Category: Books
What I’ve Been Reading
1. The Enormity of the Tragedy, by Quim Monzó. Originally written in Catalan, this short novel is popular throughout Europe for its priapic good humor.
2. Imagining India, The Idea of a Renewed Nation, by Nandan Nilekani. An excellent study of the microeconomics of entrepreneurship in India; I thank Carl Schramm for the pointer.
3. Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression.
4. The "hot hand" hypothesis is hurting, according to John Huizenga.
5. Bonsai, Alejandro Zambra, 83 pp., the next literary rage to come from Chile since Roberto Bolaño.
What is driving the eBooks boom?
Via Yves Smith, here is one hypothesis:
What's popular on Fictionwise? Well, once again it seems like
porn is blazing a path to a new media format. Of the top 10 bestsellers under the "Multiformat" category, nine are tagged "erotica" amd the last is "dark fantasy"…People who read erotic romance and 'bodice rippers' love
ebooks because of the privacy they offer, both during purchase and when
reading.
By the way, Andrew Sullivan asks how one is to post 250 times a week and read Ulysses. The answer is simple: one page at a time.
One advantage of Kindle is that it provides a new tool for mental accounting. Call me irrational but formerly I could not read more than seven or eight books at a time without abandoning some of them midway. Kindle (like Netflix, I might add) gives me a new queue and allows me to have more "hanging," partially unread books at any point in time, yet without disrupting my mental equilibrium. I'm rereading Moby Dick, one chapter at a time, on plane trips, and next in line are Middlemarch and…Ulysses.
Sentences to ponder
Jason Kottke reports:
Now you can go to the iTunes Store to buy the Kindle app from Amazon that lets you read ebooks made for the Kindle device on the iPhone.
Reader request on James Wood
Here is an old, old request, which somehow I left behind in the archives:
The critic James Wood–despite his formidable intellect and depth of knowledge, he's awfully obtuse. Discuss.
Here are Wood's picks for the best books of the year. Here is a good (negative) review of the new Wood book. Here is writing advice from James Wood. You read people for their peaks and for me that means thumbs up for Wood. Here is a good short essay on Wood.
Of all those shouting that the literary emperor has no clothes, he is the most acute observer. But, most of all, other people have smarter things to say about Wood than I do.
Modernity
In case you are wondering the book is in the Joey Pigza series recommended by Greg Mankiw, who has excellent taste in kids books (Number Devil was good also, thanks Greg!). The reader didn't seem to mind the lack of pictures.
Counter-cyclical asset of the day: Atlas Shrugged
weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This
continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high
in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.
Hat tip to Newmark's Door.
What I’ve been reading
1. Laurence M. Ball, Money, Banking, and Financial Markets. A truly modern money and banking text; could this be the best money and banking text ever? I don't yet see an Amazon link for it but presumably it will be out soon. (Addendum: Link is now here.)
2. William Flesch, Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and other Biological Components of Fiction. An excellent book on why we find fiction and narrative so satisfying; the notion of vindication is central to the hypothesis. Recommended.
3. David Post, In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace. This book is written in the style of Jefferson in at least one way. I mean that as praise.
4. Joel Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and Times of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds. Fills in many of the pieces about his life and work; it seems he lived part of his life as a practicing Muslim.
The economics of conglomerates
Jessica Crispin reports:
McGraw-Hill Cos., the owner of the Standard & Poor’s
credit-rating service, won’t be publishing a book on the financial
crisis that the author says addresses S&P’s role in the markets’
plunge.
Barry Ritholtz, chief executive officer of equity-research firm
FusionIQ, said he withdrew the manuscript from the New York publisher
and plans to return his advance after the company tried to edit passages critical of S&P. McGraw-Hill says it wasn’t initially able to verify some of the book’s claims.
Addendum: Here is Barry's account.
Keynes on consumption, chapters eight and nine
There are many lovely and insightful discussions in these two chapters; it should be enough to persuade anyone that the GT is fun to read.
For instance Keynes's discussion of the interest elasticity of savings on p.93 persuaded a whole generation of economists. Or on p.95 he references theories of spending based on expectations about the future; only in their most extreme form will they render Keynesian results impossible.
Much of these chapters are dedicated to the simple idea that consumption does not rise indefinitely with income (and other influences). The ultimate point is to establish how much aggregate demand relies on investment demand, which it turns out is, to Keynes, highly unstable.
Keynes's continuing allegiance to some elements of classical (!) economics pops up in chapter eight (e.g., pp.100, 105), specifically his view that a society can run out of profitable investment opportunities. He feared secular stagnation and thought that government management of investment might be needed to stave off this possibility. We hear all about Keynesian economics and the short run but in reality part of Keynes was still under the spell of Ricardo and Malthus and the idea of the classical stationary state (p.106).
For the same reason Keynes thought the private sector would run out of good investment opportunities, he also thought that by 2009 (what exactly was the date he gave? Brad DeLong knows) the problem of scarcity might be largely overcome. It hasn't worked out that way.
