Recommended Books:
- William Egginton: "The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality". Another erudite meditation by one of my favorite authors.
- Jay Owens: "Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles". From the suburbs of a thirsty Los Angeles to Oklahoma and its Dust Bowl migrants, and the desert Southwest where nuclear testing created radioactive fallout that spread across America. Owens visits the dessiccated remains of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the Greenland Ice Sheet.
- Josephine Quinn: "How the World Made the West"
- Alex Rowell: "We are your Soldiers - How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World"
- Peter Heather: "Christendom". A history of Christianity from Constantine's conversion to the 13th century.
- Helmut Walser Smith: "Germany, A Nation in Its Time - Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500–2000"
- Peter Lee: "The AI Revolution in Medicine". Finally a book on AI worth reading.
- Adam Smyth: "The Book-Makers". A book about making books over the centuries.
- Richard Overy: "Why War?". Two studies of war in one. The first part is about anthropology, biology, ecology and psychology to explain why humans kill other humans. The second part analyzes the four motives that lead to war: religion, power, resources and security.
- Michael Taylor: "Impossible Monsters". How the discovery of dinosaur fossils caused an intellectual revolution.
- Eugene Finkel: "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine". Quote: "The idea of the shared origin and fraternity of Russians and Ukrainians is a staple of Russian self-perception and historiography. The second key factor is security. Western powers often passed through Ukraine to attack Russia; Ukraine’s fertile soil was crucial to feeding and funding the Russian and Soviet Empires. Even more than geopolitics, it was regime stability that drove Moscow and St. Petersburg’s obsessive focus on Ukraine. Nothing scares a Russian autocrat more than a democratic Ukraine, because if Ukrainians can build a democracy, then the supposedly fraternal Russian people might too. Thus, combined, identity, security, and the interaction between the two drive Russia’s policies towards Ukraine since the 19th century."
- Oliver Bullough: "Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World’s Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything". Particularly interesting for the analysis of the tax havens created by Britain that helps terrorists, narcotraffickers and money launderers.
- Donald McNeil: "The Wisdom of Plagues". The impact of pandemics on human history. The shift from hunter-gathering to farming made it easier for viruses to jump from livestock to people. Pandemics shaped history, from the typhus that crippled Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to the covid-era isolation that caused Putin’s miscalculation in Ukraine.
- Pascal Bruckner: "The Triumph of the Slippers". A brilliant essay on the "interactive solitude" of those who work from home and rarely need to leave their home.
- Annie Jacobsen's "Nuclear War: A Scenario". A good reminder of what nuclear war would mean for the human race.
- Jeff Goodell: "The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet". The third installment in his apocalyptic climate-change trilogy after "Big Coal" (2006) and "The Water Will Come" (2017).
- Richard Blakemore: "Enemies of All". A history of piracy.
- Tom Mullaney: "The Chinese Computer". A follow-up to "The Chinese Typewriter".
- Frank Trentmann’s "Out of the Darkness - The Germans, 1942–2022"
- Roger Crowley: “Spice - The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World”
- Harvey Sachs: "The Ninth" about Beethoven
- Abraham Newman and Henry Farrell: "Underground Empire - How America Weaponized the World Economy". The USA has turned its control over information networks into a hidden tool of economic domination.
- Ed Yong: "An Immense World - How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us"
- Jackie Higgins: "Sentient - How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses"
- Hanno Sauer: "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality"
- Edwin Frank: "Stranger Than Fiction”. A history of 20th century novel.
- Jerry Brotton: “Four Points of the Compass”. A history of direction.
- Jonathan Kingdon: "Origin Africa - A Natural History". An account of the evolution of the African continent written by an African artist.
- Steve Coll: "The Achilles Trap". A comprehensive account of the way the USA propped up the Saddam Hussein regime in Reagan's times (when Reagan was both helping Saddam gas Iranian soldiers and Kurdish rebels while at the same time illegally sending weapons to Saddam's enemy Iran in what came to be known as the Iran-contra scandal) and then became Saddam's arch-enemy under Bush I and Bush II. It's one of the most shameful stories of US foreign interference. Coll is a masterful researcher and writers. Twenty years ago he wrote "Ghost Wars" (2004) about the involvement of the USA in Afghanistan and in the rise of Al Qaeda during the Soviet Invasion all way to the 2001 bombing of the Taleban.
- Anne Applebaum: "Autocracy In". An analysis of how autocratic regimes are creating alliances regardless of their ideological foundations.
- Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: "The Hidden Globe - How Wealth Hacks the World". An analysis of the network of money that rules countries.
- Dan Hancox: "Multitudes - How Crowds Made the Modern World"
- Chappel, James: "Golden Years". A history and an analysis of how old age first emerged as a distinct stage of life and how it evolved over the last century, shaped by politicians’ choices, activists’ demands, medical advancements, utopian novels and TV shows like "The Golden Girls".
- Alpers, Svetlana: "Is Art History?" Essays by one of the most influential art critics of the last century.
Articles:
Events in
Tech and Science
- A boy is healed of congenital deafness at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia using gene therapy
- Cameroon starts vaccinating children against malaria
- China's space probe Chang'e-6 returns to Earth with the first ever rocks from the far side of the Moon
- The James Webb telescope discovers massive black holes in the early universe and possibly the earliest stars (430 million years after the Big Bang)
Cinema. Best Films:
Best jazz albums:
Best classical music recordings:
- Takacs Quartet: Schubert String Quartets Nos 8 & 15 (Hyperion)
- Bertrand Chamayou: Cage2 (Erato)
- Christian Tetzlaff, Barbara Buntrock, Tanja Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt: Brahms Piano Quartets Nos 2 & 3 (Ondine)
- Francois-Xavier Poizat: Ravel's Complete Works with Piano (Aparte')
- Baiba Skride, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra & Marin Alsop: Britten Violin Concerto & Double Concerto (Orfeo)
- Anima Eterna Brugge & Pablo Heras-Casado: Bruckner Symphony No 4 (Harmonia Mundi)
- Spectrum Concerts Berlin: Taneyev Violin Sonata and Piano Quintet (Naxos)
- Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra & Joana Mallwitz: The Kurt Weill Album’ (DG)
- Czech Philharmonic & Semyon Bychkov: Smetana Ma' Vlast (Pentatone)
Best Art Events:
- "Anselm Kiefer's Fallen Angels" at Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze
- "Comics" at Centre Pompidou, Paris
- "Tamara de Lempicka" at de Young Museum, San Francisco
- “Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)” at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
- "Tony Cragg" at National Museum, Rome
- "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968” at Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
- "Saodat Ismailova" at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
- "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350” at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- "Malala Andrialavidrazana: Figures” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
- "Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet" at the Metropolitan, New York
- Christoph Buchel at Fondazione Prada, Venice
- Thomas Schutte at Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Lena Bui at Galerie Baq, Paris
- "Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991" at Mudam, Luxembourg
- "Munch - Il Grido Interiore" at Palazzo Reale, Milano
- "Surrealism" at Centre Pompidou, Paris
- "Electric Op" at Buffalo AKG Art Gallery, New York
- "Pierre Hyughe" at Punta della Dogana, Venice
- "Lumen: The Art & Science of Light" at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Good news of the year:
Heroes of the year:
( Current events)
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