What I Just Read

I read another 50 or so books in 2024, and these are the ones that stood out--the good and the not so good. Each link below will take you to my review and discussion notes. If you'd like to support my work here, you can feel free to use this Amazon link to do your shopping , I'll be paid a modest affiliate fee at no extra cost to you. Thank you for reading, and all the best for 2025! [ See also 2023's Best and Worst ] ******************************** Best (5/5 stars or close): The Odds Against Me by John Scarne The Art of Contrary Thinking by Humphrey Bancroft Neill The Shipping Man by Matthew McCleery Animal Farm by George Orwell Fiat Money Inflation in France by A.D. White The Story of Silver by William L. Silber The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse by Fernando "Ferfal" Aguirre Worst (1/5 stars or close): A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America  by Bruce Cannon Gibney How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Wal...

Tight, concise discussion of what the State really is and what it really does, not what we would like it to be. Thanks to the recent pandemic response, most of us lost once and for all our delusive belief that governments are a force for good, a force for fairness and justice. In this short book, Murray Rothbard shows how the State--no matter how "limited" a government you might set up in the beginning--always, always abrogates its citizens' rights and freedoms. It's just a matter of time. We also come to understand why the State loves war. It loves it. It gives the State far more power. It provides an easy justification to abrogate still more freedoms. And of course those in the State apparatus who profit politically or economically from war never seem to send their own sons to fight it. An all-too-typical example: note how Benjamin Netanyahu's military-age son lives safely and luxuriously in Miami, his security paid for by Israeli taxpayers . The fourth chap...

Workmanlike, dense history of the first five or so centuries of the Christian church. The book could have been better structured and more engagingly written: it throws a lot at the reader without much organizational framework. But there's a lot to throw, which unfortunately makes this book more "one damn thing after another" history than well-told history. It will likely overwhelm (or worse, bore) most readers. However! If you're genuinely curious about the origins of Christianity (and not easily overwhelmed) there's plenty to mine here. To such a reader, I would recommend pairing this book with biographies of any of the key Church figures who interest you. (In no particular order: Ambrose, Arius, Athanasius, Augustine, Boethius, John Cassian, John Chrysostom, Clement, Eusebius, Irenaeus, Jerome, Origen, Pelagius, Plotinus and of course many, many others). It's also worth reading this book with an eye to how power structures are formed, and how the doctrines a...