Here are 100 books that Evening in the Palace of Reason fans have personally recommended if you like
Evening in the Palace of Reason.
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The art of computer programming is a lot like the art of writing: It's not just about what your program says but about how it says it. One of the reasons I like the C and C++ languages—which I picked up in the late 1990s and haven't put down since—is that, as compiled, non-sandboxed languages, they promise total control over the machine. Show me where you want each byte of data to go in memory; show me the machine instructions you want; and I can make C++ do that for you.
Every "computer person" should read GEB at least once. Preferably in high school, when you still have the free time to dive deep into all the recreational math exercises. If you're already working 40-hour weeks and wonder who has time for Hofstadter's 750-page "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines," all I can say is: Better late than never!
Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Goedel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland interested in politics, ethics, and art. Philosophers are often unpopular loners who are passionate about their ideas, and so are musicians like Bach. When I teach Socrates and the trial that led to his death I can’t help but think of Bach, who was rejected from job after job in favor of mediocrities, and whose music was considered offensive by parishioners and obsolete by musicians by the end of his life. These figures endear themselves to me not just because of the ideas themselves, but because they had to fight so hard for what they believed in.
I came to the piano as an adult and felt pretty sorry for myself–how am I supposed to do all this torturous practicing before and after work?
Then I read Zhu Xiao-Mei’s account of studying the piano during the Cultural Revolution, and realized what real commitment looks like. Zhu is a brilliant concert pianist who had to master Bach while practicing in a labor camp freezer. Read this tragi-comedy of China, politics, and Bach, and surmount your (room-temperature) challenges.
Zhu Xiao-Mei was born to middle-class parents in post-war China, and her musical proficiency became clear at an early age. Taught to play the piano by her mother, she developed quickly into a prodigy, immersing herself in the work of classical masters like Bach and Brahms. She was just eleven years old when she began a rigorous course of study at the Beijing Conservatory, laying the groundwork for what was sure to be an extraordinary career. But in 1966, when Xiao-Mei was seventeen, the Cultural Revolution began, and life as she knew it changed forever. One by one, her family…
I’m a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland interested in politics, ethics, and art. Philosophers are often unpopular loners who are passionate about their ideas, and so are musicians like Bach. When I teach Socrates and the trial that led to his death I can’t help but think of Bach, who was rejected from job after job in favor of mediocrities, and whose music was considered offensive by parishioners and obsolete by musicians by the end of his life. These figures endear themselves to me not just because of the ideas themselves, but because they had to fight so hard for what they believed in.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the great Glenn Gould, one of the outstanding Bach pianists.
This book captures what I love and hate about him, through the lens of his pianos and his blind piano technician. Gould actually hated the piano in a sense, always pushing it toward something it wasn’t, thinning out its sound like a harpsichord, while also trying to make its hammers more continuous-sounding, like an orchestra.
He’s also insufferable in the way that most great artists are, and this book documents that, including his imagined injuries, senseless lawsuits, and the abuse his technicians endured, who kept his pianos alive until they were inevitably smashed.
A grand tale of obsession about the brilliant Glenn Gould and the unique, temperamental instrument he came to love beyond all others, by a top New York Times writer. Glenn Gould was one of the most complex, brilliant artists of the twentieth century, a musician famous for bizarre habits: he wore a hat and gloves even on the warmest summer day; refused to shake hands for fear of germs or damaged fingers; hummed and conducted himself while he played; and traveled the world with a battered old chair, refusing to perform while sitting on anything else. But perhaps Gould’s greatest…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’m a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland interested in politics, ethics, and art. Philosophers are often unpopular loners who are passionate about their ideas, and so are musicians like Bach. When I teach Socrates and the trial that led to his death I can’t help but think of Bach, who was rejected from job after job in favor of mediocrities, and whose music was considered offensive by parishioners and obsolete by musicians by the end of his life. These figures endear themselves to me not just because of the ideas themselves, but because they had to fight so hard for what they believed in.
Bach the church mouse and Wagner the megalomaniac had more in common than people imagine.
They both favored dense, contrapuntal textures with central themes and motifs, and both had an irrepressible personal energy, albeit manifested differently. This book digests the philosophical aspects of music in unpretentious language that saves you from having to read Schopenhauer (phew!).
It makes you more interested in both philosophy and music by showing how to two are connected in Wagner.
