All the books I read in 2021. More than 80% of the books were consumed in audio format. All the books are listed in the order read. My favorite titles are bolded and there are short reviews/impressions/excerpts under some of the titles. My lists for 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Some stats at the end of the post.
- Дневник Лишнего Человека – Иван Тургенев (2nd read)
- Constantine the Emperor – David Potter (2nd read)
This book in the category of biographies that not only cover the subject in detail but can also serve as standalone history of the period. - The Letters of Pliny the Younger – Pliny the Younger
- The Conquest of Happiness – Bertrand Russell
- The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
- The Fall of the Roman Empire – Peter Heather (2nd read)
- King John – Marc Morris
- The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization – Bryan Ward-Perkins
A short takedown of the silly continuist thesis. - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- The Annals – Tacitus
- Restaurant at the End of the Universe – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- Life, the Universe and Everything – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- I, Claudius – Robert Graves
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- Mostly Harmless – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
- The Demon’s Brood – Desmond Seward
- Hannibal – Patrick Hunt
- The Ghosts of Cannae – Robert O’Connell (2nd read)
- The Razor’s Edge – Somerset Maugham
- Claudius the God – Robert Graves
- The Jewish War – Flavius Josephus
- Cicero – Anthony Everitt
- How to Read and Why – Harold Bloom
- The Monkey’s Voyage – Alan de Queiroz
- Paul – Paula Fredriksen
- From Jesus to Christ – Paula Fredriksen
- Pompeii – Steven Tuck (course)
- Paleofantasy – Marlene Zuk
- How to Tame a Fox – Lee Alan Dugatkin
- The Story of the Human Body – Daniel Lieberman
- The Subjection of Women – John Stuart Mill
- The Rational Optimist – Matt Ridley
- The Evolution of Everything – Matt Ridley
- After Tamerlane – John Darwin
- The Great Game – Peter Hopkirk
- The Letters of Abelard and Heloise – Pierre Abelard and Heloise d’Argenteuil (William Levitan tr.)
- The Thirty Years War – C.V. Wedgwood
- How the Irish Saved Civilization – Thomas Cahill
- Emperor – Geoffrey Parker
- Imprudent King – Geoffrey Parker
- The Book of the Courtier – Baldassare Castiglione
- A Distant Mirror – Barbara Tuchman
- The Scientific Attitude – Lee McIntyre
- Fatal Discord – Michael Massing
Pretty detailed double biography of Luther and Erasmus. - Heretics and Believers – Peter Marshall
- The Mabinogion – Sioned Davies (tr.)
- How to Read Literature Like a Professor – Thomas Foster
- The Imitation of Christ – Thomas a Kempis, William Benham (tr.)
- Empires of the Sea – Roger Crowley
- The Magician of Lublin – Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Against Empathy – Paul Bloom
- Science Fictions – Stuart Ritchie
- The Parthenon – Mary Beard
- The Colosseum – Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard
- The Ancient Roman World – Ronald Mellor, Marni Mcgee
- The Table Talk of Martin Luther – Martin Luther, Thomas S. Kempis (ed.), William Hazlitt (tr.)
- The Bondage of the Will – Martin Luther
- The Praise of Folly – Desiderius Erasmus
- Innate – Kevin Mitchell
- The Civilization of Renaissance in Italy – Jacob Burckhardt
- When Christians Were Jews – Paula Fredriksen
- Thomas Cromwell – Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Roman Warfare – Adrian Goldsworthy
- The Wars of the Roses – Dan Jones
- The Landscape of History – John Lewis Gaddis
- Free to Learn – Peter Gray
- The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek
- God’s Philosophers – James Hannam
- The Idea of the Brain – Matthew Cobb
- Early Greek Philosophy – John Burnet
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstoncraft
- The Scout Mindset – Julia Galef
- Vindolanda – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #1) (2nd read)
- The Encircling Sea – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #2) (2nd read)
- Brigantia – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #3) (2nd read)
- Babylon – Paul Kriwaczek
- The Last Kingdom – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #1) (2nd read)
- The Pale Horseman – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #2) (2nd read)
- Lords of the North – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #3) (2nd read)
- Sword Song – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #4) (2nd read)
- The Burning Land – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #5) (2nd read)
- Death of Kings – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #6) (2nd read)
- The Pagan Lord – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #7) (2nd read)
- The Empty Throne – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #8) (2nd read)
- Warriors of the Storm – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #9) (2nd read)
- The Flame Bearer – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #10) (2nd read)
- War of the Wolf – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #11) (2nd read)
- Sword of Kings – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #12) (2nd read)
- War Lord – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #13) (2nd read)
- The Scythians – Barry Cunliffe
- The Rise of Athens – Anthony Everitt
- Thebes – Paul Cartledge
- Hellenica – Xenophon
- A World Lit Only by Fire – William Manchester
- How to Write a Thesis – Umberto Eco
- The Ancient Celts – Barry Cunliffe
- The Travels of Marco Polo – Marco Polo
- The Birth of Classical Europe – Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
- The Inheritance of Rome – Chris Wickham
- The Face of Battle – John Keegan
- The Field of Blood – Nicholas Morton
- Matilda – Catherine Hanley
- Augustine – Robin Lane Fox
- The Great Siege – Ernle Bradford
- The Fort – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #4)
- The Anglo-Saxons – Marc Morris
- The Grand Strategy of the Classical Sparta – Paul A. Rahe
- Genghis Khan – Frank McLynn
- The Roman Way – Edith Hamilton
- The Power of Myth – Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
- Discourses and Selected Writings – Epictetus (Thomas W. Higginson tr.)
