Books read in 2026 — Adrián A. Davín’s website

Books I have been reading this year

La Guerra Civil (graphic novel) by Paul Preston and José Pablo García. (3.5). Very readable introduction to a very complex topic. The graphic novel format makes it more digestible. This book is a very good exposition of the many agents and parties that played a role in the Spanish Civil War, with a very large Orthodox bias.
The war of art by Steven Pressfield (2) - Self-help, very easy to read. The main message is that in any creative enterprise, the most important thing is to defeat the “resistance”, that force that compels us to find excuses and postpone our goals. I would put this book in the category of low-quality self-help, a lot of motivational words and little content. Ignorable
Owning the Earth by Andro Linklater (2.5) – This is the most significant work by historian Andro Linklater, offering an all-encompassing narrative of our ideas on land ownership and their social consequences. The book’s primary flaw is its ambition. Because the book attempts to compress the history of all eras and civilizations, the narrative feels “jumpy” at times. I understand it is difficult to strike a balance between breadth and readability, but Linklater’s work occupies a middle ground that I find unconvincing. I would have preferred either a longer, better-narrated historical context for the different eras, or a shorter version focusing on specific periods that delved deeper into the mechanics of why land ownership is so vital. I read through pages of anecdotes and characters with the constant feeling that there was a deeper point just out of reach. In the final section, the author launches into a long diatribe against Austrian economic ideas, presenting an uncharitable vision of Hayek and Mises that no one familiar with their work would recognize. While I appreciate that the criticism doesn’t come from the “usual suspects,” it falls flat because it is mostly straw-manning the positions of the Austrian school. Ultimately, I did gain something from the book, but not necessarily from the content itself, but because it forced me to clarify my own positions.
Truth by Simon Blackburn (1.5) - A short book by philosopher Simon Blackburn, on the different positions on the meaning of Truth. I read this on the recommendation of my friend Jose Blanca who has read much more on the topic. Knowing Jose and the fact we share our low tolerance for bullshit, I suspect that this must be among the most clearly written introductions to this area by philosophers. Sadly enough, this was still not enough: I found the writing style unnecessarily contorted and the content not especially enlightening.
Why Politics Fails? by Ben W. Ansell (1) - One of the books I should have abandoned instead of finishing. A pop political science book about different aspects of politics, namely: democracy, equality, solidarity, security and prosperity. I was already familiar with the ideas discussed and I did not gain anything new. Moreover, I thought the discussion was full of platitudes. The content is devoid of interest. I could make a longer review if I thought it was worthwhile but it is not. Take as an example the final lines of the section on democracy: “Democracy is ultimately about opinions. Learning how to express our own effectively and to tolerate those of other people is the only way we’ll ever reach consensus. We will always disagree in general. But we will need to agree, in the end, on something”. If this sounds in general “confused” to you, most of the book reads like this.
The Invention of Power, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (2): This book failed to meet my expectations. I thought it was a book on how the Catholic Church became so successful at wielding power for such a long time. In reality, this book is an explanation of why different areas of Europe developed at different paces, using an explanation based on Game Theory and tracing all of the major reasons to a single concordat signed in the city of Worms in the year 1122. I do not think it is a bad book per se and maybe I am being too strict with the grade, but I did not find the narrative or the data very compelling in general. I did not feel the explanation of the theoretical model was sufficiently clear, and at times I was bogged down with dozens of names that I could not really place in history.
1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (2): Apparently a classic on the topic. Written in 1944 by historian Lewis Namier, it is a short book discussing the 1848 revolutions with a focus on the German question and the ascent of Nationalism. I do not think this was a good introduction to the topic; might read it again when I understand the historical context better
Candide (Voltaire) (4): Probably the first book I have read this year I really enjoyed! I found it witty and easy to read. If Voltaire was alive today he would probably have a YouTube channel where he would make fun of everyone. The very last words of this little book “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” carry a lot of wisdom and I am thinking of stamping them somewhere on my walls. It is a good reminder for people like me that end up thinking too much about doing and not doing as much as we want!
Hojoki: A Hermit’s Hut As Metaphor (5) - This is a Japanese classic, written by a Buddhist monk living near Kyoto in the 13th century. Absolutely beautiful and recommended. I will go back to it many times. Panta rei.
Tsurezuregusa: Essays in Idleness (5): Another Zuihitsu book, the last one of the 3 very famous classic Japanese works of this genre. I enjoyed every bit of it.
