The US government finally got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33-year-old Korean national who built a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the "stablecoin" TerraUSD, only to see it all come crashing down in a wipeout that cost investors $40 billion.

As private investors filed lawsuits, and as the governments of South Korea and the United States launched fraud investigations, Do Kwon was nowhere to be found. In 2022, the Korean government filed a "red notice" with Interpol, seeking Kwon's arrest and his return to Korea. A few months later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with fraud in the US.

On September 17, 2022, Kwon famously tweeted, "I am not 'on the run' or anything similar"—but he also wouldn't say where he was. He didn't help his case when he was arrested in March 2023 by the authorities in Montenegro. At an airport. With fake travel documents. On his way to a country with no US extradition agreement.

After serving some time in a Montenegro prison, Kwon battled extradition to both Korea and the US. This delayed the process by some months, but on December 31, 2024, he was shipped off to US authorities. Today, he appeared in front of a federal judge in New York City, where he pled "not guilty" to fraud.

The US Justice Department crowed about the extradition, with US Attorney General Merrick Garland pointing out that the US can sometimes get to people in surprising ways.

"We secured this extradition despite Kwon’s alleged attempt to cover his tracks by laundering proceeds of his schemes and trying to use a fraudulent passport to travel to a country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States," Garland said in a statement. "This extradition from Montenegro is an example of the Justice Department’s international partnerships, which enable the pursuit of criminals wherever they attempt to hide."

Five alleged misrepresentations

As for the charges, the US also unsealed a massive indictment against Kwon today, which you can read here (PDF) if you want all the gory details.

The basic claim is that Kwon "defrauded investors by falsely advertising the company’s blockchain products as decentralized, reliable, and effective, and by engaging in market manipulation, ultimately resulting in more than $40 billion in investor losses," according to the US government. This, the government alleges, happened in five key ways:

• "The Stablecoin Misrepresentations: Kwon made misrepresentations about the effectiveness of the system that lay at the heart of Terraform’s cryptocurrency empire, the “Terra Protocol,” which purportedly used a computer algorithm to maintain the value of Terraform’s so-called “stablecoin” pegged to the US dollar, TerraUSD (UST), at a value of $1 for one UST. But as Kwon knew, after the Terra Protocol failed to cause the restoration of UST’s $1 peg in May 2021, Kwon reached an agreement with executives at a high-frequency trading firm (the Trading Firm) so that the Trading Firm would purchase large amounts of UST in order to artificially support UST’s $1 peg.
• The LFG Misrepresentations: Kwon made misrepresentations about the governance of the Luna Foundation Guard Ltd. (LFG), which Kwon claimed was managed by an independent governing body and was tasked with deploying billions of dollars’ worth of financial reserves to defend UST’s peg. But as Kwon knew, he controlled both the LFG and Terraform. In addition, Kwon misappropriated hundreds of millions of dollars in assets from the LFG.
• The Mirror Misrepresentations: Kwon made misrepresentations about the success and operation of an investing platform on Terraform’s blockchain (the Terra blockchain) called Mirror Protocol (Mirror), that purportedly allowed users to create, buy, and sell synthetic versions of stocks listed on U.S. securities exchanges. Kwon claimed that Mirror operated in a decentralized manner and that he and Terraform played no role in Mirror’s governance. But as Kwon knew, he and Terraform secretly maintained control over Mirror, and used automated trading bots to manipulate the prices of synthetic assets that Mirror issued...
• The Chai Misrepresentations: Kwon falsely claimed that the Terra blockchain was being used to process billions of dollars in financial transactions for the Korean payment-processing application Chai. In doing so, Kwon claimed that the Terra blockchain had “real world” applications or uses, as distinct from competing cryptocurrency platforms. But as Kwon knew, Chai processed transactions through traditional financial processing networks, not the Terra blockchain.
• The Genesis Coin Misrepresentations: Kwon made misrepresentations about the use of a supply of one billion stablecoins programmed into the Terra blockchain at its creation (the Genesis Stablecoins), which were purportedly held in reserve for Terraform for certain specified uses. But Kwon used at least $145 million worth of Genesis Stablecoins, among other things, to fund fake Chai blockchain transactions and trading bots to manipulate the prices of synthetic assets that Mirror issued."

Kwon is facing charges of commodities fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

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Tesla sold almost 1.8 million cars in 2024, according to data released by the company this morning. Unfortunately for the electric automaker, it sold more than 1.8 million cars in 2023, beating this year's effort by 19,355 vehicles. But unlike last year, it sold more cars than it built, with production falling by 4 percent in 2024.

