Now that I have completed my summer session teaching duties, I will be free to focus on my research and writing for the rest of the summer. Among other things, I am writing up a new paper tentatively titled “The Leibniz Conspiracy” (about which I will be blogging about in the next day or two), and I am reading the following works:
- Jim Garrison, On the Trail of Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy, available here. Since my wife and I visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in May (a museum devoted to the events of Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas), I have immersed myself in the Zapruder film and JFK conspiracy theories. Along with the movies “Parkland” and “JFK”, this is the third book I have read on the subject since the month of May!
- Richard Jeffries, Subjective Probability (The Real Thing), available here. Given my “conversion” to Bayesian methods and subjective probability about a decade ago, I am now turning my attention to Jeffries’ work in this area.
- Cynthia Saltzman, Plunder: Napoleon’s Theft of Veronese’s Feast, available here. The author and book cover are pictured below. I ordered this book on the strength of Tyler Cowen’s recommendation (see here); my copy of this book arrived yesterday, and I am already on Chapter 2.
- Gregory Stock, The Book of Questions, available here.
- Nic Van Til, The Commercialization of Outer Space, available here.
prior probability 
Reblogged this on prior probability and commented:
Update (7/6): I have now read the excellent books by Jim Garrison (“On the trail of assassins”) and Cynthia Saltzman (“Plunder”). Let’s start with Saltzman. Her book retells the story of how so many works of looted art ended up in the famous Louvre museum in Paris, including Paolo Veronese’s “The Wedding Feast at Cana” (1563). In brief, France stole these works of art after Napoleon’s various military victories across Europe, but Saltzman also raises an intriguing legal and moral question. Most of the stolen works of art that populate the Louvre were ceded by treaty after Napoleon’s victories. So, should it make any difference whether the Louvre’s looted art was obtained by treaty, or are these treaties themselves null and void because they were imposed by military force?
Next, let’s turn to Garrison, who was the was the D.A. of New Orleans from 1962 to 1973. His fascinating book is about his investigation into the JFK assassination and the case he brought against Clay Shaw, charging him with conspiracy in the murder of JFK. While the evidence against Clay Shaw is mostly circumstantial, consisting of the testimony of various witnesses who say they saw Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald together in the months before the assassination–Garrison presents a compelling case that Oswald was framed and that JFK’s murder was the result of a conspiracy.
Uh oh, Enrique. What tastes of truth can depend on the taste that satisfies.