Read 'Em and Sleep

 Here are some books I've read in the past few months. As always, I tend to read at night when I am not my most lucid, and my memory of their contents may be suspect. This post is mainly to remind myself of what I *think* they were about. The references are not in any particular style.

 

Galston, William A. (2025). Anger, fear, and domination: Dark passions and the power of political speech. New Haven: Yale.

 This relatively short book looks at the unfortunately powerful impact of negative emotions on persuasion, particularly in the political realm. Even if one wants to believe that people are inherently good, this is a reminder that negative emotions are particularly powerful and it would be naive to deny that power ("Progress is possible, but so is regression"). The argument is not that there can be no appeal to reason or the better angels of our nature, but rather that we must be realistic about what we are up against. 

 

 Durand-Wood, Michel. (2025). You'll pay for this! Great Plains Press.

Another small book, this time dealing with the challenges of maintaining quality of life as cities change over time. My main takeaway (though I may be conflating this with another similar book I read on the topic) is that there is an inherent disconnect with both trying to have affordable housing while also treating home ownership as an investment vehicle and not just shelter. Another idea is that we tend to doom ourselves from the start by prioritizing new development ("greenfield" projects, such as creating a new neighborhood in what was once an empty tract of land) over reusing/remaking existing areas. The problem with greenfield is that, once the initial influx of money is gone, there is usually no way to support all of the new infrastructure that was created to serve the new area (additional sewage, power lines, etc.). This leads to the gradual decay of neighborhoods that "used to be nice." 

 

Shermer, Michael. (2026). Truth: What it is, how to find it, and why it still matters. Johns Hopkins.

The author of this book is (was?) the editor-in-chief of "Skeptic" magazine. The first part of the book looks at the idea of truth in an historical context, describing how it has been though of over the years. One of the main ideas is that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," contra the current "I'm just asking questions...." style of  today's conspiracy bloggers. He then works his way through various topics, such as UFOs and religion (and the associated "moral truths), and spends the last third of the book investigating consciousness and the existence of God (in the "prime mover" sense). The book was enjoyable to read, though I'm not sure there were any particular "aha" moments while reading it.