The Esoteric Revue

moving through a world of radical uncertainty with epistemic humility

Friday, March 27, 2026

“Stubborn Attachments” by Tyler Cowen

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This is a book of moral philosophy, with an emphasis on political (or at least communal) issues. It is a treatise about values and what hu...
Friday, March 20, 2026

“Effingers” by Gabriele Tergit (translated by Sophie Duvernoy)

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This is an epic novel that spans four generations of a few branches of two Jewish families in Germany, intertwined by blood and marriage. Th...
Friday, March 13, 2026

“The Methods of Ethics” by Henry Sidgwick

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This treatise is Sidgwick’s attempt to reconcile intuitive ethics, egoistic hedonism, and utilitarianism with common sense morality. He begi...
Friday, March 6, 2026

“Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame” by Christopher Boehm

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Boehm credits Darwin for speculating on the evolutionary origins of the human conscience from his very first thoughts on evolution in “On ...
Friday, February 27, 2026

“The Matter With Things Volume 1: The Ways to Truth” By Iain McGilchrist

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Much of this first volume is a rehash and update of the thesis of McGilchrist’s first book, “The Master and His Emissary” about the differen...
Friday, February 20, 2026

“On the Calculation of Volume: Vol. II” by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara Haveland)

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This novel continues the themes of Balle’s previous volume, heavy on pondering the philosophy of time and of self. The conceit of Tara repea...
Friday, February 13, 2026

“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai

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Desai’s epic novel is a story about love’s triumphs and failures, a story cloaked in mystery, a story of rigid class divisions, a story of h...
Friday, February 6, 2026

“Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000-2000” by Avner Greif, Joel Mokyr, and Guido Tabellini

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This book is a comparative institutional analysis between the economies of China and Western Europe from 1000-2000 AD. As such, it paints in...
Friday, January 30, 2026

“The Metaphysics of Morals” by Immanuel Kant (translated by Mary Gregor)

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This is Kant’s take on a system of morality derived solely from a priori logic. “The concept of freedom is a pure rational concept, which fo...
Friday, January 23, 2026

“Some Trick” by Helen DeWitt

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This is a collection of short stories. DeWitt’s stories are ostensibly unrelated, but many focus on the themes of writing, artistic creati...
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