Category: Books
Wu Jinglian
The first sentence of this MIT Press book — entitled Wu Jinglian — reads “Wu Jinglian is widely acknowledged to be China’s most influential and celebrated economist.”
Almost every page of this book is insightful on Chinese economics or politics or usually both together. And it will remind you that China is still ruled by the Communist Party. Wu Jinglian is a fan of James M. Buchanan and Douglass C. North, by the way. Here is Wu Jinglian on Wikipedia.
Recommended.
Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook will own lots of content
These days the natural monopoly of Apple is looking less permanent, but here is what I wrote a short while ago:
I expect two or three major publishers, with stacked names (“Penguin Random House”), and they will be owned by Google, Apple, Amazon, and possibly Facebook, or their successors, which perhaps would make it “Apple Penguin Random House.” Those companies have lots of cash, amazing marketing penetration, potential synergies with marketing content they own, and very strong desires to remain focal in the eyes of their customer base. They could buy up a major publisher without running solvency risk. For instance Amazon revenues are about twelve times those of a merged Penguin Random House and arguably that gap will grow.
There is no hurry, as the tech companies are waiting to buy the content companies, including the booksellers, on the cheap. Furthermore, the acquirers don’t see it as their mission to make the previous business models of those content companies work. They will wait.
Did I mention that the tech companies will own some on-line education too? EduTexts embedded in iPads will be a bigger deal than it is today, and other forms of on-line or App-based content will be given away for free, or cheaply, to sell texts and learning materials through electronic delivery.
Much of the book market will be a loss leader to support the focality of massively profitable web portals and EduTexts and related offerings.
With the sale of The Washington Post to Jeff Bezos (btw not to the company), we have now taken one step down this road.
What I’ve been reading
1. Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger. It is an above-average Booker Prize winner and probably her best novel. She remains undervalued in the United States.
2. John le Carré, The Naive and Sentimental Lover. This is supposed to be one of his failed works, and it should have been much shorter, but at least half of it is pretty damned good. It’s also a classic literary text on attitudes toward business and commerce. No spies.
3. Alyn Shipton, Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter. Very good for fans.
4. Javier Marías, The Infatuations. I’m not sold on the ending, but most of the time this feels like one of his two or three best books. I don’t think it will be his breakthrough book to “truly famous like Rushdie or Coetzee global author” status, but that moment likely will come.
5. Tomoko Shiroyama, China During the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937. A good introduction to an understudied but increasingly relevant topic.
Also arrived in my pile are:
6. Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History.
7. Jacob N. Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations.
Both appear to be of interest.
Celebrity translators, plus a Karl Kraus update
A second major example Italie cites is Jonathan Franzen‘s forthcoming The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus. (At this point it also seems worth pointing out that both these translations-by-notable-novelists are translations of works of non-fiction — disappointing, too.)
Fascinating, too, that the brilliant Kraus isn’t seen as the main selling point of the The Kraus Project:
Even the book’s cover is a departure, reversing the usual billing for author and translator. The title may be The Kraus Project, but featured placement and the biggest letters belong to Franzen.
“To me, this is a Franzen book,” Galassi said. Such, apparently, is the state of translation in the US, that even the likes of Jonathan Galassi — himself a dabbler in translation (even well-regarded, in some circles, as such) — doesn’t think that Kraus could sell the book on his reputation alone (one that surely dwarfs Franzen’s by any measure, save that of contemporary tabloid mentions), but rather that the Franzen-connection is seen as the main selling point and draw.
That is from Literary Saloon. I have pre-ordered my copy.
By the way, why not do the same for economics? Let’s say you are a big name but a little short on ideas or too busy to finish a book. Why not just edit and recycle one of the classics under your name and call it a “Project”?
*The Great Escape*
The author is Angus Deaton and the subtitle is Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. It is a very good book, as you might expect. Here are two bits I found especially interesting:
In Sweden in 1751 — well before the modern mortality decline — it was riskier to be a newborn than to be an 80-year old.
And, somewhat more recently:
…until around 1900, adult life expectancy in Britain was actually higher than life expectancy at birth. In spite of having lived for 15 years, those teenagers could expect a longer future than when they were born.
The book’s home page is here.
What I’ve been reading
1. The Childhood of Jesus, by J.M. Coetzee. Two-thirds of this is superb, although as a whole it doesn’t quite hang together. It’s still much better than most of what is published.
2. David Soll, Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply. A good overview of the history, plus it makes it clear just how much the growth of the City required somewhat rapacious behavior with respect to the water rights of upper New York State. The early history of the Groton Reservoir is interesting too.
3. Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!, in America’s Gilded Capital. I feared this would bore me with atheoretical mud-slinging and gossip, but it is actually an astute look at “behavioral public choice” and how a lot of D.C. politics actually operates. If you think you might want to read it, you should, although you can stop somewhere in the middle just fine. My main objection is the subtitle.
*How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel*
For a while I resisted reading this novel because I assumed it was a clever title followed by pedestrian content. But it is actually an engaging book centered around the topic of…how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. It is also a nice parody of self-help books. I never considered putting it down.
Furthermore it is a landmark in the integration of economics and fiction, in this case development economics. It’s more individual-centric than the “economics novels” of Russ Roberts. You can think of this as a fictional economics biography with the quality of a book you would wish to read for its own sake.
The author is Mohsin Hamid and you can order the book here.
Did J.K. Rowling use an economist clue for her pseudonym?
