Yes, the news is thin today, and I will let other people rail about Trump, as I’ve done my share in the last week or so. Instead, how about a happier topic: books? I have just finished two books and, as I’ve said, I’m reading another. I am glad to say I can recommend them all for your consdieration.
The first one was Walter Isaacson’s 2004 biography of Benjamin Franklin, which you can find on Amazon, with the long (586 pp.) paperback now only $6.66 (Satan’s number). Click cover to go to the site:
I don’t know how Isaacson manages to pump out these long biographies, which are packed with research and scholarship (though written very well), so quickly. But he does. I’ve read two of his before: his biographies of Steve Jobs (2011) and of Leonardo da Vinci (2018). Both were good, but the biography of Leonardo I think is a world-class piece of writing. If you must read one of these, start with that. Isaacson clearly has a penchant for very smart men, preferably polymaths like Franklin and Leonardo. But I note that he’s also written a biography of Albert Einstein (2008); I haven’t read that one because I’ve read about three other biographies of the man.
You can get all four as a set of “The Genius Biographies” for $51, and that’s over 2000 pages of enjoyment and education.
Like Leonardo, Franklin was also a polymath: he “discovered” and worked out the properties of electricity, helped write both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, invented bifocals, set up the American postal system, and founded the University of Pennsylvania. As a superb diplomat, he helped bring an end to the Revolutionary War on favorable term for America, and also served as what then constituted the governorship of Pennsylvania. Moving back and forth between the U.S. and France, as well as throughout America, his travels equipped him well to contribute to founding documents that all our colonies were able to sign.
Further, Franklin was a humble man, dressed in ordinary garb, not foisting himself on others, largely free from arrogance, and trying to live by his famous 13 “necessary virtues” he compiled when young. He largely succeeded in living up to those standards, though he was a bit wobbly on “temperance”, winding up with gout as well as kidney stones. Yet despite his ill health in later life, he was the prime mover in the Treaty of Paris (1783), requiring delicate skills at negotiating simultaneously with France, the nascent U.S., and Britain. The only palpable flaw that I could detect in him was his gross neglect of his wife, whom he left for 14 of the last 17 years of his life, and was not there when she died. Franklin himself had a long life, expiring at 84.
I’d recommend this highly, especially if you know little of Franklin. You’ll be impressed at his scientific skills: though he wasn’t a theoretician, he was great at thinking up hypothesis and good at testing them. Its length makes it a good book to take on a trip, but if you haven’t read his biography of Leonardo, start with that one.
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I’ve read quite a few books on the Holocaust, but this one, byJózsef Debreczeni, may be the best, outstripping even the famous books of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel (Night and If This Is a Man) . Up until recently, however, it was obscure, and, though written in 1950, it was available only in Hungarian, and wasn’t translated into other languages, including English, until 2023. I believe a reader suggested it in an earlier “books” post on this site. Click below to find it at Amazon:
What makes this book different from those of Wiesel and Levi is, curiously, its lack of analysis and of philosophizing. Night is also semi-fictional, so you can’t tell which episodes were made up, though it’s largely true. In contrast, Cold Crematorium merely describes what happened to Debreczeni in the Lager: what life was like as inmate in three different concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He was in the camps for only about a year, but that was nearly enough to do him in. From Wikipedia:
The winter of 1944–1945 was harsh, with heavy snows and extreme temperatures. [Dobreczeni] contracted diarrhea, and by January 20 he weighed 35 kg (77 lb). Thanks to a friend who brought him extra food, he survived. He subsequently contracted typhus but survived with the help of a camp doctor. Soviet forces liberated the camp in May 1945, and he recovered at a Soviet hospital.
I cannot begin to describe how grim the life in the camps was, especially at Auschwitz, but he doesn’t spare the reader the gory details. One of them: everyone constantly had diarrhea because of the diet of soup made with polluted water and almost no contents, and because the “toilet man” with the bucket didn’t come around fast enough, everything was covered with shit, which eventually piled up on the floor above the ankles. The intricate way prisoners developed a black market in food and tobacco to survive is amazing.
