In addition to the first five chapters of Robert Nozick’s classic book “Anarchy, State, and Utopia“, we read, tried to read, or began reading the following few books over the holidays:

1. Karl Sigmund, “Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science“, Basic Books (2017), available here from Amazon. In addition, here is a good review by Tyler Cowen, who alerted us to the existence of this beautiful book.

2. Giorgio Agamben, “What Is Philosophy?“, Stanford University Press (2017) (translated by Lorenzo Chiesa). We are big fans of Agamben’s works, especially his book “State of Exception”, but we found this collection of essays, by contrast, to be obscure and very difficult to read. (Not all was lost, since we also read this excellent review of an earlier work by Agamben.)

3. Joseph Vining, “From Newton’s Sleep“, Princeton University Press (1995) (pictured below). We’ve just started reading this strangely titled tome, so we’ll have more to say about it in a future blog post.