#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/2/25

It would be great if we didn't mangle our clocks twice a year, but at least I made use of the extra hour to listen to some books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was "Early Japanese Railways" by Dan Free. This book goes at a breakneck pace through the development of different railroads and associated industries across Japan during a formative period, occasionally providing historical context and analyses as a backdrop. Strangely, nearly all of the accounts of the railways that Free uses were written by foreigners, and while the contrast they provide with European and American railroads are helpful, it's a massive oversight that Japanese perspectives are rarely included. This is best viewed as a chronology, running through the events and technologies that led to the explosion of railways across the Japanese archipelago prior to WWI. There's a ton of information in the appendices and many great photos in the most recent edition. Highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Early-Japanese-Railways-1853-1914-Engineering-ebook/dp/B00A9WJP50/

Last was "Women, Race, & Class" by Angela Y. Davis. That this book was written in the early 80s is extremely impressive, given how many of the ideas and concepts Davis puts forward have only recently become mainstream. Most of this book is an excellent combination of philosophy, history, and sociology, with Davis using case studies and more qualitative work to illustrate more macro trends, which she mostly backs up with more quantitative metrics. This isn't true across all chapters, however, and in some sections she makes broad based claims (e.g. "X is known") with no supporting evidence. Additionally, the chapter on housework is weird, given that she is essentially advocating for a hypercapitalist model of housework professionalization (which neoliberal economists love) and claims that they wouldn't like it - this is demonstrably false (see most economics books/papers published since the 40s). That aside, this is a singular, prescient work that remains important for our times. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/37354/women-race-and-class-by-angela-y-davis/