Pure Land - History, tradition and practice (4) by Charles B. Jones: A good book on Pure Land Buddhism. Buddhism is quite difficult to understand because very often the explanations focus only on the historical figure of Siddharta Gautama and his philosophy, and they tend to leave aside the fact that many branches of modern Buddhism have very little to do with this and they have a very rich mythological world.
Principles of Economics by Saifedean Ammous (3.9): This book is a good, no-nonsense introduction to economics from the Austrian perspective. I would recommend this book to anyone who has not read about economics before, as first-time readers can gain a lot from the interesting content. However, although I think the Austrian School got many things right, Milton Friedman was correct when he stated that “there is no Austrian economics—only good economics and bad economics.” Bryan Caplan summarized it very well in his famous and controversial article “Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist.” My problems with Austrian economics are mostly: 1) the attempt to reconstruct economics from an ordinal scale does not really make sense; 2) the ABC is, IMO, at most an incomplete explanation of the boom and bust (still obviously better than the Keynesian one!); and 3) their dogmatic rejection of the use of math and data. Besides this, I particularly enjoyed when the author puts into perspective the amount of resources the planet has (the diametrically opposed view one gets from looking at the “pale blue dot”). It has some interesting chapters where the author covers Civilization (a consequence of people pursuing lower and lower time preferences) and Defense. These are unusual topics to cover in a book about economics, but they do not feel totally out of place.
Lo pequeño es posible by Miguel Anxo Bastos (4). Many years ago, I had a discussion about this very topic with my friend Ruben. At the time, I argued that centralization and larger states are desirable for various reasons, while Ruben took the opposite stance. Today, I find myself disagreeing completely with my past self. I am already familiar with most of the arguments Professor Bastos makes in this book (having heard many of them directly from him in videos) but it is nevertheless an excellent exposition of why, when it comes to the state, bigger is not necessarily better.
The Secret History by Procopius (3): Politics is fascinating, but following the latest news can be exhausting and infuriating at times; I would rather spend my time trying to understand the rules of power by studying history. It is a magical antidote to the illusion that whatever happens nowadays is significantly different or more important than what came before. Procopius was a writer who secretly documented the corruption and depravity of some of the most important figures of his time, including Emperor Justinian and his top general, Belisarius. I enjoyed reading this, though a shorter version would have been enough, as many of the names mentioned appear only briefly and are never heard from again.
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt (4): An interesting book about the history of the De Rerum natura, the Epicureans and Poggio Bracciolini, the scholar who made the ancient banished sect “great again”. Recommended.
Moral ambition by Rutger Bregman (1): A book that will make the world marginally worse. I would like to write a longer review with everything that is wrong with this text, but it will require some time.
If anyone builds it, everyone dies by E. Yudkowsky and N. Soares (2): I wrote a longer review on this book and it can be found here. In short: easy to read, entertaining, but also most likely wrong.
Private truth, public lies (4) by Timur Kuran: I am a bit surprised by this book. I “knew” I was going to like it, but I thought it was going to be a different type of book. I was expecting something much more along the lines of “The elephant in the brain”, with many anecdotes and results from psychology. There are many anecdotes and results from psychology in this book but the central piece is a mathematical model that is described across many chapters and that is used to explain many phenomena in social dynamics, such as the stability of the caste system in India or the sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. A recommended read, not an easy one.
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 by Dwarkesh Patel (3): Dwarkesh Patel has some of the best interviews out there with some of the most interesting people on Earth. This is a collection with extracts from their interviews, focused on the development of AI. The field is moving so incredibly fast that some things already look outdated. A good book to have an overview of what the relevant things in the field are now.
The WEIRDest people in the world (5) - Probably the best book I have read so far this year, an incredible tour de force of anthropology, history, psychology, sociology and I do not know how many other fields. One of the fundamental books that humans should read to understand other humans.
Inventing the Renaissance (4) - Ada Palmer has a contagious enthusiasm for her specialty, “The Renaissance”. The book really shows all the passion and love she has for the subject and it makes for a very fun read. Besides the book, I do recommend listening to her interviews with Dwarkesh Patel. The only downside of this book is that it might be too dense at times in characters and historical facts, in spite of Ada really doing her best to make it digestible. In any case, it is a recommended read
Blood and Thunder (4) - Beautifully written, this work narrates the fascinating story of the conquest of the West by the USA, following Kit Carson as the main character. I was lucky enough to enjoy its pages during a road trip around Utah and Arizona, so I could ask for no better backdrop for my reading. The author does not shy away from presenting facts without sugar-coating them and does his best (in my opinion successfully) to present historical characters for what they were, without hiding the darker parts of history but always presenting them in their due context, in a dispassionate way. Many modern writers should take a note or two about this.