- Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance. My conservative brother-in-law sent me this book. It arrived in an Amazon pouch, with no note or accoutrements – just something I “needed to read.” Now John is a very smart man, but almost right of The Right. So I assumed it would be overtly political – a Trumpish screed sent portside to California to educate the liberal masses (and his intelligent, but misguided relative); but no, it is basically an unadorned look back at Vance’s upbringing in the “holler”, or Appalachian mountain regions of Kentucky and Ohio. A coming to terms with the good, bad and ugly (mostly good) of his family and hillbilly roots, but also the concomitant and rapid decline of this part of America.
- Heart, by Johannes Hinrich Von Borstel. My wife is the brainiac in the family. Literally. She devours books on the brain – from neuroscience and genetics, to biology and psychology and even portraits of the brain in extremis (think Everest climber). She is always trying to get my head out of the ‘philosophy clouds’ and into subjects more real and testable – like the human heart. And now that I’m a middle-aged American male, my days are, apparently, numbered – from a heart perspective. Von Borsten teaches the basics of how to avoid the typical fate of the overworked, overfed, caffeinated male and treat this amazing muscle with proper respect and care (factoid: it beats, on average, 100,000 times a day).
- 50 Philosophy Classics, by Tom Butler-Bowdown. I love philosophy and have read my share of the classics. But it is a complicated and demanding subject and difficult to accurately recall and trace philosopher to philosopher, movement to movement over time. Butler-Bowdown has pulled together a great reference on 50 seminal philosophical texts – with quick summaries of the piece, its key philosophical points and their relationship to other thinkers and movements. I find myself often pulling this off the shelf and getting reacquainted with a treatise or introducing myself to something new.
- Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow. Just getting into this large and hugely celebrated biography of a Founding Father. I love a meaty historical biography every once in a while – I devoured “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer; and the great “John Adams” by David McCullough – and “Hamilton” has immediately pulled me in. The writing is fantastic, making mundane historical events in Hamiltons’ life intense and alive. And I love the strong sense of Hamilton presented from the get-go: precocious, hugely ambitious, in a hurry to take on and mold the world – and all from such humble and brutal childhood circumstances! I don’t think we really understand what makes a person, what drives a person – is it DNA, or family, or environment, or chance? Probably all mixed together. But it is thrilling to – once in awhile – see the ingredients combine into sheer amazingness. Like Hamilton, we get to sit-back and watch the meteor torch our skies.