Category: Books
Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America
That’s the subtitle, the title is Bound for Freedom and it is by Douglas Flamming. This book is a good antidote to libertarians who assign too much blame to state governments, and not enough blame to voluntary norms, when it comes to Southern segregation and Jim Crow. Early in the twentieth century, Los Angeles was devoid of the oppressive Jim Crow laws that were so common in the South. In fact California had some (unenforced) laws prohibiting discrimination according to race. Yet according to one survey only three of two hundred saloons would serve blacks. Most hotels did not accept blacks either and that was in direct contradiction to state law. Both Hollywood and the petroleum industry for the most part refused to hire blacks, even for jobs of unskilled labor. On the positive side, many of the businesses along Central Avenue were fully integrated, serving Latino and Japanese customers as well. Blacks did have, overall, a much better existence in LA than in the South but this volume shows that Jim Crow cannot simply be blamed on oppressive government regulations.
Here is my earlier post on Jim Crow in sports.
What I’ve Been Reading
1. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.
I liked Alan Schwartz’s Amazon review: ""Buy on apples, sell on cheese" is an old proverb among wine merchants. Taking a bite of an apple before tasting wine makes it easier to detect flaws in the wine, and the buyer who does so will not as easily make the mistake of paying more than the wine is worth. Cheese, on the other hand, pairs well with wine and enhances its flavor, so a seller who offers cheese may command a higher price for the wine (and may even deserve it, if the wine is intended to be drunk with cheese).""
2. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Yes, that’s the Clay Shirky. This is (implicitly) a very good Hayekian, spontaneous order treatment of social software on the web. The book poses a simple and important question: what happens when it is virtually costless to organize people into groups?
3. Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa, by Robert Paarlberg. The point is unassailable, the subtitle says it all.
4. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: A Saudi Family in the American Century. So far it’s great. I know you’re sick of reading about Bin Laden; just think of it as a (partial) history of the Saudis.
Addendum: The new "Nudge" blog is here.
Retribution, by Max Hastings
In the course of the war, Germany lost 781 submarines, Japan 128. By contrast, the Japanese navy sank only 41 American submarines, 18 percent of those which saw combat duty. Six more were lost accidentally on Pacific patrols. Even these relatively modest casualties meant that 22 percent of all American sailors who experienced submarine operations perished — 375 officers and 3,131 enlisted men — the highest loss of any branch of the wartime U.S. armed forces.
The subtitle of this book is The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. Have you ever wondered what kind of peace the Japanese expected (before losing), how the battle for the Philippines unfolded, why the Japanese treated their POWs so badly, or what it is like to be in a submarine surrounded by falling depth charges?
Every year there are five or six books that just wow me. This is one of them. It is as gripping as a first-rate novel and I learned something on almost every page. Here is one review. You can buy it here.
Bonk (What I’ve been Reading)
We have molecular gastronomy, so why not apply science to…other things, as does Mary Roach. The subtitle is "The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex." Here is the author’s home page; she also wrote Spook and Stiff, both of which are good. This isn’t a "how to" book, it is a real popular science book on its topic and I predict it will be successful.
2. The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, by Peter Lavezzoli. You need to care about the topic, but today this became one of my favorite non-fiction books, ever. I bought a copy just to express my loyalty to the author. I’ve said this before, but lack of knowledge of Indian classical music is the biggest gap in the education — and enjoyment — of many many smart people. This is one very good introduction but it offers much to the veteran as well.
3. How Judges Think, by Richard A. Posner. Every sentence in this book is substance, to a remarkable degree. It’s hard to find a central thread to the argument, but I blame that on the topic rather than on any failing of the author. After all, judges think in some pretty complicated ways and Posner goes out of his way to minimize the role of conscious theory in judicial behavior. Content aside (which reflects all of Posner’s usual erudition), anyone interested in non-fiction should take a look at this book. Just imagine, a text totally stripped of that which is content-less. Can the reader stand it?
Scream it from the Rooftops
Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, by Fuchsia Dunlop, due out in mid-April.
She is one of the writers I revere most. And yes, I know she is usually a cookbook writer, but I do mean her writing, not just her recipes. The more general point is you should expect to see many of the best writers, today, in new media and genres, not in the old. I saw notice of this, by the way, in the vastly superior to almost anything else London Review of Books.
The permanent tax revolt
…the fractional assessment of homes was easily the largest single government housing subsidy in the postwar era, and it was among the largest categories of social expenditure of any kind, direct or indirect. Fractional assessment of residential property provided a subsidy that was forty times greater than federal spending for public housing. It was ten times greater than the home mortgage interest deduction. It was five times as costly as more controversial "welfare" programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Although fractional assessment did not show up on official government budgets, on the eve of the tax revolt it was providing more benefits than any other social policy in America except for the twin blockbusters of the federal budget, Social Security and Medicare.
That is from the new book The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, by Isaac Martin. The main thesis of this book is overstated, namely that the professionalization of property tax assessments is the root cause of American exceptionalism on tax politics; nonetheless I found this a very informative and stimulating read.
