Books worth reading, mentioned by people worth listening to

This is a wonderful and moving book predicting the replacement of books by screens published in 1996. The author repeatedly apologises for how pessimistic he sounds. He had no idea.

I'm halfway through now and this book is getting seriously upsetting. I've never seen someone fumble with such catastrophic consequences before. He led his whole country off a cliff for Bush to repeatedly embarrass him. Like stomach churning awfully embarrassing

Shared excerpt discussing Veblen's theory of the leisure class and status displays among the rich, focusing on how wealth is flaunted through leisurely pursuits and 'pecuniary emulation' while masking anxieties about status relative to aristocratic elite.

Shared excerpt discussing Langlois's research on infant preferences for attractive faces, showing that infants as young as 2-3 months looked longer at more attractive faces, and that 12-month-olds showed more positive interactions with attractive stimuli.

1587 is absolutely one of the great books on Chinese history. It is a series of vignettes, each a chapter centered on the life of a single notable individual in a single year during the Ming dynasty's decline.

An aside, his China: A Macro History is also really good, concise, often incisive intro text overviewing the duration of the country's history. I don't know of any that do a better job!