I am an academic researcher and an avid non-fiction reader. There are many popular books on science or music, but itās much harder to find texts that manage to occupy the space between popular and professional writing. Iāve always been looking for this kind of book, whether on physics, music, AI, or math ā even when I knew that as a non-pro, I wouldnāt be able to understand everything. In my new book Iāve been trying to accomplish something similar: A book that can intrigue readers who are not professional economic theorists, that they will find interesting even if they canāt follow everything.
This is actually not one book but a five-volume (!) series of books which contains some of the best writing on classical music Iāve ever come across.
Taruskin, who passed away recently, was a legendary musicologist. In his writings, he managed to combine analytic writing that addresses his colleagues with unbelievably sharp and insightful writing that I, as a classical music fan who is not a pro, enjoy tremendously.
Taruskin loved picking intellectual fights, and this sort of combative energy is gripping. In this series, there are major story arcs like the interplay between āoralā and āliterateā traditions or the role of nationalism in 19th-century music. I liked how Tarsukin switches smoothly between a close analysis of a piece and a discussion of how it relates to the wider culture.
The Oxford History of Western Music is a magisterial survey of the traditions of Western music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time. This text illuminates, through a representative sampling of masterworks, those themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to each musical age.
Taking a critical perspective, this text sets the details of music, the chronological sweep of figures, works, and musical ideas, within the larger context of world affairs and cultural history. Written by an authoritative, opinionated, and controversial figure in musicology, The Oxford History of Western Music provides a criticalā¦
In the ongoing debates over artificial general intelligence (AGI), Judea Pearl is taking a firm stand: He argues that an intelligent robot should be able to reason about causality and that the currently fashionable approaches to AI miss this aspect.
A celebrated AI researcher and a Turing Prize laureate, Pearl has developed an amazingly original approach to this problem. This book is a high-end popular exposition of his approach.
But itās so much more than that. Itās a history of statistics and its conflicted attitude to causality. Itās a story of heroes (or villains?) in this history. And itās a scientific autobiography that describes Pearlās journey. Pearl likes picking fights with the AI community, statisticians, or economists. Heās boastful, provocative, extremely intelligent, and knows how to tell a story.
'Wonderful ... illuminating and fun to read' - Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
'"Pearl's accomplishments over the last 30 years have provided the theoretical basis for progress in artificial intelligence and have redefined the term "thinking machine"' - Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google, Inc.
The influential book in how causality revolutionized science and the world, by the pioneer of artificial intelligence
'Correlation does not imply causation.' This mantra was invoked by scientists for decades in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smokingā¦
With its lively, demystifying approach, The Tao of Inner Peace shows how the Tao can be a powerful and calming source of growth, inspiration, and well-being in times of conflict and anxiety.
This timely guide to the timeless wisdom of the Tao Te Ching shows how to: bring greater joy,ā¦
I am an academic economist, but even more interested in intellectual debates. I discovered this book when I was a PhD student, and it has remained a favorite of mine.
In the 1970s, macroeconomics (not my field) underwent a revolution. The old guard was āKeynesian,ā the new Turks were ānew classicalā. This book is a series of conversations from the early 1980s with the protagonists of this epic period, many future Nobel laureates.
The interviewer, Arjo Klamer, was interested in the rhetoric and culture of economics, and he constructed the interviews in a way that nicely brought out these elements. The interlocutors are brilliant, acerbic, and funny. If you think economics is dry or boring, you wonāt think so after seeing how passionate these people are.
A collection of interviews with 11 of the nation's leading economic theorists providing an introduction to current issues in economic theory and to the ways in which economists think.
Although I am a classical music fan, 19th-century romanticism isnāt generally my cup of tea. And yet, I couldnāt stop reading Charles Rosenās book about the romantic composers in 1830-1850.
While Richard Taruskin was an academic scholar with a side gig as a performer, with Charles Rosen, the situation was reversed. His identity as a professional pianist is quite palpable in this book. However, as with Taruskin, I enjoyed how Rosen was able to move back and forth between analyses of musical scores and discussions of the wider European culture in the 19th century.
This book helped me become a huge fan of Schumannās piano music. What more can one ask from a book on music?
What Charles Rosen's celebrated book The Classical Style did for music of the Classical period, this new, much-awaited volume brilliantly does for the Romantic era. An exhilarating exploration of the musical language, forms, and styles of the Romantic period, it captures the spirit that enlivened a generation of composers and musicians, and in doing so it conveys the very sense of Romantic music. In readings uniquely informed by his performing experience, Rosen offers consistently acute and thoroughly engaging analyses of works by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bellini, Liszt, and Berlioz, and he presents a new view of Chopin as a masterā¦
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his leftā¦
A simple (not perfect) test of whether youāre going to love this book: Just check out the authorās blog, called āshtetl-optimizedā. The style is similar: sharp, funny, mixing professional theoretical Computer Science with broader takes.
I am still in the middle of the book, and nevertheless, Iām happy to recommend it. As an amateur with superficial CS knowledge, I am enjoying this introduction to classical complexity theory and the basic theory of quantum computation.
Aaronsonās distinctive style makes the ride all the more enjoyable. Itās neither a ārealā textbook nor a pop-science book. Itās in a weird space somewhere in between, and I love it!
Written by noted quantum computing theorist Scott Aaronson, this book takes readers on a tour through some of the deepest ideas of maths, computer science and physics. Full of insights, arguments and philosophical perspectives, the book covers an amazing array of topics. Beginning in antiquity with Democritus, it progresses through logic and set theory, computability and complexity theory, quantum computing, cryptography, the information content of quantum states and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are also extended discussions about time travel, Newcomb's Paradox, the anthropic principle and the views of Roger Penrose. Aaronson's informal style makes this fascinating book accessibleā¦
This is an essay collection that explores the professional culture of contemporary economic theory. When is a theoretical result taken seriously for economic applications? How do theorists try to influence this judgment? How do theorists respond to economists' penchant for ārationalā explanations of human behavior? These are some of the questions the book analyzes.
The essays offer a precise yet accessible exposition of modern classics of economic theory, highlighting their style and rhetoric and placing them in the broader context of the field's professional culture. Affectionate in its criticism and anthropological in its approach, the book is aimed at readers with some background in economic theory who want to learn more and who are curious about what this culture looks like from the inside.
Ron Burley has a rule against messing around with married women, but lovely Lavender has convinced him to break it. Their steamy affair sets someone off, but it isnāt Lavenderās clueless husbandāitās Marta, Burleyās clingy childhood friend and ex-lover.
Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medicalā¦