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
That’s the new Jeff Sachs book. It promotes resource pessimism, Nordic-style social democracy, foreign aid, and a fundamental rethinking of U.S. foreign policy. Most of all it expresses a faith in global cooperation. Sachs is very smart and, though I do not agree with him, there is often more to his views than his critics admit. But my browsing of this book never gave me the feeling that I had access to the mind of Jeffrey Sachs. It doesn’t even read like a popularization. Imagine a smart and diligent but not insightful or self-reflective person doing a "color by numbers" version of what a Jeffrey Sachs book should read like.
Cop in the Hood
Motivated primarily by a desire for court overtime pay, police officers want arrests on their own terms, ideally without victims, complaints, or unnecessary paperwork. Young officers make more arrests than veteran officers. These officers believe that making arrests is police work. In my squad, the top three officers in arrest totals were three officers with the least experience. An arrest-based culture can exist in a low-drug environment, but without a limitless supply of arrestable criminal offenders, an arrest-based culture cannot make a lot of arrests. Neighborhoods, without public drug dealings will not produce a high number of arrests.
That is from Peter Moskos’s truly excellent Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. This is one of the two or three best conceptual analyses of "cops and robbers" I have read. It is mandatory reading for all fans of The Wire and recommended for everyone else.
How many books should be facing out?
To boost sales, retailer Borders Group is taking a simple but radical approach, our colleague Jeff Trachtenberg reports in today’s Wall Street Journal.
Borders is increasing the number of books that it displays with the
cover facing out (rather than the spine facing out), even though this
shelf-space-eating approach will require cutting inventory at each
store up to 10%. Says one analyst: “Breakfast cereals are not stocked
end-of-box out. […] It’s a little bizarre that it’s taken booksellers
this long to realize that the point of self-service is to make the
product as tempting as possible.”
The link is here. I understand the basic model as follows. Superstores first invest in high inventory and a tony reputation. You start thinking of them as "the place to go" for books, or in an earlier era, for music. They then devote more and more of their space to non-book items. The number of greeting cards and chocolates stocked by my Borders has risen steadily over time, as have the size of the coffee shops. Having more books "face out" — at least they are books — is one of the lesser aspects of this more general problem. It’s related to why most trendy restaurants peak in the first year and a half of their operation, followed by decline and then stagnation. Once they have a high enough (and sticky enough) reputation, it is time to cash in and lower the quality of the product to the informed and more sophisticated buyers.
Who’s Your City?
The always-interesting Richard Florida has a new book out, namely Who’s Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live The Most Important Decision of Your Life.
The book tells you how to find the city for you (for me it is Los Angeles, but somehow closer to everything else, and with better bookshops) and why the mood of a city matters.
Is the following true:? The class of city you live in matters less than before, because you can use Amazon or Starbucks in either Manhattan or Chattanooga. But within a class of city, personality now matters more precisely because people can sort themselves on the basis of personality rather than convenience.
What about me? I enjoy living in an area which is not totally flat and I also enjoy the feeling that I can drive from one mini-region to another and experience changes; Maryland and DC really do differ from Virginia. I felt hedged in living in Wellington, New Zealand and in general I don’t like having my back to the water.
Last week Robin Hanson and I discussed which would be the best city to live in if a) all your basic needs were taken care of, and b) you could not otherwise spend any money. Oxford, even with mediocre weather, seemed like a strong pick. There is a true intellectual community and everything there costs a lot anyway; not being able to spend any money isn’t so different from the reality.
What books should you read on Africa?
Chris Blattman offers up his list in two parts, here and here, the second relying on suggestions from Elliot Green. I’ll add a few suggestions to these lists, including P.T. Bauer’s West African Trade, Stanislav Andreski’s The African Predicament, The Da Capo Guide to African Music, Martin Lynn on the palm oil trade, and Robert Klitgaard’s Tropical Gangsters.
But I am forgetting lots so please help out in the comments…
What I’ve been reading
1. Predictocracy: Market Mechanisms for Public and Private Decision-Making, by Michael Abramowicz. A good compilation of current knowledge on prediction markets; he also argues for letting prediction markets determine many social decisions. Here is his debate with Robin Hanson on the same.
2. Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, by Robin Wright. An intelligent and experienced book on current trends in the Middle East and why we should be optimistic that pluralism will triumph. Here is one good review.
3. "What makes Finnish kids so smart?"
4. Superior, Nebraska: The Common Sense Values of America’s Heartland, by Denis Boyles. Contra "What’s the Matter with Kansas?", Boyle argues that the Midwestern values of individual responsibility are wise and sophisticated and that the Republican Party embodies much of this wisdom. The author lives…in France. By the way, here are maps for per capita Starbucks and Wal-Mart.
5. Edward Castronova, Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality. This seems to be less popular than Synthetic Worlds but in terms of social science I think it is better and deeper; recommended. Here is a Russ Roberts podcast with Castronova.
