I mentioned offhand earlier today that Jacques Gernet’s A History of Chinese Civilization is one of the top ten books I’d read. I’ve read this book three or four times that I recall. It’s incredible, and I obviously I’ve only read it in translation.
But this prompted a question: what are the other nine books?
OK, so I’ve given it some thought. I’ll try and balance it out in a disciplinary sense, but I’ll list them now.
Obviously, A History of Chinese Civilization is first. But second? Most of you will not be surprised that I would put Principles of Population Genetics on the list. I still remember reading the third edition front to back the first time in 2004. Yes, I had some knowledge of population genetics before then, but only in fragments. This is the text that opened up a whole new world. Genomics has changed things since the last edition, but the basic principles are the same.
What next? At around the same time that I was diving deeply into the Hartl & Clark book, I read Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. The first time I tried to read this book, in 2003, I felt it was incredibly pretentious and dense. The second time, in 2004, I made my way through it, albeit slowly. It’s not an easy book to read because there are a lot of concepts the author throws at you.
On the whole, I think In Gods We Trust is essential reading to understanding religion, but I’ve also moved a bit further than this, in large part because of the field of cultural evolution. But you need to get the cognitive foundations first, and this book does that.
While we’re on cognitive science, of all Steven Pinker’s books, I think The Language Instinct is the most important. He hadn’t gotten quite so famous, and this book is also close to his core area of research. But his fluid style clarity of exposition shines through. Though The Blank Slate is the Pinker book I’ve enjoyed the most, I believe it is more dated than The Language Instinct.
Again, most readers will not be surprised that I’ll put Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization on this list. Ward-Perkins changed my view of Late Antiquity with his powerful materialist treatment. I’ve read this book three or four times. It’s a fast read.
What next? I want to say The Selfish Gene, but I have to admit that I read that later than The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins is criticized as derivative, but he is also an excellent expositor. His books are works of art in relation to scientific communication. They’re worth the time.
I say scientific communication because the further Dawkins veers from science, the less interesting he is. Though I was already an atheist when I read The Blind Watchmaker in the early 1990s, I found the parts relating to religion far less interesting and persuasive than when he focused on science.
So far I’ve listed nonfiction. There’s a reason for that: I almost never reread fiction. Unlike many people, I didn’t have much interest in fiction as a child. I read prose translations of the Iliad and the Oddessy, as well as Clan of the Cave Bear. That’s about it before puberty. When I was 13 I noticed Isaac Asimov had some science fiction books. I picked up Prelude to the Foundation, and the rest is history.
Of the various works of science fiction and fantasy I’ve read, if there is one I would select out of this ten, I would choose George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords. This is book three, but it’s the best of the bunch. Marginally better than book two, A Clash of Kings, and definitely better than book one, A Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, Martin’s books declined with book four and book five. I don’t have high hopes for the sixth book, assuming it ever comes out.
From Dawn to Decadence, by Jaques Barzun. Is there anything I need to say here?
Well, what I will say is that this work was Barzun’s last great distillation of a lifetime of observation and scholarship. It’s an enjoyable “core dump,” and allows one to look into the workings of a brilliant mind. Despite its length, I felt it was a quick read. There isn’t great conceptual depth here, it’s the narrative density of information that drags you along.
Coming down the wire, I’m going to have to put down A History of Byzantine State and Society.
This is a massive book, and it is true to its title, interleaving military and diplomatic history with intellectual and social currents. Because Byzantium was placed between the West and the world of Islam, a book like this necessarily touches upon developments further west and east. It’s not simply singularly focused on Byzantium. Additionally, it’s time horizon is not narrow, but sweeps across various epochs, from the end of the Classical period, all the way to the conquest by the Turks.
The final entry is hard, but I’ll give it to Empires of the Silk Road. This is a strange book, but important one. The author shines a light on a different perspective, and ends the work with a peculiar rant against modernism. But imagine a world where the view of the nomad was privileged. That is what Empires of the Silk Road does, giving you a “steppe-eye-view.”