Richard Wagner's devotees have ranged from the subtlest minds (Proust) to the most brutal (Hitler). The enduring fascination with his works arises not only from his singular fusion of musical innovation and theatrical daring, but also from his largely overlooked engagement with the boldest investigations of modern philosophy. In this radically clarifying book, Bryan Magee traces Wagner's intellectual quests, from his youthful embrace of revolutionary socialism to the near-Buddhist resignation of his final years. Magee shows how abstract thought can permeate music and stimulate creations of great power and beauty. And he unflinchingly confronts the Wagner whose paranoia, egocentricity, and…
In 2021 I retired as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at Oxford. For many years I had been interested not only in German literature but in European literature and culture more broadly, particularly in the eighteenth century. Oxford is a centre of Enlightenment research, being the site of the Voltaire Foundation, where a team of scholars has just finished editing the complete works of Voltaire. When in 2013 I was asked to write a book on the Enlightenment, I realized that I had ideal resources to hand – though I also benefited from a year’s leave spent at Göttingen, the best place in Germany to study the eighteenth century.
For centuries German historians underplayed the Enlightenment, treating it as an unwelcome foreign import. Writing with the zeal almost of a missionary, Reed shows that Germany participated fully in the Enlightenment, and that the great luminaries of the German classical age, Goethe and Schiller, continued its endeavours in individual and sometimes idiosyncratic ways. He also offers a unique introduction to the philosophy of Kant, showing how it developed in the specific milieu of Prussia under the Enlightened despot Frederick the Great, and drawing attention also to his pioneering work as a theoretical scientist: Kant was the first person to suggest that the nebulae visible beyond the Milky Way might be separate galaxies.
Germany's political and cultural past, from ancient times through World War II, has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany's Enlightenment. Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking…
I was born in East Germany and experienced the disappearance of that country and the huge changes that followed as a child. My history teachers reflected this fracture in the narratives they constructed, switching between those they had grown up with and the new version they had been told to teach after 1990. It struck me how little resemblance the neat division of German history into chapters and timelines bears to people’s actual lives which often span one or even several of Germany’s radical fault lines. My fascination with my country’s fractured memory has never left me since.
Growing up in rural Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, the towering figure of Frederick the Great accompanied my childhood. One of my earliest memories is running down the endless steps of the vineyard terraces at his summer palace of Sanssouci, excited by the splendour of the landscaped gardens below. On these family outings, my father would tell me tales about how ‘Old Fritz’ introduced the potato in Germany and how he won many wars by whipping the Prussian army into shape. But Frederick was also a complicated and troubled man. A patron of the arts and fascinated by the ideals of the Enlightenment, he could also be ruthless in pursuing his ambition to make Prussia a European power. Blanning’s excellent biography captures Frederick in all his complexity.
'Highly readable and deeply researched' - Andrew Roberts
'Masterful ... brilliantly brings to life one of the most complex characters of modern European history' - Sunday Telegraph
'It is sure to be the standard English-language account for many years. It instructs; it entertains; and it surprises' - Philip Mansel, The Spectator
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dominated the eighteenth century in the same way that Napoleon dominated the start of the nineteenth. He was a force of nature, a ruthless, brilliant, charismatic military commander, a monarch of exceptional energy and talent, a gifted composer, performer, poet and philosopher, and…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am what is euphemistically called an "independent scholar," meaning I have no academic affiliation, no straightforward road I must follow (in order, let’s say, to gain tenure), and no duty per se to follow a pre-ordained or politically correct point of view. But being a "freelance" has obligations which I take very seriously. I feel that my job, in any subject I choose to pursue, is to engage the reader in a joint venture. I must instill in them the same enthusiasm I have for whatever I’m writing about, which in this case is the history of Prussia, and the state of this footprint on earth which war and ceaseless conflict have rearranged countless times. To do that, I usually take an often oblique and "off the radar" approach that I think will pull the reader along with me, making the journey for both of us something that matters.
