Contraptions Book Club
The theme for the 2026 book club is The Divergence Machine. We will read a set of books selected to explore the thesis that the story of civilization 1600-2000 is best understood as the emergence of a set of divergence mechanisms on the margins of the Modernity Machine we explored in 2025. Each book will be discussed during the last week of the corresponding month, in a dedicated chat thread.
2026 Picks
January: Candide by Voltaire. For English, pick either the Theo Cuffe translation (2005) or the Robert Adams translation (1966). Chat.
February: Underground Empire by Henry Farrell. Chat.
March: Pick between The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart and The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen
2026 Side Quests
Deviant Globalization by Nils Gilman (Ed).
2025 Book Club
The theme for the 2025 book club is The Modernity Machine. We will read a set of history books selected to explore the thesis that the story of civilization 1200-1600 AD is best understood as the construction of the first civilization-scale machine. You can read my notes in the Modernity Machine series, and catch up on the year-end discussion here.
What We Read
January: City of Fortune by Roger Crowley. Chat.
February: Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires by David Chaffetz. Chat.
March: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates. Chat.
April: Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography by Robert Irwin. Chat.
May: The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Elizabeth S. Eisenstein. Chat.
June: Monkey King: Journey to the West, choose either the unabridged Jenner edition or the abridged Lovell edition (recommended). Chat.
July: Side-quest month: Pick your own book relevant to 1200-1600. You can pick from the side-quest list if you like, or find your own book.
August: Elective month: Choose from: Canterbury Tales, Decameron, Divine Comedy, and Don Quixote. Pick your edition/translation carefully.
September: Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays. Chat.
October: Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia’s Greatest Empire by Harold van der Linde. Chat.
November: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann.
December: Utopia by Thomas More. Chat.
2025 Side Quests
Relatively expensive and detailed books that you might want to read on the side.
Slaves on Horses by Patricia Crone
Venice: A New History, by Thomas Madden.
Islamic Gunpowder Empires by Dougles E. Streusend
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman
Before European Hegemony by Janet L. Abu-Lughod
Kingdoms of Faith by Brian A. Catlos
Ocean of Churn by Sanjeev Sanyal
The Chivalric Turn by David Crouch
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer
Zheng He: China And the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 by Edward L. Dreyer
Vijayanagara by Burton Stein
Empires of the monsoon: A history of the Indian Ocean and its invaders by Richard Hall
When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the ‘Riches of the East’ by Stewart Gordon