Books

The Atlantic Magazine has published its 25 best books of the year here. Gordon Wood, easily my favorite author regarding the early history of the U.S. and the revolutionary era has a new book out called Empire of Liberty. Other books on the list that caught my attention are The Thirty Years War, The New Old World, The Arabs and This Time is Different. I also ran across a book called The Cold War that looks interesting. If anyone has read any of these, give me some feedback.

I am a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan, especially his New Yorker articles and The Tipping Point. He has a collection of his articles out called What The Dog Saw. Steven Pinker has some pretty incisive criticisms in his review in the NY Times today.

I wonder when Robert Caro is going to publish his fourth volumn of his biography of Lyndon Johnson. The Senate was a brilliant book. I hope Nassim Taleb is working on something new. I have read The Black Swan twice and may read it again when I get my loaned copy back. And where has Tony Judt been lately? I love his articles and Postwar was brilliant. I am getting a little burned out on behavioral economics and the financial meltdown, which is unfortunate because the best stuff on the latter is probably coming out now, after authors have had some time to digest and write. Andrew Sorkin's new book looks interesting but I know I wonuldn't read it for quite some time. It also purportedly doesn't contain much analysis, but Sorkin apparently had great access to the big Wall Street players.

Back to Steve Coll's Ghost Wars. This book is full of so many surprises that I can't wait. And it is very timely with the questions about Afghan policy swirling.