In the final quarter of 2024, Tesla built 436,718 Models 3 and Y and delivered 471,930, clearing out a stash of inventory in the process. It built an additional 22,727 electric vehicles—the elderly Models S and X and the divisive Cybertruck—and sold 23,640 of them during the same three months. So in Q4 2024, Tesla actually achieved modest, year-over-year growth in total sales of about 2 percent.

But the picture of the year as a whole is less rosy. Model 3 and Y sales fell by 2 percent year over year, with production falling by slightly more. As noted, this appears to have allowed Tesla to reduce what was at one point a growing inventory of unsold vehicles.

2024 was the first full year of Cybertruck production, and it appears the angular pickup's contribution to the sales numbers has been minimal. In 2023, Tesla built 70,826 "other models"—in 2024, it built 94,105. However, it built many more of these other models than it could find homes for, selling just 85,133 of these higher-priced EVs.

Tesla will post its full 2024 financial results at the end of the month.

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It's January, and for people in the US, that means the same thing it's meant every January since 2019: a new batch of previously copyrighted works have entered the public domain. People can publish, modify, and adapt these works and their characters without needing to clear rights or pay royalties.

This year's introductions cover books, plays, movies, art, and musical compositions from 1929, plus sound recordings from 1924. Most works released from 1923 onward are protected for 95 years after their release under the terms of 1998's Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This law prevented new works from entering the public domain for two decades.

As it does every year, the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a rundown of the most significant works entering the public domain this year.

Significant novels include Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, the first English translation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Agatha Christie's The Seven Dials Mystery, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

Many of the films on the list showcase the then-new addition of sound to movies, including the first all-color feature-length film with sound throughout (Warner Bros.' On With the Show!) and the first films with sound from directors like Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock. Buster Keaton's final silent film, Spite Marriage, is also on the list. Musical compositions include notables like Singin' in the Rain and Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

On the Disney front, we get the Silly Symphony short The Skeleton Dance, as well as a dozen more Mickey Mouse shorts. These include the first films to depict Mickey wearing white gloves and the first to show him talking—as we covered last year, it's only the 1920s-era versions of these characters who have entered the public domain, so each new version is significant for people looking to use these characters without drawing the ire of Disney and other copyright holders.

As far as culturally significant characters, there's nothing in 2025 that's as significant as Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse were in 2024 (Disney being at least partly responsible for why it takes copyrighted works so long to enter the public domain in the first place). But we do get a version of Popeye the Sailor as well as the initial version of Belgian reporter/adventurer Tintin. Whether the specific spinach-eating version of Popeye is in the public domain is a matter of some debate, though—Popeye didn't start getting his powers from spinach until 1931, but the copyright on that version of Popeye may not have been renewed in the first place.

The Duke University piece, written by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, is worth a read not just because it highlights this year's most significant public domain additions but because it calls attention to modern works that have built on and benefitted from public domain releases. Some of those works include Wicked, the 2024 film adapted from the 2003 musical adapted (extremely loosely!) from Gregory Maguire's Wizard of Oz-inspired 1995 novel; and Percival Everett's James, a retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, a runaway slave.

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Here we go again!

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My annual reading list. You can follow previous years’ lists by clicking back through this link.

First, the historical and professional work. Let me use the same language I use ever year, since it’s a lot of books and people wonder how this is possible:

I read these books for my own purposes–to prepare for teaching, to keep up or catch up on the historiography in my fields, occasionally to broaden my horizons. So I do not read every word of these books, nor do I generally read for factual information. I read for preparation for my work, whether my own professional writing, to inform my blog posts, to prepare for new courses, or to think through harder questions. That often means simply being aware of the basic outlines of a book so that I can go into more detail later when I need to write about a given subject. I also included the few books on contemporary politics I read this year, since there’s not much sense separating those out from historical books given my writing. And lest you think this is some exercise in weirdness, it allows me to references these books for years and most of my books are generated out of doing this work.

This year saw a bit more historical reading than usual, but I don’t think I actually read more. Rather, new history books are just really short. Comparing today to the 90s is amazing in terms of length. Mostly I think it’s for the best.

I put asterisks next to 20 books I thought LGM readers should really read. These aren’t necessary the best books here, though there is some overlap, but rather ones that are a bit more accessible and also very good. There are certainly more than 20 very fine books here, but here are 20 of them for you. I am happy to spend part of the day discussing the various books in comments, if you want or. have questions or whatever.

