Person
Thomas Chatterton Williams's book recommendations
Key facts
- Thomas Chatterton Williams has recommended or discussed 11 books on podcasts, as of September 20, 2022.
- Thomas Chatterton Williams has talked about books on 2 podcasts, as of September 20, 2022.
- Those books came up in 2 episodes, as of September 20, 2022.
- The 3 books Thomas Chatterton Williams has mentioned in the most episodes, as of September 20, 2022: The Brothers Karamazov, Between the World and Me and The Lottery.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Thomas Chatterton Williams aired on September 20, 2022.
Updated
Across 2 podcasts. Every show Thomas Chatterton Williams appears on, in one place — not just one.
Thomas Chatterton Williams’s most recommended books
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
- Aesop's Fables by Aesop
- Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides
- Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed by Daniel Frank, Aaron Segal
- Racecraft by Barbara J. Fields
- The Children by David Halberstam
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
Thomas Chatterton Williams is an American cultural critic and writer. He is the author of the 2019 book Self-Portrait in Black and White and a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is a visiting professor of the humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, and a 2022 Guggenheim fellow. Formerly, Williams was a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and an Easy Chair columnist for Harper's Magazine. In podcast discussions, Williams spoke about several books that shaped his life and thinking. He discussed how Barbara J. Fields and Karen E. Fields's Racecraft influenced his views on American inequality, shared that he fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in high school, and recounted how his father introduced him to Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery'. He also discussed the profound impact of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in shattering his faith and serving as a link to the world, mentioned passages from Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, and discussed David Halberstam's The Children.
Books recommended by Thomas Chatterton Williams
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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.
Discussed“and then I read The Brothers Karamazov and it was just an astonishing reading experience for me and it kind of shattered my faith”
Where to get it
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Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a powerful, epistolary memoir structured as a letter from a father to his teenage son regarding the realities of growing up Black in America.
Critiqued“Um but there's an astonishing kind of passage in Between the World and Me where he basically sees um a kind of caricature of an upper class or wealthy um Frenchman in a in a beautiful car smoking a cigarette and he imagines him going on to have some type of amazing night and kind of living this kind of”
Where to get it
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The Lottery
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a chilling short story that depicts a small town participating in a violent annual ritual, exposing the dark consequences of blind conformity and tradition.
Discussed“So, um my dad when one of those I mean, this is probably a little bit cliche or or it's maybe obvious to some of your listeners, but when I was 15, 16 and my best friend and I were studying all the time with my dad and we were navigating our social context and trying to figure out how”
Where to get it
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Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables by Aesop is a classic collection of moral tales attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, designed to impart practical lessons through animal allegories.
Discussed“and to pay us handsomely um for our age to to sit and and and study and to read Aesop's Fables when we were really young and then to get on to more sophisticated things later.”
Where to get it
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Guide for the Perplexed
Discussed“for my dad, like enormously impactful um books for him were like Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, which I have to admit I I I've I used to talk to him about Maimonides, but I never did actually read um Guide for the Perplexed.”
Where to get it
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Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
Discussed“For my dad, like enormously impactful books for him were like Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, which I have to admit I used to talk to him about Maimonides and stuff, but I never actually read.”
Where to get it
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Racecraft
Discussed“one of the books that made the biggest impression on me is called racecraft the soul of American in equality by Barbara and Karen Fields”
Where to get it
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The Children
The Children by David Halberstam is a historical account that chronicles the young, ordinary college students who spearheaded the pivotal sit-in movement during the American civil rights struggle.
Discussed“And I was reading lately, I've been reading David Halberstam's book, The Children, on the sit-in movement.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“Well, the type of school that I went to, I mean, yeah, The Great Gatsby, I fell in love with in high school.”
Where to get it
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The Story of Philosophy
"The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant is a sweeping historical overview that chronicles the lives and ideas of the world's greatest thinkers, making complex philosophical concepts accessible to general readers.
Discussed“And so, he basically was under the age of 10, and the story that we've always understood from him was that he in in a neighbor's house, uh he came across um a copy of Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy.”
Where to get it
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Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a classic Gothic novel examining the destructive, all-consuming passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw across the bleak Yorkshire moors.
Discussed“And it's very difficult for me to see, even as somebody who was coming from a house full of books, it was difficult for me to see why at that age I was reading Wuthering Heights, for example.”
Where to get it
Books by Thomas Chatterton Williams
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Chatterton Williams on Practical Philosophy and Embracing Contradiction | The Daily Stoic | 2022-09-20 | 15 |
| Thomas Chatterton Williams on ‘Unlearning Race’ | The Book Review | 2019-10-18 | 1 |
Other mentions (2: passing, ad reads, own books)
“And that's actually really um one of the main arguments in my in my second book, Self-Portrait in Black and White.”
“And that's actually really one of the main arguments in my second book, Self-Portrait in Black and White.”