Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - A Series of Unfortunate Events
We Are Not Saved
A book full of potential comparisons to our own day for the motivated, and strangely removed from our own day if you're really going to be honest about it. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany By: William L. Shirer Published: 1960 1250 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany, from Hitler’s birth to the Nuremberg trials. Written by someone who was there for a great deal of the most important period. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Shirer is a journalist, not a historian, but he did have access to the German...
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Radical Markets - I Mean Really Radical
We Are Not Saved
Policy proposals from the White Queen. (It’s a Lewis Carroll reference. No, I’m not talking about the Mad Hatter or the Red Queen. It’s from “Through the Looking Glass”.) Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society By: Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl Published: 2019 384 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A series of radical proposals for restructuring property, voting, immigration, investing, and employment. All of the proposals seek to solve the problem of “monopolized or missing markets” in ways that seem pretty strange. One has to...
info_outline![Gemini Goes Insane — How Should I Update? [Essay] show art](https://assets.libsyn.com/content/198202985?height=50&width=50)
Gemini Goes Insane — How Should I Update? [Essay]
We Are Not Saved
One part documentation of a strange AI hallucination. One part panic about whether I’ll be put out of business by AI.
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Goliath's Curse (and the Agents of Doom!)
We Are Not Saved
Using the Stone of Democracy to Slay the Goliath of Inequality Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse By: Luke Kemp Published: 2025 592 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? By most accounts, civilization, which is to say the large Hobbesian state, is a good thing. Kemp doesn’t necessarily agree. In his account, states are lumbering, tyrannical, extractive Goliaths, cursed to grow bigger, more oppressive and more brittle until they are eventually brought down by a “stone” that hits in just the right place. Civilization forms out of dominance hierarchies,...
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Knowing Our Limits - Epistemology Without Bayes
We Are Not Saved
I was promised useful stories to assist me in a quest for justified belief. Instead I got a lesson in the limits of expertise. Unfortunately it was the author’s expertise that was limited. Knowing Our Limits By: Nathan Ballantyne Published: 2019 344 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Regulative epistemology as opposed to descriptive epistemology. Put more simply, this is about how to find truth, as opposed to how to define truth. Though because the author recommends having very high standards, you may come away from the book thinking that there is no truth. That is not...
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A YA Series, a First Contact Novel, and a Startup Book Walk Into a Bar—Pursued by Wolves
We Are Not Saved
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The Origin of Politics - Kibbutzim, Chimps, and Children
We Are Not Saved
Would you like some genetics in your politics? The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations – Social Disintegration, Birth Rates, and the Path to Extinction By: Nicholas Wade Published: 2025 256 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Wade offers up an evolutionary psychology account of how to make politics actually function; how, when you try to disconnect politics and the exercise of power from core human nature, as shaped by evolution, things go off the rails. What authorial biases should I be aware of? Nicholas Wade worked as a science writer for...
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A Case for Latter-Day Christianity - (i.e. A Case for the Christianity of Mormons)
We Are Not Saved
I feel like I should make some clever connection between this book and the discussion which raged about the Shroud of Turin, but nothing occurs to me. A Case for Latter-day Christianity: Evidences for the Restoration of the New Testament’s “Mere” Christian Church By: Robert Starling Published: 2019 360 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A broad, and intensive defense of the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). With a special focus on tying that theology to the theology of the early Christian Church. As such it spends a lot of time examining differences...
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Taking Religion Seriously - Can You Get to Belief Purely Through Reason?
We Are Not Saved
In which I mostly talk about the Shroud of Turin. Murray only spends seven pages on the it, so my review is not comprehensive. Actually, never mind. That's what the top sections are for. Taking Religion Seriously By: Charles Murray Published: 2025 152 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Murray’s journey from agnosticism to belief, a journey that is largely intellectual rather than spiritual. Because it was largely intellectual, it’s also more explicable. This allows Murray to write a different sort of conversion story, one that’s more amenable to being mapped out as a...
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Children of Mars - Sid Meier's Civilization Lied
We Are Not Saved
Back when Rome was just one Italian settlement out of many, but a settlement with a dream! Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome's Empire By: Jeremy Armstrong Published: 2025 288 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? The deep history of Rome. What we actually know about its legendary founding, its early rise to prominence, and the shape of its military. Additionally, the development of Roman identity and how that identity interacted with the other elements. What's the author's angle? This belongs to that genre of book which takes recent scholarship and archaeological evidence and uses it to...
info_outlineI actually never got around to discussing the Lord of the Flies element of this book. But trust me it’s in there!
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
By: David Grann
Published: 2023
352 Pages
Briefly, what is this book about?
This book is about what happened to HMS Wager, a Royal Navy ship that was shipwrecked on the south coast of Chile in 1741. The journey before the shipwreck was brutal, and it only got worse from there. Out of an initial crew of roughly 250, only about 36 eventually made it back to England.
What's the author's angle?
Grann is a writer for the New Yorker who has written three books centered around unearthing interesting and often tragic historical events. His first book was The Lost City of Z. (Which I have read, and it was quite good.) His second and best known book is Killers of the Flower Moon (which I have not read). This is his third book in that same vein.
Who should read this book?
I quite enjoy books like this: true survival stories, particularly those framed by ambitions and sensibilities we can barely imagine in 2025. It’s also history at its pointiest, the tale of a single ship, and really just a handful of men. (The book largely focuses on just three.) If all that sounds appealing, then I think you’ll like this book.
Specific thoughts: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there