The Shape of Code

My rate of book reading has remained steady this year, however, my ability to buy really interesting books has declined. Consequently, the list of honourable mentions is longer than the main list. Hopefully my luck/skill will improve next year. As is usually the case, most book were not published in this year.

Liberal Fascism: The secret history of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg is reviewed in a separate post.

Oxygen: The molecule that made the world by Nick Lane, a professor of evolutionary biochemistry, published in 2016. The book discusses changes in the percentage of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere over billions of years and the factors that are thought to have driven these changes. The content is at the technical end of popular science writing. The author is a strong proponent that life (which over a billion or so years produced most of the oxygen in the atmosphere) originated in hydrothermal vents, not via lightening storms in the Earth’s primordial atmosphere (as suggested by the Miller–Urey experiment). The Wikipedia article on the origins of life contains a lot more words on the Miller–Urey experiment.

“By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England” by Jessica Marie Otis, a professor of history, published in 2024. Here, early modern England starts around 1543 with the publication of an arithmetic textbook, The Ground of Artes, that was republished 45 times up until 1700. As the title suggests, the book discusses the factors driving the spread of numeracy into the general population, e.g., the need for traders and organizations to keep accounts, and the people to keep track of time. For the general reader, the book is rather short at 160 readable pages. Historians get to enjoy the 51 pages of notes and 37 pages of bibliography.

For insightful long, discursive book reviews that are often more interesting than the books themselves (based on those I have purchased), see: Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf. This year, Astral Codex ran a Non-Book Review Contest.

The blog Worshipping the Future by Helen Dale and Lorenzo Warby continues to be an excellent read. It is “… a series of essays dissecting the social mechanisms that have led to the strange and disorienting times in which we live.” The series is a well written analysis that attempts to “… understand mechanisms of how and the why, …” of Woke.

As an aside, one of the few pop cds I bought this year turned out to be excellent: “PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE” by Christine and the Queens.

Honourable mentions

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist. Assuming you are among the approximately 5% of people still alive after civilizations collapses (the book does not talk about this, but without industrial scale production of food, most people will starve to death), how can useful modern day items (i.e., available in the last hundred years or so) be created? Items include ammonia-based fertilizer, electricity, radio receiver and simple drugs. The processes sound a lot easier to do than they are likely to be in practice (manufacturing processes invariably make use of a lot of tacit knowledge), but then it is a popular book covering a lot of ground. It’s really a list of items to consider, along with some starting ideas.

“Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land” by Jacob Mikanowski, a historian and science writer, published in 2023. A history of Eastern Europe from the first century to today, covering the countries encircled by Germany, the Baltic Sea, Russia, and the Black Sea/Mediterranean. The story is essentially one of migrations, and mass slaughters, with the accompanying creation and destruction of cultures. Harrowing in places. It’s no wonder that the people from that part of the world cling to whatever roots they have.

“Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success” by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, published in 2023. To quote Wikipedia: “Cognitive reframing is a psychological technique that consists of identifying and then changing the way situations, experiences, events, ideas and emotions are viewed.” This book contains around 200 reframes of every day situations/events/emotions, with accompanying discussion. Some struck me as a bit outlandish, but sometimes outlandish has the desired effect.

Details on your best books of the year very welcome in the comments.