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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!

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

I recommend six books that serve as the necessary foundation for in-depth understanding of China.

Shattered Lands by @SamDalrymple123 is a must-read for history buffs.

I'm unlikely to read this but it strikes me as a little bit lame to write a whole book quite obviously trying to challenge Tom Holland's _Dominion_ & then not even mention him by name.

This is the best book I've read this year. It is also an important book. In a world obsessed with AI, Max Bennett approaches intelligence from a key point of view: biology.

You stole the phrase 'golden fetters' from Keynes, but it was basically these kinds of chains that prevented countries from responding effectively to the Great Depression.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, which is this book about a government agency that is dealing with antimemes, ideas that erase themselves from your memory after you've dealt with them but are themselves important.

It makes this point that you can look at how people's lives change through just the things they had available, like cutlery or whatever, or basic tools. I think about AI through that lens.

There's a famous book about financial bubbles called This Time Is Different because people always say this time is different, and it always is.

There's a fascinating book I read a while ago called 'Red Plenty,' which is about Soviet central planning in the '60s, '70s, '80s and it's about sort of what happens when you have a central planning that just cannot cope with the level of complexity of a sophisticated economy.

There's a book written by a French academic sort of 20 years ago or something called 'How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read,' which sounds very kind of snide. But kind of his point is that like there's the book you read when you were 17 and you really didn't get it.

There's a book by Zola about the creation of department stores called Au Bonheur des Dames, which means 'The Ladies' Paradise.' It's basically about a 19th-century Jeff Bezos calling a department store into existence out of thin air through force of will.

It is an intellectually rigorous, urgent exploration of why human beings believe things that aren't true. The book draws from psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, and social theory, and it speaks directly to the uneasy question of the fragility of truth.

The example I think I use in the book is Ezekiel Emanuel, telling people you shouldn't go to restaurants because we still have some COVIDs like now, in 2022, 2023, right? But he rides a motorcycle, which is known to be one of the most dangerous things per mile that you can do. People are usually not super meta-rational about risk.