s the title of a compilation with Washington’s writing : The Harper American Literature. Here’s one of numerous brilliant passages in the book :

    “From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race. I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic, individual merit. Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded. This I have said here, not to call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which I am proud.”

    Not surprisingly, Marxist complainers like W. E. B. DuBois – who received the “Lenin Peace Prize” – criticize Washington’s thought. Also see The Harper American Literature.

    Not sure how I made it this far – even reading Frederick Douglass – and skipped Washington.

    1. What really got to me from the book was his recollection when a boy how highly he sang the praises of the taste of that baked sweet potato (with one or both butter and brown sugar). He’d never had such a delicacy. I think of that when I occasionally contemplate how much contemporary humans take for granted, and especially when I eat a baked sweet potato.

      Regarding “merit”: Another part of the book hitting me equally hard related his arriving at Hampton Institute (sleeping under a wooden sidewalk in the dirt wearing his only suit the night before going to the school). He did not have enough tuition for the term. He asked a school matron if he could work (IIRC including making up the fires starting at 4 a.m.) to take care of the balance. That day she gave him a trial run cleaning a lecture hall. At least twice if not three times he swept the floor and wiped down the walls. She inspected the room and told him, “I guess you’ll do,” or words to that effect.

      Several years ago I visited Hardy, VA, his birthplace and now a national historical monument, hoping I was only a couple yards away from the site of the cabin, as no one knows exactly where it was. We hiked into some adjacent woods and I contemplated him frolicking there as a boy.

  10. Funny coincidence but I just finished The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackyroyd and was fascinated by every detail. I did not read the Hilary Mantel book, but this was so good as it tied More to the history of the time.

    I also finished Free Speech by Jacob Mchanama who I heard speak at USC Censorship of Science conference and I met at an earlier time. Another great book on the history of the free speech movement.

    I recommend I, Claudius by Robert Graves.

    1. I was blown away by I, Claudius when I read it as a teen or tween. Also Claudius the God. But on a recent re-reading, I didn’t care for it that much. Must give it another go. (And I really like Robert Graves’ various other books.)

      1. I’ve been wanting to get to I, Claudius. I’ve watched the now ancient PBS series, and I have it on DVD. There are YouTube videos that analyze the brilliant use of the camera during the many dramatic scenes, and watching some of those adds greatly to the enjoyment of the series.

        2. I read I, Claudius 40 odd years ago, followed by Claudius the God, and I was spellbound. I watched the series with Derek Jacobi (ye gods, 1976, even longer than I remembered!) and I loved it. I tried them both again recently and found I couldn’t properly get into either. I’m not sure if the problem is that they’ve dated badly, or that I’ve changed in my reading and watching habits, or, more likely, exposure to so much similar material has simply tempered my attention. Even so, both books and series are well worth it.

          1. I read the two Claudius novels when I was very much younger than I am now. Intrigued I read ‘The Twelve Caesars’ by Suetonius and I was hooked on Rome. There is a new translation of Suetonius by the British historian Tom Holland which is well recommended.

    2. Coincidentally I just finished re-reading “I, Claudius” after almost 40 years (I still have the paperback I bought ca. 1986 when I saw the TV series on a repeat on PBS). It was just as gripping a read as I remember it, although my historian friend who specializes in Rome takes issue with Graves’s portrayal of Augustus and especially Livia, which my friend says is coloured by Graves’s reliance on Suetonius and Tacitus, who were connected with the senate.

      I re-read it in part because I just made my first trip to Rome a few months ago and now have a better understanding of the city and its landmarks.

      My copy has a helpful family tree of the Julian-Claudian family at the back – many of the same names were carried from generation to generation, so it can get a bit confusing.

      Now I’m onto re-reading “Claudius the God”.

      In a very different vein, I’m also re-reading Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama”, gripping from a different perspective (mystery rather than political intrigue).

  11. I loved Night* and Wolf Hall. I haven’t read the other. I am in the middle of Richard Evans’ three-volume history of the Third Reich (excellent of course**).

