Category: Books

Here is the list, from notes taken by Bettina Greaves.  Most of these still have not been written, yet should be.

…I regularly hear Europeans complain that American stores are too cold in the summer.  Again, the conflict lies in the cultural schemes.  Americans like to be cool, even extremely cool.  Research has shown that the coldest stores in America tend to be the most expensive.  Since air conditioning is a necessity, we need extreme air conditioning to convey a sense of luxury.

That is from Clotaire Rapaille’s The Culture Code, a fun romp through national cultures, how the French think about seduction, why the Americans invaded Iraq, why monetary incentives work better in some cultures than others, why autistic children have trouble learning, and what makes foreigners so hard to understand.

OK, he is making all this stuff up.  Publishers Weekly referred to its:

"preposterous generalizations and overstatements, e.g., Japanese men "seem utterly incapable of courtship or wooing a woman.""

It is one of the few non-fiction books I have read this year which will stick with me.  Here is the book’s home page.

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, by Deirdre McCloskey.  Here is a related article.  Here is the book’s home page.

That is Deepak Lal’s new book, the subtitle is The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-First Century.  I rarely call myself a classical liberal, for fear the title has become musty and for realization that the feasible set today is quite different from that faced by Cobden and Bright.  That aside, here is what I think classical liberalism should become for the 21st century.

1. The welfare state is not going away.  But it is imperative that we avoid Western  European levels of taxation through the explosion of Medicare liabilities.  Don’t forget that the United States is a — should I say the — generator of global public goods par excellence.  Going down the path of France or Sweden would mean disaster.

2. What recipes lead to both strong markets and decent governance?  The not-yet-developed countries of the world all face this problem.  Simply deregulating does not itself solve the governance problem, as we have discovered many times in the last fifteen years.  Our understanding here is backward but much is at stake.

3. We face a variety of critical issues involving decentralization: how to deal with pandemics, natural disasters, or terrorists with nuclear weapons, to name but a few.  None of these are areas for laissez-faire.  Yet for all the squawking about the need for government, most of the real solutions "on the ground" will emphasize voluntary action and the private sector.  When faced with these problems, how can we do better rather than worse?  Note the close connection between this problem and #2; for instance in Indonesia the government won’t allow transparent communication about the nature of the avian flu problem.

Overrated classical liberal ideas are privatization (sometimes useful, but it often replicates old problems in a new regulatory guise) and abolishing foreign aid.

Your take, Alex?  Other classical liberal bloggers?

For Lal’s vision, well…you have to read his book.  You can start with the book’s web page and sample chapter here.

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.  I am a big fan of what Acemoglu is trying to do, namely integrating history with an economic account of the rise of the West.  But this doesn’t work as a book.  There is too much thicket and they should have been forced to cut the equations.

George Lodge and Craig Wilson, A Corporate Solution to Global Poverty: How Multinationals can Help the Poor and Invigorate Their Own Legitimacy.  The title is wonderful, but this boils down to a call for a World Development Corporation, a’ la Felix Rohatyn but on a global scale.  Underargued.

Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.  He makes bold claims: for instance Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics might be identical to the multiverse of some versions of inflation theory.  He seems to be making all this up, but I applaud the boldness.  I wouldn’t have understood the truth anyway.

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena.  What is left to be said?  Our beliefs are endogenous, so how can we trust our beliefs?  We can’t.

Kyle Gann, Music Downtown, Writings from the Village Voice.  I loved this book, but you won’t.  For people who think Philip Glass and Robert Ashley are geniuses.

Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons.  His first mega-novel to fail.  None of the dialogue rings true and the author comes across as a dirty old man.

Jose Saramago, Blindness.  The Death of Ricardo Reis may be his deepest book, but this is the one most guaranteed to impress.  To appreciate him, you have to get over the fact that most of his novels are boring stinkers.

Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None.  Does anyone find this suspenseful?  I didn’t.  But I loved the film when I was ten.

John Banville, The Sea.  No way did this dirge deserve the Booker Prize.  That pick was strictly a lifetime achievement award.

Stephen King, Song of Susannah.  I adore I-IV of The Dark Tower series, but by this point the plot has fallen apart. 

Robert Wuthnow, American Mythos: Why Our Best Efforts to Be a Better Nation Fall Short.  He is a remarkably powerful mind, but in this book he is spinning his wheels.

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point.  I reread this one, just to remind myself how beautifully constructed it is.

Toni Morrison, Beloved.  I used to hate this book, but now I see the appeal.  Read Part Three first and work backwards.

Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun.  Excellent.  I had never read this one, and don’t forget that his robot stories are commentary on Judaic theology and law.

He voted twice for Adlai Stevenson; read this review of Steven B. Smith’s new book on Strauss.

Adam Smith that is, the author of this new book is Duncan Foley, and the fallacy is the idea of the invisible hand of the marketplace turning greed into the public good.  Imagine a neo-Marxist introduction to the classical economists, written at a popular level, with plenty of Marx plus bits of commentary on Hayek and Veblen.  Overall the book puzzled me; it hovers on the verge of making definite claims but draws back each time.  I’d rather have a good slugfest with clearly staked out positions.  This is an attempt to be the next Robert Heilbroner.  It is not my cup of tea, but some of you will want to buy it here.  Here is my earlier post on what remains valid from the economics of Karl Marx.

The full title is The Redemption of Love: Rescuing Marriage And Sexuality from the Economics of a Fallen World. The author is Carrie Miles, psychologist and also wife of my colleague Larry Iannaccone.  Where is my review copy?  In the meantime, here is a summary, it sounds very Protestant.  Someone is going to write a bestseller on this topic, let’s see if it is Carrie.  Here is an earlier book by Carrie and her husband.

I’ve been meaning to review these, but it looks like they will get a sentence or so a piece…

I am pleased to announce that I now have a book contract with Dutton/Penguin.  I have a wonderful editor, Jeff Galas, and of course I have already started the work.  A few bits of the book will look familiar to MR readers, but there will be plenty of new material as well.  Of course you haven’t read it, but I am nonetheless keen to take title suggestions, either in the comments or through email.  If I use your title idea or any close derivative thereof, I will send you something valuable (seriously), of my choosing.

The average number of weeks that a new No. 1
bestseller stayed top of the hardback fiction section of the New York
Times Bestseller List has fallen from 5.5 in the 1990s, 14 in the 1970s
and 22 in the 1960s to barely a fortnight last year — according to the
study of the half-century from 1956-2005.

In the 1960s, fewer than three novels reached No. 1 in an average year; last year, 23 did.

Here is the link, the pointer was from Alex. To repeat my standard mantra, the evidence shows we are moving away from a winner-take-all society, not toward it.

Here is a review of their new book, The Vanity of the Philosopher.  Here is my previous post on David Levy.

No matter how unoriginal stallholders’ products may be, they have to seem to be for local folk.  It is crucial that the winemaker from Caromb buy his Pataugas [basic country walking shoes] on the market, the Sanit-Didier road mender his balaclava, and that everyone see them do so, even if not many do the same.  That way everyone can feel they have participated in that Friday morning’s local-life event.  Moreover, "foreigners" like the idea of buying market products precisely because they are perceived to be used by natives.

That is from Michele de la Pradelle’s Market Day in Provence.  This book is not easy to summarize, but it is one of the three or four best economic ethnographies I have read.  You will find more information, including an excerpt, here.