I could list more. And probably five out of these ten would switch if I made a new list six months from now. But, I am pretty convinced Principles of Population Genetics and The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization would be on any list. All are equal, but some are more equal…
Wow. I read four of the books on your recommendation. Two caveats:
Reading Empires of the Silk Road, I felt like I had walked into a play somewhere in the second act. The book is poorly structured. Beckwith will use terms without defining them and finally tell you exactly what they mean a hundred or two hundred pages later. Similarly, there is a lot of talk about trade but rarely are we told what is traded. Perhaps the book must be reread to be completely understood.
After reading From Dawn to Decadence, I wrote: “This is an impossible book. A page and a half a year to describe the history of western cultural life’. Well-crafted essays will be followed by what seem like lists put into sentences. On one page will be passages of great profundity; on another, vaporous statements like, “France became Anglophile [after the publication of Voltaire’s “Letters on the English”].”
“Barzun does not force things into a unifying theory of history. Perhaps because of that, the book felt more like a series of parts than a unified whole. Perhaps honesty requires that.
“The last chapter is awful, a crotchety old man sputtering at the 1990s, exaggerating and often being factually wrong. Ironically, many of the things he complains about, he had told us existed in earlier times in earlier parts of the book. I did not see why they were now so terrible.”
I’ve already read several of the books on the list because of recommendations here, and #1 has been sitting on my shelf for at least a year. I have been slowly making my way through that shelf, but now that I am retired maybe I can up my game. My first thought was that I would have to add Barzun and the rest of the unread books on the list, but Sweeny’s comment above makes me wonder… Hmmm
Finally past kidding myself I’ll ever read anything I purchase for the pile at this point. But I already have some of these and I’ll bump them toward the top.
Razib, I don’t do patreon, but did email a small Amazon card to the contact email for the blog as a thanks at the start of the book club. I just re-sent.
thanks BF. got it
Could you elaborate on this? I reread The Blank Slate recently, and it seemed like, as Pinker argued in the 2016 afterword, it held up pretty well. By contrast, despite really enjoying most of Pinker’s books, I’ve never read The Language Instinct, because I assumed that, having been published ~25 years ago, it might be somewhat dated at this point. (Admittedly, I also find linguistics qua linguistics less interesting than the subjects of his other books.)
I’m inclined to treat ASOIAF as more of a package deal, but I definitely agree that ASOS is the best single volume. But I think ADWD was still pretty good, and, while AFFC was a definite drop-off in quality, I think it had enough good material to be worth reading. And I think the series as a whole benefits quite a bit from rereading. I’m not really a fan of fiction of any stripe these days, both because I find that I enjoy it far less than I did when I was younger (the artifice and contrivance just feels a lot more obvious) and because I learn significantly more from non-fiction. But I still appreciate ASOIAF more than a lot of fantasy fiction, and I’d probably read the 6th volume if Martin ever finished writing it.
the science in blank slate holds up. but the culture has moved against it, HARD. this is mostly since 2016…
do you almost never reread fiction on some principle or personal taste? what fiction have you reread?
rarely reread. it’s like reading a popular science book. i get out of it what i want, and that’s it (different for textbooks).
i reread gene wolfe’s book of the new sun. did reread a song of ice and fire before feast for crows. did reread dune once. east of eden i think? that’s all i can recall. perhaps pride and prejudice twice?
“Again, most readers will not be surprised that I’ll put Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization on this list. Ward-Perkins changed my view of Late Antiquity with his powerful materialist treatment.”
Late Antiquity (generally the years 238-718) resulted in a decline in civilization throughout the Roman world except in Syria/Palestine/Egypt, but in Britain (withdrawal of Constantine III’s forces), Tunisia (overtaxation under Byzantine rule), and Italy (Justinian’s war), this must be attributed to the Romans themselves much more than to the barbarians. The lands conquered by the groups that actually destroyed the Empire during their destruction -southern Gaul (conquered by the Visigoths), Tunisia (conquered by the Vandals), and Syria/Palestine/Egypt (conquered by the Arabs)- barely show signs of actual suffering in the archaeological record. The Franks, who caused a great deal of destruction in northern Gaul, and Sueves, who caused a great deal of destruction in Hispania, did not destroy the Empire.