Episode · Lex Fridman Podcast · 2021-11-08
Lex Fridman & Niall Ferguson: books mentioned on Lex Fridman Podcast #239
#239 – Niall Ferguson: History of Money, Power, War, and Truth
Niall Ferguson is a historian at Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of 16 books on the history of money, war, power, and catastrophe.
Lex Fridman discussed Doom by Niall Ferguson. Niall Ferguson recommended Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and discussed Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Doom
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson is an analytical historical study that examines how human societies throughout history have responded to wars, pandemics, and major systemic disasters.
Discussed“in the book doom the politics of catastrophe your newest book you describe wars pandemics and the terrible disasters in human history”
Where to get it
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Life and Fate
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman is a sweeping masterpiece depicting the brutality and human ramifications of the Eastern Front, the Holocaust, and totalitarianism during World War II.
Recommended“if only if one reads grossman's life and fate”
Where to get it
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Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is Adolf Hitler's notorious autobiographical manifesto detailing his political ideology and antisemitic worldview.
Discussed“because it's out of the experience of defeat in 1918 as hitler makes clear in mind camp that he becomes radicalized and enters the political realm”
Where to get it
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In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust is a monumental, multi-volume modernist novel that explores memory, time, art, and the profound meaning of human existence through an immersive blend of narrative and philosophical essay.
Discussed“i'm currently in the midst of the later stages of of proust's great allah”
Where to get it
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On the Road
On the Road by Jack Kerouac is a seminal autobiographical novel that chronicles the cross-country road trips of its protagonist and captures the restless energy of the Beat Generation.
Discussed“one of my earliest literary simulations was to reenact jack kerouac tripping on the road when i was 17 culminating and getting very wasted in the hanging gardens of zochimilco”
Where to get it
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War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a monumental historical novel blending grand military strategy with intimate domestic life against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
Discussed“i think um of all of those writers tolstoy had the biggest impact because at the end of war and peace there's this great essay on historical determinism which i think was the reason i became a historian”
Where to get it
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The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound philosophical novel that explores deep spiritual questions surrounding faith, free will, morality, and the human condition.
Recommended“if you haven't read the brothers karamazov you will not really you're not grown up”
Where to get it
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Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound psychological novel that explores guilt, morality, and the severe consequences of moral relativism and nihilism.
Discussed“remember raskolnikov's nightmare at the end of crime and punishment in which he imagines in his dream a world in which a terrible virus spreads”
Where to get it
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The Captive Mind
The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz is a classic philosophical and political analysis examining why intellectuals and ordinary people succumbed to the appeal of totalitarianism and communism in the twentieth century.
Discussed“there's a fantastic book that i'm going to misremember milos is the captive soul the captive mind rather which has a fantastic passage here”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (9) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“i remember looking at great numbers of these in the british museum when i was writing the ascent of money”
“and this was the point of the ascent of money as an evolutionary story”
“and they illustrate something i should have made more clear of the ascent of money that not everything used in payment needs to be money”
“when it hit me the other day that we actually had this precedent for crypto i got quite excited and thought i wish i had written that in the ascent of money”
“i found that when i was writing doom and so we slightly are biased in favor of the periods when trust prevailed and the system functioned”
“when i updated the ascent of money which was in 2018 10 years after it came out i wrote a new chapter in which i said bitcoin which had just sold off after its 2017 bubble will rise again through adoption”
“when i wrote this under money which was in 2008 you couldn't really solve the problem”
“this argument was central to my book the pity of war”
“in a book called the square in the tower i argued that it would be very costly for the united states to allow the public sphere to continue to be dominated by a handful of big tech companies”