What I’ve been reading

Arvind Panagariya, Free Trade and Prosperity: How Openness Helps the Developing Countries Grow Richer and Combat Poverty.  Self-recommending.  The book has plenty of evidence, not just the usual hand-waving.

Knut Hamsun, On Overgrown Paths.  Hamsun’s memoir, last creation, and maybe most interesting work?  But few like to talk about it, for it is 1945 and the Norwegian government has just come to place him under house arrest and in turn bring him to an institution, for having wholeheartedly supported the Nazis. The story of course is told from his rather matter of fact point of view…

Jenny Davidson, Reading Jane Austen.  I hardly know any books about Jane Austen, and indeed I don’t much enjoy reading her novels.  Still, this is the best book on Austen I have seen, take that for what it is worth.  It is very much to the point and furthermore the author writes: “I also hold a degree of suspicion toward those who love Austen, though, myself included.”

James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian is a good treatment of someone who was not the greatest Victorian.

Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History, I had high hopes but it bored me.

Mercatus has republished The Market Process: Advanced Studies in Political Economy, a series of Austrian-like essays from the 1980s, edited by Peter J. Boettke and David L. Prychitko.

Joel S. Baden, The Book of Exodus: A Biography is forthcoming, a good general introduction.

David C. Rose, Why Culture Matters Most, is from the perspective of a Douglass North-type economist.