Non-fiction Books 12/12

The Best of 2021

The Mind Club, recommended to me by one of my readers, is a must-read. If nothing else, check out my essay about it. The book, by Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray, was published several years ago, but to no fanfare, perhaps because Wegner had died. One very important insight of the book is that we often oversimplify a moral situation by attributing to one party agency without feelings and to another party feelings without agency. So someone will describe “the market” as if it were an evil robot, with a consumer or worker regarded as a helpless victim.

The Constitution of Knowledge is irritating, because in describing the decline of social sense-making Jonathan Rauch assigns too much agency to Mr. Trump and too little agency to the educated elites. But it is a must-read book, because it emphasizes that the key to overcoming the inevitable biases and blind spots of individuals is to pursue truth through social norms and institutions. My review is forthcoming.

Post-Journalism is another must-read book. Andrey Mir’s primary thesis is straightforward, but his in-depth history of technology, power, economics, and the provision of information is what makes it worthwhile as a long read. See my review.

The Scout Mindset is a book that I refer to again and again. I think that author Julia Galef’s distinction between scout mindset and soldier mindset is a powerful way to tell the FIT from the non-FIT. See my review.

Wanting is for those of us who needed a book-length treatment of Rene Girard’s theory of mimesis. Author Luke Burgis also is the one who introduced me to the phrase “self-licking ice cream cone.”

Boomers, by Helen Andrews, is a take-down of some prominent figures of the Baby Boom era. See my essay.

Tyler Cowen has his own list of best books of 2021. We agree that this was a strong year. But none of the books on my list make his, and conversely. In fact, I think I have only read one of the books on his list.