A number of commentators keep on bringing up Henry Hazlitt's book on Keynes in the comments section. Hazlitt's book makes many good points and has many "gotchas" on Keynes's errors. Still, Hazlitt cannot bring himself to see or admit there are conditions under which Keynes can be right and thus I don't regard it as a convincing critique. The best critical approaches to the GT are those which figure out under which conditions it might be correct and then examine empirically whether those conditions in fact hold.
The World Between the Wars, 1919-1939: An Economist’s Perspective
I don't know why this book, by Joseph C, Davis, isn't cited more often, as it's one of the best on this period. Here is one small bit:
In the spring of 1933 a mock-trial of "the economists" was staged at the London School of Economics, Robert Boothby, M.P. representing "the state of the popular mind," charged the economists with "conspiring to spread mental fog," declaring that they "were unintelligible; that they had in general proved wrong; and that in any case they all disagreed." Four men of high standing (Sir William Beveridge, Sir Arthur Salter, Professor T.E. Gregory, and Hubert Henderson) discussed Boothby's charges without wholly refuting them. It was sagely observed: "Much of the public's distrust of economics arises from the fact that the economist is compelled to act both as physiologist and doctor at once." In fact, economists had not been trained to be "economic doctors" or "social engineers," and very few persons had acquired such competence.
I wonder if anyone will restage such a trial today…
Jessica Crispin reads
I am a very keen and regular reader of Bookslut and here is Jessica Crispin:
although it covers so many areas I occasionally wish some things had
been expanded. Like the monkeys who went on hunger strike until all
monkeys were receiving grapes. Or the evolutionary explanation for
"beer goggles." Although my favorite part was when he mentioned a study
where women "politely" asked men for no strings attached sex and they
counted how many agreed. (Less than you would think.) So many
questions! Were the results different if they "belligerently demanded"
casual sex? Did they go through with the sex, or did they just say,
"Okay, just wanted to know if you were interested. I'm going home now."
Because that seems mean. I need to find the original study.
The link is here, but that is all there is.
Resumption of Keynes symposium
I've been tied up with some other commitments but I miss reading the book and we are resuming. We'll do chapters eight and nine for Monday; be ready!
What I read some time ago
But they're all coming out this book season and thus I tell you about them now:
1. Peter Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.
2. Frank H. Buckley, Fair Governance: Paternalism and Perfectionism; a critique of "Nudge" and soft paternalism.
3. Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution.
There's also another good book on Samuel Johnson, which is what I have been reading, in addition to the new translation of The Canterbury Tales.
Markets in everything, book lovers’ edition
only $7,000 so I feel like it was a HUGE bargain. What value! First let
me say that the book does start off a little slow but once you get into
the third chapter, "Silicon Molecules: We Hardly Knew Ye'", you just
can't put this book down. It isn't without it's moments though. The
contrast between antagonist and protagonist is just simply fantastic. I
highly suggest reading this book by flashlight under the covers or in a
homemade fort/tent in your bedroom. A+ and Highly recommended!
And:
in. I mean, "Chemical Shifts of P-31 Compounds" had me on the edge of
my seat, and "Hyperfine Coupling Constants of the Pnictogens" had a
little something for everybody. I can say this with the conviction that
only comes with love when I say that "Chemical Shifts and Coupling
Constants for Silicon-29" is total crap.
And:
think "for the cost of $8000, one better be able to do rocket science
after reading." Well, I have even better news. After I closed this
book, I realized I had gained the knowledge to spontaneously teleport!
That's right! I don't even need this junky telepod anymore.
And:
I clicked on the "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" link. Can't wait to hear from Springer.
And:
Fascinating, witty, and very subtle in it's criticisms of our modern
times. It's an intensely moving story about how a young Nepalese boy
"Silicon" (age 29) struggles to get by in a city that offers no support
for immigrants as he works a meaningless job to get by. The woman he
loves is a violent criminal, and this book chronicles his struggle to
hold on to his righteousness while simultaneously trying to woo her and
become a couple.
But I won't spoil the ending! Buy this book and you won't be disappointed!
I liked this one-star review:
year grad student knows that you can't manipulate subvolume III/35A
with nuclei B-11 without first lowering the magnetic replicator to -300
ohms! Not to mention that unless you lower the cylindrical volume 4
quarks you'll freeze 90% of the atoms! And don't get me started on
nucleus Si-29, you can't…
Finally:
Africa’s World War
The subtitle is Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe and yes the book truly explains all of these things or at least gives it a noble try. The author is Gérard Prunier. I've been stunned by how much I've learned from this book, which is clear without denying the underlying complexities. I rate it as one of the two excellent books of the year so far, the other being Ted Gioia's book on the history of the blues.
You'll find a very critical review of the book here but I was more impressed by the book than by the review. I liked this excerpt:
Interviewer: What model of democracy do you see as suitable?
Kabila: I cannot say now, you are asking too much. Being a head of state is not like being in a restaurant. I have to have time to think about it.