5 ms·

Can you give an example of a book published after, say, 2000 that is really valuable for insights we would not be able to get from either older books (if relate

Can you give an example of a book published after, say, 2000 that is really valuable for insights we would not be able to get from either older books (if related to the human condition) or news articles (if more to do with some bare fact)? I read mostly books written before the World Wars and I’m doubtful there’s much after that period of any real and lasting value. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy some of it, of course, mostly the fiction. The exception might be really niche works of local history, which is probably <0.001% of all such books, or a few really good scientific/mathematical compendiums.

RugnirViking 3y ago
Obviously it's a bit of a cop out but analysis of events. Books on the invasion of Iraq, or the gulf war. Books on the financial crisis. You might say this is a small portion of what's worth reading, but these are things with undoubtedly huge relevance to what is happening today in the short term future, as well as giving insight into the people and systems that govern us very specifically
- Amezarak 3y ago
  I could be wrong, but I think almost everything in those examples exists in news articles, although to be fair, those articles are often long-form, and some are sourced with reporting from the books you mention. I've never read a book on either subject, but I maybe presumptuously think myself well-informed. ;) I do think, as time goes on, and things are declassified, we'll learn more about e.g., the Iraq War than we know now. To a point, things become clearer with distance, which often renders books written on contemporary subjects outdated. But a book published today could be a decent summary of events for people who didn't live through them, or were too young to pay attention at the time. Unfortunately, one recent why I don't pay them too much mind is that most of the genre is hopelessly partisan, one way or another, and I don't know that there are any really great historians to write something timeless. But either way, I would say the insights you can glean from those books are still readily available if you're watching events critically today. Not much has changed, and if it has, it was usually for the worst. Maybe the most interesting part for many people would be the reminder that many of the same people directly responsible for those disasters are still considered respectable people today and help drive policy. E.g., Bill Kristol didn't go into some kind of exile - he's still considered a very serious person and has a lot of influence and is out there shilling the same type of thinking in a different context.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    > I could be wrong, but I think almost everything in those examples exists in news articles, although to be fair, those articles are often long-form, and some are sourced with reporting from the books you mention. I've never read a book on either subject, but I maybe presumptuously think myself well-informed. ;) Crashed, by Adam Tooze was a very very good retelling of the GFC, and I did read all the newspapers at the time and still found lots of interesting stuff. More generally, I'd argue that modern historians probably have the highest chance of producing useful new insights recently. If you accept fiction (and like fantasy fiction), I'd argue that the Malazan books of the fallen and/or the Nine Worlds series are serious works that are going to endure. Ask me again in a century, though ;)
Arch-TK 3y ago
I don't think it's as bad as <0.001%. There's a larger volume of books published these days than ever before the 2nd world war, so there's a lot more crap to wade through, the nice thing about old books is that time has done the job of pruning out a lot of the crap. I think people still write good books which can provide good insights into the human condition, it's just hard to find them in the present.
Freak_NL 3y ago
It's not that any specific particular work of fiction will provide really valuable insights — what is insightful to one reader may be obvious to another — but that the whole field changes and absorbs societal change and extrapolates and interprets society from there. It means books get written now which explore perspectives and voices unheard before, which in turn can help us readers expand our frame of reference. The collective works of fiction written before 1900 tend to reflect the societal viewpoints of well-off white men (even when written by women or specifically dealing with societal ills). Go a few decades beyond that and you see authors from a working class background join the chorus, then more women, a broadening of sexual themes reflecting society's change (feminism, sexual liberation, homosexuality, etc.), more open criticism of religion too. Digital technology changed society significantly, and this is of course reflected in writing from the more recent decades, and coming up towards today you see more and more diversity amongst authors, adding — through the characters and narratives they create — yet more perspectives and insights. Sometimes pushing the envelope of a specific field, sometimes getting rid of tropes which no longer convince. Fiction changes constantly and will always be rooted in the year it was written. You sell yourself short if you stop at 1940.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  Unique perspectives are not made by sex or skin color, but by life experiences. Two Americans today, whatever their sex and race, have virtually everything in common with each other compared to anybody from 1800, let alone 800. The extreme, excessive focus on race and sex in contemporary writing is exactly what makes it boring and irrelevant. This comment is a great example - you've been taught by contemporary writing that such a tendency existed, when it in fact excludes the objective reality of the tons of works that could not have been said to be "written" or "about" such people even by modern framing, but also the fact that "well-off white man" is a completely meaningless and inapplicable phrase if you go back more than a couple centuries. The sort of work you're describing is the stuff we're taught to acculturate us to the world we already live in. There's no point browbeating me with even more material that I am already steeped in.
  - spookybones 3y ago
johngossman 3y ago
I recently read a blog that argued exactly the opposite: that there was no point in reading old books because if they contained good ideas, somebody had written a newer book that better summarized those and combined them with new ideas, and that old books were liable to be wrong. Both arguments are wrong. The point is to read good books, not (usually) to just pick books before or after a certain date. I see elsewhere you argue that people at the time can’t evaluate the facts because they don’t have perspective. It is usually argued that people writing history lack understanding (and facts) about periods they didn’t live through. Short vs long form is also missing the point: short articles can be error ridden, misguided and even boring. At best they will waste less of your time, but there are great, long books that provide texture and insight that cannot be summarized.
dTal 3y ago
The proposition that no one has written a worthwhile book or had a new insight in the past 24 years is so laughably indefensible that it stuns me to see someone put it forth in earnest. To engage with it risks dignifying it beyond its stature. Rather than post my own list of books, I will link to this democratically determined list of "books that changed your thinking, changed your mind, enlightened you, helped you move ahead, helped you heal, in short, made a difference.": https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21995.Best_21st_Century_Non_Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21995.Best_21st_Century_...
- Amezarak 3y ago
  I don’t guess we’ll ever come to an understanding then, because I find that list totally laughable and a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I like Bill Bryson and I own the book but if his a Short History of Nearly Everything (#1 on the list) is the strongest example of what “changed your thinking, changed your mind, enlightened you, helped you move ahead” etc., well, things are very grim indeed. Scrolling down the list mostly gets much worse. The world would be no worse off if most of those books had never existed, and many of them don’t offer anything new at all. I scrolled down to 100, against my better instincts and encountering such luminaries as Tina Fey. People have had interesting insights in that period - of course - but very few of them require anything longer than a sentence, and they are few and far between. By the way, 2000 was chosen semi-arbitrarily, I would probably put the line much farther back.

