Library
This library is a record of books that I’ve read, with a written response to each. There are no ratings here. I limit recommendations, and I do not write with the aim of reviewing. A book might make me think about something else, I may engage extensively with one passage, or I might evaluate the argument of the text as a whole. The texture of my responses will shift depending on the text.
One caveat: the write-ups from before 2024 read more like book reviews, because that’s what they were. Most started life on Goodreads, a few in graduate seminars, back before this site existed.
Some of my responses are short (perhaps a few paragraphs) while others may be entire essays. The amount written is a reflection not of the quality of the book, but of my own thinking.
My books are listed in reverse-chronological order by when I completed them. Each entry is listed in full bibliographic form, with a short annotation below. Some of these I own, others I do not.
2019
Excellent at narrative, remarkably terrible at interpretation: reading Algerian politics as asabiya is Orientalist nonsense.
Sympathetic on a subject usually painted derogatorily, though the syntax takes real time.
O'Ballance, Edgar. The Algerian Insurrection 1954-1962. Archon Books, 1967.
Really sloppy work, obsessed with painting the 1954 outbreak as the work of power-hungry radicals.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976.
So foundational it has been eclipsed by its successors; much rests on hunches newer science can test.
A bit dated, but some good advice worth the short time it took.
A great synthetic overview: the 1920s as a brief dance on the edge of a precipice.
Disjointed, and “Heroic Commerce” is nonsense (heroic for whom?), but interesting reading.
Clearly dated with laughable predictions, but suggestive of the decolonizing hopefulness of the mid-60s.
Micaud, Charles A. Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization. Pall Mall Press, 1964.
A goofy little book from 1964; the model seems outright wrong to me.
Moorehead, Alan. Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940-43. Sphere, 1965.
A bit disappointing: handy for a journalist’s view of northeast Africa, not for studying the Maghrib broadly.
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
A great skeleton for newcomers, but overweights superpower politics; inferior to Westad.
Fakhry, Majid. A History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
An excellent overview, but you need Plato, Aristotle, and especially neo-Platonism going in.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Not good, not terrible; I understand the literary merit but cannot in good conscience recommend it.
Lovecraft, H.P. The Call of Cthulhu. Penguin Classics, 2016.
Mixed: dull plots, real power in the dream-grotesque atmosphere, and racial prejudice reprehensible even for his time.
Solid on Arab Spring youth, but hastily published and underestimating Islam’s role.
An important work on sovereignty, but Agamben writes for other philosophers and takes close reading.
Boucheron, Patrick, ed. France in the World: A New Global History. New York: Other Press, 2019.
Academically excellent, but requires a sense of French history Americans don’t have; digest slowly.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. Translated by David McDuff. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
Russia so corrupt not even Christ could endure it; a superb case against admiring the empire.
Really good for travelers, though the history is rushed and the censorship content out of date.
Outstanding: women were essential to the Croix de Feu’s success; settler North Africa fairly called fascist.
The “Libyan nation” first emerged among colonial-era exiles; admirable work that reads like a dissertation.
Sound on Millennial-Right tactics but misses the movement’s demographic paranoia and its women; felt rushed.
Weir, Andy. The Martian. New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.
Not that plausible, but Weir kept me hooked with a Mars survival novel; I really loved this one.
Townsend, Naomi. Mother Words: Poems from the First Year. Independently Published, 2018.
Motherhood as a universal process, written through the mother-child emotional relationship; don’t let the self-publication fool you.
An important story that transforms our idea of World War II and of “France,” told remarkably well.
Woolf, Virginia and Eudora Welty. To the Lighthouse. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.
I understand the literary merit, but it’s not for me; maybe I’ll try again some other time.
An excellent study of Fascist Italy’s contest over Tunisia; essential on interwar Italian foreign policy.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2010.
Salinger speaks through what is unsaid; the carousel scene brought me to tears.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
An outstanding novel after a slow start; Kesey illustrates the “Combine,” the tentacles of power, better than Foucault.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Berkley Books, 1954.
An engaging, deeply Freudian novel: no answers, lots of questions.
Steichen, Edward, ed. The Family of Man. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990.
THIS is the liberal universalism I love, a message that needs preserving.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Vintage Books, 2003.
Not really about the dog but about living with autism; abrupt ending, but I really enjoyed it.
Not a ton of detail, but a reasonable sense of how the Carpatho-Rusyns fit into Eastern Europe.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. The Lord of the Rings, 3. New York: Mariner Books, 2012.
Finishes the series with excellence: Book 5 the best, Book 6 above all bittersweet; I’m sad it’s over.