- The World Before Us – Tom Higham
- Letters from a Stoic – Seneca (Robin Campbell tr.)
- The Winter King – Thomas Penn
- Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction – Helen Morales
- Written in Stone – Christopher Stevens
- Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction – Harry Sidebottom (2nd read)
- The Enemy at the Gate – Andrew Wheatcroft
- Experiencing Medieval Europe – Kenneth Bartlett (course)
- The Tragedy of Empire – Michael Kulikowski
- The Apocryphal Gospels: A Very Short Introduction – Paul Foster
- Rebellion – Peter Ackroyd
- The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
- In Defense of History – Richard J. Evans
- Augustine: A Very Short Introduction – Henry Chadwick
- A Needle in the Right Hand of God – R. Howard Bloch
- Paul: A Very Short Introduction – E.P. Sanders
Decent introduction to Paul. Would recommend it along with Bart Ehrman’s Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene. One thing sorely missing from Sanders’ book is that he doesn’t talk about the sources (that’s Pauline epistles). It’s very crucial that the readers know about which letters of Paul are judged to be his and which are considered forgeries, so we can actually sort out what Paul himself believed and not take forgers’ ideas for Paul’s. Sanders almost exclusively cites from authentic letters (I didn’t check every citation, but don’t remember him citing anything from forged letters—Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus), but it would be nice if he explicitly talked about the sources and why they are problematic or not.
Sanders provoked some thoughts about how to treat history of people and ideas from the past:
There’s a tendency among some historians (and people in general) to synthesize the thoughts/opinions/views of an ancient person from surviving materials.
A lot of times these people collate arguments from multiple sources, that span an authors lifetime, into a single argument and pretend that this frankenstein of an idea existed, or even more absurd, that the ancient author had this comprehensive worldview throughout their life without change. Or if they find a person contradicting their previous views, they try to harmonize and accommodate those views.
When treating past people’s ideas we should always follow these rules and make them explicit:
– Each document should stand for itself. Don’t try to build a worldview from multiple documents that the author himself was unaware of. Here the sequence/chronology of the sources is of high importance to trace the evolution of ideas or changes in them. Worldviews are not static.
– Contradictions in the author’s ideas doesn’t mean that there must be an overall philosophy that should accommodate them (or that the author had this overall philosophy). Maybe the author totally rejected their previous ideas during their lifetime, or improved them, or maybe they’re just contradictions because the author never actually explicitly tried to reconcile their different ideas. There are no philosophies without contradictions. After all we are fallible. - Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introductions – John Monaghan and Peter Just
- The Dream of Enlightenment – Anthony Gottlieb
- The Red Prince – Helen Carr
- Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
- Revolution – Peter Ackroyd
- On Grand Strategy – John Lewis Gaddis
- The History of Astronomy: A Very Short Introduction – Michael Hoskin
- Ancestors – Alice Roberts
- The History of the Franks – Gregory of Tours
- In Search of a Kingdom – Laurence Bergreen
- God’s Jury – Cullen Murphy
- The Richest Man Who Ever Lived – Greg Steinmetz
- Galileo’s Middle Finger – Alice Dreger
- Who We Are and How We Got Here – David Reich
- The Cheese and the Worms – Carlo Ginzburg
- The Bible: A Very Short Introduction – John Riches
- The Waning of the Middle Ages – Johan Huizinga
- The Astonishing Hypothesis – Francis Crick
- The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
- Memoirs of My Life – Edward Gibbon
- Third Thoughts – Steven Weinberg (2nd read)
- Chaucer’s People – Liza Picard
- Sexual Selection: A Very Short Introduction – Marlene Zuk
- Biological Anthropology – Barbara King (course)
- The Ancient City – Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (Willard Small tr.)
- The Black Cloud – Fred Hoyle
- Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
- The New World – Winston Churchill (A History of the English-Speaking Peoples vol. 2)
- Roman Architecture – Diana Kleiner (course YOC)
- Conquerors – Roger Crowley
- Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction – Edward Siecienski
- A Short History of Humanity – Johannes Krause
- Over the Edge of the World – Laurence Bergreen
- Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – Max Weber (Talcott Parsons tr.)