I like this book because, more than the other books, it’s just a graphic and un-fictional presentation of day-to-day life in a concentration camp. This shows you how horrible the Holocaust really was, and how inhumane were the people who engineered and implemented it. It doesn’t discuss whether all of us have the potential to become Nazis, and doesn’t go into depth about how the Holocaust affected the author after he was liberated. The book simply ends with the liberation. One trigger warning: it is very graphic and disturbing, but also the only book I know that makes you see what it was like to be an inmate.
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Finally, I am 110 pages into the book below, which I mentioned a few days ago (click cover to go to Amazon site). I recommend it, at least what I’ve read of it so far. It’s an analysis of cancel culture by two employees of FIRE (Schlott is also a journalist). As I said the other day,
This extremism and demonization is in fact the subject of a good book I’m reading now: Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott’s The Canceling of the American Mind , which takes up Great Untruth #3 of Haidt and Lukianoff’s earlier bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). Let me remind you of all three of those Untruths whose embrace by the young is, Haidt and Lukianoff argued, responsible for a lot of turmoil, divisiveness, and rancor on and off campus:
1.) What doesn’t kill you make you weaker
2.) Always trust your feelings
3.) Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
It’s a lot like Lukianoff’s talk that I heard in Los Angeles a couple of months ago, recounting horrific tales of cancellation coming from both the Right and the Left. Right now I’m reading about those instances, and haven’t yet encountered the authors’ solutions, which come at the end of the book. We all recognize divisive nature of politics (and life!) in America, as well as the fact that for many, the validity of social/political arguments now seems to rest largely on whether the person who makes them is on your side (“good”) or not (“bad”). I’ll give an overall assessment when I’m done.
Now it’s your turn to tell us what you’re reading or what you’ve read lately, preferably dwelling on books you’d recommend. I’ve found many good books by following readers’ suggestions, and so I hope to make this a regular feature. Put your readings in the comments!
City of Thieves
by David Beniof
History: A Novel
by Elsa Morante
Both outstanding in my opinion
Francesca Stavrakopoulou: God An Anatomy
and from the same author: King Manasseh and child sacrifice: Biblical distortions of historical reality.
The second one is rather theological, the first one is for the general public.
There’s a trilogy of books by Aleksander Tisma regarding life after the holocaust that are very good: The Book of Blam, The Use of Man, and Kapo.
Robert Harris’s Precipice is quite good. About the affair of Asquith and Venetia Stanley while WW1 is starting. The fact that all of his letters to her were preserved certainly makes it all the more interesting.
Also, I am reading Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War. It is a fascinating study of the cost of hubris. All of the ignored intelligence (including a spy close to Sadat) due to confirmation bias. Enormous consequences of this bias. Fascinating.
My favorite biographies from Isaacson are:
Einstein
Elon Musk
and: Steve Jobs
He is a great writer.
Good books I’ve read lately:
The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power by Richard Evans. Evans is an excellent history writer. I haven’t started The Third Reich at War yet. Excellent books. If Evans can hold my interests while discussing German politics from 1865 to 1918, I am impressed. Because he is trying to be comprehensive, he sometimes strays into “Too many notes, Mozart” territory for me.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by novelist Haruki Murakami. Quirky, interesting memoir.
Source Code by Bill Gates. Well written and very interesting. In at the start.
Brothers by ALex Van Halen. Engaging and interesting memoir.
Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari, best ever from Harari
On a lighter side: Any of Michael Connelly’s novels about Harry Bosch or Micky Haller. Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police series. Charming stories, set in the French countryside in Perigord.
“Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century” by Geoffrey R. Stone
A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett
Evolution, AI, And The Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
The author is deeply involved in the development of AI and clearly understands the difficulty of recreating what millennia of evolution has accomplished.
As a layman I found the book fascinating.
I recommend Philip Roth’s Patrimony, an account of his relationship with his father. And Claire Keegan’s wonderful short novel, Small Things Like These. It is based on the Irish “laundries”, where unmarried pregnant girls were hidden away
and forced to work. The date of the story is 1985, the institution of these laundries went on in Ireland until 1996. The system was run by the Catholic Church together with the Irish State.
