For quite a while, maybe all year, Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten has been posting very long book reviews by other people.
This was a contest, with monetary prizes for the book reviews that won.
Here are the winners:
- 1st: The Dawn Of Everything, reviewed by Erik Hoel. Erik is a neuroscientist and author of the recent novel The Revelations. He writes at his Substack The Intrinsic Perspective.
- 2nd: 1587, A Year Of No Significance, reviewed by occasional ACX commenter McClain.
- 3rd: The Castrato, reviewed by Roger’s Bacon. RB is a teacher based in NYC. He writes at Secretorum and serves as head editor at Seeds of Science (ACX grant winner), a journal publishing speculative and non-traditional scientific articles.
- 3rd: The Future Of Fusion Energy, reviewed by TheChaostician.
- 3rd: The Internationalists, reviewed by Belos. Belos is working on a new blook titled best of a great lot about system design for effective governance.
So you see, a considerable variety of topics are represented. There are ten others that were finalists and about fifteen or so honorable mentions.
I haven’t read most of these reviews, and none of the books, almost all of which are nonfiction. (The God-Emperor of Dune is here, though! I read that one!)
The few reviews I have read have been really long, thoughtful, and fascinating, and now that links to the winners, finalists, and honorable mentions have all been gathered up into one post, I will probably read more of these reviews, and possibly some of the books. I thought some of you might also like to take a look.
I rarely read the New Yorker anymore, but their book reviews are always terrific. And, my sister and I would never see a movie without asking each other, ‘What did Pauline say?’