1. Jenny Carson, A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice ***
2. Marc Dixon, Heartland Blues: Labor Rights in the Industrial Midwest ***
3. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s
4. Jessica Wang, Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920
5. Elena Schneider, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World
6. Christopher Boyer, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico
7. Gregory Smoak, ed., Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West
8. Moon Ho-Jung, Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the U.S. Security State
9. Conor Morrissey, Protestant Nationalists in Ireland, 1900-1923
10. Kate Clifford Larson, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer ***
11. Errol Wayne Stevens, In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression
12. Christina Greene, Free Joan Little: The Politics of Race, Sexual Violence, and Imprisonment
13. Jordan Biro-Walters, Wide Open Desert: A Queer History of New Mexico
14. Alexandra Harmon, Reclaiming the Reservation: Histories of Indian Sovereignty Repressed and Renewed
15. Darnella Davis, Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era
16. Pablo Mitchell, Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880-1920
17. Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
18. Judith Stepan-Norris and Jasmine Kerrissey, Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight over the U.S. Labor Movement
19. David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640
20. Jennifer Eaglin, Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol
21. Maurice Hobson, The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta
22. Meng Zhang, Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market
23. Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, Empire’s Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962
24. Steven Friedman, Prisoners of the Past: South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule
25. Tani Barlow, ed., Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia
26. Susan Nance, Rodeo: An Animal History
27. Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792
28. Patrick Burke, Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock
29. Jessica Ordaz, The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity
30. Natalia Molina, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community
31. Charlotte Coté, A Drum in One Hand, A Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast
32. Alaina Roberts, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land
33. Thomas Mackaman, New Immigrants and the Radicalization of American Labor, 1914-1924
34. Pekka Hamalainen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Conquest for North America  ***
35. Terence Young, Heading Out: A History of American Camping
36. Diane C. Fujino and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation
37. Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876-1945
38. Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir, eds., Power Lines: Building a Labor-Climate Justice Movement ***
39. Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life ***
40. Soyica Diggs Colbert, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry ***
41. Kathryn Gin Lum, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History
42. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture ***
43. Paul A. Shackel, The Ruined Anthracite: Historical Trauma in Coal-Mining Communities
44. Eric Zolov, The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties
45. Joshua Reid, The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs
46. Adam Moore, Empire’s Labor: The Global Army That Supports U.S. Wars ***
47. Chris Otter, Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology
48. Musab Younis, On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought
49. Bronwen Everill, Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition
50. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink, Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress
51. Adria Imada, An Archive of Skin, an Archive of Kin: Disability and Life-Making during Medical Incarceration
52. Frederick Hoxie, This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made
53. Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People
54. Andrew Hazelton, Labor’s Outcasts: Migrant Farmworkers & Unions in North America, 1934-1966
55. Luis Aguiar & Joseph McCartin, eds., Purple Power: The History and Global Impact of SEIU
56. Courtney Fullilove, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture
57. Peter Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1920
58. Daniel S. Moak, From the New Deal to the War on Schools: Race, Inequality, and the Rise of the Punitive Education State
59. Pekka Hamalainen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power ***
60. Erik Kojola, Mining the Heartland: Nature, Place, and Populism on the Iron Range
61. Ronald W. Schatz, The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era
62. James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
63. Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America
64. Paul S. Hirsch, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism ***
65. Louis P. Masur, The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America
66. Clayton Howard, The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac: The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California
67. Alice L. Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
68. James Poskett, Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science
69. Jeannie N. Shinozuka, Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950
70. Sean Ehrlich, The Politics of Fair Trade: Moving Beyond Free Trade and Protection
71. Jane Berger, A New Working Class: The Legacies of Public Sector Employment in the Civil Rights Movement
72. Erin Woodruff Stone, Captives of Conquest: Slavery in the Early Modern Spanish Caribbean
73. Andrew Egan, Haywire: Discord in Maine’s Logging Woods and the Unraveling of an Industry
74. Stephen Chambers, No God But Gain: The Untold of Cuban Slavery, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Making of the United States
75. Nan Enstad, Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism ***
76. Joy Lisi Rankin, A People’s History of Computing in the United States
77. Sheila McManus, Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the American West
78. Lucas Bessire, Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains
79. Rachel Walker, Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America
80. Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South
81. Kevin Grant, Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890-1948
82. Amy Aronson, Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life ***
83. Tony Michaels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
84. Brian Hochman, The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States
85. Anna Willow, Understanding ExtrACTIVISM: Culture and Power in Natural Resource Disputes
86. David B. Williams, Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of the Puget Sound
87. David Wilson, Northern Paiutes of the Malheur: High Desert Reckoning in Oregon Country
88. Gabriel Valle, Gardening at the Margins: Convivial Labor, Community, and Resistance
89. Michael Dwyer, Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush
90. Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman, and Ryan T. Cragun, Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society
91. Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts ***
92. Kathleen Cairns, At Home in the World: California Women and the Postwar Environmental Movement
93. Thomas A. Castillo, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami
94. Emily Marker, Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era
95. Ellen Spears, Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945
96. John M. Findlay, The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000
97. Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth: A History *** (Wrote Review of this in the LA Review of Books)
98. Mark S. Ferrara, The Raging Erie: Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal
99. Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment ***
100. Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the Constitution in the Founding Era
101. Anita Huizar-Hernandez, Forging Arizona: A History of Peralta Land Grant and Racial Identity in the West
102. Sandra Bolzenius, Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II
103. William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan
104. William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain
105. Pavla Simkova, Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands
106. Maurice Crandall, These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 ***
107. Diana K. Johnson, Seattle in Coalition: Multiracial Alliances, Labor Politics, and Transnational Activism in the Pacific Northwest, 1970-1999
108. Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool in Modern War ***
109. Alberto Garcia, Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico
110. Amanda Frost, You Are Not America: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers ***
111. Timothy E. Nelson, Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930
112. Pablo Piccato, A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth and Justice in Mexico
113. Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia
114. Michael Jonas, Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War
115. J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Toward Utopia: A Economic History of the Twentieth Century ***
116. James C. Benton, Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America
117. Rebecca Kosmos, Intertwined: Women, Nature, and Climate Justice
118. Naoko Wake, American Survivors: Trans-Pacific Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
119. Michael A. Verney, A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early U.S. Republic
120. Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys
121. Rebecca Sharpless, Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South
122. Jennifer Bess, Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O’odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin
123. Annelise Heinz, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture
124. Davide Orsini, The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy
125. Benjamin T. Smith, The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976
126. Dillon J. Carroll, Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Civil War Soldiers
127. Elizabeth Grennan Browning, Nature’s Laboratory: Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886-1937
128. Jalane Schmidt, Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba
129. David Stiller, Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande
130. Andrew Curley, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation
131. Thomas Fleischman, Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany’s Rise and Fall
132. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico
133. K. Norman Johnson, Jerry F. Franklin, and Gordon H. Reeves, The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan: The Wild Science of Saving Old Growth Ecosystems
134. Thomas J. Campanella, Brooklyn: The Once and Future City (note: If you know anyone in your life who is a full on Brooklyn person and who likes a readable history with a ton of pictures, this would make a good gift)
135. David L. Parsons, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era

