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The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict
Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress,
Virginia Postrel
- This book expresses my own political and
social ideas and values in the context of current events and
issues better than the work of any other writer I've encountered.
Postrel has done a very good job in this book of expressing exactly
why I find the terms "left" and "right" and
"conservative" and "liberal" to be worthless,
empty icons. Instead, she finds the labels "stasist"
and "dynamist" better descriptions of the real divisions
in culture and politics in the current era. If you read only
one book about current events and politics this year, make it
this one. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
- Two Signposts on the Road to a New Enlightenment: My extended review of Consilience by
Edward O. Wilson and The
Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel
- dynamist.com: Virginia Postrel's web site devoted to the ideas
developed in this book
Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama
- Continuing his analysis of modern society
in the aftermath of the Cold War, Fukuyama follows up his book
The End of History and the Last Man with a detailed view
of the role that trust plays in a number of societies. He identifies
the concept of trust as one of the basic ingredients of civil
society, labeling it the essential element of what he calls "social
capital" -- a resource that can be cultivated and squandered,
depending on the choices made by a society's leaders and institutions.
Highly Recommended
The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary
Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman,
Edited by David Boaz
- Highly recommended resource of the basic
texts of liberty, both for the newcomer to freedom and the committed
libertarian.
Law and Legal Theory in the UK and USA, Richard A. Posner
- Judge Posner collects here his three Clarendon
Law Lectures at Oxford University. He contrasts the jurisprudential
philosophy, substantive law and economic legal culture of the
U.K. and the U.S. Among other things, he makes the surprising
conlcusion that the current U.K. legal system is closer to the
Continental system than it is to the U.S. and shows that simple
reforms in which one system might seek to adopt isolated practices
from the other would be unwise. Recommended to the serious student
of comparative legal theory and practice.
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn
- This volume won Bailyn the Pulitzer Prize
for history. Bailyn here expands his exhaustive technical scholarship
on the pamphlet literature of the American Revolution to a wider
discussion of the currents of thought in which the Founders conceived
the republic. Recommended to the serious student of Anglo-Amercian
Enlightenment political theory and practice.
The Origins of Virtue,
Matt Ridley
- Richard Dawkins blurbed this book like
this: "If my The Selfish Gene were to have a Volume
Two devoted to humans, The Origins of Virtue is pretty
much what I think it ought to look like." This book melds
Dawkins' basic thesis with the insights derived in the last two
decades from thinking about the iterated prisoners' dilemma
to sketch a "natural history" of human morals. Recommended.
A General Theory of Love,
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon
- A very well-written survey of the "state
of the art" in cognitive science on the subject of love.
References to literature and the arts and an easy writing style
make this a real treasure. Highly Reccomended.
The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas.
- Described as "a liberal education
in one volume", this is a very readable history of Western
thought from the pre-Socratic Greeks through "post-modernism".
The book concentrates mainly on the history of metaphysics and
epistemology (as the ground for the great story of the Copernican
revolution), and suffers from a less well-developed treatment
of moral and political thought. Recommended.
The Machinery of Freedom,
David Friedman
- A book oft-cited as a "basic text"
of modern anarcho-capitalist legal thinking and worth its reputation.
It is insightful and witty. If you're wondering, "what are
all these anarchist crazies on the Web talking about?" you
should read this short book. HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED.
Freedom and the Law,
Bruno Leoni.
- As a series of lectures, this book doesn't
read as well as it would have if it had been edited by the author
as a book, but good discussion of libertarian legal ideas, especially
the tendency of legislatures to "over-rule".
Private Truths, Public Lies : The Social Consequences
of Preference Falsification,
Timur Kuran
- A technical exploration of the role of
"preference falsification", i.e. false expressions
of real preferences about matters of public policy and social
life. Kuran offers a valuable addition to the understanding of
phenomena such as revolutions and apparent sudden shifts in public
opinion. RECOMMENDED.
Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Robert Conquest
- Robert Conquest is a noted British "sovietologist"
(and was a foreign policy advisor and speechwriter to Margaret
Thatcher - and also is a noted science fiction writer!). In this
book he looks back on the roots and development of totalitarian
ideologies in the 20th century and discusses at length the contrasts
between societies that fell prey to those ideological contagions
and ones that proved largely immune to them. Especially engaging
is Conquest's informed depiction of the thorough corruption of
civic society under Soviet communism in Russia. Very well written:
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials : The Rise of Irrationalism
and Perils of Piety, Wendy Kaminer
- Following up on themes found in her 1992
book I'm
Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, Kaminer examines
the causes and effects of irrationalism in American public life
and pop culture. Very entertaining and well-written, this book
is a valuable guide to the loony and pious turn so much of our
public discourse has taken recently. Recommended
The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State, Bruce
L. Benson.
- Very good discussion of privately-produced
law, including interesting discussion of pre-state common law
practices.