RugnirViking 3y ago

Obviously it's a bit of a cop out but analysis of events. Books on the invasion of Iraq, or the gulf war. Books on the financial crisis. You might say this is a small portion of what's worth reading, but these are things with undoubtedly huge relevance to what is happening today in the short term future, as well as giving insight into the people and systems that govern us very specifically

Amezarak 3y ago
I could be wrong, but I think almost everything in those examples exists in news articles, although to be fair, those articles are often long-form, and some are sourced with reporting from the books you mention. I've never read a book on either subject, but I maybe presumptuously think myself well-informed. ;) I do think, as time goes on, and things are declassified, we'll learn more about e.g., the Iraq War than we know now. To a point, things become clearer with distance, which often renders books written on contemporary subjects outdated. But a book published today could be a decent summary of events for people who didn't live through them, or were too young to pay attention at the time. Unfortunately, one recent why I don't pay them too much mind is that most of the genre is hopelessly partisan, one way or another, and I don't know that there are any really great historians to write something timeless. But either way, I would say the insights you can glean from those books are still readily available if you're watching events critically today. Not much has changed, and if it has, it was usually for the worst. Maybe the most interesting part for many people would be the reminder that many of the same people directly responsible for those disasters are still considered respectable people today and help drive policy. E.g., Bill Kristol didn't go into some kind of exile - he's still considered a very serious person and has a lot of influence and is out there shilling the same type of thinking in a different context.
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  > I could be wrong, but I think almost everything in those examples exists in news articles, although to be fair, those articles are often long-form, and some are sourced with reporting from the books you mention. I've never read a book on either subject, but I maybe presumptuously think myself well-informed. ;) Crashed, by Adam Tooze was a very very good retelling of the GFC, and I did read all the newspapers at the time and still found lots of interesting stuff. More generally, I'd argue that modern historians probably have the highest chance of producing useful new insights recently. If you accept fiction (and like fantasy fiction), I'd argue that the Malazan books of the fallen and/or the Nine Worlds series are serious works that are going to endure. Ask me again in a century, though ;)

Arch-TK 3y ago

I don't think it's as bad as <0.001%. There's a larger volume of books published these days than ever before the 2nd world war, so there's a lot more crap to wade through, the nice thing about old books is that time has done the job of pruning out a lot of the crap. I think people still write good books which can provide good insights into the human condition, it's just hard to find them in the present.

