Books I read in 2024

Bix demonstrates persuasively and meticulously that the western conception of Hirohito as a passive ruler (used instrumentally by militarists surrounding him) is false. Instead, the emperor and his court actively perpetuated and shaped the role of imperial ideology in modern Japan. Hirohito idolized his grandfather, the Meiji Emperor, and was deeply invested in surpassing what he perceived as faults of his father, the reclusive and sickly Taisho. During Hirohito's reign, the emperor and his court maintained the imperial house's divinity, traced to ancestral lineage from the Shinto goddess Amaterasu. The court, military, and factions within Japan's civilian government upheld this belief, their engagements with it reflecting their preferred visions for the country (this is visible in the struggle between the Imperial Way and Control factions within the military, and Prime Minister Konoe's articulation of Hakko ichiu). A different path might have been open to Japan in the period before and around Hirohito's ascension, where the country might have continued towards constitutional monarchy. However, this would've required a commitment that Hirohito was disinclined to provide. Ultimately, in a mixture of collaboration and refusal to check the ambitions of the separate military branches, Hirohito's decisions (and acts of omission) helped overextend Japan's military, and pushed the country towards a virtually inevitable defeat.

Someone suggested this one for a book club I'm part of, and I was excited to have an excuse to pick it up. The book opens with an anonymous narrator allowing a travelling performer spend the night at his home. He discovers that the perfomer is covered with tattoos that seem to magically move over the performer's body. Each chapter from the book is a "scene" leaping from the performer's tattooed skin. The plots/characters are unconnected; I remember reading that Bradbury wrote them for magazine publication, and that they were later collected as this small volume.

A story from this book that folks might know is "The Veldt", which I first learned about back in college from a classic deadmau5 track. The story follows a family living in what we might now call a "smart house", which takes care of any of the inhabitants' needs that you might imagine. The family's two children, Peter and Wendy, are obsessed with their holodeck-esque "nursery" which generates immersive virtual realities. The parents, George and Lydia, grow increasingly concerned with how fixated the children have become with the entertainment system. I won't spill much more, but these outlines likely feel eerily contemporary to a society wracked with concerns over impacts of technology on young people, and widespread anomie more generally. Bradbury seems to have anticipated anxieties that haunt us nearly a century later; a mark of good sci-fi, if you ask me.

Dr. Wills kindly provides a straightforward summary of the book's central argument in its first paragraph:

This book has a basic thesis, that the Bomb altered our subsequent history down to its deepest constitutional roots. It redefined the presidency, as in all respects America's "Commander in Chief" (a term that took on a new and unconstitutional meaning in this period). It fostered an anxiety of continuing crisis, so that society was pervasively militarized. It redefined the government as a National Security State, with an apparatus of secrecy and executive control.

Control over "the button" is what Wills refers to as Bomb power. In the United States, authority over our atomic weapons lies solely in the hands of the sitting president. As Wills argues, this is a departure from the traditional role that the office has played. The US constitution intended the congress to be responsible for committing US forces to wartime activity. In exceptional circumstances when presidents acted beyond the constitution (e.g., Lincoln's suspension of habeaus corpus during the US civil war), order was ultimately restored following resolution of the crisis. However, the US exited the second world war without an off-ramp for the executive to relinquish authority over atomic power. The Manhattan Project's secretive origins under Roosevelt's orders (rather than by direction of congress) established an unbroken line of authority tracing to the executive branch. The apocalyptic power of atomic weapons provided a logic to justify the proliferation of US airbases worldwide. This massive resource commitment was rationalized as being necessary during the Cold War, and was repurposed without much difficulty during the War on Terror.

This has had the effect of rendering congressional and judicial oversight over the executive essentially meaningless. "If the President has the sole authority to launch nation-destroying weapons", Wills says, "he has license to use every other power at his disposal that might safeguard that supreme necessity." Restraint from other government branches introduces friction on the deployment of atomic weapons, undermining their deterrant power. The steady expansion of executive powers is easily excused in the name of national security, and seldomly are such extensions withdrawn. Information needed to understand how the office is using powers granted to it is frequently classified. An example Wills highlights is the Air Force's vigorous attempts to avoid accountability for deaths of military contractors during test flights. Lengthy and protracted legal struggle on the part of surviving family members revealed the flights held no special importance to national defense. It was simply more expedient for the Air Force to avoid taking responsibility for negligently caused deaths.

