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Best and Worst Books, 2024

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!

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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
The Story of Silver by William L. Silber


Worst (1/5 stars or close):
How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter
Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont (trans. Alexis Lykiard)
End Times by Peter Turchin

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The Prophet of Edan by Philip Chase [The Edan Trilogy #2]

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H.R. by Edwin Lefevre

I wouldn't recommend this odd book for its story. But H.R. is interesting for its social and psychological commentary on early 20th century New York society, as the Gilded Age gave way to the so-called Progressive Era. Edwin Lefevre is the author of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator , the famous (at least among investors) pseudobiography of Jesse Livermore. This book, in stark contrast, is a forgotten and comparatively forgettable work.  But not totally forgettable. The reader watches the life arc of a young man who catapults himself across several caste barriers, starting as a frustrated New York City bank clerk who quits and, implausibly, starts a union of sandwich-board advertisers. He then uses this sandwich board advertising platform (you could think of it as an early 1900s "new media" platform) to gain influence throughout the city, ultimately parlaying his way into joining New York's social and economic elite. At its heart, this book is about power and influ...

The Art of War in the Middle Ages by Charles Oman

A wonderful, information-dense book surveying the evolution of warfare across the Middle Ages, and a glorious starting point for readers to contextualize an enormous amount of European history. There's a great deal of historical knowledge here that author Charles Oman assumes in his readers.  And so the very act of reading this book (and looking up the author's near-constant historical references) equates to a semester or two--at least--of upper-level undergrad European history. Read this book and spend some time looking things up. Then read several more books like this [1].  Pretty soon, enough osmosis happens such that the various battles and historical figures this author mentions casually will be things you start mentioning casually: Cannae, Adrianople, Brunanburh, Hastings, Robert Guiscard, Durazzo, Tours, Crecy, Agincourt, Arnold von Winkelried, Albrecht von Wallenstein, and so on. (This will be an inner monologue of course, because we all know how much every...