- Conquest of the Americas – Marshall C. Eakin (course)
- Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
- The Return of Martin Guerre – Natalie Zemon Davis
- Early Modern England – Keith Wrightson (course YOC)
- Marco Polo – Laurence Bergreen
- On the Ends of Good and Evil – Cicero (H. Harris Rackham tr.)
- The Borgias – G.J. Meyer
- The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction – Jerry Brotton
- Inventing the Middle Ages – Norman F. Cantor
- Never Greater Slaughter – Michael Livingston
- Journeys of the Great Explorers – Glyndwr Williams
- The Age of Revolution – Winston Churchill (A History of the English-Speaking Peoples vol. 3)
- The Courage to Be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
- The Beginner’s Guide to Stoicism – Matthew Van Natta
- Sicily – John Julius Norwich
- Mythology – Edith Hamilton
- Europe in the High Middle Ages – William Chester Jordan
- The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England – Ian Mortimer
- How Innovation Works – Matt Ridley
- Omnipotent Government – Ludwig von Mises
- Bosworth 1485 – Michael Jones
- City of Fortune – Roger Crowley
- In the Wake of the Plague – Norman Cantor
- Life in a Medieval City – Joseph Gies and Frances Gies
- World Without End – Hugh Thomas
- God’s Shadow – Alan Mikhail
- The Borgias and Their Enemies – Christopher Hibbert
- The Secret History of the Mongol Queens – Jack Weatherford
- The Great Warming – Brian Fagan
- The Faithful Executioner – Joel F. Harrington
- Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Invisible Gorilla – Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
- Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction – Michael Eliot Howard
- Monasticism: A Very Short Introduction – Stephen Davis
- The Invaders – Pat Shipman
- The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction – William Bynum
- The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order – Samuel Huntington
- Genghis Khan and the Quest for God – Jack Weatherford
- The Anatomy of the State – Murray Rothbard
- The Bronze Lie – Myke Cole
- The Winter King – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #1)
- Survival of the Friendliest – Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods
- The Sacred Band – James Romm
- Enemy of God – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #2)
- The Map That Changed the World – Simon Winchester
- A Story of Us – Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson
- Your Inner Fish – Neil Shubin
- 1491 – Charles C. Mann (2nd read)
- The History of the Vikings – Christopher R. Fee
- The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson – Olafur Egilsson (trs./eds. Karl Smari Hreinsson and Adam Nichols)
- Medieval Bodies – Jack Hartnell
- Exercised – Daniel Lieberman
- Range – David Epstein
- Nature Via Nature – Matt Ridley
- A Hangman’s Diary – Franz Schmidt (ed. Albrecht Keller, trs. Calvert and Gruner)
- The Hedgehog and the Fox – Isaiah Berlin
- The Origins of Virtue – Matt Ridley
- The Horse, the Wheel, and Language – David Anthony
The detail and scope of this book puts all other historians and history books to shame. Stop dumbing down ffs! - Evolution (Oxford Readers) – Mark Ridley (ed.)
- A Historian Goes to the Movies – Gregory Aldrete (course)
- The Sultan and the Queen – Jerry Brotton
- Excalibur – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #3)
- The Reluctant Mr. Darwin – David Quammen
- Some Assembly Required – Neil Shubin
- The Great Mortality – John Kelly
- Ancestral Journeys – Jean Manco
- The Secret of Our Success – Joseph Henrich
- A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy – Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (eds.)
- Caesar’s Legion – Stephen Dando-Collins
- Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin
- Rome is Burning – Anthony Barrett
- Castles – Marc Morris
- The Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
- Antiquity – Norman Cantor
- World War Z – Max Brooks
- The Denial of Death – Ernest Becker
- Ubik – Philip K. Dick
- Tree Story – Valerie Trouet
- The Wind in the Willow – Kenneth Grahame
- The Blank Slate – Steven Pinker
- Reformations – Carlos M.N. Eire
- Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
- Life in a Medieval Village – Frances Gies and Joseph Gies
- The Jugurthine War and the Cataline Conspiracy – Sallust (tr. Alfred W. Pollard)
- How We Think – John Dewey
- Christendom Destroyed – Mark Greengrass
- Understanding Greek and Roman Technology – Stephen Ressler (course)
- The Pursuit of Glory – Timothy Blanning
- The Greek World – Robert Garland (course)
- Iron Kingdom – Christopher Clark
- Vanished Kingdoms – Norman Davies
- The Cathedral – William R. Cook (course)
- Philosophy of Biology – Alex Rosenberg and Robert Arp (eds.)
- Francis I – Leonie Frieda
- The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne – Michel de Montaigne (tr. Donald M. Frame)
- The History of the Byzantine Empire – Charles W.C. Oman
- The Formation of a Persecuting – R.I. Moore
- The Classical World – Robin Lane Fox
# of books read: 261
# of pages read: 88,305- average book length: 338p (though this is affected by the inclusion of courses which have 0 page count)
- 31 out 261 books are by female authors