Wills doesn't provide a prescription on how we can begin stepping down from the status quo, but I think the book is useful for framing our understanding of the US presidency over the last 75-ish years. Meaningful democratic oversight has been made impossible by the cult of the Commander in Chief and the aura of secrecy that it entails. Any efforts to move away from the atmosphere of permanent emergency will need to contend with them.

This is another book I read as part of a book club. Jenny had also wanted me to read this one for a while. In Song, Miller is able to coax newly tragic threads from one of the most retold stories in western culture. The novel follows the life of Patroclus, Achilles's lover and companion, from boyhood to his mortal end on the battlefields of the Trojan war. A connection between Circe and Song is the pain that stems from children being different or below the expectations that their parents set out for them. By crafting the narrative over the entire lifetime of the book's protagonists, we see an Achilles whose divine-born gifts and prophesized glory are burden handed down from the gods and his wounded mother. I've never been disappointed by Miller's work; if you've only read Circe, definitely pick this one up.

This is the latest novel from the Children of Time series. As with the other two, we listened to this one as an audiobook. I think I enjoyed this one more than the second, but not as much as the first. Tchaikovsky has been building a pallete with each novel, and I've enjoyed seeing the base colors enriched with additions from subsequent works. The story opens with another unfortunate colony ship, the Enkidu, barely surviving arrival at its exoplanet destination. Worse, it appears that planet's terraforming is incomplete. Its atmosphere is breathable, but conditions are harsh. This poses an immediete dilemma for the Enkidu's captain, who must decide the fates of the ship's thousands of cryosleeping colonists, knowing the planet below can only support a fraction of them.

The story jumps forward, landing on the perspective of Liff (age 12, in earth years), granddaughter of the Enkidu's captain. The planet's settlement, Landfall, is in the midst of decline due to repeated crop failures. Townspeople blame "Watchers" and "Seccers" lurking unseen in the surrounding forest for lost tools, suspected sabotage, and stolen food. A hungry, roaming wolf haunts Liff's dreams. After seeing her grandfather (who'd gone missing years prior) at night in the hills outside her home, Liff becomes convinced that the "witch" rumored to live in the forest is holding him captive. The only person that takes her seriously is Miranda, Liff's kind schoolteacher, who'd recently moved with her relatives (Fabian, Portia, and Paul) from the outskirts to Landfall. Despite Miranda's and her companions' usefulness to the struggling community (in particular, Fabian's knack for repairing degrading farm equipment), their newcomer status attracts suspicion from an increasingly desperate community. Tchaikovsky builds a sense of dread that holds throughout the story, and layers of unease are added until the story's interesting conclusion.

Similar to what I wrote about Lovecraft Country, I think this story would make a wonderful graphic novel. I wish I had the talent and skill required to do it justice. The scenes of early and declining Landfall feel vivid, and the dreamlike sequences that Liff experiences would lend themselves to visual form. And, the cast of characters (spindly Fabian; robust Portia; aloof Paul and his 8 children; the equally curious and resigned duo of Gothi and Gethli) are vibrant and contrast each other beautifully. If you enjoyed the first two books of this series, definitely pick this one up.

While it starts somewhat slowly, I enjoyed this one. The book's plot is a bit of a mystery (told in the first person), with different figures in the narrator's community turning up dead. While you can spend some time speculating about the causes of the string of deaths, the meat of the book is its wandering through the mostly quiet rhythms of the narrator's life in rural Poland, and her thoughts about people, animals, William Blake, and astrology. Through its narrator, the book is committed to examining how humans casually (and frequently, cruelly) disregard the creatures that share the earth with us. Her voice is adamant and filled with a moral certainty that's refreshing, or at least interesting. If you're willing to be patient with the story, this one is worth picking up.