The Keegan is great!
If you’re interested in things Irish, I highly recommend “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958” by Fintan O’Toole. I lived in Ireland in 2014, but until I read this book, I didn’t realize how far the country has come in the last 50-60 years. (To go back a couple more decades, try Heinrich Boll’s ‘Irish Journal’).
Carrion Comfort by Simons. This is a horror novel about an ancient and powerful cabal of what I would call mind vampires, and the small group of former victims who set out to risk all in order to destroy them. One of the victims is a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, and there he first meets one of these creatures who is a member of the SS at the time.
Just finished reading The Expanse sci fi book series, by Corey. I can believe the claims that this is the best series in that genre. And the streaming adaptation is good too, but it cannot get into the characters heads and describe all the little details like the book does. Here, humanity has spread out into the more accessible parts of our solar system, with technology that does not seem terribly far from what we have now. It’s very hard and very dangerous. But now a civil war starts between the old earth military and the militaries of the other colonies. And then an ancient semi-sentient alien probe is awakened, and our civil war becomes the least of our problems.
Project Hail Mary by Weir. This is also a sci fi book, and what I really liked is that it went pretty deeply into science and had a very positive ‘go-science’ attitude. This is apparently being made into a movie, and I can see why. Our sun is dying, and it’s discovered to be because it is infected by a strange kind of life form. Other stars are seen to also be dying, except for one. Why is that star not infected? A desperate mission is sent to learn why, and meanwhile time is running out.
No argument here with The Expanse being the all-time best science fiction series. I’d highly recommend the audiobooks, read by Jefferson Mays, who is an absolutely perfect fit (think Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland; he’s that perfect).
Just finished reading The Expanse. It réads like à history book. I mean it ßeems very believable.
I’m a big fan of Project Hail Mary, too. I love hard science fiction, and this book pushed all my buttons. The latest I’ve heard is that the movie version will come out in spring 2026.
For those who want to read PHM, if you have a choice of format, I’ve heard that you should go with the audio version of the book. Everyone seems to agree that the narration is superb. Also, that it is a good gift for people in the hospital.
Simmons is a really fun writer. He has another horror novel that is excellent: Children of the Night. He writes in many genres including science fiction: Hyperion/Ilium series are probably my favorite novels by him. He really vilifies religion in those books (also assumes that Catholicism will be with us into the far future) , so I gravitated towards that fun expose of Catholic evil in the future.
Yes, all the Corey books are great. Also one of the best TV adaptations The Expanse as you noted. If you like Space Opera, you can’t go wrong with Alistair Reynolds or David Zindell- both masters of the craft. Neverness by Zindell is one of the best (unknown, don’t know why) sci-fi books in the genre.
Yes, but Hyperion is so much more than just its (much welcome) vilification of religion; it is an absolutely magnificent read. Simmons had been an English teacher, and the first book is structured like the Canterbury Tales. A friend of mine just read it, and texted me “Where has this been all my life? Oh, wait, I see it’s been in every e-mail you’ve sent me for the last three years.” 🙂 Unfortunately, my friend didn’t like the Canterbury Tales as much, and put it down after the first two stories.
Alastair Reynolds, at least through Terminal World, was my favorite science fiction author. Haven’t read anything more recent (other than his short fiction), but intend to.
Thanks for the recommendation on Neverness. I have the book, but haven’t gotten around to it. I’ll move it up the list.
I am reading John Troutman’s Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music, and thoroughly enjoying it.
So much to read, so little time to read it….I am attracted by all three of our host’s recommendations, as well as some of those in the comments above.
The latest book I have read is “How Life Works”, by Philip Ball. A fascinating, detailed but accessible corrective to the notion that genes and genetics alone rule the roost.
