Book Reviews
compiled by piero scaruffi
The reviews of scientific books (several hundreds) are on a separate page. Below are books on history, politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, and culture in general. Ansary, Tamim: "The Invention of Yesterday" (2019) Armitage, David: "Civil Wars" (2017) Arthur, Brian: "The Nature of Technology" (2009) Aslan, Reza: "No God But God" (2005) Atkins, Peter-William: "The Second Law" (1984) Bacevich, Andrew: "The Age of Illusions" (2020) Barzun, Jacques: "From Dawn To Decadence" (2000) Bauer, Wolfgang: "China and the Search for Happiness" (1976) Bawer, Bruce: "While Europe Slept" (2006) Beevor, Antony: "World War II" (2012) Bergen, Peter: "The Osama bin Laden I Know" (2006) Bergen, Peter: "Manhunt - The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden" (2012) Bostrom, Nick: "Superintelligence" (2014) Brendon, Piers: "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire" (2007) Brown, John Seely & Duguid, Paul: "The Social Life of Information" (2000) Brown,John Seely, & al: "The Power of Pull" (Harvard, 2010) Bryson, Bill: "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (2003) Calasso, Roberto: "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" (1988) Calasso, Roberto: "Ka" (1996) Calasso, Roberto: "The Ruin of Kasch" (1983) Carse, James: "The Religious Case Against Belief" (2008) Jacobs, Jane: "The Economy of Cities" (1970) James Chambers: "The Devil's Horsemen - The Mongol Invasion of Europe" (1979) Chang, Jung: "The Real Mao" (2005) Chomsky, Noam: "Hegemony or Survival" (2003) Chomsky, Noam: "Necessary Illusions" (1989) Chomsky, Noam: "Manufacturing Consent" (1988) Coll, Steve: "9/11 Ghost Wars" (2004) Cowen, Tyler: "The Great Stagnation" (2010) Crosby, Alfred: "Ecological Imperialism" (1986) Cross, Gary and Proctor, Robert: "Packaged Pleasures" (2014) Cumings, Bruce: "Dominion from Sea to Sea" (2009) Dawisha, Karen: "Putin's Kleptocracy" (2014) Diamond, Jared: "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" (2004) Diamond, Jared: "Guns, Germs and Steel" (1997) Dohrn-VanRossum, Gerhard : "The History of the Hour" (1996) Dreyfus, Hubert & Sean Dorrance Kelly: "All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age" (2010) Duby, Georges & Perrot, Michelle: "A History of Women in the West" (1991) Dyson, George: "Turing's Cathedral" (2012) Ellsberg, Daniel: "The Doomsday Machine" (2017) Ferguson, Neill: COLOSSUS (Penguin, 2004) Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe: MILLENNIUM (1995) Flink, James: "The Automobile Age" (1990) Foucault, Michel: "Discipline and Punishment" (1975) Friedman, Thomas: "The World is Flat" (2005) Fukuyama, Francis: "The Origins of Political Order" (2011) Fukuyama, Francis: "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) Gelfand, Michele: "Rule Makes, Rule Breakers" (2018) Gilder, George: "Knowledge and Power" (2013) Gladwell, Malcolm: "The Outliers" (2008) Glaeser, Edward: "Triumph of the City" (2011) Gordon, John Steele : "An Empire of Wealth" (2004) Grayling, AC: "The Age of Genius" (2016) Gregg, Gary: "The Middle East - A Cultural Psychology" (2005) Hanson, Victor: "The Case for Trump" (2019) Harari, Yuval: "Sapiens" (2011) Harari, Yuval: "Homo Deus" (2015) Harari, Yuval: "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" (2018) Harrison, Robert : "Juvenescence" (2014) Hastings, Max : "Armageddon" (2004) Hayes, Stephen : "The Connection" (2004) Heather, Peter: "Empires and Barbarians" (Oxford, 2009) Hubbard, Glenn and Tim Kane: "Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America" (2013) Isaacson, Walter: "Steve Jobs" (2011) Johnson, Chalmers: "Blowback" (2000) Huntington, Samuel: "The Clash of Civilizations" (1996) Johnson, Paul: "A History of the Jews" (1987) Kelly, Kevin: "What Technology Wants" (2010) Khanna, Parag: "Connectography" (2016) Kinzer, Stephen: "Overthrow" (Henry Holt, 2006) Kristof, Nicholas & WuDunn, Sheryl: "Thunder From The East" (2000) Landes, David: "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" (1999) Lanier, Jaron: "You Are Not A Gadget" (2010) Laqueur, Walter : "The Last Days of Europe" (Dunne, 2007) Lambert, Malcolm : "God's Armies" (2016) Laqueur, Thomas : "Solitary Sex" (Zone Books, 2003) Latour, Bruno: "We Have Never Been Modern" (1991) Lee, Kai-fu: "AI Superpowers" (2018) Leverett, Flynt and Hillay: "Going to Tehran" (2012) Lomborg, Bjorn: "False Alarm" (2020) Mamdani, Mahmood : "Good Muslim Bad Muslim" (2004) McLuhan, Marshall: "The Gutenberg Galaxy" (1962) McLuhan, Marshall: "Understanding Media" (1964) McGilchrist, Iain: "The Master and His Emissary" (Yale Univ Press, 2012) McNeely, Ian: "Reinventing Knowledge" (2008) Mearsheimer, John: "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" (2001) Michael Mandelbaum: "The Case for Goliath - How America Acts as the World's Goernment in the 21st Century" (2005) Mishra, Pankaj: "Age of Anger" (2017) Moore, Steven: "The Novel" (Continuum, 2010) Morris, Ian: Ian Morris: War! What is it Good for? (2014) Nuland, Sherwin: "How We Die" (Knopf, 1994) Paczkowski, Andrzej: "The Black Book of Communism" (1999) Petroski, Henry: "To Forgive Design" (2012) Phelps, Edmund: "Mass Flourishing" (2013) Pigliucci, Massimo: "Answers for Aristotle - How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life" (Basic, 2012) Pink, Daniel: "A Whole New Mind" (2005) Pinker, Steven: "The Better Angels of our Nature" (2011) Pistono, Federico: "Robots Will Steal Your Job But That's OK" (2012) Polanyi, Karl: "The Great Transformation" (1944) Pollack, Kenneth: "A Path Out of the Desert" (2008) Postman, Neil: "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985) Postman, Neil: "Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century" (1999) Ramirez, Ainissa: "The Alchemy of Us" (2020) Rashid, Ahmed: "Descent into Chaos" (2008)  Rice, Condoleezza : "Democracy" (2017)
Ricks, Thomas : "Fiasco - The American Military Adventure in Iraq" (2006) Rifkin, Jeremy: "The Empathic Civilization" (2009) Riordan, Teresa: "Inventing Beauty" (Broadway Books, 2004) Rosenberg & Birdzell: "How the West Grew Rich" (Basic, 1986) Rowen, Henry: "Making It - The Rise of Asia in Information Technologies" (Stanford Univ Press, 2007) Singer, Michael: "The Untethered Soul - The Journey Beyond Yourself " (2007) Singer, Peter: "The Expanding Circle" (1981) Sanger, David: "The Perfect Weapon" (2018) Saul, John Ralston: "Voltaire's Bastards" (1992) Santosuosso, Antonio: "Storming the Heavens" (2004) Schuman, Michael: "The Miracle" (2009) Scott, Laurence: "The Four-dimensional Human" (Norton, 2015) Shlain, Leonard: "Art and Physics" (1991) Snyder, Timothy: "The Road to Unfreedom" (2018) Solomon, Steven: "Water" (2010) Standage, Tom: "Writing in the Wall" (2013) Stark, Rodney and Bainbridge, William: "The Future of Religion" (1986) Taylor, Paul: "The Next America" (2014) Tenet, George: "At The Center Of The Storm" (2007) Thornton, Bruce: "Eros - The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality" (1997) Trentmann, Frank: "Empire Of Things" (2016) Turchin, Peter: "War and Peace and War" (2006) Turner, Fred: "From Counterculture to Cyberculture" (2006) Tyler, Patrick: "A World of Trouble" (2008) Hugh Thomas: "The Slave Trade" (1997) Watson, Peter: "Ideas" (2005) Wertheim, Margaret: "Pythagoras's Trousers" (1997) Wertheim, Margaret: "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace" (1999) Wilson, A. N.: "The Decline of Britain in the World" (2005) Wolff, Michael: "Fire and Fury" (2018) Wright, Robert: "Non Zero" (2000) Wright, Robert: "The Evolution of God" (2009) Wu, Tim: "The Master Switch - The Rise and Fall of Information Empires" (2010) Yergin, Daniel: "The Prize" (1991) Zakaria, Fareed: "The Future of Freedom" (2004) See also my reviews of scientific books (several hundreds) (Copyright © 2014 piero scaruffi) |