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Contemporary Thought and PoliticsBook

by Ernest Gellner

Who uses, recommends or left Contemporary Thought and Politics, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
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Lucking across a used copy, I enjoyed the re-read: Gellner's acerbic wit, playful style, acuity, and characteristic themes are all on good display here, as he touches on student revolt, the Prague Spring, the idea of progress, the relationship between the scale of social integration and nationalism, ideas about the philosophy of history and of social science, how the social organization of Berber tribes illuminates international relations, and so on.

His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for May 2019 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.

2019-05-31·bactra.org ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.