Before we dive head first into the New Year, here’s a quick look back at the books I read in 2024.  

I read and reviewed 21 books last year. A little off my pace of the last couple of years. On the other hand, I think I wrote more non-review posts last year too.

All but one of these were nonfiction, and even the one novel, A Madman Dreams of Turning Machines, contained significant amounts of nonfiction content, mainly history and mathematics.

For the last several years, I’ve been focused on climate, the environment and nature, and that continued in 2024. Twelve of the books I read last year were in these categories.

Here are some highlights. The links point to my reviews.

Best writing:  All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley. The book is a memoir of the ten years Bringley spent working as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The job gave him time and quiet to mourn the death of his elder brother from cancer. The book is mostly about art, but it’s also about grief and suffering and how art depicts those experiences and helps us understand them better. It’s a wonderfully written book, both sad and joyful.

Most informative:  Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie is a powerful antidote to climate doom-ism. Ritchie examines eight of our most pressing environmental problems including sustainability, biodiversity loss, deforestation and climate change. Backed by fascinating data from Our World in Data, where she’s lead researcher, Ritchie paints a surprisingly optimistic picture of the enormous challenges we face.

Most provocative: I like books that make you rethink long-held ideas or help you put them in a larger framework. On Freedom by Timothy Snyder certainly does that. It’s a deep examination of a cherished ideal. Snyder argues that the way we usually think about freedom, as freedom from, is a dead end that leaves us vulnerable to tyrants. He urges us to think more about positive freedom, freedom to or freedom for. An important book in these difficult times.

OK, now I’m ready for more great books in 2025!

Thanks for reading

---

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to Unsolicited Feedback.