    I just finished Source Code by Bill Gates, which I highly recommend. I needed a break from the Third Reich!

    “*” I also highly recommend If This Is a Man and The Truce by Primo Levi on the same subject (which I think you have recommended in these pages) and also Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

    ** As noted, Evans is excellent, though, in some places, in his (admirable) quest to be very thorough and comprehensive, he does stray into “too many notes Mozart” territory for my tastes.

    I’ll note that I have been criticized for continuing to enjoy The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Evans praises Shirer’s book fairly effusively over several pages in his preface to the first volume of his work. His main criticism of Shirer is incompleteness, especially with respect to the pre-WWI antecedents of Nazism. I think Shirer would have happily owned the criticism.

    1. I stand with you on The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I have read many books on this subject, and Shirer’s remains the most effective at conveying the reality of living under the Nazis*. The section on the Holocaust is also very effective at conveying the horror of the situation and demonstrating the egregious complicity of German businesses in the worst excesses of the regime. I have no training in history, so I may be wrong. Still, I feel that Most criticisms stem from the snobbery of some historians objecting to a ‘mere’ journalist writing a serious work of history, but I reject that; the fact that he was there and involved in current events adds something missing in the works of historians like Richard Evans and Ian Kershaw (as good as their books are).

      *With one exception: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer. I doubt that Jerry hasn’t read Klemperer. But for a first-hand account of living as a Jew in Nazi Germany, his writing hasn’t been topped. The diaries give a unique perspective and an insight into his persecution, which is fascinating and heartbreaking. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the subject.

      2. Trivia: Werner Klemperer was “Colonel Klink” on “Hogan’s Heroes”. His father was Victor’s first cousin.

    2. Shirer’s “Berlin Diary” and “The Nightmare Years: 1930 to 1940”. Of course all of his “20th Century Journey” books are good reads.

  12. Perhaps something different: A newly released novel by the Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade called “Sons and Daughters”. He was an author of substantial talent overshadowed by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Set in early nineteen thirties Poland the story describes the trials caused by modernity confronting a traditional world view.

    1. I recommend Paul Theroux to anyone – his recent one, The Bad Angel Brothers, while not his very best, had brilliant parts – descriptions of the cobalt mines in Africa; the resentments of the central character at war with his sociopathic brother. Lawrence Osbourne is also an interesting writer, very much in the style of Theroux and Graham Greene….his short-story collection Burning Angel was excellent

  13. I can definitely recommend Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. I started with her Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead and found it quite good, good enough to try another, and find Books of Jacob fantastic so far.

  14. If you are up for a great page-turner that’s not great literature: We have recently read through the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly (also the Renee Ballard and Michael Haller novels). They are excellent. Connelly is a master story-teller.

      1. I read the first one: Slow Horses on advice of a friend and enjoyed it. But I bogged down in the second one with the very arch British language and inside baseball (cricket?). Must give it another go.

  15. Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation

    I became curious about why European Jews developed a separate language instead of preserving Hebrew after the diaspora. This book opened up an entirely different portrait of Yiddish history than I expected. Very detailed account of that history.

  16. For a fun read, I recommend Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022), in which an intelligent Pacific octopus is a main character. For a serious read, William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (2022), which proposes that how our present actions affect the deep future should be a primary facet of moral thinking.

    1. Waugh has not always worn well, but Scoop is still good fun. The Sword of Honour trilogy, based in part on his wartime experiences, is also pretty good.

  18. I’m an applied mathematician, but I’m also an intellectual wanting to understand reality. I’ve really appreciated the works of evolutionary biologists, like Jerry and Dawkins. I have a similar interest in physics. I recommend everything written by Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist, and I’m now reading Reality Is Not What It Seems. Trying to understand what is real is hard, and I have to say Rovelli’s book is very important.