I think the hype around this book was ultimately greater than my experience with it, but I shouldn't underrate the unique and influential aspects of it. There's something deeply unsettling about the idea that our naive radio broadcasts into deep space might lure extraterrestrial predators toward us (Liu's second title in the series, the Dark Forest, is now a preferred name for this resolution of the Fermi paradox). The book's prologue, taking place during China's violent Cultural Revolution, is heartbreaking. It's understandable how someone facing Ye Wenjie's grief might despair for humanity's future. The book's antagonists are compelling and interesting, and the Trisolaran race against time to disrupt humanity's technological advancement is an interesting cliffhanger.

This is the book I brought to an annual holiday party hosted by two friends, in which the attendees bring a book that will be taken home by another guest. I had several strong candidates from titles I read this year, but after deliberation, I opted for this one. Early in this book, Graeber (who passed away in 2020) takes up the task of demolishing the classic story we're told about the invention of money, that is: humanity invented money to dispense with the bartering problem. While this tale seems facially logical, Graeber observes that we don't really have evidence to support the claim. Coins have the property of being archaeologically durable; we can recover them as clues to how people from previous times lived. However, coinage doesn't always show up in sufficiently advanced ancient societies (such as Babylon) at the rate you might expect. Instead, Graeber argues persuasively that "virtual" money, arising from social obligations and mutual aid amongst community members, precedes coinage. In Debt, Graeber traces cyclical progressions across history in which civilizations move between virtual/credit based accounting and bullion-based coinage. The latter is linked to periods defined by conflict and low social trust. Metal based currency is ideal for paying soldiers, and it can be stolen, allowing armies and mercenaries to supplement their pay as they move during campaigns. I'm barely scratching the surface of everything that Graeber covers in this book (his analysis of language connecting debt to morality, and his analysis/reminder that much of the financial tools characteristic of modern capitalism were developed before the Industrial Revolution are each fascinating). It's a longer work, but you won't regret giving it the time it requires.

This book is one of the places where Foucalt developed the concept of biopower. As states transitioned to modernity, duties of sovereignty expanded beyond determining the conditions of how subjects of the state might die (i.e., through enforcement of laws, conscription into wars, etc.). To sustain the industrial transition to capitalism, sovereignty also needed to be concerned with how subjects of the state live. Thus, states came to care about the concept (and health) of populations, entailing a more active role in managing reproduction. Foucalt argues that sexuality, as a concept and discursive tool, was used to assist with this task. Sexuality became the object of scientific and medical investigation, forming new discourses and categories of deviance. These ultimately helped states legitimize intervention into the private lives of their subjects, imposing discipline and conformity.

I never read much Foucault during college, but having finished this book, I wish I'd had the opportunity. I'm not sure if I'll continue reading the other 3 volumes in 2025, but I've gained a greater appreciation for why Foucault's concepts lurk in the background of many modern sociological works. Establishing a framework for investigating how and why modern societies seek to manage and discipline their subjects is incredibly useful. However, this doesn't make Foucalt's writing any easier to parse. I doubt it'd be easier going even if I could read the original French.

I picked this one up after listening to the Know Your Enemy episode in which the hosts interviewed the author. Before reading this book, I knew that Friedman was one of the central figures of the "Chicago School" of economics, a faction that displaced the rival Keynesian approach to become essentially synonymous with mainstream economics. Reading Burns's book probably wouldn't offer a different one-sentence summary of the Chicago School's trajectory, but my picture of the characters on the stage has appreciably changed, as well as my sense of Friedman, "the first neoliberal", himself.

It's interesting to think about the world in which Friedman goes on to become a professor of statistics rather than economics. I hadn't realized that it was within the field of statistics where Friedman made his first academic contributions (such as his involvement in the development of sequential analysis). One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how Burns contrasts Friedman with his contemporaries, especially in the middle of Friedman's career. Despite being talented mathematically, Friedman comes off as being practical, avoiding overly formal or mathematically complex treatments of economic theory. This is perhaps best seen in the debates between Friedman and members of the Cowles commission, which Burns uses to illustrate Friedman's rejection of physics-inspired mathematics applied economic modeling. Another example is Friedman's collaboration with Anna Schwarz in A Monetary History of the United States, whose arguments (enabled via painstaking data collection from Schwarz) gain their fundamental heft through descriptive analysis.

