Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative 

By Jennifer Burns 
592 pages
Published: Nov. 2023

I’ve just begun reading this book – another part of the Milton Friedman binge I’ve been on. So far, I’m very happy with it and would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to understand how and why Friedman’s version of free-market capitalism has been so influential in the public conversation about government and economics that has been going on for more than 50 years.

Had I not already begun to study Friedman, I’m not sure if I would have been able to fully appreciate what a terrific job Jennifer Burns did with this biography. It’s not only comprehensive and detailed, it answers lots of questions I was asking myself as a late-in-life fan of this amazing man.

Critical Reception 

An Economist Best Book of 2023… one of The New York Times’ 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall… named a most anticipated fall book by the Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg… finalist for the 2024 Hayek Book Prize.

Click here to read an extensive review of the book by David. R. Henderson in the Summer 2024 Cato Institute newsletter.

Click here and here to watch two interesting discussions with Jennifer Burns about Friedman and her book.

How the Mind Works

By Steven Pinker
660 pages
Published: 1997

How the Mind Works by the Canadian/American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker is one of those rare nonfiction books that I can’t get enough of.

Like Sapiens by Yuval Harari, it is an engaging and accessible investigation into everything one thinks about when thinking about the human mind: awareness, intelligence, emotion, vision, consciousness, and self-consciousness. Pinker presents a convincing theory about what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.

Pinker’s primary perspective is evolutionary biology, but his erudition is much broader than that, which provides the reader with many rich and interesting ways to understand how our brains work, including philosophical, economic, and social schools of thought. Thus, he gets into such subjects as feminism and “the meaning of life.”

His stance on evolution is nuanced. He explains the basics well and refutes the common misunderstandings. He rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas (e.g., that the mind works like a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection), and challenges fashionable ones (e.g., that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting).

Critical Reception 

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize… a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997… featured in Time magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nature, Science, Lingua Franca, and Science Times… front-page reviews in The Washington Post, Book World, The Boston Globe, and the San Diego Union Book Review.

“This is the best book I’ve read all year!” – Michael Masterson

Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles 

By Samual Graydon
368 pages
Published: Sept. 2023

This my third attempt to understand Einstein – his life and his work. I bought the book because I’d read that it wasn’t a terribly lengthy (as so many bios are) and that, because it was written as a series of vignettes, it is easy to consume. And Einstein in Time and Space did not disappoint.

We all know that Einstein was a genius, that he was eccentric, and that the only subject he managed to earn good grades in was mathematics. But until I began reading Einstein in Time and Space, I had little idea about how complex and interesting his life was.

He was, as one reviewer summarized, “the curious child, the rebellious student, the serial adulterer, the wily prankster, the loyal friend, the civil-rights defender, the intellect unsurpassed in his time….”

Italy in a Wineglass: The Taste of History

By Marc Millon
336 pages
Published: May 2024

I wanted to read Italy in a Wineglass because I am always eager to learn about wine and it was strongly recommended in a magazine I was perusing in my doctor’s waiting room.

I expected it to be relatively short, entertaining, and informative. It was… and much more. Far from simply the guide to Italian wine that I expected, it is also a travel memoir and deep dive into Italian history, starting with the Greeks, Etruscans, and Phoenicians, then moving through Roman antiquity, early Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Florentine Renaissance, the promise of Italian unification, and the two World Wars, and continuing into the present day.

I’m only about a third of the way through. I’m treating it as a bathroom book, reading one chapter at a time – and so far, I’m liking it a lot.

You can listen to the audio version of Italy in a Wineglass, for free, here.