Language Log said yes. The false name attached to the new book is Robert Galbraith, and here is the cited reason why:
The clue was in the collocations of the surname. The most famous Galbraith in the whole of Rowling’s lifetime, without any reasonable doubt, was John Kenneth Galbraith, the Canadian liberal economist, US diplomat under Kennedy, and professor of economics at Harvard. Initials: J. K. Now that I’ve pointed it out, how could you have missed it? Kick yourself.
Here is more. But Rowling herself explains it differently:
The name she chose, Ms. Rowling explained, is a mash-up of that of one of her heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ella Galbraith, a fantasy name she chose for herself as a girl.
Ms. Rowling wrote the book under a man’s name, she said, to take her writing persona “as far away as possible” from herself. She said she remembered too late that the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who died in 2006, shared her first two initials, and feared that might be a clue to her identity.
Yet it wasn’t. I was able to pick up one of the last remaining copies of this book in Scotland, last week, as the volume was sitting sadly alone in a corner of an Edinburgh airport bookstore.
My favorite things Sri Lanka
This is a tough one, and I admit failure in advance, and yes I will call upon the diaspora in this case. But even that doesn’t much help me. Here goes:
1. Popular music: M.I.A., with Arular and then Kala being my favorite works by her.
2. Science fiction writer, lived in: Arthur C. Clarke lived there for over fifty years.
3. Author: Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, I like but do not love his work. Two quite recent Sri Lankan novels are Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel, and Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane, both noteworthy.
4. Movie, set in: I can’t think of one. Bridge on the River Kwai was filmed here.
5. Architect: Geoffrey Bawa, some images are here.
Is Lal Jayawardena the most famous Sri Lankan economist? And I have had excellent Sri Lankan food in Germany, most of all in Berlin. There is a takeaways Sri Lankan place in Derwood, Maryland, Spice Lanka, which I have yet to try. When I was much younger, the Sri Lankan chess player Sunil Weeramantry was always very cordial to me. And my grandmother had a Sri Lankan friend who, when I was a small boy, used to bring us cashews. I liked him. I think of the music — perhaps unfairly — as falling into the “raucous, influenced by cinema, good jolly fun but I’m not going to buy it” category, but I would gladly receive your better-informed recommendations in the comments.
Sorry people, I’ll try harder next time. I don’t follow cricket and I know virtually nothing about cinema here, I hope to learn more.
*Revolutionary Iran*
The author is Michael Axworthy and the subtitle is History of the Islamic Republic. It is already out in the UK. This is one of the few must-read books of this year (How Asia Works and China’s War With Japan are the other two, plus Knausgaard), excellent and insightful from beginning to end.
*The Great Tamasha*
The author is James Astill and the subtitle is Cricket, Corruption, and the Spectacular Rise of Modern India. This is an excellent book on India even if you, like I, have no real understanding of cricket. Here are a few bits:
According to an analysis by Richard Cashman of the 143 Indians who played Test cricket up to 1979, half had a college degree, compared to 1 or 2 per cent of Indians as a whole.
And:
Cricket is now ubiquitous on Indian television. It is shown constantly on 16 sports channels and relentlessly discussed on over 100 news channels.
And quoting Ashis Nandy:
“Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.”
Recommended.
What I’ve been reading
I’ve hit on three winners in a row:
1. Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism. Way, way better than that dog in the nighttime stuff. Update: The correct link is here.
2. Amy Sackville, Orkney. Not every honeymoon works out the way you planned.
3. Rana Mitter, China’s War With Japan 1937-1945, the US edition has the sillier title Forgotten Ally. Let’s hope there won’t be a rerun of this show, in any case the return to knowing some background on this conflict is rising. I count this as by far my favorite history book of the year, splendid content and writing both.
How big is your chance of dying in an ordinary day?
A Micromort can also be compared to a form of imaginary Russian roulette in which 20 coins are thrown in the air: if they all come down heads, the subject is executed. That is about the same odds as the 1-in-a-million chance that we describe as the average everyday dose of acute fatal risk.
That is from Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter, The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger, which is an interesting book about the proper framing and communication of risk.
Tim Harford has a new book coming out
The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, which I believe will cover macro.
The UK edition is out August 1st, the US edition is out in January 2014.
My favorite things Scotland
And so the journey continues.
Let’s put the Scottish Enlightenment aside and turn to some more recent creations. Here goes:
1. Novel: Alasdair Gray, Lanark. Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod deserve notice as well. I don’t relate to Trainspotting. I understand the case for Robert Louis Stevenson and would wish to jump on board, but usually I lose interest before the end of his books.
2. Painter: Henry Raeburn was part of the Scottish Enlightenment I think. So where to turn? Ken Currie? Scotland is not strong in this category.
3. Classical music: Umm…William Primrose was a strong violist.
4. Architect: Charles Rennie MacIntosh, especially the library.
5. Inventor: James Watt, but there is lots and lots of competition here.
6. Actor: How about Sean Connery? Don’t forget Zardoz.
7. Movie: Gregory’s Girl.
8. Movie, set in Scotland: The Queen.
9. Popular music: David Byrne was born in Scotland. I know the Cocteau Twins, Boards of Canada, Franz Ferdinand, and others, they are OK but I do not love them. Dire Straits and Annie Lennox deserve mention, but overall I suspect many of you rate this group higher than I do. Jesus and Mary Chain? While we’re at it, there is Ewan McLennan and Bert Jansch, both of whom I enjoy.
The bottom line: These are people of intellect (remember the Enlightenment!) and also people of action. For explorers and inventors the record is extremely strong. Yet for music and some of the arts the contributions are rather faint.