There's more to life than books, you know / But not much more
My three favourite books of 2024 have almost nothing in common, except that (1) they are each terrific, exceptionally engrossing cover-to-cover reads, and (2) they each, in a double sense, fill crucial gaps.
Paula Fredriksen's Ancient Christianities is now the finest synthetic study of which I'm aware for connecting together the periods (normally treated as intrinsically discrete, rarely competently covered by the same scholars, often relegated to different academic disciplines with different methodologies and prerogatives) of the early Jesus movement and the apostles/evangelists with the late Roman Christian empire wherein the New Testament canon was given its definitive shape and Christianity its ostensibly orthodox form. The purposeful plural in Fredriksen's title suggests that even post-Nicaea there remained fractious and diverse competition among Christianities; that spell-check is telling me as I type this that "Christianities" isn't a word is in itself a small sign that, like Peter Brown's influential argument for myriad "micro-Christendoms" enduring into the Middle Ages, this is a contention that remains imperative to (re-)assert, particularly in a book pitched for a wider readership. Indeed, Fredriksen's latest does for the first half of the first millennium A.D. (opting for the anodyne "Common Era" in this case would seem slightly perverse!) what Brown's now-classic The Rise of Western Christendom accomplished for the period ca. 200–1000 A.D. As someone whose fields of research overlap partially with Fredriksen's, this isn't what I would personally nominate as her best book per se –- I would go with either From Jesus to Christ (1988) or Augustine and the Jews (2008) or possibly, more recently Paul: The Pagans' Apostles (2017) –– but that shortlist of titles is partly to the point in suggesting Ancient Christianties' secondary lacuna-filling function: This is the study that ties together most fully and seamlessly the different, temporally removed strands of Fredriksen's brilliant work, and for that reason it's the first book I would recommend to students or non-specialist readers from the four-decade-plus oeuvre of one of the truly great historians working today.
Longtime Rolling Stone critic (and frequent music-doc talking head) Rob Sheffield's Taylor Swift book is instantly, happily The Taylor Swift Book, and would be a safe bet to remain so for years to come if not for the fluid and unpredictable in-progress trajectory of its subject. (But that's what subsequent "expanded" editions are for.) Search Amazon under 'Books' for 'Taylor Swift' and you will see quickly how bleak and barren the bibliographic landscape is, populated largely by risible junk for young kids, with public domain photos filling space between useless columns of A.I.-generated prose. This is not to undersell how really damn good Sheffield's book is, but rather to emphasize how direly we've needed a serious, smart, deeply engaged, human-composed critical study of the world's most important active musical artist (for some years now!), and one that is equally sharp in considering Swift as a pop-cultural phenomenon and as a peculiarly fascinating, highly allusive songwriter. On a decidedly lesser (but personal) note, this book is also an unexpected godsend for middle-aged male Swifties who dearly love the Smiths, have a special fondness for minor Barbara Stanwyck pictures, and – rock snobs be damned – dare to entertain, or even articulate, the notion that Swift might well be the most vivid, expressive, and idiosyncratically literary encapsulator and enunciator of specific emotional experiences or states in song since Stephen Patrick Morrissey in his prime. It seems odd to suggest that Sheffield gets Swift and her music better than anyone else, in part because – right – he's a male music critic in his '50s but also, and more substantively, because, as Sheffield himself admirably concedes, he continues after countless listens to her songs and records to find Swift essentially mysterious, opaque, impossible to ever fully figure out or pin down. Yet such a concession/observation coming from the author of a book on Swift is precisely why he's eminently qualified to write it. He recognizes and insightfully unpacks the central paradox of Swift, her songs, and her shifting celebrity persona(e): that the most effusively diaristic pop star since John Lennon is (again like Lennon) also the most subtly elusive and unknowable, except on the limited terms she grants and via the voluminous art that just keeps coming in big, torrential blasts of feeling. Sheffield clearly has thought through, debated, ruminated on, reconsidered, and fretted over just how to phrase every claim or idea he posits in Heartbreak Is the National Anthem. As in Swift's music –– not least the "Taylor's Version" re-recordings –– that kind of mental/emotional labour shows. And it pays off, if not a literal fraction as well for Sheffield as for America's youngest female self-made billionaire. To quote another great music critic writing on Swift, it "evince[s] an effort that bears a remarkable resemblance to care––that is, to caring in the best, broadest, and most emotional sense."
In a very different sense, Bob Woodward's riveting War captures in crystalline detail the contours and contents of the here and now. Though, alas, it had no discernible impact on the election held a mere three weeks after its publication date, it will be of tremendous value for future historians as they try to explicate the geopolitical order of things during the tumultuous, perilous 2020s. What will make War a particularly valuable document is its exemplary use of Woodward's signature method of procuring uncommonly frank quotes from unnamed insiders and then weaving them into a novel-like narrative. Secondarily, this book will also help in future (and hopefully not as long as it took to re-assess on balance the legacy of LBJ, the presidency with so many striking parallels to Biden's) to bolster noble defenses of the Biden administration, notwithstanding its failings, which Woodward also details (most disastrously in the case of the Afghanistan military withdrawal). One is left with the highly credible impression that Biden and his top cabinet officials, here especially Blinken, Sullivan, and Austin, are/were fundamentally decent and thoughtful leaders, which did not guarantee success, generally or in every mission or endeavour they were forced into or chose to undertake. But decent and thoughtful is far more than can be said for or reasonably expected of the misanthropes, extremist ideologues, and egomaniacs who soon will succeed them in the US Executive branch.
