Verarde
Pondering Wearing A Hat
I never finished The House of Silk. It appeared under my bed covered in dust, so I've picked it back up.
Which book are you reading now? Volume XI
- Thread starter NedimNapoleon
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SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
It's been a while.
Finished:
Egypt on the Brink, by Tarek Osman. I feel like I kind of understand the situation there more. Hated the skimping on its military history. Can nobody else integrate descriptions of battles into amodern history like Mr. Jones?
The Spotter's Guide to Urban Engineering, by Claire Barratt and Ian Whitelaw. A must-read. Makes a train ride vastly more interesting not just by looking at the pages, but by looking outside the window and seeing how many specimens of modern engineering you can catalog.
Starting:
The Accidental Guerilla by David Killcullen. A look at the complex situations of recent insurgent conflicts versus the US military's view of them. Looked interesting, from the few pages I flipped through.
Finished:
Egypt on the Brink, by Tarek Osman. I feel like I kind of understand the situation there more. Hated the skimping on its military history. Can nobody else integrate descriptions of battles into amodern history like Mr. Jones?
The Spotter's Guide to Urban Engineering, by Claire Barratt and Ian Whitelaw. A must-read. Makes a train ride vastly more interesting not just by looking at the pages, but by looking outside the window and seeing how many specimens of modern engineering you can catalog.
Starting:
The Accidental Guerilla by David Killcullen. A look at the complex situations of recent insurgent conflicts versus the US military's view of them. Looked interesting, from the few pages I flipped through.
Integral
Can't you hear it?
Ehhhh but it's a serious subject. That's kind of the problem. If it wasn't on a serious subject it wouldn't matter. But the issue at hand is an important issue. Then again, I'm still not sure if having read the book is worse than not having read it.
Fair enough! I've finished it, and it has piqued my interest in the subject. In that, the book has served its purpose.
Upward and onward to
Parfit - On What Matters.
Here is a review by a consequentialist. Thirteen hundred pages reviewed in sixteen hundred words.
Here is a review by Tyler Cowen. Cowen's book reviews rarely last 200 words yet he spares a twelve hundred for Parfit; his main criticism is that Parfit should have included more insights from formal game theory. Indeed Cowen views the book as a failure on the whole precisely because it does not interact with the advances that economists and political scientists have made in social choice theory and game theory. I am reading it with that in mind; nevertheless my priors are strongly sympathetic to Kant and I cannot help but read it in that self-confirming light. It should be interesting nonetheless.
Here is a review by Peter Singer.
--
Finished
- Pacific Crucible
- Otaku
- Why Nations Fail
- After the Prophet
Currently working on
- On What Matters
Queue
- Shi'ism: Religion of Protest
- Solomon’s Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations (a good followup to Why Nations Fail)
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Having left this book 1/3 completed at my parents' house, I've moved on to Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution. A delightful and rewarding read thus far. A mix of bardship, poetry, and history.
Took a break from my current reading list to tackle By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 by Michael Holt. It covers the primaries, general election, and the chaos afterwards of the contest between Hayes and Tilden. Very well-written and balanced, I'd recommend it.
Felt appropriate to kick off the general election season.
Felt appropriate to kick off the general election season.
No activity? Come on, somebody has read something interesting in the last week! 
Still working on my front-page three, but I have also read So Far from God by John Eisenhower. No, it's not about religion or anything like that, but rather the Mexican War from 1846-1848. Well-paced, very detailed on the campaigns. Couldn't put it down during Taylor's early engagements or Winfield Scott's march from Veracruz to Mexico City.
Still working on my front-page three, but I have also read So Far from God by John Eisenhower. No, it's not about religion or anything like that, but rather the Mexican War from 1846-1848. Well-paced, very detailed on the campaigns. Couldn't put it down during Taylor's early engagements or Winfield Scott's march from Veracruz to Mexico City.
Integral
Can't you hear it?
No activity? Come on, somebody has read something interesting in the last week!
Um....I got through three pages of On What Matters. Does that count?
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Finished Accidental Guerrilla. Still good, but the conclusion section was mainly repetition of earlier points he made and obvious implications that you can figure out on your own.
