What I've been reading - Marginal REVOLUTION

1. Aladdin, a new translation by Yasmine Seale. A wonderful, lively small volume, a good reintroduction to the Arabian Nights, recommended.

2. Shalini Shankar, Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success. Not as analytical as I was wanting, but more analytical than I had been expecting.

3. Rowan Ricardo Phillips, The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey. Provides a good look at the interior world of tennis competition, with emphasis on very recent times. A good look at how to think about the game, not only in the abstract, but as it plays out through the logic of particular events and tournaments.

4. Tim Smedley, Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution. Perhaps the best extant introduction to the air pollution issue, one of the world’s most important and underrated crises, and no I am not talking about carbon.

5. Gordon Peake, Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles, and Secrets from Timor-Leste. Mostly analytical, with real information blended with travelogue. I can’t judge the content, but I was never tempted to put this one down and throw it away.

6. Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation. Excellent survey and overview, makes the late 19th century intelligible, among other achievements. “For Greeks, unlike the concept of the nation, the state had always been an object of popular derision.”