Three-Toed Sloth

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, April 2026

Attention conservation notice: I have no taste, and no qualifications to opine on poetry or international political economy.

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

Regular readers (if I have any left) know that Henry is a long-time co-author and, even more, a friend; it'd be absurd to pretend I could write an objective review of one of his books.

With that disclaimer out of the way, this is a great book, which simultaneously illuminates some very, very important phenomena, and is very well-written. The phenomena are all about the ways in which globalization has turned out to create a series of "chokepoints", central nodes in the various networks of finance and communication, and to have placed those chokepoints under the control of the United States, without anyone really intending or even expecting this. Over-simplifying greatly: because the US was already the economic and technological leader of the world (and had been for some time), it made sense --- it was cheaper or more efficient --- to route connections through America, often through very specific parts of America. (Such as office parks in suburban northern Virginia.) Having created these connections, and the very material infrastructure which implements them, it then made more sense for further connections to route through those American nodes, rather than going through the expense of creating parallel, and perhaps little-used, routes. (There is a reason I finally posted about search and increasing returns while finishing this book.) Equally accidentally, and largely as a consequence of the War on Terror, the US government woke up to the fact that it could control those chokepoints, i.e., deny adversaries access to those networks; what was almost as good, it could very credibly threaten to do so. Hence "weaponized interdependence". Having become conscious of these powers (not least because of Henry and Newman's own article), the US government has proceeded to use them with abandon, provoking nigh-inevitable responses from other countries and other actors.

This is both a sophisticated work of social science (I can see where specific works on network theory or path dependence have shaped their thinking, and I daresay there are non-complex-systems influences I miss), and one which conveys a lot of detail about specific institutions and technologies. It is nonetheless not ponderously learned or monographic, but rather readable, even exciting, and something which can, and should, be read very widely. (Henry has a nice blog post about they ways they deliberately learned from thrillers and science fiction about how to narrate complicated systems.) It is, to repeat, a great book, and I am proud to call one of its authors a friend.

(Long ago, I made myself a promise that I would never recommend or review a book unless I finished it cover-to-cover. So it is that I only this month got to reading the last chapter, about how these powers could be restrained and/or turned towards good ends, such as combating climate change. This is painful reading in light of everything that has happened since the book came out in 2023, but there might still be some value to it, once the Republic emerges from its Babylonian captivity.) §

Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins

Mind candy fantasy: sequel to The Ninth Rain (in my backlog; suffice to say: good), and continuing the high standard of that book. I will say there was a bit in the middle where I set it down for a couple months, before I made myself press through it, but that was because I could tell that horrible things were about to happen to all of the separated bands of heroes, and I cared about the characters too much. (Horrible things did happen, but it was worth it.) I look forward to reading the sequel. §

Ludovico Ariosto (trans. David R. Slavitt), Orlando Furioso: A New Verse Translation

At the border of "mind candy" and "classics of the Western canon". I shall emphasize the former. This is a big fat (600+ pp.) epic fantasy which follows an over-lapping set of characters, switching between viewpoints, as they go on quests, meet in single combat and in vast battles, fall in and out of love, perform daring rescues and even more daring feats of skull-duggery, listen to and enact prophecies, retrieve magic artifacts and tame or fight mythic beasts, go mad (hence the title), etc., etc. (It's even a sequel to a popular series, but continued by another author.) It is, in short, very much a recognizable genre work, both in content and form. It's also an epic poem, composed and translated in verse, and very, very much a product of a Renaissance world-view, projected back to the time of Charlemagne.

My grasp of Italian is that of a pre-kindergarten. (This despite the best efforts of my mother, and of Signora Anna and the other teachers at Silver Spring Bilingual Montessori.) I can have no opinion about whether the translation is accurate, but it is pretty good English verse. §

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur; Scientifiction and Fantastica; Commit a Social Science; Networks; The Continuing Crises; The Dismal Science; The Beloved Republic; Kith and Kin; The Commonwealth of Letters