Category: Books

Right or wrong, or perhaps somewhere in between, Clark’s is about as
stimulating an account of world economic history as one is likely to
find. Let’s hope that the human traits to which he attributes economic
progress are acquired, not genetic, and that the countries that grow in
population over the next 50 years turn out to be good at imparting
them. Alternatively, we can simply hope he’s wrong.

Here is the full review.

Addendum: Here is today’s NYT essay, arguing for the genetic unity of mankind, here is a previous Slate piece.  Here is a good NYT excerpt:

During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered
children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent
European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in
later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to
have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an
average of 96.5, a trivial difference.

Second addendum: Here is Deirdre McCloskey’s review of Clark.

"Yes, but think of the dead!"

Another voice took up the strain.  "The dead," it said.  "Think of the unborn…"

Or:

"Whatever it dislocates," said Redwood, "My little boy must have the food."

Those are both from H.G. Wells’s excellent and far ahead of its time, The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth.  The novella concerns a new tool of genetic engineering that makes people thirty-five feet tall, and of course occasions social conflict.  Well’s short fiction is in general much underrated.

Here is Arnold Kling’s list.  I liked this part:

Two books that show economic intellect to advantage are Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen and One Economics, Many Recipes, by Dani Rodrik. Cowen’s book is a set of observations on everyday life, while Rodrik’s book looks at the high-level issue of which economic institutions to recommend for underdeveloped countries.  I made the case for Cowen’s book here and the case for Rodrik’s book here.

What Cowen and Rodrik have in common is a gentle approach.  In contrast to Caplan and Clark, who self-assuredly hammer away at alternative viewpoints, Cowen and Rodrik allow room for disagreement and self-doubt.  Cowen and Rodrik encourage their readers to think, and I encourage readers to try to learn how to think like Cowen and Rodrik, whether or not you agree with them.

The entire list is useful, so go out and elevate the practice of holiday gift-giving.

You may remember our very successful book forum on Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms.  In short, we all read the book together and I offered running commentary on the contents.  There was a special encouragement for reader comments, and Greg very graciously responded at length.  Next Alex and I, along with some specially invited guest bloggers, will be doing Tim Harford’s new The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World.  Tim’s book won’t be out until January 15, so of course the forum won’t start until a little after then.  But if you wish to pre-order, now is as good a time as any.

Loyal MR readers already know about Tim, a regular columnist for The Financial Times and author of The Undercover Economist.  Here is Tim’s blog, and here is Tim’s homepage.

Back in 1970, the economist Harry G. Johnson pointed out that all
successful founders of schools not only are geniuses with profound
insights but also provide a road map that tells their followers and
successors what to do to make a successful academic career within the
school. Schumpeter did not do that second part.

Here is the full review, Brad DeLong on Thomas McCraw and Schumpeter.

By 2025 “at the latest,” he predicts, “artificial-emotion technologies”
will allow robots to be more emotionally available than the typical
American human male.

I believe that my wife would not be alone in thinking that the toaster exceeded this standard some time ago.

John’s new book War, Wine, and Taxes sells new for $29.95 on Amazon [TC: this is correcting a previous mistake in listing the price], with free shipping in the U.S.  Many of the used copies of John’s book are selling for over $30, others in the $25-30 range, and the shipping charges are higher than Amazon’s.  Last I looked, none of the forty used copies were selling for less than $25 and one was selling for $50.

It is not hard to get a new copy of John’s book, John assures me.  What’s up?

Buy it here, or here on Amazon.  The Board of Editors included Russ Roberts and myself, and the publisher is Liberty Fund.

Here are two short essay-lets.  I’ll admit to not yet having seen a Kindle, but I think it is not the wave of the future and not the next iPod.  The key feature of the iPod is the use of software to organize your music collection, not just the portability.  The (somewhat) comparable use of software for reading is RSS, but Kindle is not an efficient way of reading blogs, it is mostly designed for full-length titles.  (And if you really want to read your favorite blogs on RSS, while you walk around, the iPhone already allows that.)  Furthermore we want to hear our favorite songs many times, but the ability to call up again our favorite book is not of comparable value, again limiting the value of using software to organize our reading.  Plus a book takes longer to consume than does a song, so just carry the book you are reading instead of carrying Kindle.  Maybe Kindle is good for voracious readers who take long trips, and don’t want to buy books along the way, but can you build a market on that?

Here is one interesting review of the product, here is a very detailed and very pro-Kindle review.  I’m still a skeptic, at least until software takes on a larger role in reorganizing the reading experience. 

Ryan Holiday blogs my email to him:

My reading was much different when I was younger. I would more likely
intensively engage with some important book totally full of new ideas.
Hayek. Parfit. Plato. And so on. There just aren’t books like that left
for me anymore. So I read many more, to learn bits, but haven’t in
years experienced a "view quake." That is sad, to me at least, but I
don’t know how to avoid how that has turned out. So enjoy your best
reading years while you can!

Quine should be on that list as well.  Nietzsche was a view quake in high school, though I find him oddly uninteresting upon rereading.  Here is Ryan’s post on Marcus Aurelius.; the Stoics collectively were a view quake for me, in economics there was Anthony Downs and Thomas Schelling and Albert Hirschmann.  David Hume.  Maybe Rene Girard was the last "view quake" author I read.  On the upside, greater context means that many more books are interesting than was the case before.

Many of you are asking me about Amazon Kindle, the new ebook (sort of); Jason Kottke offers a round-up of opinion.
 

The Japanese pihlosopher Musashi once said that only a select few appreciate the art of war.  Gruner is one of them.  The battle is defensive at night.  Amorous forays with the mascot fill his days.  And it is hard to tell which of the two activities impassions him most.

That is from Albert Sanchez Piñol’s Cold Skin, a Catalan novel which is well known in Europe (I discovered it browsing a Swiss bookstore) but obscure in the United States.  It captivated me right away.  I cannot quite call it science fiction, but I would recommend it to science fiction and horror fans who are looking for something serious and conceptual and literary, and who feel that only scraps remain on the table…

1. Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet, by John Armstrong.  The author does not demonstrate overwhelming expertise but this is nonetheless not a bad place to start on the most neglected of all the great writers.

2. The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, by Mark Lilla.  Why Schleiermacher really matters, how Kant painted himself into a corner trying to solve the problems laid out by Rousseau, and why it all springs from Hobbes.  I found this well above average for its genre, though you must have a taste for Straussian-like books where big ideas clash at the macro level and there is little attempt at any kind of empirical resolution.

3. How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom, by Garry Kasparov.  This is a fun book, except that life mostly doesn’t imitate chess.  Chess is characteristic for its lack of self-deception; it is hard to avoid knowing where you stand in the hierarchy and excuses are few and far between.  That’s why most chess players are depressed.  Kasparov seems to save his self-deception for politics; let’s hope he is still alive a year from now.

4. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes.  This favorite book of Jason Kottke is first-rate non-fiction, it is also one of the best books on the Cold War.

5. The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa.  One of the best studies of the psychology of political power and the connection between tyranny and the erotic.  A fun albeit sometimes harrowing read.  Another superb translation by Edith Grossman, might she be the best translator ever?

If a mythical Tyler asked you that
question "What have you been reading lately that you learned from?"
what would be your answer?

Here is more, the distinction is between "reading edifying works, rather than works that challenged me and taught," the key is the latter, so answer the question!