This year didn't have much of a theme - it started as a Japanese variant of my Russian 2017 and Chinese 2018, but the theme just didn't stick. In another wandering year I read more fiction that I have in awhile, and started retracing my steps a few times with fun intersections with other books I've been thinking about for the past few years.
1. The Making of the Atomic Bomb
So far, there's always been one book I read that just stuck in my head. This year, probably because of some deep moral questions about my own work, Rhodes' classic was the book that stuck. He crafted a beautiful three-phase narrative from scientific discovery, to technological development, to political and military application in a way that felt authentic and honest. More than anything, Rhodes painted a fully three-dimensional portrait of the larger-than-life men who participated in the last great arms race of our species, and his empathy and respect for their contributions combined with a lightweight narrative of caution and technological skepticism made the 900 page history book fly by like a fantasy novel.
2. The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
This is the hipster-pick - only ~300 other people read this book in 2019, and I probably know 10 of them. That said, it's an essential read for people trying to synthesize what's happening in the world of politics and democracy. Importantly, it's a cautionary tale of government overpromising and underdelivering even as populations ask government to assume even more responsibility for problems across society. Paradoxically, the increased accountability provided by a decentralized media actually is presented as a negative, making it too easy to throw stones and progressively harder to provide any positive narrative for societal change. The only solution is a massive reduction in the exception of government, combined with a huge increase in actual results, but such a solution is untenable given the cyclical nature of democratic politics; to actually acknowledge these limitations would be a politically untenable choice.
3. Matterhorn
This semi-autobiographical novel was an incredible story that combined great writing with incisive political analysis and a strong anti-war message that's only more important to reflect on going into the 19th year of our own contemporary wars in the Middle East. As a narrative device, the author's choice to flip perspectives between soldiers in a firefight and commanders trying to reason through things back at base was a chilling reminder that abstraction and distance breeds the kind of intellectually pure cruelty that Scott warns against in his famous critique of High Modernism, Seeing Like a State. Fighting a mathematically pure war is the best way to guarantee maximal suffering on all sides. The choice to weave these two different perspectives together, and the impressive literary ability to do so in a way that didn't feel forced is the true genius of this book.
4. Mistborn
This year, I read two Brandon Sanderson trilogies, and man does this guy know how to craft a story! Though I loved the Stormlight Archive, Mistborn took the cake; the purity of the magic and the foreshadowing was great, and while I didn't love the second book, the first and third books were some of the most fun fantasy I read this year.
5. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
This book is weird, refreshingly so. It's an epistemological book, with the basic central theme that the only morally pure pursuit is to obtain progressively more knowledge in a way that's fundamentally unbounded. To Deutsch, we will never know everything, and that's part of the joy of being human! I don't think that Deutsch is always right, but he's a unique mind: the way he thinks about the world and humanity's place in it is a refreshing breath of optimistic epistemic fresh air, and this book succeeded in changing the way I think, the highest compliment for any book!