The role of Prussia as a real player in Western European politics is largely due to the most famous of all the Hohenzollerns, the warrior king Frederick the Great. Brutalized as a young cadet by a schooling regimen devised by his buffoonish father, Frederick distinguished himself from the myth of the stereotypical Prussian Junker (uncultivated, boorish, recklessly brave) by developing into a Renaissance gentleman -- fond of music, an unabashed Francophile, patron of Voltaire. This can never disguise his fame as a soldier and master strategist, however, as well as that of an amoral and duplicitous diplomat who essentially put Prussia on the map. Mitford's delightful biography (the 1970 first edition is beautifully illustrated) covers all the high points (and low points) of Frederick’s career in distinguished prose.
Frederick II of Prussia attempted to escape his authoritarian father as a boy, but went on to become one of history's greatest rulers. He loved the flute, and devoted hours of study to the arts and French literature, forming a long-lasting but turbulent friendship with Voltaire. He was a military genius and enlarged the borders of his empire, but he also promoted religious tolerance, economic reform and laid the foundation for a united Germany. Nancy Mitford brings all these contradictions and achievements to sparkling life in an fascinating, intimate biography.
I’ve been rather fixated with money and finances since I was a kid beating my friend's parents at Monopoly. I majored in economics and had a few rough years financially graduating into the depths of the great recession in 2010. In 2013 I completed my Master’s in finance and economics, took a day job in economic research, and have been moonlighting as a finance writer for the past five years.
You might be thinking, what is a philosophy book doing on a list of books to make me a better investor?
Here’s a bit of a secret about investing; learning the technical details about how to build a portfolio is the easy part. The hard part is staying cool during market crashes, bear markets, and recessions. The easiest way to lose money as an investor is to panic sell at the worst possible time.
The philosophy of stoicism is defined by focusing our attention on only the things we can control and making peace with the things we can’t. That is also the definition of a great long-term investor. You can’t control the markets but you can control how you react.
The beloved classic daily devotional of Stoic meditations—the only authorized print edition in the US and complete with a ribbon marker—with more than two million copies sold!
Why have history's greatest minds—from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today's top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities—embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise.
The Daily Stoic offers 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations from…
In 2021 I retired as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at Oxford. For many years I had been interested not only in German literature but in European literature and culture more broadly, particularly in the eighteenth century. Oxford is a centre of Enlightenment research, being the site of the Voltaire Foundation, where a team of scholars has just finished editing the complete works of Voltaire. When in 2013 I was asked to write a book on the Enlightenment, I realized that I had ideal resources to hand – though I also benefited from a year’s leave spent at Göttingen, the best place in Germany to study the eighteenth century.
The late Roy Porter wanted to show that England did not lag behind Scotland in promoting Enlightenment, and assembled a huge quantity of material to show not just the theoretical but also the practical effects of Enlightenment. Ranging widely, he dwells on practical projects like the building of roads and canals, on the beginnings of industry (e.g. Wedgwood’s pottery factory at Etruria), and on reform of the criminal law. A distinguished historian of science, he says much about medical experiments, scientific research, and the increasingly humane treatment of mental disorders.
It is almost impossible to encapsulate briefly the range and variety contained in Roy Porter's major new book. For generations the focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but makes an overwhelming, fascinating case for considering Britain the "true" home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to 20th-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
In 2021 I retired as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at Oxford. For many years I had been interested not only in German literature but in European literature and culture more broadly, particularly in the eighteenth century. Oxford is a centre of Enlightenment research, being the site of the Voltaire Foundation, where a team of scholars has just finished editing the complete works of Voltaire. When in 2013 I was asked to write a book on the Enlightenment, I realized that I had ideal resources to hand – though I also benefited from a year’s leave spent at Göttingen, the best place in Germany to study the eighteenth century.
O’Brien looks at the place of women in the British Enlightenment in two ways. Historians, especially in Scotland, offered progressive narratives of the history of civilization, in which women had the task of softening the manners of history’s male protagonists. Women writers, on the other hand, could not be reduced to such a subordinate role, but were independent-minded and often radical. We have all heard of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, but she had many predecessors, notably the politically radical historianCatharine Macaulay, whose voices are presented here.
During the long eighteenth century, ideas of society and of social progress were first fully investigated. These investigations took place in the contexts of economic, theological, historical and literary writings which paid unprecedented attention to the place of women. Combining intellectual history with literary criticism, Karen O'Brien examines the central importance to the British Enlightenment both of women writers and of women as a subject of enquiry. She examines the work of a range of writers, including John Locke, Mary Astell, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, T. R. Malthus, the Bluestockings, Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft and the first female…