Also finished Epidemics and Pandemics, subtitle "Their Impacts on Human History". Interesting book, but when the author was adamant in the preface that he was a historian and not a scientist, I knew there would be trouble. The phrase "cytokine storm" was nowhere in the section about the 1918 flu pandemic. The author is content to just ask questions in the "Unresolved Historical Issues" section without bringing up any recent research. Sigh, historians writing about topics that require scientific expertise (pro-tip: consulting experts in other fields does wonders). How disappointing.
The local library doesn't seem to have any other good science or engineering books that I haven't read anymore. Mainly social science material now.
Started The Struggle for Europe by William I. Hitchcock. Looks interesting so far, and I needed a break from the Muslim world.
Also finished Epidemics and Pandemics, subtitle "Their Impacts on Human History". Interesting book, but when the author was adamant in the preface that he was a historian and not a scientist, I knew there would be trouble. The phrase "cytokine storm" was nowhere in the section about the 1918 flu pandemic. The author is content to just ask questions in the "Unresolved Historical Issues" section without bringing up any recent research. Sigh, historians writing about topics that require scientific expertise (pro-tip: consulting experts in other fields does wonders). How disappointing.
The local library doesn't seem to have any other good science or engineering books that I haven't read anymore. Mainly social science material now.
Started The Struggle for Europe by William I. Hitchcock. Looks interesting so far, and I needed a break from the Muslim world.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Well, I didn't buy the book. 
What do you mean by the last sentence? Events and contexts of past years, or does it tarnish the current conclusions he draws?
What do you mean by the last sentence? Events and contexts of past years, or does it tarnish the current conclusions he draws?
Integral
Can't you hear it?
Added another one to the bucket list: Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs.
1. Given that the only thing I know about demography comes from Richard Florida, this should be good.
2. Austin, Seattle, and the Research Triangle are in; Flint, Detroit and Cleveland are out. No word yet on Boston.
1. Given that the only thing I know about demography comes from Richard Florida, this should be good.
2. Austin, Seattle, and the Research Triangle are in; Flint, Detroit and Cleveland are out. No word yet on Boston.
Eat_Up_Martha
Prince
What did you think? Have you read many of his other works? I'm a big fan of his work and I'm always eager to hear others' opinions.
I'm working on The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. It's nice to have reading options to suit your mood.
You're forgetting that Newton's theory of gravity has force being divided by the square of the distance between center mass of the objects in question, equaling the radius in this case. So it's really a 2.4 increase in gravity.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It was really good. It's the first book of his I've read, although I've been meaning to read his stuff for a while, just never quite got round to it. (For some reason, my reading habits over the last couple of years have leant absurdly towards non-fiction.) I'll definitely get hold of some more of his stuff once I work through the little "to read" pile I've accumulated.
Recent reads:
About to finish Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture and Why We Get Sick: the New Science of Darwinian Medicine.
Spoiler :
About to finish Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture and Why We Get Sick: the New Science of Darwinian Medicine.
Chris Wickham - Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800
Chris Wickham - The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000
I've also placed an order for the following:
The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800-1990s - R. E. Elson
A History of South-East Asia 4 eds - D.G.E. Hall
Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia - Clifford Geertz
Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali - Clifford Geertz
The Religion of Java - Clifford Geertz
Mystic Synthesis in Java: A History of Islamization from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries - M. C. Ricklefs
Polarizing Javanese Society: Islamic and Other Visions c. 1830-1930 - M. C. Ricklefs
Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast China and the Chinese - Anthony Reid
Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia - Anthony Reid
At this stage, I'm running out of first rate stuff to purchase.
Chris Wickham - The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000
I've also placed an order for the following:
The End of the Peasantry in Southeast Asia: A Social and Economic History of Peasant Livelihood, 1800-1990s - R. E. Elson
A History of South-East Asia 4 eds - D.G.E. Hall
Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia - Clifford Geertz
Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali - Clifford Geertz
The Religion of Java - Clifford Geertz
Mystic Synthesis in Java: A History of Islamization from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries - M. C. Ricklefs
Polarizing Javanese Society: Islamic and Other Visions c. 1830-1930 - M. C. Ricklefs
Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast China and the Chinese - Anthony Reid
Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia - Anthony Reid
At this stage, I'm running out of first rate stuff to purchase.
Integral
Can't you hear it?
I skimmed through that a year or two ago. Never got around to reading it closely, but it's not a bad book. It is extremely content-dense.
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