12 Books I actually liked

Most books are not worth reading and should not even have been written, but there are a few that I was impressed with to the point of being willing to recommend them:

• Who we are and how we got here — a nice overview of what genetic research has uncovered about human prehistory.

• Brave New World — not a fan of fiction in general, but is a compelling alternative view of humanity’s technological future, and funny in its own way. As a teenager I found the world unnerving, but as an adult I think it would be a better alternative to the timeline that humanity may have already chosen.

• Atlas Shrugged — while the book is known primarily for Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, the story itself is not bad. It details a woman’s struggle to manage her business in the face of an increasingly egalitarian and oppressive government. There is a bunch of, uh, romantic scenes involving her and who can be summarized as Argentinean Chad and American Chad.

• The Elephant in the Brain — there is a lot of nice work on self-deception out there: The presentation of self in everyday life and Nietzsche’s philosophy involves unveiling how morality and other human tendencies are caused by self-deception. I’m listing this one because I didn’t read the presentation of self, and have not read enough of Nietzsche’s work to know which of his books to recommend.

• Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist — Lynn’s personal memoirs, written three years before his death in 2023. Nothing too special in the book; you probably wouldn’t have guessed Lynn would have been as successful as he was by examining his early life. Though there are some funny stories in the book, particularly about Richard Herrnstein and German girls in the river.

• The Dark Enlightenment and Xenosystems — Yarvin’s great, but I can’t say his writing appeals to me. Nick Land is “harder” to read in the academic sense, but I find his style more suited to my personal tastes.

• The Son Also Rises — an alternative take on why social class has genetic roots. Most studies on this topic typically involve twin and pedigree data, but Clark uses surnames instead: he notes that there is a strong persistence in the degree to which certain surnames are associated with status that cannot be adequately explained by cultural or social models of class.

• Unsettled: what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters — best book on the climate change issue right now, exposes low quality alarmist research (e.g. increase in tornadoes is driven by improvements in detection technology, that climate models are terrible), and makes a good case for recent global warming being athropogenic.

• Bronze Age Mindset — didn’t read it in print, though I did listen to the public audiobook twice. The book itself is about a wide variety of topics: human evolution, philosophy, classical history... Many find it hard to describe what the central thesis of the book is, and when told that, BAP said that was a good thing, though I forget why that was. If one does not want to read the whole book, I recommend Anton’s review.

• The g-factor — despite being written almost 30 years ago, it still may be the best book on intelligence research right now. There’s a few mistakes he made in the book, like pushing back too hard on the issue of sex differences in intelligence, but otherwise the best case for the existence of general intelligence.

• The Bell Curve — an alternative to the g-factor that is less technically demanding, but explores the sociological and political implications of intelligence research more in depth.