Some of Friedman's signature policy views (such as fixing growth of monetary supply to GDP) were abandoned after being attempted, but in many ways Burns argues we're still living in the world that Friedman helped create. I hadn't fully appreciated Friedman's role in popularizing the idea that anticipating and managing lender expecations is critical to controlling inflation. By the time I was born in the 90s, this notion was on its way to becoming conventional wisdom. Under Alan Greenspan, the Fed took steps to publish its meeting notes more frequently and began requiring the Fed use fresher (rather than lagged) data for its reporting. These reforms might seem small (or even boring), but they're a powerful example of how institutional transparency and consistency undergird the regularity of day-to-day life. Burns shows that Friedman's correspondence and public writing influenced Greenspan's decisions over these reforms, at least to some degree. Considering Friedman's often antagonistic views towards the Fed, it's ironic that he helped reform the institution to better support its stabilizing role for the US economy.

Between 2016-2019, I listened through Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast series, but I never picked up his first book. As appropriate, I listened to this one as an audiobook. This book helped remind me of the role that street violence and political violence played in pushing Roman society towards its autocratic destiny. Duncan's book recounts the fractures that opened in Roman society over inequality and land reform, the Social War (concerning the establishment of citizenship for residents of Italy), and concludes with a recounting of Sulla's time as permanent dictator of Rome. At least in the way that Duncan tells it, the story feels very legible in modern terms, beginning with politicians being outpaced by popular forces they unleash, to seeing political descendants cynically harnessing those energies, and culminating with undemocratic (and conservative) reforms that misdiagnose the problems faced by their society.

There's a conservative tendency in the United States to construct idealized conceptions of the "traditional" family. In our current era, this nostalgic impulse frequently lands on an image from the 1950s, the archetypal nuclear family. Rather than being a natural state that can be returned to (through the practice of proper/"traditional" values), Coontz's book shows how the exceptional political economy of midcentury America resulted in an equally exceptional form of family life. It was a unique combination of legal and social pressures that pushed US women out of the workforce (and into the household) post-WWII, rather than a spontaneous seachange about the roles of women and motherhood. Coontz shows how societal changes preceded rationalizations of the nuclear family, and how conditions during the 1950s primed multiple generations for feminist ideas that would be popularized in the 1960s.

A fair amount of this book might feel unsurprising for some readers, but I think it's worth reading despite its age (first published in 1992, updated in 2016). In particular, Coontz connects the establishment of the idealized nuclear family form with the contemporaneous process of suburbanization. The reshaping of cities during this period has had extremely far-reaching consequences. But these changes would not have occurred without subsidized construction of highways and roads, and easy access to favorable housing loans (whose distribution favored white americans). Further, the GI Bill amounted to a massive and widespread investment in the educational success of men, ushering in an era of social mobility that hasn't been repeated. Each of these things puts a lie to the idea that nuclear families from this period succeeded without "handouts" from the government. Above all, Coontz urges us to abandon our demands families conform to a particular shape or moral framework, and asks us to focus on ensuring our society provides parents and children with what they need to thrive.

I'd been working through this one for a while. The story follows Richard, a professor of classic literature living in Berlin, widowed, and recently retired. Richard comes to meet and advocate for a group of men, refugees from northern Africa and the middle-east, that are seeking work in Berlin. While its events are fictional, I think Go, Went, Gone is excellent for examining the practice and consequences of Achille Mbembe's theory of necropolitics. Through its characters, the novel satirizes and criticizes bureaucratic processes that exclude and sweep vulnerable people out of public view. It's extremely easy to quietly, even politely, avoid the gaze of people in our communities that need help. That aversion sustains the legal structures that enable our society to treat people as disposable, burdens, or less than human. Encounters that Go, Went, Gone's characters have with formalistic language (drawn from administrative correspondence or legislative pronouncements) help illustrate this. These moments surface contradictions between liberal society's nominal concern and respect for individual rights with its policing of boundaries for participation. At times, Go, Went, Gone's pace can be slow, but it provides much to chew on, and is worth picking up.