- A German history of the Balkans Tony Barber, Financial Times
- A Brazilian history of the Atlantic slave trade Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Not Even Past
- A conservative history of America at its peak Ross Douthat, New York Times
- The emotional lives of others Andrew Beatty, Aeon
space exploration
RCH: “10 Worst Space Disasters in History”
My latest at RealClearHistory:
When I think about space disasters, I am reminded of the space battle between Earth and Trisolaris in Liu Cixin’s fantastic sci-fi novel. Stay with me here. Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest novel needs to be read. In the novel, humans make contact with a nearby alien civilization, who proceed to make plans to invade earth, wipe out its human population, and re-populate it with themselves. The first battle between Earth’s space forces and the would-be invaders ends badly for Earth, as thousands of space warships are destroyed in a matter minutes by a Trisolaran probe. The novel brings up an uncomfortable theory that humans have been all-too-willing to neglect: what if the universe is a hostile, deadly place instead of a curious one?
Please, read the rest.
Nightcap
- Exquisite Rot: Spalted Wood and the Lost Art of Intarsia Daniel Elkind, Public Domain Review
- Classic books: Like ice in children’s hands Alberto Manguel, Times Literary Supplement
- Our aquatic universe Tim Folger, Aeon
- From eternity to here: the Rome we have lost Ingrid Rowland, Commonweal
BC’s weekend reads
- Cairo’s Chinatown
- Informational post on Turkish grand strategy
- Free speech for me, but not for thee (SPLC edition)
- Experts and the gold standard and, really, a big key to continued economic development
- A bunch of new earth-like planets have been found. The Long Space Age (peep the dates)