I’ve got the Ball on one of my very tall piles of to-be-reads. Glad for the praise. I’m reading a very old David Quammen book called Wild Thoughts From Wild Places. I’ve liked all the many books of his I’ve read. Also Rachel Kushner’s Telex from Cuba is very good. Catching up on many New Yorkers, Atlantics, Harper’s (never know how to pluralize) and Grantas…and Paris Reviews🙀
‘Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003) by Simon Sebag Montefiore, who had a good UK election in 2019 and is having a good Israel-Gaza war.
Using the decade or so of opportunity in the 90s to inspect the Russian archives and visit the Soviet ex-Republics, he strategically limited his doorstep to the inner circle, mainly from the early 30s onwards, establishing excellent focus, structure and intensity.
For me, SSM filled in Trotsky’s characterisation of Stalin as a mediocrity with a more rounded, equally arcane and at times deeply blackly humorous biography of Uncle Joe. One wonders what Shostakovich was thinking as Djugashvili lectured him on his musical ‘formalism’ (whatever that is) versus the tunes of the people.
It would not be surprising at all if one found out that the book inspired a lot of Armando Iannucci’s presentation of the Soviet top brass in ‘The Death of Stalin’. A stupendous and vivid read, in my opinion.
+1
My Beloved Monster: Masha the Half-wild Rescue Cat who Rescued Me.
Author: Caleb Carr
I am in the middle of reading “An African History of Africa” by Zeinab Badawi, a British journalist who was born in Sudan. The book is a tie-in to a TV series she did a few years ago (available on YouTube) and covers the continent from the evolution of humans to the present.
Agree re City of Thieves, one of the few books I continually recommend to others. And I often wonder why, given his obvious talent in making videos (e.g., Game of Thrones), Benioff hasn’t made this into a movie. Seems it would be just right for that. Googling now, I see there’s been a Reddit thread on that.
Also in the WWII/Holocaust area, I highly recommend Charles Powers’ In the Memory of the Forest, which was good enough for one re-read, and possibly another. (Sadly, it was his first novel, and he died shortly before its publication.)
I haven’t found much in recent years that I enthusiastically push on others (and that includes several highly praised/prizewinning novels). I really liked James by Percival Everett, which gave me a good reason to re-re-re-read Huckleberry Finn.
Also several by James McBride: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong, and The Good Lord Bird (although the narrator’s description of Frederick Douglass was cringe-worthy).
Loot by Tania James
In non-fiction, I liked David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon (haven’t seen the movie adaptation), which made me want to re-read his Lost City of Z (which didn’t seem as gripping the second time around). The Wager was also gripping, although the ending seemed somewhat anti-climactic.
How Life Imitates Chess
Garry Kasparov
2007
In a nutshell: worth a try. I practice chess as much as possible, so I’m way biased. I like his recounting of various chess masters and competitions. His idea to make a map of your mind (something like that) is intriguing.
Thanks again for a post like this – I love to check out what’s being read, so thanks to contributors.
I swear you would love Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, Jerry.
In case you are interested in what is contained in the 900 plus pages of the “Project 2025” book prepared by, in part, the Heritage Foundation, an excellent summary was recently published. The title of the book (which is just a bit more than a pamphlet of 138 pages and can be read in a very short period of time) is “The Project How Project 2025 is Reshaping America” by Atlantic writer David A. Graham. Every American should read it to understand what is happening.
Who We Are and Where We Came From by David Reich
A fascinating account of ancient DNA used to study genetic patterns created by large scale migration among humans.
I second David Reich’s wonderful book. One of my favorites on biology/genetics.
Oh yes, that was excellent.
Although I prefer physical books, an e-reader has advantages that are hard to beat since my bookshelves are quite full. So I have various books on a short-list to read on the ‘ol Kindle. What is also useful is that you can get a generous sample of each book to read first. Many books don’t pass the test, but these made the list.