    In his previous book, The Order of Time, we find out time is an illusion, and that our measurements of time are human created. He tells us entropy is the nature of the universe. He uses the metaphor of rocks falling down a mountain for entropy, which led me to Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus where life is pushing those rocks back up that mountain.

    https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-nature-of-reality.html

  19. Re: Yiddish. Wherever Jews lived they created their own languages based on the vernacular; hence Judeio-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Ladino-Judeo Spanish; Judeio-German-Yiddish. There were others; mutant forms that evolved into separate languages.

  20. Abundance is Ezra Klein’s & Derek Thompson’s new book in which they promote a “liberalism that builds.”
    Could it be a way forward, for Democrats and for our country? (I haven’t finished it yet, but have felt encouraged by the author interviews I’ve heard.)

  21. As a sailor and history buff, I suggest any of the books in the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian, starting with Master and Commander. And then watch the movie (based on several of the books), which is simply one of the best ever made–certainly the best seafaring movie.

    1. Full agreement. I’ve read the series three times!! (If you’d told me I would do that years ago I would have laughed heartily.)

    2. Agreed. Apparently, the real person’s name was Thomas Cochrane. Little known fact. He (Thomas Cochrane) played a major role in liberating South America from Spain. Non-fiction books have been written about him.

      1. Correct. And South American adventures of that nature feature in the Aubrey-Maturin series. 😉

  22. I was looking forward to one of these.

    I mainly read fiction these days. Based on repeated recommendations here, I am nearing the end of reading thru The Expanse, which is an epic sci fi series. I can suggest that this is the best series in that genre, as the story is very compelling, and the characters are very well fleshed out. The streaming series on Amazon that is based on the books is also very good, and how they do the special effects I think is very interesting. But the series can’t hold a candle to the books bc only the books can get inside the heads of the characters.

    Next up, I had enjoyed a horror novel called Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. This is the same author who wrote Hyperion, and that means it should be good. This book is about a cabal of vampires, of sorts, only they “feed” by entering peoples minds and controlling them like puppets. The culture they have is played off against a group of victims who are trying to fight back and destroy these creatures who have been controlling human governance since way back when. Its the kind of book that I think would translate very well into a movie or short series.

    I will mention a third one, another sci fi story called Project Hail Mary. This is about the discovery that our sun is being slowly consumed by space microbes, and that other stars around us are also going dim as they too are infected. So we launch a singular space ship to a star that seems immune to the microbes in a desperate attempt to learn why that is, and to bring back what is found before its too late. It is a story that leans heavily on science and the sheer excitement of exploration and discovery. This is being made into a movie, apparently, and I can understand why.

    1. +infinity on both the Expanse books and the series – which bounced from SyFy (Season 1-3) then to Amazon (Season 4-6). They are both awesome.

      I’ve just been listening to the audiobook of “A Conventional Boy”, the latest from Charles Stross’ “Laundry” series around protecting the world (well, mainly Britain) from existential horrors from beyond space-time (a la Cthulhu). It’s nicely written and well-paced. In addition I was fascinated by his afterword, connecting the 1980’s moral panic around Dungeons and Dragons with the Salem Witch trials and the Satanic abuse/false memory scandals of the 1980’s-90/2000’s with the accompanying involvement of US fundamentalist Christians in the latter which, to me, have some of the hallmarks of the social contagion around modern progressive thinking, despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

  23. The actor Mark Rylance, who plays Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall (which is excellent BTW), is one of my favorite actors. He also plays the role of an Englishman who takes his small boat across the English Channel to help rescue the trapped British army in the movie “Dunkirk”. Excellent movie.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/

    1. He also plays the Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel, in the film Bridge of Spies, the film adaptation of James Donovan’s Strangers on a Bridge. (I enjoy the movie, but Spielberg overdoes his ‘man alone’ theme with Hanks’s Donovan.) The book is excellent.

  24. Probably because we lived in Los Alamos, I enjoyed The Woman at Otowi Crossing by Frank Waters.

  25. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell.

    From the Amazon page:

    Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

    How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?

    This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them “essays,” meaning “attempts” or “tries.” Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller and, over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment—and in search of themselves.

