an eudæmonist › reading

to be read (maybe)

This is a list of books I might like to read. Then again, I might not like to read them. In any case, they are books I thought at one time I might be interested in reading and considered it worthwhile to try to remember. I’m not at all sure that this will be particularly up-to-date when you look at it, but I will try to keep it current (see the revision date below). Currently own a copy of unread titles in grey; linked titles intended for ILL (whenever that is available again).

Mediterranean

• Roland Betancourt. Byzantine Intersectionality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020.
• Laonikos Chalkokondyles. The Histories. 2 vols. ed. & trans. Anthony Kaldellis. Cambridge, MA: Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard UP, 2014.
• Marcel Detienne. The Gardens of Adonis. Spices in Greek Mythology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994.
• Margaret Graver. Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007.
• Karina Groucher. Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East. Oxford: OUP, 2012.
• S.C. Humphreys. Kinship in Ancient Athens: An Anthropological Analysis. 2 vols. Oxford: OUP, 2019.
• Judith Herrin. Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020.
• Lila Leontidou. The Mediterranean City in Transition: Social Change and Urban Development. Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990.
• Alexander Mikaberidze The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History. Oxford: OUP, 2020.
• Orlando Patterson. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982.
• Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Lisa Auanger, eds. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. Austin, TX: Univ. Texas Press, 2002.
• Philip De Souza Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge: CUP, 1999.
• Laura Swift. Archilochus: The Poems: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: OUP, 2019.

Microcosmographia Academica

• Peter Brown. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2023.
• Hsi Chu. Learning to Be A Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu. trans. Daniel K. Gardner. Berkeley, CA: Univ. California Press, 1990.
• Ofer Gal and Raz Chen-Morris. Baroque Science. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2014.
• Alexandra Gillespie and Deidre Lynch, eds. The Unfinished Book. Oxford: OUP, 2021.
• Anthony Grafton. Commerce with the Classics. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. Michigan Press, 1997.
• Anthony Grafton. Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2020.
• Vivian Green, ed. Love in a Cool Climate: The Letters of Mark Pattison and Meta Bradley, 1879–1884. Oxford: OUP, 1986.
• H. S. Jones. Intellect and Character in Victorian England: Mark Pattison and the Invention of the Don. Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2007.
• Christina Lupton. Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2018.
• C. Wright Miller. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Grove, 1959.
• Gabriel Naudé. Instructions concerning erecting of a library. trans. John Evelyn. 1661.
• Anahid Nersessian. The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2020.
• Mark Pattison. Isaac Casaubon: 1559–1614. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892.
• Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen. The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2019.
• Joseph Justus Scaliger. Autobiography of Joseph Scaliger. trans. George W. Robinson. Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1927.
• Steven Shapin. A Social History of Truth. Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1994.
• Helen Smith. Grossly Material Things: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2012.
• Valerie Wayne. Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

None so sweet

Initial list in this section based on the bibliography in Mary Ann Lund’s A User’s Guide to Melancholy (Cambridge: CUP, 2021).

• Matthew Bell. Melancholia: The Western Malady. Cambridge: CUP, 2014.
• Angus Gowland. The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton in Context. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.
• Stanley W. Jackson. Melancholia and Depression: from Hippocratic Times to Modern Times. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1986.
• Brian Levack. The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2013.
• Mary Ann Lund. Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’. Cambridge: CUP, 2010.
• Michael MacDonald. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: CUP, 1981.
• Jennifer Radden. Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression. Oxford: OUP, 2009
• Alisha Rankin. Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen Healers in Early Modern Germany. Chicago, IL: Univ. Chicago Press, 2013.
• Meredith K. Ray. Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2015.
• Nancy G. Siraisi. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago, IL: Univ. Chicago Press, 1990.
• Erin Sullivan. Beyond Melancholy: Sadness and Selfhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2016.
• Andrew Wear. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680. Oxford: OUP, 2000.
• Susan Wells. Robert Burton’s Rhetoric: An Anatomy of Early Modern Knowledge. University Park, PA: Penn. State UP, 2019.

Ritual / Occult

• Talal Asad. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
• Susan Boynton. Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 100–1125. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2006.
• William T. Cavanaugh. The Uses of Idololatry. Oxford: OUP, 2024.
• Alan Gauld. A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge: CUP, 1992.
• Chris Goto-Jones. Conjuring Asia: Magic, Orientalism, and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2016.
• Peter Kingsley. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford: OUP, 1995.
• Frank Klaassen. The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance. University Park, PA: Penn. State UP, 2012.
• Alfred L. Kroeber. Configurations of Cultural Growth. Berkeley, CA: Univ. California Press, 1944.
• Benedek Láng. Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. University Park, PA: Penn. State UP, 2010.
• Fred Naiden. Supplication. Oxford: OUP, 2006.
• Lawrence M. Principe. The Secrets of Alchemy. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2012.
• Courtenay Raia. The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2019.
• W.H.R. Rivers. Medicine, Magic and Religion. London: Routledge, 2001 (1915).
• Jonathan Z. Smith. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004.
• Randall Styers. Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Valerio Valeri. Kingship and Sacrifices: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1985.
• Lindsay Watson. Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Russia / Central Asia / Persia

• Christopher I. Beckwith. The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2023.
• Vartan Gregorian. The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2013.
• Patricia Herlihy. Odessa: A History 1794–1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.
• Laleh Khalili. Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. London: Verso, 2020.
• Nancy Shields Kollmann. The Russian Empire 1450–1801. Oxford: OUP, 2017.
• Michael Khodarkovsky. Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads: 1660–1771. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992.
• Jūrate Kiaupiene. Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2020.
• Ümit Kurt. The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2021.
• Tim Mackintosh-Smith. Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2019.
• Omeljan Pritsak. The Pečenegs: A Case of Social and Economic Transformation. Lisse, Netherlands: Peter de Ridder Press, 1976.
• Ruth Rogaski. Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2022.
• Hugh Seton-Watson. The Russian Empire, 1801–1917. Oxford: OUP, 1967.

Social History (Europe)

• Nadine Akkerman. Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain. Oxford: OUP, 2018.
• Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800. Philadelphia, PA: Univ. Penn. Press, 1999.
• Alexander Broadie. The Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2001.
• James Buchan. The Authentic Adam Smith. New York: Norton, 2006.
• Katherine Dauge-Roth. Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France. New York: Routledge, 2019.
• Anthony Fletcher. Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1995.
• Kate Flint. The Woman Reader: 1837–1914. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
• Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough, eds. The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Berkeley, CA: Univ. California Press, 1996.
• Mary Harris. Common Threads: Women, Mathematics, and Work. Stoke on Trent: Trentham, 1997.
• C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage 1967 (1938).
• Emma Rothschild. An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France Over Three Centuries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2022.
• Adam Smyth. Autobiography in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2010.
• Jacob Soll. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. Michigan Press, 2009.
• Lawrence Stone. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977.
• Raoul Vaneigem. The Revolution of Everyday Life.

Journal of Happiness Studies

This list has nothing to do with the real Journal of Happiness Studies, but I think it’s amusing that an academic journal has that name.

• Marghanita Laski. Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1962.
• Abraham Maslow. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper, 1954.
• Abraham Maslow. Towards and Psychology of Being. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1962.
• G. H. Mead. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1934.