A Million Years of Logic, the End of Economics, and the Sociological Future
This entry is cross-posted at orgtheory.net, the social science and management blog. Also, please check out my on book politics and universities, From Black Power to Black Studies. Thanks for reading!
We’ve reached the end of Logic of Life, Tim Harford’s engaging tour of economics and its lessons for everyday life. Harford ends the book on a highly speculative note about technology, economics, and growth. Tim does a good job summarizing the emerging consensus. The “normal” state of human life is poverty and near zero economic development. Once a community establishes reasonable institutions for commerce and trade, people can quickly produce and exploit technological advances. The effects are cumulative: once a nation allows markets to work beyond a certain threshold, the population experiences exponentially increasing benefits. The economists’ summary of world history is: “no capitalism = no growth, some capitalism = growth, growth, growth!!”
This discussion is interesting because of the connections to ideas outside the normal realm of economics, especially in areas like psychology and, my own area, sociology. Here’s just one example. Harford discusses the idea that population size should correlate with innovation. Simply put, if you have a hundred million people, you’ll get a least a few geniuses. The inventions of these geniuses can be mass marketed, which fuels later growth episodes. Fair enough.
But where do “geniuses” come from? Turns out, there is a fascinating literature on creativity and achievement. A few names: R. Keith Sawyer, a sociologist/psychologist, writes eloquently on the emergence of genius from networks and groups. Sociologist Randall Collins wrote a highly regarded book on prominent philosophers showing that “genius level” philosophers tended to be clustered in space and time, suggesting that genius is made possible by very specific kinds of “hot house” situations. Other research, pioneered by Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson, shows that high level performance isn’t just a matter of talent. It’s also a matter of specific training techniques and immersion in a topic. Basically, it’s not just talent that leads to achievement, it’s also the right kind of social environment.*
What’s the point? It’s this: Economics, as understood for hundreds of years, has played out. The major problems of econ 101 have been solved. We know about supply and demand, marginal utility, choice under uncertainty, and budget constraints. We have a wide variety of tools, ranging from game theory to econometrics, that help us identify these processes in situations ranging from war, to car sales, to dating. We are also seeing how these processes plug into classic macroeconomic issues, such as growth and international trade.
However, the market system itself, as indicated by Tim’s concluding chapter, depends on population, innovation, and liberal economic institutions. These, in turn, depend on psychology, group culture, and networks, the domain of sociologists, psychologists, historians, and anthropologists. Economists have shown how the market system processes the inputs, but there’s still much, much more to be said about where the inputs come from. That’s what’s going to be exciting in the decades to come, and I can’t wait to see it.
* Author David Shenk nicely covers this research on his blog The Genius in All of Us.
Which work of American liberal political thought has held up best?
Having said A, one must say B. Ezra Klein poses this question and receives many responses. I’ll nominate William Appleman Williams’s The Tragedy of American Foreign Policy, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, Richard Rorty on cruelty, Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice, and Harold Cruse’s Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail deserves consideration although it does not exactly fit the category. Rachel Carson wrote an important book but not really a good book. Carol Gilligan is an interesting dark horse selection.
Jane Jacobs, by the way, might win either prize if you are allowed to count her as either a conservative or a liberal. But which is she? John Dewey and Walter Lippmann are two other figures who could be nominated for either prize.
If you think this list beats the conservative one, you are right. Note, however, that the conservative list excluded economics (and libertarians), which is where most of the contributions have come on the Right over the last fifty years. Plus the all-important Chicago School focused on ideas and articles, not books. So the comparison is not as lopsided as these posts, taken alone, might indicate.
Just a few weeks ago, Bryan Caplan and I decided that Rawls’s Theory of Justice wins the prize for "least Hansonian book ever." For all the evident philosophic care, in the final analysis Rawls was just making stuff up.
What are your nominations?
Addendum: Thinking back, Wilson’s On Human Nature might be a good pick for the conservative prize, even though I do not believe Wilson is himself a conservative.
Nazi Literature in the Americas
Part of Bolaño’s genius is to ask, via ironies so sharp you can cut
your hands on his pages, if we perhaps find a too-easy comfort in art,
if we use it as anesthetic, excuse and hide-out in a world that is very
busy doing very real things to very real human beings. Is it courageous
to read Plato during a military coup or is it something else?
That’s from one review of the newly translated Roberto Bolaño book. (Might it have been titled "Conservative Fascism"?) This work is not a structured narrative but rather a series of impressionistic portraits of how easy it is for some people to slip into being horrible and stay that way. Imagine a fictional bestiary of creepy aesthetes who are playing at human relationships, sleepwalking through their dreamlike yet trivial obsessions, and in the meantime pledging allegiance to tyranny. Literature is a "surreptitious form of violence" throughout.
Here are excerpts from other reviews. At this point it goes without saying that everything by Bolaño is essential reading; however you may find many parts baffling if you don’t have a strong background in things Latin American.