I was dissatisfied with my 2015 reading. A number of projects and situations contrived to cut down my reading time drastically, and so this list feels even more provisional than most years, a grab-bag of things that stood out for me stood out for me personally rather than a considered ranking. I think in a better world we would all do books of a given year 5 to 10 years down the line, and the resulting lists would be far more well-considered. Maybe 25 or 50 years would be even better.
I was pulled into a number of projects and situations that obliterated both my concentration and reading time, the biggest being my Facilitated Communication investigation, which consumed an entire quarter of the year. That would not have been so bad by itself but a handful of other similar matters made it difficult to do as much comprehensive reading as I would have liked. I’ve resolved to change that this year.
So, wish a bit of disappointment and shame, I am attaching a “Promising Nonfiction” section of books I haven’t yet assessed. These are books that due to their subject matter, pedigree, author, or some other factor struck me as being worth investigating, but which I didn’t have time to do so. Note that it is entirely possible that some of these books are terrible–they just merit a look in my mind. (Example: Cesar Hidalgo’s Why Information Grows would have been on the promising list, but I did get time to take a look at it and it did not fulfill its promise. On the other hand, I am near-certain Noel Malcolm’s latest tome of scholarship is brilliant, but simply didn’t have time to get to a work so far outside outside my current area of focus.) If any readers have opinions on them, please chime in.
Book of the Year
The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory (New Directions in German Studies)
Price: $39.95
14 used & new available from $39.95
Fiction
Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories (NYRB Classics)
Price: $15.34
44 used & new available from $6.43
A Brief History of Seven Killings (Booker Prize Winner): A Novel
Price: $10.99
1 used & new available from $10.99
Macbeth: Third Series (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series)
Price: $12.30
56 used & new available from $5.66
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (New York Review Books Classics)
Price: $16.95
11 used & new available from $6.79
The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes (Hackett Classics)
Price: $16.10
31 used & new available from $7.74
Nonfiction
The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
Price: $15.99
1 used & new available from $15.99
The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz
Price: $10.79
26 used & new available from $6.00
Paradoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton Legacy Library)
Price: $71.24
10 used & new available from $71.24
Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg's Theory of Myth (Theorists of Myth)
Price: $159.01
14 used & new available from $122.00
Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology
Price: $15.09
53 used & new available from $2.74
Price: $67.84
25 used & new available from $15.00
Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up
Price: $15.87
1 used & new available from $15.87
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
Price: $13.99
1 used & new available from $13.99
The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (The Princeton History of the Ancient World)
Price: $30.30
37 used & new available from $6.81
Persius: A Study in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural
Price: $56.62
7 used & new available from $41.45
Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others (Foundational Questions in Science)
Price: $16.01
30 used & new available from $2.70
The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution
Price: $45.98
16 used & new available from $3.28
Greek Models of Mind and Self (Revealing antiquity ; Book 22)
Price: $26.99
1 used & new available from $26.99
Track-Two Diplomacy Toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978-2014
Price: $47.00
22 used & new available from $29.98
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
Price: $28.00
53 used & new available from $1.75
The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973
Price: $20.69
30 used & new available from $8.00
The Cybernetics Moment (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History)
Price: $20.49
1 used & new available from $20.49
Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe (Science Essentials)
Price: $17.49
66 used & new available from $4.00
Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions (New York Review Books Classics)
Price: $14.95
46 used & new available from $2.69
Promising Nonfiction
Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits, and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World
Price: $27.06
27 used & new available from $5.38
The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology
Price: $34.95
22 used & new available from $10.57
Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity
Price: $19.83
1 used & new available from $19.83
Price: $45.00
1 used & new available from $45.00
Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance
Price: $25.38
66 used & new available from $2.20
Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco
Price: $82.50
4 used & new available from $55.14
Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
Price: $9.99
1 used & new available from $9.99
Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present
Price: $26.18
21 used & new available from $4.41
Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World
Price: $7.62
49 used & new available from $3.24
A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change -- and the Limits of Evolution
Price: $37.03
21 used & new available from $4.00
We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination
Price: $39.81
19 used & new available from $15.54
The Age of Catastrophe: A History of the West 1914-1945
Price: $47.50
1 used & new available from $47.50
A Country Called Prison: Mass Incarceration and the Making of a New Nation
Price: $24.73
46 used & new available from $4.17
Price: $26.95
1 used & new available from $26.95
Price: $41.99
20 used & new available from $26.74
Stem Cell Dialogues: A Philosophical and Scientific Inquiry Into Medical Frontiers
Price: $9.90
42 used & new available from $9.50
The Political Machine: Assembling Sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus (The Rostovtzeff Lectures)
Price: $49.44
22 used & new available from $14.00
Barbarism and Religion: Volume 6, Barbarism: Triumph in the West (Barbarism and Religion, 6)
Price: $121.88
10 used & new available from $97.76
Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity
Price: $2.99
1 used & new available from $2.99
Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa
Price: $28.99
28 used & new available from $14.29
Price: $13.18
1 used & new available from $13.18
Price: $28.87
31 used & new available from $2.32
Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947
Price: $15.99
25 used & new available from $7.46
The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
Price: $24.95
38 used & new available from $4.86
Price: $80.75
1 used & new available from $80.75
Very Different, But Much the Same: The Evolution of English Society Since 1714
Price: $79.00
9 used & new available from $12.00
State Power in Ancient China and Rome (Oxford Studies in Early Empires)
Price: $113.33
11 used & new available from $59.32
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
Price: $50.00
24 used & new available from $9.53
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Price: $32.95
49 used & new available from $6.95
The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve (Evolution and Cognition)
Price: $37.43
20 used & new available from $17.00
Back to the Garden: Nature and the Mediterranean World from Prehistory to the Present
Price: $38.00
1 used & new available from $38.00
The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore
Price: $19.87
1 used & new available from $19.87
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