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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 05/10/2026

77) PERFECTION (Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes) - this book had few generational level sniped from orbit level paragraphs insulting millennial lifestyle choices and taste post great recession maybe the best novel about "airspace" in the gentrification / airbnb sense of the word

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 05/10/2026

I don't wanna be a James C Scott bro but also...

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 04/10/2026

76) INVITATION TO A BANQUET (Fuchsia Dunlop) - her cookbooks are always so well written and I find myself enjoying the written matter more than the recipes, so it turns out a comprehensive survey course in chinese cuisine is a delight the lesson: I should order more soups

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 02/10/2026

Incredible set of designs for Sunset Blvd coming from @ladotofficial.bsky.social - cannot wait, thanks @cd13.lacity.gov Eunisses Hernandez and the whole team on an awesome proposal

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 01/10/2026

75) THE UNFINISHED METROPOLIS (Benjamin Schneider) - felt this was a little bit too much "what" and not enough "how" in trying to address the book thesis, but a whirlwind tour of american urbanism in the 2000s

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 28/09/2026

this might be the best business name in all of LA

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 28/09/2026

beef rendang, salmon head curry, chicken curry, achar, tomato garden chili chutney

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 26/09/2026

74) Chinese Espresso (Grazia Ting Deng) - picked this up basically on a lark for the princeton UP sale and despite the very much a dissertation book this was a fun read into to wenzhouese community that runs a majority of coffee shops (or "bars") in Bologna Italy in the italian fashion

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 24/09/2026

apparently we are just... never getting the olive to fig improvements that were promised out of the 7th street bikeway capital projects (see: "project is on hold") apps.engineering.lacity.gov/uprs/report/...

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 24/09/2026

welcome to the drip era in cargo bikes theradavist.com/omnium-carha...

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 24/09/2026

73) THIS VAST ENTERPRISE (Craig Ferman) - Really enjoyed this new history of lewis and clark and delivered on the premises, reshaped my understanding of how difficult land travel was in this era and how "small" the United States was at the founding relative to america

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 21/09/2026

extremely excited to see a my childhood mall turn into this

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 16/09/2026

72) THE WRECK OF THE PENN CENTRAL (Joseph R. Daughen and Peter Binzen) - Up there with BARBARIANS AT THE GATE in terms of great, tick tock business books, this is a must read for anybody interested in intercity commerce and travel

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 15/09/2026

presented without comment iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 15/09/2026

related, really loved this book about how the New Deal (and specifically, Joseph Kennedy) brought speculators under control and gave citizens sovereignty over wall street

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 13/09/2026

We really lost our opportunity to do Japanese style real estate and railroad development with the Penn Central bankruptcy

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 13/09/2026

71) VICHY FRANCE: OLD GUARD AND NEW ORDER (Robert Paxton) - the classic, an examination of the soul of a nation under occupation, wrestles with the question of what does it mean to disobey the state, and when does it serve those values

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 12/09/2026

70) DONE IN A DAY (Elisa Tamarkin) - this is an in-depth examination of the last day of the Fall of Saigon, and it really delivers on the sense of place- embassy cables, foreign correspondents, Vietnam voyeurism, etc first book I read in a while that is screaming out for a film / TV adaptation, lol

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 10/09/2026

68 - (Revised) - CHINA AND JAPAN (Ezra Vogel) - a deep cut vogel, I thought this was insightful and a good primer but the sections on WWII and the Chinese Japanese War + Taiwan colonization were strongest

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 09/09/2026

69) THE BLACK DEATH (Thomas Asbridge) - Really loved this, a new social history of the Black Death and really drives home just how much society in both muslim and christian europe shifted due to the plague. lots of great new research summarized as well and rewrites a lot of mental history

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 09/09/2026

68) AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE (Edward Yong) - a combination foreign correspondent book and family memoir, this worked really well as a social narrative of modern China

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 05/09/2026

anybody know of a English language deep dive on how the tren interubano got promised and built? It’s … very nice although awful first / last minute based on a quick ride

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 27/08/2026

67) YUPPIES (Dylan Gottlieb) - a spirtual successor to FEAR CITY this is a great book about the cultural of the financialized world and those who built it - the New York yuppies of the 80s - highly recommend

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 25/08/2026

66) THE FOOD AND WINE OF FRANCE (Edward Behr) - a lovely travelogue about the world's foremost food nation

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 25/08/2026

65) AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE (Edward Wong) - a really good mix of family memoir and wrap up of US / China relationship deterioration in the Xi era. found the family stuff more novel than the rest, but overall, really enjoyed this

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 25/08/2026

the end of summer urge to order more tomato seeds

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 24/08/2026

homemade / homegrown pappa al pomodoro, row seven garleek kimchi, burrata, basil

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 20/08/2026

64) SMOG AND SUNSHINE (Ann Carlson) - a @carterrubin.com rec, this is a must read for policymakers in CA and a reminder of how important ambition is for california and how we lead the nation. also, things can and do get better!

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 19/08/2026

63) THE GUNS OF AUGUST (Barbara Tuchman) - promoted to read this by @ericcarlschwartz.com and what can I say? A classic for a reason and well worth the read. Sadly the ebook version cover doesn’t match the first edition.

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 19/08/2026

62) ROPE (Tim Queeny) - if you want a one word book about a very nautical subject, you should read COD (a global history) instead. This came so so so close to a DNF.

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 19/08/2026

61) BACKLASH PRESIDENTS (Julia Azari) - I eventually found this insightful, but political science introductions are rough. But a good theory of how backlash matters and sticks around in the American electorate over decades.

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 15/08/2026

frontiers of neighborhood nomenclature

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 13/08/2026

brief architectural diversion

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 11/08/2026

this map is gonna hurt my brain for the foreseeable future

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 09/08/2026

60) MUTINY (Noam Scheiber) - this book is maybe less than the sum of the parts but a good overview of the changes we’ve seen in the union movement from 2015-2025, which remains and underreported story IMO and scheiber has a front row seat with lots of good personal narratives

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 09/08/2026

59) THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (Gordon wood) - sadly took his death for me to finally read this, and it’s a classic for a reason and will lend a ton of context for how you perceive the founding of the US. More about honor and title and why we don’t have an aristocratic tradition

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Hunter Owens @hunterowens.net · 09/08/2026

58) OIL BEACH (Christina Dunbar Hesler) - came here looking to learn more about the ports and LA oil industry, instead got way more theory (and phrase transspecies supply chain justice). the authors lack of familiarity with the SoCal political landscape showed but some good anecdotes