My Eight Best Books of 2024
Here's the best of what I read in 2024. TL;DR: Rawls for our time, discovering Indonesia, following in the wake of James Cook, why we should embrace darkness, elvish beards, did the butler in fact do it, and Urdu poetry set to music.
Prior lists: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016.
The list has eight books for the second year in a row—is eight the new ten? Now there was a precipitous decline (again) in available reading time, but maybe quality was prized over quantity. Maybe!
My book of the year is Free and Equal by Daniel Chandler. I was introduced to Rawls’ work early this year and was drawn to his thinking. Chandler makes the “for” case with an infectious enthusiasm. As with most political philosophers, that spirit is much needed because Rawls can be a hard slog. Note to my friends in the humanities: Turn up the readability!
As you will see, I’ve also done one review—that of Nexus by Yuval Harari—a bit differently.
As always, I provide a line or two of commentary on, and a quote from, each work. The titles link to the Amazon Kindle store page for the book. Page numbers are provided for the quotes if available and Kindle locations if not.
The List
(fuller descriptions and a quote follow below)
Philosophy
Free and Equal, Daniel Chandler
History
Revolusi, David van Reybrouck
The Wide Wide Sea, Hampton Sides
Society
Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari
The Darkness Manifesto, Johan Eklöf
Fiction
The Nature of Middle-Earth, JRR Tolkien and Carl Hostetter
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
Culture
The Dialogue of Pyaasa, Nasreen Munni Kabir
Philosophy
Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society, Daniel Chandler
I sought this year to find frameworks for thinking about how people live in relative peace and harmony in a highly heterogeneous setting (such as, say, American university campuses). I was introduced to Rawls’ concept of an “overlapping consensus,” which I’ve spoken about elsewhere, by a friend who is a professor in Penn’s philosophy department. This book presents an accessible case for the relevance of Rawls’ work to our time and place. It is very much a “for” argument (and Chandler is on a proselytizing mission, as you can see in this New York Times essay); if you want one form of “against,” consider In the Shadow of Justice by Katrina Forrester.
Now, for the first time since the publication of A Theory of Justice more than half a century ago, there is an urgent need and appetite for systematic political thinking on a scale that only a philosopher like Rawls can provide—and his ideas are uniquely suited to the challenges we face today. (p 10)
History
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, David Van Reybrouck
I’ve visited Indonesia many times, made venture capital investments in Indonesian companies, and know many Indonesians. Indonesia has the fourth-largest population of any country in the world. Yet it is essentially a mystery outside Southeast Asia, even among the well-traveled and the geo-curious. I put this down partly because the country lacks a great popular history in English, and this book, which received extraordinarily positive reviews, begins filling the gap. The reviews are deserved.
Everyone knows the attack on Pearl Harbor was a turning point in the history of World War II, but few realise how much that attack had to do with the Dutch East Indies oil reserves. (p 154)
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides
The pace of geographical exploration over the last four centuries has been so rapid that no part of the globe is unexplored or unimagined today. But this was a multi-century process. The vast expanse of the Pacific, particularly, was terra incognita (setting aside the extreme peculiarity of Spanish galleon traffic between Manila and Acapulco—for two and a half centuries, they did not run into Hawaii!). This tale of Cook’s last voyage has mystery, wonder, humanity, and inhumanity.
It is said to have been the last large habitable land on earth settled by humans, and the last of the islands discovered by the Polynesians. (p 114 — and you’ll have to go there to know which land he is referring to!)
Society
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Yuval Noah Harari
Note: Harari’s book is full of interesting facts and ideas, but it is primarily intended to be an ominous warning about AI. He places this warning in historical context (he is a medieval historian, something that gets obscured by his Deep Thinker public persona). For him, AI is fundamentally unlike prior information-related technological advances such as the printing press. The book deserves wide reading and debate.
As an experiment, I asked ChatGPT and Gemini (the AI chatbots from OpenAI and Google, respectively) to give me a review with this prompt: Give me a pithy one-paragraph review of Yuval Harari’s Nexus. End the paragraph with a single line that lays out his biggest concern.
Both reviews are presented below, unedited and without comment. The quote below may serve as commentary.
