Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
The editors should provide us with a written list of the books they mention. They mention the titles and authors so quickly it’s hard to note them.
@La Tapada: I agree that a list would be most helpful. Thanks especially for the recommendation on the Edith Wharton book. As to Joe Sobran, my son went to school with his grandson so I would see Mr. Sobran in the pick up line. Always interesting to talk to – and get the wafting of the cigar smoke. I will add that his car probably looked even worse than his office (since he was apparently in it for a longer time period).
Extremely fun podcast. Very enjoyable as well as informative.
Best nonfiction book of recent years that not nearly enough people have read: Virginia Postrel’s The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion (Nov. 2013). Although it has deservedly received dozens of five-star reviews as well as critical acclaim–Tyler Cowan has called it Postrel’s best book–its reception I think, has been hindered, oddly enough, by its gorgeously stunning and quintessentially glamorous cover, which draws you in but does not dispel the easy association in most people’s minds between glamour and fashion or celebrity. In fact, Postrel’s discussion gets at the DNA of human longing, the dream of becoming fully self-realized–from Sierra Leone orphan Michaela DePrince’s childhood discovery of a Western magazine with a photo of a ballet dancer on the cover (which she ripped off and kept in her underwear), to an adolescent Oprah Winfrey identifying with the opening sequence of the Mary Tyler Moore show, to the glamour of a military life, of living off the grid, of Star Trek, and of projecting one’s dreams on to the candidacy of Barack Obama. It’s really deep but so much fun to read–and look it–that it works as a coffee table book as well as serious scholarship. It’s a crime against wisdom that this book is yet to become a best seller.
I listened and took notes. Thanks to the editors for the following suggestions:
BEST RECENT NON FICTION:
MBD – Who Lost Russia by Peter Conradi
CCWC – The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered by Laura Auricchio
RS – Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskell and Stian Westlake
RL- The Idea of Nationalism by Hans Kohn, Nationalism by Liah Greenfeld
FAVORITE NON FICTION OF ALL TIME:
MBD – The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton
CCWC – Going Solo by Roald Dahl (sequel to Boy, also by Roald Dahl)
RS – The Next American Nation by Michael Lind
RL – Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie
NOVELS (recent-ish)
MBD – The Secret Place by Tana French (Book 5 of the Dublin Murder Squad Series)
CCWC – Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
RS – The Power by Naomi Alderman
RL – The Illiad by Homer, Elmore Leonard, Ross McDonald, Chinaman’s Chance by Ross Thomas
BEST NOVEL – ALL TIME
MBD – A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe, Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep
CCWC – Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (list maker note: CONCUR!)
RS – Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Costello by John Maxwell Coetzee and The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess
RL – Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (HM – The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky)
BEST RECENT CONSERVATIVE BOOK
MBD – Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left by Roger Scruton (HM – The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray – list maker note: great book!)
CCWC – Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism by Yuval Levin
RS – Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy by Daniel Ziblatt
RL – Same as Charlie, runner-up: Coming Apart by Charles Murray
FAVORITE CONSERVATIVE BOOK OF ALL TIME
MBD – Eugenics and Other Evils by GK Chesterton, Single Issues by Joseph Sobran
CCWC – The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk
RS – The Great Exception by Jefferson Cowie, Rule and Ruin by Geoffrey Kabaservice
RL – Witness by Whittaker Chambers, Constitution of Liberty by Friedrick Hayek, and Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk, Conservative Intellectual Movement by George H. Nash
FAVORITE BILL BUCKLEY BOOK
MBD – The Lexicon, Up From Liberalism
CCWC – Up From Liberalism
RS – The Unmaking of a Mayor
RL – Stained Glass (Blackford Oakes series)
GREATEST AMERICAN/BRITISH NOVELIST OF ALL TIME
MBD – Mark Twain (HM: Tom Wolfe)
CCWC – Jane Austen (caveat: not necessarily the “greatest” but captures a certain sensibility of England)
RS – Sana Krasikov
RL – Mark Twain
FAVORITE HISTORIAN
MBD – Tom Holland (Rubicon, In the Shadow of the Sword)
CCWC – David McCullough
RS – Niall Ferguson, Mark Levinson (The Box)
RL – David Hackett Fisher
TO READ in 2018
MBD – The Great Deception by Christopher Booker and Richard D. North, History of England and PG Wodehouse
CCWC – Graham Greene
RS – Negroland
RL – History of England by Peter Ackroyd (Foundation, Revolution)
HAPPY READING EVERYONE!
Thank you, @nerinabellinger!