Benjamin Franklin’s observation to a woman that the United States was “a republic, if you can keep it” has become so ubiquitous that its original foreboding tone has almost been lost entirely. The phrase in our own day has become almost a cheerful maternal admonition. Yet, the Revolutionary generation that wrote the United States Constitution and shaped the American republic’s regime treated the phrase not so much as a kindly or triumphalist admonition, but as a threat with consequences that were near at hand.

The Mesopotamians knew their migraines; the Egyptians had a word for seizures. The Hindu Vedas have medical term for dropsy and a goddess specifically dedicated to smallpox. Tuberculosis was so omnipresent and familiar to the ancients that – as with ice and the Eskimos – distinct words exist for each incarnation of it. But even common cancers, such as breast, lung, and prostate, are conspicuously absent. With a few notable exceptions, in the vast stretch of medical history there is no book or God for cancer.

The Idiot is a book that manages like no other to plunge fearlessly into suffering while at the same time illuminating the enduring, almost unspeakable tenderness of the human—The body is a site of tenderness, but also a problem that can’t be solved, a fraught place of ongoing crises, wars, injustices, failures. The desire for comfort and the reality of isolation and are unresolved.

During WWII, as the Luftwaffe targeted culturally-rich cities in 1942, two economists, Keynes and Hayek, took their turn in fire-watching on the roof of King’s College chapel. This opened an account of the history’s greatest economic duel.

Misfortune is not injustice.

Yet, nowadays, the benevolent human emotion to help the less fortunate has led to a confusion of language in which “injustice” is becoming synonymous with “misfortune”. Calling something an “injustice”—unlike calling some thing a “misfortune”—suggests that societal remedial action is mandatory. This confusion would be merely annoying if it did not breed support for public policies that exacerbate rather than ameliorate problems. Pinpointing and explaining these unfortunate consequences of public policies is among Sowell’s chief talents.

The Code Book leads readers on a journey through the history of coding, cryptography, and codebreaking. From primitive to high tech, Singh effectively crafts a narrative that turns cyphers into living, breathing beings that mutate from their humble beginnings as ancient hieroglyphics, into complex mathematical equations, that ultimately land on the shore of Internet surfing — communication by email. The incessant tug-of-war between code-makers and code-breakers kept my eyes darting from page to page as every seemingly unbreakable, gradually more complex code was peeled back to its essence and disposed of resourcefully.

The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface. Fast forward to 2023, democracy’s discontent persists. Abetted by pandemic, hyper partisanship, recalcitrant racial injustice, and toxic social media, the discontent is now more acute than it was a quarter century ago— more rancorous, even lethal.

Undefined words have a special power in politics, particularly when they invoke some principle that engages people’s emotions.

“Fair” is one of those undefined words which have attracted political support for various policies. While the fact that the word is undefined is an intellectual handicap, it is a huge political advantage. People with very different views on substantive issues can be unified and mobilized behind a word that papers over their differing, and sometimes even mutually contradictory, ideas. Who, after all, is in favor of unfairness? And who, after all, dares to point out the fallacies of a belief as long as it carries the “intent” for fairness?

What is Justice?

To ask whether a society is just, is to ask how it distributes the resources we prize—income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honors. A just society distributes these goods in a reasonable way; it gives each person his or her due. The hard question begins when we ask what is the reasonable way, what people are due, and why.