    This book, a spirited and singular biography, relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing, youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Étienne de La Boétie and with his adopted “daughter,” Marie de Gournay. And we also meet his readers—who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, “how to live?”

  26. “Money Lies and God, Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy” by Katherine Stewart

    1. I’m on a politics kick right now. Just ordered the Kindle version. Thanks for the tip.

  27. I recently completed rereading David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity. I highly recommend both as I find Deutsch’s ideas compelling and admire his ability to write clearly about complicated topics. I pick them up about once a year to read again.

    Over the Christmas holiday break I read Churchill’s 6-volume WW2 series. I liked his writing style, and also the mix of historical facts with personal anecdotes. His 4-volume History Of The English Speaking Peoples is good as well, especially for the times of Cromwell and Henry VIII.

    The White Pill by Michael Malice is a great account of the resilience of the human spirit against authoritarian regimes, primarily the Soviet Union.

    For fiction, I enjoyed The Terror by Dan Simmons. It’s an alternative historical fiction take on what happened when the Terror and Erebus were stranded in the ice while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. I heard the TV series is also very good.

    Lastly, I just finished The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. Surprisingly good fiction set in the early 20th century concerning anarchists, with some obvious Christian allegory and more than a few plot twists.

    1. I have liked everything I’ve read by Churchill, which I think includes everything he published as books except the English Speaking Peoples. Must get to those …

      His WWII series is superb. I eventually bought a used First Us Edition set!

      1. Would that be the multi volume series The Second World War? I’ve 6 books purchased at a book fair with a 7th – “Churchill – By His Contempories” which I’ve been saving for retirement (which begins in 2 days…). Mine are from the 1950’s reprint society but even so, they are in remarkably good condition!

  29. Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945. The case is that so much was then going on in world history that we have never properly accounted for it.

  30. I can recommend just about any of Richard Powers’ novels. Powers is scientifically literate, and he typically works scientific themes into his fiction. The Overstory, featuring trees, won the Pulitizer Prize in 2019. His latest novel, Playground, deals with the oceans, and AI. I enjoyed his early book, The Gold Bug Variations, which combines biology and information science. Powers is not particularly strong on character development, but his plots are brilliant. Of the three that I just mentioned, Playground is the shortest by quite a bit.

    1. Love Richard Powers, especially his earlier books. Gold Bug, The Time of Our Singing,
      Orfeo, and The Prisoner’s Dilemma were particularly good. His latest books are good, but a tiny bit didactic.

      Hillary Mantel’s 3 Wolf Hall books are superb!
      Currently reading Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba. Pretty good so far. It takes place in the 60s. Also reading Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 and William Boyd’s Gabriel’s Moon.

  31. Ceiling Cat,

    Deadpan by Richard Walter (retired UCLA professor, screenwriter, and novelist) may be up your alley. He wrote me last week after seeing my quote in The New Yorker on antisemitism at Harvard. His book is a funny take on an unfunny topic: antisemitism. I’ve just started reading it.

  32. Material World by Ed Conway. Its about the stuff we dig out of the ground that POTUS wants to ransom the world for.
    And, How to save the planet one object at a time by Tara Shine. A book that should be in every school. Both nonfiction, but who knows these days

  33. If you’re in the mood for a short, mentally non-taxing book that is a total change of pace from what you’ve been reading, I’d suggest A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck. It’s an incredibly entertaining piece of surrealist science fiction that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about

  34. A book I often read is Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” published by Penguin It is a very well thumbed book. I have recently come across a few books on Humanism They are: “Humanism: A very short Introduction” by Stephen Law, “The Little Book of Humanism: Universal lessons on finding purpose, meaning and joy” by Alice Robson and Andrew Copson, “On Humanism” by Richard Norman. One the best reviewed and recommended books on the topic. They are all in print and easily found in Kindle and in print versions

    I would also highly recommend “How to be good without god” by Greg Epstein although it is a long time since I have read it. It too is available on Amazon

    And for great prose, lots of fun you cannot go past anything written by Douglas Adams.

