What I’ve been reading – Marginal REVOLUTION

1. Paul Mendes-Flohr, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent.  A beautifully written, first-rate intellectual biography of Buber.  It is hard to imagine finding a better book on him.

2. Robert C. Austin and Artan R. Hoxha, Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant.  How did this strange story end up happening?  This book offers the best set of explanations I have seen.  But Hoxha himself remains a psychological cipher at the end of it all?  It turns out he never thought Mao was much of an ideologue, being too influenced by Chinese culture and thought.  Also I had not previously realize how much Albania’s growing youth population — with the most natalist demographics in Europe at the time — was considered a major threat to the regime.

3. Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945.  Such an excellent and high-level work.  And the author is not afraid to accuse Popper of making everything about himself, and also writing on topics (Plato, Hegel, Marx) where he was less than well-informed.  I had not known that Popper hated Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna book, feeling that the actual Viennese environment at the time was far more positive and forward-looking than most intellectual historians were inclined to grant.  Nor had I known how cut off Popper was during his New Zealand years, as there were no plane connections, New Zealand news did not cover foreign affairs very much, and the mail was painfully slow.  Popper also wanted to turn the Mont Pelerin Society into a coalition group, including socialists.  That did not happen.

4. Frank Callanan, James Joyce: A Political Life.  An excellent, lengthy study, I now see Joyce as intensely political whereas I did not before.  “His fiercely Parnellian critique of Ireland and Irish nationalism is only politically intelligible as written from within Irish nationalism.  It is an argument addressed to Irish nationalists.  The paradox of Joyce’s nationalism is that it is in his critique of nationalism that his nationalism is most evident.”  As Italo Svevo once stated: “Joyce is twice a rebel, against England and against Ireland.”

5. Suzy Hansen, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan.  An insightful look into Erdoğan, Turkish Islamism, parts of Istanbul, and most of all how Turkey slid into autocracy.  One of the best case studies I know of on how a fragile democracy can go away.

All of these books are very good.  I’ve been seeing complaining in the press lately, and on social media, about the paucity of book reviews these days.  Well, no one is stopping you from reviewing books!  Just do it.