Last year, I started keeping track of presses I read from, which I thought would be interesting. So here’s this year’s list (if they don’t all add up, well, fine) and the top 10 presses over the last two years:

1. North Carolina—12
2. Oxford—11
3. Chicago—10
4. Harvard—8
5. Illinois—8
6. Washington—8
7. California—7
8. Princeton—7
9. Pennsylvania—5
10. Duke—5
11. Cornell—4
12. Yale—4
13. NYU—3
14. Nebraska—3
15. Cambridge—3
16. Oklahoma—2 
17. Verso—2
18. Norton—2
19. Routledge—2
20. Penguin—2
21. Massachusetts—2
22. Basic—2
23. Johns Hopkins—2 
24. Arizona—2
25. New Mexico—2
26. New Press—1
27. Kansas—1
28. Utah—1
29. Crown—1
30. Wits University (South Africa)—1
31. McFarland—1
32. Mariner (Harper Collins)—1
33. Texas A&M—1
34. Columbia—1  
35. Rutgers—1
36. Beacon—1
37. Texas Tech—1
38. Bloomsbury—1  
39. Colorado—1
40. Pittsburgh—1
41. LSU—1
42. Nevada—1
43. Oregon State–1

Top 10 over two years:

1. Oxford—21
2. North Carolina—20
3. Illinois—14
4. Harvard—13
5. Chicago—12
6. California—12
7. Washington—11
8. Princeton—11
9. Duke—9
10. Yale—9
11. Cambridge—9

Washington is so high for two reasons–I write in environmental and Pacific Northwest history so naturally I am going to read a preponderance of books in those two fields. Illinois is there because of labor history, though I find myself reading less labor history these days as the entire field has shifted to discussing neoliberalism in the 1970s, which has value, up to a point, but not like this.

