Michel Houellebecq – SUBMISSION (2015) Rating: 4/5 You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as an ordered, categorized list of all my book reviews and ratings here: https://akarlin.com/books Finally read Houellebecq’s Submission a few weeks ago, filling in a major and hitherto embarrassing lacuna. He is a master […]
Richard Lynn – RACE DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY (2019) Rating: 5/5 TLDR: Global survey of racial differences in psychopathic personality confirms the standard Rushtonian pattern of Negroids < Caucasoids < Mongoloids on the r/K life history scale. You can access all of my latest book, film, and video game reviews at this link, as well as
Arthur K. Kroeber – CHINA’S ECONOMY (2016) Rating: 4/5 TLDR: Comprehensive and very readable overview of Chinese economy from a China expert, with especially useful discussions on Chinese SOE’s, financial system, and the validity of Chinese economic statistics (spoiler: They’re fine). Learned some interesting new things from it, despite having already read a considerable amount on
~7% Chance This Guy Will Be President Come 2020. Let’s Review His Book.
Best Books While I have read quite a few books on WW1, only a couple really “stand out”: Niall Ferguson (1998) – The Pity of War: Explaining World War I [download] does justice to its subtitle, boldly reinterpreting most of the standard narrative through vivid statistical argumentation. For instance, the claims that there was widespread enthusiasm
Joseph Tainter – The Collapse of Complex Societies (1998) Rating: 5/5 Notes: Can be downloaded here. Access my other reviews here: https://akarlin.com/reviews/ TLDR: Joseph Tainter argues that the root cause of civilizational collapse is because of over-investment into and declining marginal returns on complexity. Societies invest in complexity to solve their problems and typically need to expend
Vladimir Voinovich (1986) – Moscow 2042 Rating: 2/5 TLDR: Good perspective on sovok-liberal Russophobia. Vladimir Voinovich died the other day. In the Anglosphere, this only seems to have been noticed by RFERL, where this Serb/Jewish literary dissident worked during his exile from the USSR in the 1980s. Like Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich opposed the Soviet regime – but that was
Karl Marx – Capital. Rating: 2/10 I did earnestly try to read Capital on about three separate occasions in my early twenties, before I wised up and stopped wasting my time on a pointless historical relic. At a basic level, Marx is just a very poor writer, and I say this as someone who read Adam Smith’s
Steven Pinker – Enlightenment Now [buy; don’t]. Rating: 1/10. My impression on getting through a third of Enlightenment Now is that it was essentially a summary of Better Angels, followed by running commentary on the graphs from Our World in Data and Gapminder. But I don’t begrudge him for that, since I agree with him (and Lord Kelvin) on
“The Paleo Manifesto” by John Durant, published in 2013. Rating: 5/5. Most books on the paleo diet follow a set pattern: An inspirational story about how the author wrecked his health with junk food or vegetarianism before the caveman came riding on a white horse to the rescue; an explanation of why, contrary to the
“The Otherness of Self” by Xin Liu, published in 2002. Rating: 1/5. I don’t want to sound overly demanding, but really, unless a writer is the next Kant or Heidegger, he owes it to his readers to make his prose at least minimally engaging. With this book on too many occasions I was under the
In Search of Wealth and Power by Benjamin Schwartz, published in 1964. Rating: 4/5. In Search of Wealth and Power is a very dense but richly rewarding tome by Benjamin Schwartz, a noted China scholar. He focuses on the life of the translator Yan Fu to illustrate the culture clashes that arose when traditional Chinese civilization came into
Black Sun Rising (Book 1 of the Coldfire Trilogy) by C.S. Friedman, published in 1991. Rating: 3/5. The Coldfire Trilogy is sometimes described as a successful fusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. So what better work to start reviewing on this site? I will be forthright: By far the most wondrous and intriguing element of this series
Chinese Characteristics by Arthur Henderson Smith, published in 1894. It is available free here. Rating: 5/5. In rich and evocative prose reminiscent of De Tocqueville’s writings on America, Arthur H. Smith lays out what he sees as the core features of the Chinese character and his values. The tone is bold and fearless, making sweeping generalizations and brusque judgments that
Confessions of an Online Hustler by Matt Forney, published in 2013. See the Amazon version of this review. Rating: 4/5. Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: This book isn’t for the casual reader. Despite the title, it’s not a “life interest” story with a morass of prurient and scandalous details, nor is it