Leech, by Ennes (horror)
The Ruins, by Smith (horror)
The Sellout, by Beatty (a satirical story)
Life As o One Knows It, by Imari (on the origin of life)
The Unexpurgated Code, by Leavy (rules on how to live)
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (classical rules on how to live)
The Black Echo, by Connelly (A murder mystery)
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, by King (a funny autobiography)
A Confederacy of Dunces (a satirical story)
The Slow Horses Series by Mick Herron (I’m sure you will love his sense of humor).\
Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan
The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War – a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson
Most of the books that I have read more than once are works of historical fiction such as the Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. I suppose one could say that I am somewhat of a literary snob as second read books must pass a high bar and be in my estimation a work of great literature in whatever canon they are found. That being said I am recommending a book that probably should be considered a hybrid detective/sci-fi novel by the late Philip Kerr called A Philosophical Investigation. The literary allusion here is the Philosophical Investigations published by Ludwig Wittgenstein posthumously. The book moves back and forth between the perspective of an astute female British cop and a brilliant serial killer in a narrative that expounds upon the philosophy of Wittgenstein in a most clever and at times profound way.
Two very different books.
“Burn book” by Kara Swisher. A fascinating account of the guys who brought us the Internet, Apple and much more of the technology in which we all live in a love/hate relation. Spoiler: She loves Jobs and hates Musk. She considers most of them to be adolescents who have never really grown up.
A quite different book is by the historian Timothy Snyder: “Bloodlands: Europe between HItler and Stalin”, the story of the horrors perpetrated on Ukraine by Hitler and Stalin. Snyder is a specialist on the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the the Holocaust. His blog, “Thinking about…”, is well worth following. His post on Trump’s purported but false anti-antisemitism, “Fomenting antisemitism”, is an eye-opener.
I just finished “A Cup of Tears” by Abraham Lewin, who was a Hebrew teacher before the war. It is a diary (part of the Ringelblum archive) written in the Warsaw ghetto, first entry Thursday, 26 March 1942. The last entry is Saturday, 16 January 1943, so Lewin was probably killed or deported to Treblinka during the January 18-22 “Aktion”.
I recommend Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth.
Glad you read Cold Crematorium. That was my recommendation as the best of the genre. As vivid as it gets.
And, yes, I’ve read most of the Walter Isaacson books. Agree that Leonardo da Vinci is world class. Isaacson is amazing. I, too, have read a number of Einstein biographies, but Isaacson’s is one of the best. For fleeting moments, I thought I understood general relativity when reading his book. He’s not a scientist but is very good at explaining scientific concepts.
I agree with Jim Blilie’s recommendation of Source Code by Bill Gates, which I just completed this morning!
I read Robert Sapolsky “Determined” as recommended here and glad of it I followed that with:
“The Alignment Problem”
How can machines learn Human Values.
Brian Christian
Strangely, (I think) it seemed appropriate after “Determined” as a good read to follow on.
The brain meets it’s machine equivalent.
I haven’t finished it, but I’m enjoying “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. It argues, among other things, that neither liberals or conservatives have done a good job of producing the kind of government that can get things done.
Amen to that.
That’s because they are more interested in getting reelected than in doing what is best for the country and the world.
Another one I really enjoyed:
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes
A compelling story about Edison, Tesla, JP Morgan, and Westinghouse electrifying the world.
Not sure if it violates your rules, but I would like to mention my book Cancer Virus Hunters (JHU Press 2022) which tells the history of the idea that viruses cause cancer and the lesser known ways in which molecular biology was driven by developments in tumor virology (reverse transcriptase, oncogenes, p53, RNA splicing, HIV test) in addition to the development of vaccines for cancer (HBV and HPV).
Nature Wants us to be Fat by Richard Johnson. Currently reading a second time. Well written, interesting theory. Seems well supported. Fits with what I understand of the benefits of low carb but explains some aspects that aren’t answered by the “high carb leading to insulin resistance theory”. Well worth a read. A good partner book to another favourite, Ben Bikman’s Why We Get Sick.
Some recent reads:
The Mind & the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the power of mental force by Jeffery Schwartz. Interesting book. A bit older but still good.
Incognito and Livewired, both by David Eagleman. Great reads.
Perception: How our Bodies Shape our Minds by Dennis Proffitt and Drake Baer. Good read.
The Experience Machine: How our Minds Predict and Shape Reality by Andy Clark. Really interesting read.