    I love all of Bertrand Russell, Bart Erhman, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain and some fellow named Jerry Coyne too

  35. Since cats are one of the main topics on this page, I recommend The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein, a very satisfying time travel story where the main character’s most trusted companion is his cat while it was also inspired by Heinlein’s own cat (and the dedication is to fellow aelurophiles). It is an older book but just in case you never got to it.

  36. I recently re-read The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, about Stalin, his sidekicks and their wives, and the merciless way he treated most of them. Riveting and horrifying.

    I am currently halfway through The Lost Rainforests of Britain, by Guy Shrubsole, about the temperate rainforests that once covered much of western GB, and now survive only in small isolated patches. Both riveting and also slightly horrifying, in its own way.

  38. There is a book newly released I have not read. But I know there are a lot of scientists on this site. It’s called Unreliable by Csaba Szabo.
    It’s about shoddy scientific research and an investigation into this misconduct.

  39. Hi Jerry:

    Looking through the comments, I don’t see that anyone has already asked–are you planning to read the other two books in the Wolf Hall trilogy? I’m currently reading Wolf Hall, but am only a little of a quarter of the way through. Enjoying it quite a bit.

  40. Highly recommended Catherine De Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda.

  41. Goodbye, Dr Banda by Alexander Chula. Hastings Banda was the first President of Malawi after independence. He built a school which was to be the Eton of Africa (Eton is England’s most elite school). It specialised in Latin and Greek – a proper classical British education, and it took the smartest students not the richest. Alexander Chula was a teacher there shortly after graduating from Oxford. The book is many things: a meditation on post-independence decline and chaos, the amazing energy, resourcefulness, and didactic skill of a missionary Robert Laws, the similarity between Ancient Greek theatre and traditional Malawi dance/theatre, and the uselessness of the average aid programme. One of my top ten books ever, but I had a special interest as I spent a year there long ago.

    1. “…the uselessness of the average aid programme”: the former Tory Minister Rory Stewart has pointed out that, despite the hundreds of millions of development aid the UK has pumped into Malawi since independence, the GDP per head is exactly the same as it was sixty years ago.

    1. I read it and learned quite a bit. However, I would not go so far as to recommend it.

    2. Yes, I highly recommend it. It came out when my father was undergoing chemotherapy for the cancer that would eventually kill him. I found the book helpful in understanding the causes of cancer and its history of treatment.

      I didn’t find Mukherjee’s later books (on genes and cells) as good, though.

  43. I am planning to re-read Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, by Florence King. If you’d like some laughs in between all the serious stuff, you might enjoy it.

    King was born and “reared” in the American South, and her grandmother tried hard to make a “lady” of her. Unfortunately for Granny, Florence was a born nonconformist and misanthrope, and she grew up to be a bisexual writer. Needless to say, none of these attributes were “ladylike.”

    It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It’s also thoroughly politically incorrect, and King’s wit can be brutal.

  44. “The War of Return” by Einat Wilf debunks all the fake history of Israel which paints Israel as the imperialist aggressor on the rights of the “indigenous Palestinian” Muslims and which accuses Israel of the very atrocities the world’s Islamist movements have been committing against it and against Jews, Christian, ex-Muslims and the “wrong kind of” Muslims all over the world — and which so much of the Media and Student Protestors in the West are taking as gospel. It also exposes the role of UNRWA and large swaths of the UN in supporting the Islamist project of genocide against the people of Israel.

  45. I love these posts for the wealth of recommendations that arise. I’m afraid that if you didn’t like Wolf Hall, we may not be in sync reading-wise. But I’ll tentatively recommend a couple: I’ve recently re-re-re-read Cloud Atlas and am currently re-re-reading The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, both by David Mitchell and both excellent.

    The first is a nested group of 6 novellas, each expanding on the previous one’s themes of bondage and what we owe the future on a personal level. 1000 Autumns is a historical fiction set at the opening of Japanese relations to the west. A fantastic unrequited love story palpaply brought to life, with a touch of the mystic. Read the first chapter of each, and I guarantee you’ll be hoooked.

