On history, economics, philosophy & the written word
Books are the best technology ever invented for transmitting serious thought across time. These are the ones worth your attention.
The Essays were written by a man who retreated from public life to think carefully about what it means to live well. That project feels, four centuries later, more urgent than ever. A reflection on why Montaigne is the ideal companion for uncertain times.
Continue readingThe first time you read Middlemarch, you read it as a young person. The second time, you bring everything that has happened to you in between. The book has not changed. You have. This is why the classics reward return visits in a way that most new books cannot.
Continue readingA running list of books I return to, recommend, or have recently found indispensable.
The first great personal essayist and still the best. Montaigne invented a form and filled it with the most honest self-examination in literature. Start anywhere.
Read selectively. Books I and IV reward careful attention. Most summaries of this book are wrong about what Smith actually argues.
The finest narrative history of the First World War's opening weeks. A masterclass in how serious history can also be gripping prose.
Private notes that were never meant to be published. The most powerful argument for Stoic philosophy, precisely because it was written for an audience of one.