Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2025-12-03
Books mentioned on Dan Wang on What China and America Can Learn from Each Other
Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
Buddenbrooks
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann is a sweeping historical novel that chronicles the decline of a prosperous merchant family across four generations in northern Germany.
Discussed“I prefer Buddenbrooks to Magic Mountain.”
Where to get it
-
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann's monumental novel The Magic Mountain follows a young engineer who visits his cousin at an international tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, where time and philosophical debates stretch endlessly.
Discussed“I prefer Buddenbrooks to Magic Mountain.”
Where to get it
-
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is a sweeping nineteenth-century masterpiece examining love, infidelity, and societal norms in imperial Russia.
Discussed“But War and Peace is still clearly better than Anna Karenina, which is more of a mono novel, and less complex and sprawling, right?”
Where to get it
-
War and Peace
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is a monumental literary masterpiece that chronicles Russian society, family life, and the dramatic historical events surrounding the Napoleonic Wars.
Discussed“But War and Peace is still clearly better than Anna Karenina, which is more of a mono novel, and less complex and sprawling, right?”
Where to get it
-
Seeing Like a State
Seeing Like a State by James C.
Critiqued“I think that James C. Scott's most popular work, Seeing Like a State, is also, unfortunately, his, I would say, weakest work.”
Where to get it
-
The Art of Not Being Governed
Discussed“I think that, by far, James C. Scott's very best work is The Art of Not Being Governed, in which he did extensive fieldwork in Yunnan, as well as the broader zone of southwest China and southeast Asia, which is heavily mountainous, an area that is larger than Western Europe.”
Where to get it
-
The Three-Body Problem
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is an acclaimed Chinese science fiction novel that explores humanity's first contact with an alien civilization facing imminent destruction from a triple-star system.
Discussed“Why is volume one of Three-Body Problem the best of the three volumes?”
Where to get it
-
Red and the Black
Red and the Black by Stendhal is a classic 19th-century French novel that traces the ambitions of Julien Sorel as he navigates the rigid social hierarchies of post-Napoleonic society.
Discussed“Stendhal mentioned the Comte Ory in my favorite book, my favorite novel, The Red and the Black.”
Where to get it
-
A lion for love
Discussed“Robert Alter, before he translated the Torah, wrote a biography of Stendhal called A Lion for Love.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“He has a new and bestselling book out called Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future.”
“Before the last two questions, let me just plug your book again, which I was very happy to have blurbed. Dan Wang, it is Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future.”