A Self-Serving but Useful List of Gift Ideas
Who should get my books? And I'd like a GMO glow-in-the-dark plant, please.
Much of this is a repost from last year but I have made some additions and revisions.
One of my books (surprise!)
The Fabric of Civilization: For the textile lover, of course, but for anyone interested in history, technology, or why our world is the way it is. More than one reader has told me it reminds them of James Burke’s Connections series, and it should appeal to fans of Matt Ridley (who gave it a nice endorsement blurb) and Steven Johnson.
The Power of Glamour: It’s a beautiful artifact, so you can buy it for non-readers who want something for the coffee table. The images serve as a visual soundtrack to a work of intellectual theory, including two chapters limning the history of glamour in its pre-modern and modern forms. This book decodes glamour as a form of communication and visual persuasion. Better for René Girard or Martin Gurri fans than for the typical fashionista.
The Substance of Style: An oldie but a goodie. What’s the value of making things look good? Status isn’t the only reason people care about how things look and feel. The trend that inspired the book is a background phenomenon now, but the analysis still holds—all the more so as we enter an era of AI images on demand. More accessible than The Power of Glamour, this is the book for anyone interested in design, branding, or why they buy cool-looking things they don’t need. Features a famous paragraph on toilet brush holders.
The Future and Its Enemies: The classic is enjoying a resurgence of interest, some of which I discussed in this early Substack post. It puts both the rise of illiberalism and the burgeoning “progress studies” movement in a useful framework—the conflict between ideals of bottom-up dynamism and top-imposed stasis—that crosses traditional political and cultural lines. (Just substitute “Donald Trump” where it says “Pat Buchanan,” keeping in mind that Buchanan was a more serious thinker.) For your loved ones who like arguing on the internet or listening to political podcasts.
An Audible gift subscription: Pick one, three, six, or 12 months at $15 a month. Members get one book a month plus access to a catalog of freebies. I highly recommend William Hookins’s narration of Moby Dick.
Harry Potter books on Audible, starting with The Sorcerer’s Stone. I’d never read the books and listened to them last year. (I have an Audible subscription, but I got them from the public library, which did require a degree of patience.) The narrator Jim Dale, who does all the voices, is amazing and the books deserve their success.
A coffee gift subscription: I usually buy on for my coffee-obsessed nephew. See this CNET guide for advice. For those who want Red State flavor, there’s Black Rifle Coffee. Just yesterday I saw a guy in Orange wearing one of their shirts.
In 2020, Megan McArdle established a Substack called Cookery Monster to carry her famous (but not updated) Kitchen Gift Guide. She hasn’t updated it but it’s still a valuable guide.
The Foundation for American Innovation has a partly serious, partly playful (I hope) gift guide that includes the Stripe Press library and an Elon Musk saint candle. I want the GMO Glow-in-the-Dark plant. In 2013, plans for such plants set off a culture war on Kickstarter, which I wrote about here. Four years later Sarah Zhang chronicled the demise of that attempt for The Atlantic. Finally, a glow-in-the-dark plant hit the market last February, developed by a Wisconsin-based synthetic biology company called Light Bio.
I get a commission on Amazon links. If you’ve got other last-minute gift ideas to share, please put them in the comments.
I had already read Moby Dick three times (once in a 25-hour reading marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum with a multitude of celebrity readers, including Teller, and ship's biscuit with grog), but William Hootkins's was the best! I never fully appreciated Melville's humor until listening to Hootkins! Now on to Harry Potter. I have read them all to my children, at varying speeds and states of wakefulness, but it's time to listen!
Firefly petunias! I want some, too, but even ordinary petunias don't seem to grow in my location. I hope that they can make a glowing poinsettia. Thanks for the link.