#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/29/25

I've had a fairly relaxing Thanksgiving break, and after partaking of the seasonal feast I listened to books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was "Seeing Red" by Michael Witgen. This book presents a zoomed in view of the old northwest of the land claimed by the United States - roughly modern day Ohio to Wisconsin - focusing on indigenous peoples and the use of coercive "treaties" by the US to systematically dispossess their land and claw back any monetary payments. The strength of this book is in the deep context it provides across this region, although it's also a weakness since more quantitative data on larger trends is mostly absent. Overall, however, this is an insightful look into an important region and era for North American history. Highly recommend https://uncpress.org/9781469677774/seeing-red/

Next was "Bankers and Empire" by Peter James Hudson. Hudson reviews the early history of American banking expansion into the Caribbean, with its sometimes corrupt practices and entanglements. This is extremely focused on individual actors, which while it can be entertaining gives very little insight into the sector as a whole, and while Hudson very clearly dislikes the industry much of the chronology here demonstrates fairly innocuous international expansion. There are of course, extremely problematic episodes (US military intervention to protect US bank assets, the American president of the Nicaraguan branch of a US bank serving as the Nicaraguan minister of finance, etc.), but inexplicably those events are merely mentioned and not explored in any detail. There's still a lot here to use as a reference in US financial industry in the Caribbean, but not much beyond that https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo26032761.html

Next was "The Experience Machine" by Andy Clark. Most of this book is the exploration of a compelling thesis - that the mind is fundamentally geared towards prediction and reducing prediction error. When confined to more instantaneous, anatomically grounded phenomena this is well supported by the research discussed here, however it falls apart in other contexts that Clark avoids (e.g. imagination, planning). Beyond that, he conflates cognitive processes with psychological phenomena, which while admittedly a spectrum leads his section on "extended minds" to become nearly meaningless. If everything is neuroscience, then nothing is. The earlier chapters, however, mostly make up for these failings if you read while taking those issues into account. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608016/the-experience-machine-by-andy-clark/

Last was "Sex, Race, and Robots" by Ayanna Howard. There's the seed of a decent memoir here, but it's surrounded by boundless ascientific AI hype, with only a dash of ethical thought. I wish this were more on robotics specifically, since that's Howard's field, but that's mostly shoved aside to ride the ill-defined "AI" hype train. A missed opportunity https://www.audible.com/pd/Sex-Race-and-Robots-Audiobook/B08DRSY5Y6