Awakening From the Meaning Crisis: Part 1: Origins by John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro. Excellent Book
I recently read “Why Orwell Matters” by Hitchens (which I thoroughly enjoyed), and in the book he mentioned that Orwell was impressed by Mailer’s 1948 novel “The Naked and the Dead” so I picked that up. It’s a hefty 700+ pager and I’m about half-way through it. I’m astonished that Mailer was only 24 when he wrote it. I like WW2 novels and this one stacks up there with some of the best. Brutal and sad and insightful and I can see why he was criticized for his portrayal of women (not that his portrayal of men is somehow glowing). Either way, it is an engrossing read, and if George Orwell liked it, what more can I say? H/t to CH for that one.
I enjoyed the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. It copped flak for being too kind to Musk when it came out, but I found the account of how he runs his companies very enlightening, and it explains a lot about the way he and his script kiddies are carrying on at DOGE.
On the holocaust front, I recently read a book called “Conversations with an Executioner” by Kazimierz Moczarski. The author was an officer of the Polish Underground Army fighting against the Nazi occupation, was imprisoned after the war by the Polish communist authorities, and spent 9 months in a cell with SS Gruppenführer Jurgen Stroop, who was responsible for destroying the Warsaw ghetto. To quote the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, “It is perhaps a unique document, the best portrait we have of a genuine Nazi who persisted to the end in his macabre creed: he believed that the reason the Nazis had lost the war was that they had been too good, not resolute enough in uprooting all the poisonous tendencies in Germany.”
And on a more cheering note, I very much enjoyed the novel “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus – there was a TV series based on it, which was OK, but not, IMO, nearly as good as the book.
Stephen Kings “The Institute”.About a çlañdestine group that kidnaps children, kills their parénts and eventually tortures the kids to death. All to prevent an imaginary threat to the world. The kids incarceration and looming death (which the kidß were aware of) reminded me about the victims of the Holocaust. And like the Nazis who pursued this even to the end of the war, the people running the institute were certain in the rightness of their cause.
You might enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliant, devastating Never Let Me Go.
The book Lessons in Chemistry was terrific! So much has changed yet so much has remained the same.
I never saw the TV show.
If you want to read additional books about the Holocaust, I recommend these four:
We Were in Auschwitz by Janusz Nel Siedlicki. An early Holocaust survivor memoir, this book is not well known FSR.
The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather. An amazing story of relentless courage.
Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death by David Marwell. A detailed discussion of Mengele’s life and death.
Kalman and Leopold: Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz by Richard K Lowy. There is also a film of the same title. See https://kalmanandleopold.com/ .
Also, I recommend:
The Woman That [sic] Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy [correct spelling]
The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls by Kara Dansky.
The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread by Maria Balinska. Balinska includes a lot of Jewish and Eastern European history in her book.
I’ve gotten started on the 41 volumes of the Penguin Monarchs; Athelstan to Elizabeth II, with a few of the minor Anglo-Saxon kings left out. I’m up to William I. They seem like perfect brief (100-120 pages each) introductions, written by notable scholars, with a-good-number-but-not-too-many footnotes, and nice bibliographies.
Just finishing up Lev Grossman’s astonishing Fillory trilogy (The Magicians and sequels). For anyone who’s ever wanted an atheist to interact with The Chronicles of Narnia. They are extremely creative, and the audiobook narrator is fabulous.
And, since Benjamin Franklin was mentioned in the OP, something completely different: The Dashkova Memoirs by Thomas K. Carpenter. It’s “alternate history fantasy,” set in a steampunk 1820s Philadelphia, where a polymath (including magic) Ben Franklin has befriended an exiled Russian aristocrat (the Dashkova of the title), and political and magical skulduggery ensues. Indie/self-published, which normally would be a hard no, but Carpenter is very prolific, and the books are surprisingly well-written and creative. Plus, you can get the e-books for less than $2 each at Book Bale. (Note: I have no connection with either Carpenter or Book Bale; just a satisfied reader/customer).
David Reich’s “Who we are and how we got here” is one of the most interesting books I have recently read.