Freak_NL 3y ago

It's not that any specific particular work of fiction will provide really valuable insights — what is insightful to one reader may be obvious to another — but that the whole field changes and absorbs societal change and extrapolates and interprets society from there. It means books get written now which explore perspectives and voices unheard before, which in turn can help us readers expand our frame of reference. The collective works of fiction written before 1900 tend to reflect the societal viewpoints of well-off white men (even when written by women or specifically dealing with societal ills). Go a few decades beyond that and you see authors from a working class background join the chorus, then more women, a broadening of sexual themes reflecting society's change (feminism, sexual liberation, homosexuality, etc.), more open criticism of religion too. Digital technology changed society significantly, and this is of course reflected in writing from the more recent decades, and coming up towards today you see more and more diversity amongst authors, adding — through the characters and narratives they create — yet more perspectives and insights. Sometimes pushing the envelope of a specific field, sometimes getting rid of tropes which no longer convince. Fiction changes constantly and will always be rooted in the year it was written. You sell yourself short if you stop at 1940.

Amezarak 3y ago
Unique perspectives are not made by sex or skin color, but by life experiences. Two Americans today, whatever their sex and race, have virtually everything in common with each other compared to anybody from 1800, let alone 800. The extreme, excessive focus on race and sex in contemporary writing is exactly what makes it boring and irrelevant. This comment is a great example - you've been taught by contemporary writing that such a tendency existed, when it in fact excludes the objective reality of the tons of works that could not have been said to be "written" or "about" such people even by modern framing, but also the fact that "well-off white man" is a completely meaningless and inapplicable phrase if you go back more than a couple centuries. The sort of work you're describing is the stuff we're taught to acculturate us to the world we already live in. There's no point browbeating me with even more material that I am already steeped in.
- spookybones 3y ago

johngossman 3y ago

I recently read a blog that argued exactly the opposite: that there was no point in reading old books because if they contained good ideas, somebody had written a newer book that better summarized those and combined them with new ideas, and that old books were liable to be wrong. Both arguments are wrong. The point is to read good books, not (usually) to just pick books before or after a certain date. I see elsewhere you argue that people at the time can’t evaluate the facts because they don’t have perspective. It is usually argued that people writing history lack understanding (and facts) about periods they didn’t live through. Short vs long form is also missing the point: short articles can be error ridden, misguided and even boring. At best they will waste less of your time, but there are great, long books that provide texture and insight that cannot be summarized.

dTal 3y ago

The proposition that no one has written a worthwhile book or had a new insight in the past 24 years is so laughably indefensible that it stuns me to see someone put it forth in earnest. To engage with it risks dignifying it beyond its stature. Rather than post my own list of books, I will link to this democratically determined list of "books that changed your thinking, changed your mind, enlightened you, helped you move ahead, helped you heal, in short, made a difference.": https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21995.Best_21st_Century_Non_Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21995.Best_21st_Century_...

Amezarak 3y ago
I don’t guess we’ll ever come to an understanding then, because I find that list totally laughable and a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I like Bill Bryson and I own the book but if his a Short History of Nearly Everything (#1 on the list) is the strongest example of what “changed your thinking, changed your mind, enlightened you, helped you move ahead” etc., well, things are very grim indeed. Scrolling down the list mostly gets much worse. The world would be no worse off if most of those books had never existed, and many of them don’t offer anything new at all. I scrolled down to 100, against my better instincts and encountering such luminaries as Tina Fey. People have had interesting insights in that period - of course - but very few of them require anything longer than a sentence, and they are few and far between. By the way, 2000 was chosen semi-arbitrarily, I would probably put the line much farther back.