What We Are Reading Today: Top Ten Ideas of Physics by Anthony Zee

Short Url
Updated 18 June 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Top Ten Ideas of Physics by Anthony Zee

Could any discovery be more unexpected and shocking than the realization that the reality we were born into is but an approximation of an underlying quantum world that is barely within our grasp? This is just one of the foundational pillars of theoretical physics that A. Zee discusses in this book. Join him as he presents his Top Ten List of the biggest, most breathtaking ideas in physics—the ones that have fundamentally transformed our understanding of the universe.

“Top Ten Ideas of Physics” tells a story that will keep readers enthralled, along the way explaining the meaning of each idea and how it came about. Leading the list are the notions that the physical world is comprehensible and that the laws of physics are the same here, there, and everywhere. 

As the story unfolds, the apparently solid world dissolves into an intertwining web of dancing fields, exhibiting greater symmetries as we examine them at deeper and deeper levels.


What We Are Reading Today: Elites and Democracy by Hugo Drotchon

Updated 08 January 2026
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Elites and Democracy by Hugo Drotchon

A central paradox of democracies is that they are always ruled by elites. What can democracy mean in this context? Today, it is often said that a populist revolt against elites is driving democratic politics throughout the West.

But in “Elites and Democracy,” Hugo Drochon argues that democracy is more accurately and usefully understood as a perpetual struggle among competing elites—between rising elites and ruling elites.

Real political change comes from the interaction between social movements and elite political institutions such as parties. But, although true democracy—the rule of the people—may never be achieved, striving toward it can bring about worthwhile democratic results.

Moving away from conceptions of democracy, “Elites and Democracy” develops a dynamic theory of democracy.

At the turn of the 20th century, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels put forward “elite” theories of democracy and gave us terms such as the “ruling class” and “elites” itself.