  46. I read Wolf Hall because Christopher Hitchens liked it so much. And it truly is a masterpiece! (Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror & The Light are as good.)

    The TV-adaptation is quite good. Mark Rylance manages to express with his eyes the complex inner feelings that Mantel shows as a stream of consciousness. The second series has one annoying aspect: some black actors are cast as Tudor era nobility. The acting is great, of course, but this is silly and unnecessary…

  47. I would go for John Keegan’s “Face of Battle” which is probably the most influential book on military history published in the last 50 years and possibly one of the most important history books of that time. In the book Keegan analyses three battles in English/British history, Agincourt, Waterloo and the first day on the Somme (1 July 1916), as examples of actions where the weapon systems were primarily edged/archers/cavalry (Agincourt), black powder (Waterloo) and, finally, industrial (Somme). Keegan switches the emphasis of the narrative from the top ( “General Zog ordered that two divisions of infantry attack”) to the fighting man at the sharp end of war. He examines the effect of weapons, motivation and morale on the infantry, why weapon systems failed ( cavalry at both Agincourt and Waterloo, archers at Agincourt, bombardment on the Somme). Although Face of Battle uses UK examples you can extend his thinking throughout history – the book is that good. Yes, of course it has aged a bit, especially the over-optimistic last chapter, but the core three chapters still maintain their relevance today.

  48. https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1905658072938262785 📚

    https://x.com/TheAcademy/status/1766983054436835778 🇺🇸🎬🏆🇬🇧

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_%28film%29 🇬🇧🎬
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Amis 🇬🇧📚

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CsjT0idotVO/ 🧑‍🤝‍🧑
    https://www.instagram.com/p/CsoLcgtLArP/ 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

    Martin Amis, the original author of the Academy Award-winning film “The Zone of Interest”. 🇺🇸🎬🏆🇬🇧
    I was really surprised to learn that Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens were best friends!! 😯😮😯

  50. Thx for your site and book recommendations. Here’s three I’ve just read:

    Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy by Graham Linehan.

    Graham’s a terrific comedy writer (he wrote Father Ted and the IT Crowd) and a strong defender of women’s rights against the trans activists. That’s how he “lost” his career.

    How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment by Matt Johnson

    I like to regularly remind myself of the sanity and clarity of Christopher Hitchens. What it means to be truly liberal and independent. This book has me wanting to re-read Why Orwell Matters.

    The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War – a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson

    I love the historical narrative genre, and I’m a WWII buff. This ripping yarn takes you on real adventures across the globe and fills in chunks of knowledge like missing jigsaw pieces. It’s also a stark reminder of the origins of the UN and NATO and why allies and close trade relations are important.

  51. ++ to the Dan Simmons and Richard Wrangham recs.

    In no particular order, I enjoyed the novels:

    Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
    Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher (a hilarious novel about academia)
    I Am A Cat by Soseki Natsume
    Invisible Kitties by Youyou Yu
    If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura
    We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
    Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (a collection of short stories combining science fiction, fantasy, horror, and Korean folklore)
    The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
    We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (A MASTERPIECE!!)

    I enjoyed the following nonfiction:

    Memento Mori by Eunice Hong
    A Cat by Leonard Michaels

  52. My newest favorite author is Lionel Shriver. I highly recommend “Should we Stay or Should we Go?” (dark humor), and “Mania” (a satire of wokeness). I think you’d esp. like the latter.

  53. I’ve begun reading Alex Rosenberg’s new book, “Blunt Instrument, Why economic theory can’t get any better… why we need it anyway” because he’s written two of my favourite books, “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality (poor title, evidently urged by his publisher as there’s a lot more about physics and biology than Atheism) and
    “How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories”, again, more about neuroscience than history. I’d be very interested in your view of the new book, as well as any more comments you have on the other two, Jerry.

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