Now onto the fiction and literary nonfiction. I beat my all time reading list of 68 and that was 2020, when I had lots of time. Of course, I’ve been on sabbatical this fall, so that explains a lot of it. But I’m pretty happy to have read 70. Asterisks are books I’ve read before. I guess what I’d say about this year is a lot more plays than normal (intentional), a ton of international fiction, a few classics (a goal in 2025 is to read more of these), an OK number of music books (probably should read more in 25), and a reengagement with Philip Roth in the last few weeks, who might have been a terrible person but who was a great writer, funny, amazing discussions of American identity, and a true master of prose.

1. Jean-Patrick Manchette, The Mad and the Bad
2. Steacy Easton, Why Tammy Wynette Matters
3. Charles Portis, The Dog of the South
4. Emi Yagi, Diary of a Void
5. Margo Price, Maybe We’ll Make It
6. Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968
7. Chrétien de Troyes, Ywain: The Knight of the Lion**
8. Tommy Orange, There There
9. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian***
10. Harald Voetmann, Awake
11. Philip Eil, Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the Pill Mill Killer
12. John McPhee, Rising from the Plains,**
13. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer**
14. Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honor of Katarina Blum
15. Richard Ford, The Ultimate Good Luck
16. Le Thi Diem Thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For
17. Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange
18. Albert Cossery, Proud Beggars
19. Laila Lalami, The Other Americans
20. Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy
21. Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives
22. Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking For is in the Library
23. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men
24. Toni Morrison, A Mercy
25. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
26. Studs Terkel, Working
27. C. Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey
28. Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
29. Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore**
30. Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives***
31. Antonio Tabucchi, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro***
32. Carl Hiaasen, Lucky You
33. Arthur Miller, The Crucible
34. Homer, The Odyssey **
35. Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
36. Richard Thompson, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975
37. Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
38. Jean-Patrick Manchette, The N’Gustro Affair***
39. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
40. Eugene O’Neill, Complete Plays, 1913-1920
41. Alex Harvey, Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles
42. Leonard Sciascia, The Day of the Owl
43. Tobias Wolff, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
44. Phil Klay, Missionaries
45. James Wilcox, Modern Baptists
46. John Bleasdale, The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terence Malick
47. Wole Soyinka, Isara
48. Colin Escott, Hank Williams: The Biography
49. Sally Rooney, Normal People
50. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
51. Henrik Ibsen, Enemy of the People, (Arthur Miller adaptation)
52. Tsitsi Dangarembga, The Book of Not
53. Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris
54. Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale
55. Shoji Morimoto, Rental Person Who Does Nothing
56. Nanni Balestrini, We Want Everything
57. Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow
58. Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All
59. Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer***
60. Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda***
61. Ivan Doig, This House of Sky**
62. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses**
63. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind
64. Morgan Talty, Fire Exit
65. Roberto Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction
66. Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
67. Dave Zirin, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy
68. Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer***
69. Peter Handke, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
70. Philip Roth, Zuckerman Unbound***

Let’s talk books today!

The post 2024: A Historian’s Reading List appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

There aren't that many movies specifically set on New Year's Eve, but one of the best is The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Joel and Ethan Coen's visually striking, affectionate homage to classic Hollywood screwball comedies. The film turned 30 this year, so it's the perfect opportunity for a rewatch.

(WARNING: Spoilers below.)

The Coen brothers started writing the script for The Hudsucker Proxy when Joel was working as an assistant editor on Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). Raimi ended up co-writing the script, as well as making a cameo appearance as a brainstorming marketing executive.  The Coen brothers took their inspiration from the films of Preston Sturgess and Frank Capra, among others, but the intent was never to satirize or parody those films. "It's the case where, having seen those movies, we say 'They're really fun—let's do one!'; as opposed to "They're really fun—let's comment upon them,'" Ethan Coen has said.

They finished the script in 1985, but at the time they were small indie film directors. It wasn't until the critical and commercial success of 1991's Barton Fink that the Coen brothers had the juice in Hollywood to finally make The Hudsucker Proxy. Warner Bros. greenlit the project and producer Joel Silver gave the brothers complete creative control, particularly over the final cut.

Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is an ambitious, idealistic recent graduate of a business college in Muncie, Indiana, who takes a job as a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries in New York, intent on working his way to the top. That ascent happens much sooner than expected. On the same December day in 1958, the company's founder and president, Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), leaps to his death from the boardroom on the 44th floor (not counting the mezzanine).

A meteoric rise

To keep the company's stock from going public as the bylaws dictate, board member Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman) proposes they elect a patsy as the next president—someone so incompetent it will spook investors and temporarily depress the stock so the board can buy up controlling shares on the cheap. Enter Norville, who takes the opportunity of delivering a Blue Letter to Mussburger to pitch a new product, represented by a simple circle drawn on a piece of paper: "You know... for kids!" Thinking he's found his imbecilic patsy, Mussburger names Norville the new president.

Meanwhile, a reporter for the Manhattan Argus, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is skeptical about this new "idea man" and cons her way into becoming Norville's secretary to find out what's really going on. At first, everything goes according to the board's plan. Norville's proposal for the "dingus" is fast-tracked into production and dubbed the Hula-Hoop by marketing. It's shaping up to be a spectacular failure until a little boy finds a discarded Hula-Hoop on the street and demonstrates a variety of tricks while playing with it.

The Hula-Hoop becomes a national sensation. The company's stock soars instead of crashing and Norville basks in unexpected glory. Frankly, the success goes to his head. But the ruthless Mussburger has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Is Norville any match for his machinations? Maybe he is, with a little timely magical intervention to ensure a happy ending.

A fad is born

Unfortunately for the Coen brothers, The Hudsucker Proxy was not their hoped-for mainstream success. It was a box office bomb, grossing just $11.3 million worldwide against a production budget of between $24-$40 million. Reviews were mixed, with critics declaring the film something of a technical pastiche that lacked humanity—all style with little substance and too many sly references to classic films from Hollywood of yore. But as often happens, the film withstood the test of time, amassing a strong cult following over the last 30 years.

Even the film's harshest critics had nothing but praise for the film's stunning cinematography and production design, a tribute to the distinctive vision of its directors. Visual effects supervisor Michael McAlister, in a 2019 interview, called The Hudsucker Proxy his favorite of the many films he's worked on: "It's the only movie that I've worked on that I wouldn't change one frame of film under my department's domain."

This is a mythical version of New York City, created with miniatures of all the iconic skyscrapers, crammed together into a single area to evoke a bygone Manhattan. (The models were later used for films like Batman Forever and Godzilla.) There are shades of Art Deco and Frank Lloyd Wright, mixed in with darker dystopian touches reminiscent of films like 1985's Brazil.

I've never understood the early criticisms, but then, I've always been a fan of screwball comedies and appreciate that the Coen brothers played this one straight, rather than trying to make a clever satire. It's the sheer earnest good cheer they bring to the film that makes The Hudsucker Proxy so eminently watchable, year after year—reminiscent of It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and similar feel-good fare.

A second chance

You've got smart, snappy dialog and rapid-fire delivery in the style of 1940s comedies like The Front Page. Jason Leigh specifically modeled Amy Archer's vocal and physical mannerisms on Rosalind Russell's reporter in that film, as well as on Katharine Hepburn. Robbins plays Norville's wide-eyed optimism to perfection and Paul Newman's rasping delivery ("Sure, sure") and smug confidence makes Mussburger the perfect screwball comedy villain.

You've also got the fast-talking elevator operator, Buzz (Jim True) for comic relief, firing off bad puns about the former president's suicide ("When is a sidewalk well-dressed? When it's WARING Hudsucker! Get it?"), John Mahoney as Argus chief editor Al, and Bruce Campbell as Amy's dim-witted misogynist colleague, Smitty. The Coen brothers even employ a couple of dyspeptic diner patrons, Benny and Lou, as narrators to provide the needed exposition in the scene where Amy picks up an unwitting Norville with the old mother's lumbago ruse ("she's good, Lou").

Ultimately, The Hudsucker Proxy is an uplifting fable about why it matters to be good and decent, even in a cut-throat world that values nothing but profit. Those pursuits didn't bring Waring Hudsucker true happiness, after all, leading to his voluntary departure for the Great Hereafter. As he wrote in his final missive, "Failure should never lead to despair. That despair looks only to the past, in business and in love. The future is now." It's a fitting reminder for us all as 2024 draws to a close.

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