ChatGPT 4o:
Harari’s Nexus explores the intricate web of connections that shape our modern world, from technology and politics to the environment and beyond. With his trademark clarity, he unpacks how these interdependencies amplify both opportunities and vulnerabilities, painting a vivid picture of a world on the brink of transformation. Yet Harari’s sharpest insight lies in his biggest concern: that humanity’s tools are evolving faster than its wisdom, leaving us ill-prepared to wield the power we’ve created.
Gemini:
In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari traces the evolution of information networks throughout human history, from ancient myths and religions to the cutting-edge world of artificial intelligence (AI). He argues that our understanding of reality is increasingly shaped by these networks, and that the rise of AI poses unprecedented challenges to our individual and collective identities. Harari's biggest concern is that the increasing power of AI could lead to the creation of a new kind of "god" – an artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence and ultimately controls humanity.
As the platforms were overrun by falsehoods and outrage, executives hoped that if more people were enabled to express themselves more freely, truth would eventually prevail. This, however, did not happen. As we have seen again and again throughout history, in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose. (p 263)
The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life, Johan Eklöf
Every now and then, a book comes along that opens your eyes to something so obvious you feel a little embarrassed for not noticing it before. Johan Eklöf’s The Darkness Manifesto is one of those books. Eklöf, a bat biologist, makes a compelling case for the importance of darkness—not just for the natural world, but for humans too—as our nights become drowned in artificial light. The book is illuminating, humbling, sad, and hopeful as he takes us from the disorientation of migratory birds to the subtle, almost spiritual loss we experience when starry skies vanish. You will think differently about turning the lights on. And yes, carpe noctem.
The night is quite simply our friend. We rest in darkness, in its stillness and subtle beauty. We draw inspiration from the night, beyond the Milky Way and the distant light. There’s still life in the darkness of night, so let us take back the night, let us capture it. Carpe noctem. (p 214)
Fiction
The Nature of Middle-Earth, JRR Tolkien and Carl Hostetter
This book reveals Tolkien’s world-building genius. It is not for a casual reader of The Hobbit, but if you’ve read any of the extensive series of related works edited by Christopher Tolkien — The History of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, and more — you’ll appreciate this investigation of the lore of Middle-earth. Philosophy, metaphysics, calendar, language, and much more. It is known to Tolkien fans that the author was alert to every small detail; it is still startling to realize, as you can see in the quote below, that he’d spent meaningful time thinking about beards.
A note was sent to Patricia Finney (Dec. 9/72), answering a question about beards, that mentioned some of the male characters which she and a friend did not imagine as having beards. I replied that I myself imagined Aragorn, Denethor, Imrahil, Boromir, Faramir as beardless. This, I said, I supposed not to be due to any custom of shaving, but a racial characteristic. None of the Eldar had any beards, and this was a general racial characteristic of all Elves in my “world.” (p 187)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
Note: the book I link to above is an omnibus collection of the first four Poirot mysteries, of which Ackroyd is one.
Not everything I read needs to expand my tiny mind or deepen my pitiful understanding of the universe—often, especially this year, I want to be thoroughly entertained. Sometimes you just want to know whether the butler did it, versus thinking about the meaning of life. Sometimes you want a formula, down to the inevitable mystery-ending gathering where all the suspects are present. I went down a Christie/Poirot rabbit hole this year — all books I’d read many years ago. I picked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for this list as it is Christie at her best, with sharp plotting, humor, and quite the twist at the end. It's still great fun, a hundred years later.
‘The number is complete,’ said Poirot. ‘Everyone is here.’ There was a ring of satisfaction in his tone. And with the sound of it I saw a ripple of something like uneasiness pass over all those faces grouped at the other end of the room. There was a suggestion in all this as of a trap—a trap that had closed. (L 23585)
Culture
The Dialogue of Pyaasa: Guru Dutt’s Immortal Classic, Nasreen Munni Kabir
My book lists reflect my intellectual and cultural interests. The latter don’t always have a book-centric vehicle for appearing here. One such interest is old Hindi film songs, and here I finally have an example suitable for a book list! This is a wonderful presentation of the script of Pyaasa, perhaps the greatest of all films by Guru Dutt, perhaps the greatest of the romantic directors of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Dialogue: Abrar Alvi; music: SD Burman; lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi. Aficionados will know that those last two contributions are as important for this genre in that era as anything else. The script is presented very unusually and most effectively in Urdu, Devanagari, transliterated Roman, and English. The quote below (p 24) is from one of the most famous songs in the film.