The Transparent Society,
David
Brin
- A book about the values of openness and
secrecy in a world that will be transformed by new information
technologies such as the net and micro-surveillance technologies.
Brin stakes out a position in distinction to the advocates of
thoroughgoing privacy who have been perhaps the most vocal element
of the cyberspace community. I found much with which to agree
in Brin's identification of openness as a key secondary value
in support of a free society and agree that his position is not
as radical as it has been characterized to be by some who have
criticized the book. I disagree with any position Brin might
be taking (it's actually had to tell, in the end) in opposition
to such cryptographic tools as pubic key encryption. The book
is a necessary counterpoint in an on-going dialogue. Highly recommended.
The Postmodern Turn,
Steven Best, Douglas Kellner
- A historical and analytical overview of
postmodernism by two authors basically sympathetic to the fundamental
concepts. A good introduction and, for those previously unfamiliar
with postmodernism, a work that makes clear how modern Western
academia has worked itself into a quagmire of self-doubt, contradiction
and irrelevancy (although this is not the authors' intent). Recommended
as a good single-volume overview of the subject (but a warning:
contains dense postmodernist and Marxist jargon; if you're allergic
to Marxist jargo, beware!)
No Turning Back,Wallace
Kaufman -- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
--
- I highly recommend this book for anyone
in environmental issues, the "environmentalist movement"
and generally our relationship to nature. Kaufman is a self-confessed
"recovering environmentalist", conservationist and
science journalist. A listing of chapter titles reveals the scope
and subject matter of the book:
- Confessions of an Environmentalist
- The Search for Authority
- An Opposition Movement is Born
- The Roots of Environmental Thinking in
America
- Searching for a New Sense of the Sacred
- Winning the Public Away from Science
- Nature as We Want It: Can the Environmental
Movement Adapt to the New Ecology?
- Who Owns Nature?
- Technology to the Rescue
- This is Not the End, But the Beginning
- Kaufman, who has been an "insider"
in leading environmentalist groups, traces the anti-scientific
development of the American environmental movement from its roots
in late 18th century romanticism through it's modern anti-capitalist
political activism. He makes a compelling case for privatist
approaches to conservation and the employment of advanced, intelligent
technology to natural resource management issues. Kaufman explores
scientifically reasonable definitions of "nature" in
light of the special place of humans and current insight into
the chaotic nature of complex systems. His scientifically critical,
but ultimately optimistic, approach to environmental questions
such as global warming, deforestation, wetlands and wilderness
preservation, species extinction, land and other resource use
and human population growth are clear and encouraging expressions
of extropian values.
Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, David Friedman
- Friedman employs his informal and witty
style to walk the reader through "Economics 101" using,
as the title suggests, examples from everyday life. Not a "radical"
book like The Machinery of Freedom, Hidden Order
defends the free market using homespun wisdom, illustrated with
the basic tools of technical economics.
The Spike, Damien
Broderick
- Perhaps the first book-length treatment
of the transhumanist idea of the Singularity. A good overview
of the technological and social issues raised by the possible
coming superacceleration of progress. Discusses the ideas of
Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Frank Tipler, Max More and others
who have been seminal in the formation of transhumanist thinking.
Even though I don't agree with Broderick's political economics,
I think the book does a good job of introducing the key ideas
of transhumanism, especially to a public not yet familar with
them.
Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis
of Benevolence, David Kelley
- In this small book, Kelley makes a compelling
case that benevolence is a rational corollary of egoist morality.
Kelley writes from the heart of "orthodox" Randian
objectivism, but his work should be of interest to a broader
audience than it will likely reach.
Improving Nature,
Michael J. Reiss and Roger Straughan
- An overview of the moral and ethical dimensions
of genetic engineering. Reiss is a biologist and Anglican priest
and Straughan is an academic moral philosopher. The book presents
a surprisingly (to me) positive view of human control of biological
destiny via genetic engineering. Unfortunately, neither author
is likely to receive a Pulitzer prize for their writing style...
On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, Donald Kagan
- Kagan explores the causes of war by looking
at specific examples: The Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic
War, the First and Second World Wars and a war that didn't happen,
the Cuban Missile Crisis. Includes a well-written critique of
the diplomatic strategy of appeasement.
Why Gods Persist : A Scientific Approach to Religion, Robert A. Hinde
- A dense and poorly-written book that attempts
to catalogue all the various reasons that religious belief and
practice persist despite the Enlightenment. The subject deserves
much better. Not recommended.
The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level
of Civilization, Douglas S.
Robertson
- Disappointing musings on the impact of
computer technology on changes in society. The book begins well
with discussion of the idea that each true revolutionary change
in civilization has come with advances in information tehnology
(i.e. spoken language, writing, printing . . .) But Robertson
then takes a detour into a detailed discussion of the impact
of computers on the development of mathematics, following up
with brief, unimaginative essays on other areas of culture. No
new ideas here: this book would have been interesting in, say,
1960, but Robertson really misses the boat on the true impact
that computer technology will have.
