Results for “What I've Been Reading”

442 found

1. Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke.  A definitive economic history of many things, including globalization and trade.  It is nicely balanced, though a bit boring to actually read.

2. The Sourcebook of Contemporary Architecture, by Alex Sanchez Vidiella.  I loved this book, which is mostly photos.  It is amazing how many first-rate buildings the world has put up since 2000.  Can any other seven year period in world history compare?  Japan is underrepresented in this volume, and they don’t even resort to Dubai.  Spain and America take the lead.

3. Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms.  The best collection of the Russian absurdist, offered up in many short bits; recommended, he is an underread writer outside of Russia.

4. Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher.  How the Amish came to forgive the guy who shot ten of their children.  A sleeper book, it has turned up on some of the odder "best of" lists for the year.

5. Vernon Smith, Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms.  This is Vernon’s big picture book, covering Hayek, the extended liberal order, and how experimental economics makes it all fit together.  A capstone to an amazing career, next will come his autobiography.

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?

1. David Linden, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God.  My standards for popular science books have tightened in the last ten years but this still exceeds them.  A good rule of thumb is to read anything that comes from Belknap Press at Harvard, unless of course it is Michael Sandel’s question-begging critique of transhumanism and genetic engineering.

2. God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead.  Yes there is a uniquely Anglo-American way of looking at the world, here’s how it came about, and also why the rest of the world resents it.  And why Tony Blair fought the Iraq War.  Consistently interesting and readable, recommended.  In passing it is also one of the best books for understanding the rise of the West.

3. Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, by Jonathan Gould.  I loved this book, and yes I was already sick of books about the Beatles.  Not only is the musical analysis first-rate (it pinpoints what is wrong with the arrangement of "Got to Get You Into My Life"), but it is close to an economic history of the Beatles.  Of course they started Apple, their record label, to shift labor income into capital gains, yet they were not up to running a music company.  Who needs the Laffer Curve?  You can (in part) blame high marginal tax rates for the breakup of the Beatles.

4. Michael Dirda, Classics for Pleasure.  As with popular science books, I am long since jaded with the genre of "let’s read my short essays about the classics so you don’t have to go bother reading those long, nasty books yourself."  But this one delivers a true odyssey of discovery; I dog-eared a dozen or so pages to follow up on the recommendations.  Will tracking down John Aubrey’s Brief Lives pay off?  Who knows, but don’t we live on hope as it is?

1. Days on the Family Farm, by Carrie Meyer.  An interesting economic study of life on an early twentieth American family farm, based on personal diaries, and an antidote to anyone who thinks that all GMU economics faculty are like the bloggers you know.

2. Theory of Clouds, by Stephane Audeguy.  I loved this novel, which was the rage in France but sadly will die here stillborn.  Think Julian Barnes, Sten Nadolny, or Kazuo Ishiguro.  Short, fun, dreamy, and conceptual.  Its quality illustrates one of my favorite book-buying algorithms, which is to snap up serious foreign fiction translated into English, if only because the selection pressures are so severe.

3.  Free Trade Reimagined, by Roberto Unger.  This is the fourth book this year to challenge the doctrine of comparative advantage, a more important fact than any argument in the books themselves.  The book is weak on empirics but it does present the sophisticated version of the anti-free trade arguments.  I don’t believe in open borders, so I suppose I’m not a free trader either.  Unger is smart, smart, smart, but that doesn’t mean he should be Minister of Long-Term Planning in Brazil, which he is.  Here’s the whole thing on-line.

4. The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa.  That makes two wonderful novels in one week.  I don’t enjoy all of his recent work, but this one is very fun, hearkening back to the tradition of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.  The Edith Grossman translation is first-rate as always.

5. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross.  Ross won’t quite say it, but he tries to convince the reader that
the twentieth century is the best century for music, ever.
That’s without pushing serialism too hard or resorting much to popular
music.  Sibelius, Janacek, Messiaen, and John Adams are among the heroes in this story.  If you
are only going to buy (and read) ten books on music, ever, this should be one of
them.  Here is one good review.  Here is a Jason Kottke interview with Ross, very interesting.

It was an amazing week for reading (the best since I’ve started doing MR) mostly because it was an amazing week for flying.  There’s more to come…

1. A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States, by Stephen Mihm.  This book offers interesting tales of 19th century counterfeiters — an understudied topic — but it is too quick to slush together counterfeiters, capitalists, and Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man.  I read about 80 pages, some of you will wish to read more.

2. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang.  This is a less subtle version of the "free trade isn’t always best" arguments made by Dani Rodrik.  Reread my post The New Attack on Free Trade.

3. Bill Clinton, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.  Should we resent that this book is essentially a campaign prop for Hillary?  Still, it was better than expected.  It’s not deep but it does stress the virtues of commercialization and the profit motive.  Less surprisingly, globalization and micro-finance are portrayed as positive forces as well.

4. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke.  The NYT gave it a rave, lead review, as did The Washington Post and other sources.  So far it is being framed as the major American novel of the year.  It’s an almost anachronistically modernist in its structure and seriousness.  And is there really anything more to say about the Vietnam War?  First I was bored but then I reread the first 150 pages and now I love it. 

5. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life, by Mark Francis.  It’s the best intellectual history I’ve read since McCraw’s Schumpeter book, and did you know that he and George Eliot had a non-consummated fling?  It’s a highly specialized topic, so I can’t recommend this book to everyone but I loved it and no you don’t need to care about Spencer the libertarian.

1. Open Secrets of American Foreign Policy, by Gordon Tullock.  A history of the bloopers and stupidities of American foreign policy, from virtually day one.  If you think Gordon embraces a narrow, reductionist rational choice view of the world, here is the antidote.  Gordon tells me that foreign policy has long been his number one interest, although he has written on the topic only now.

2. One Economics, Many Recipes, by Dani Rodrik.  I agree with much of the substance of this book, namely that we know a lot less about the causes of economic growth than we like to think.  I am less happy with the implied rhetorical choices; in particular I wish Rodrik were more consistently agnostic.  For instance Rodrik defends industrial policy, but at times this just translates into lower (or no) taxes for export zones.  So why frame it as a larger rather than a smaller claim? 

3. The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by CrackpotEconomics , by Jonathan Chait.  I’ve taught Ph.d. macroeconomics to some of the people referred to, either directly or indirectly, in this book.  They didn’t all get A pluses.  So I see the talk of conspiracy as way, way overblown.  This book catalogs many good criticisms of the Bush administration, and in that sense is valuable, but it does not raise the level of debate.

4. Do Economists Make Markets?, an edited collection of essays.  How could they not cite Alex’s Entrepreneurial Economics?  Or pay homage to Robin Hanson and prediction markets?  Still, this is a useful introduction to how economists have tried to shape real world markets, from spectrum auctions to options pricing.

1. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium, by Robert Friedel.  A very good treatment of the history of Western technology, although it is not accessible reading for most non-specialists.

2. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, by Chris Mooney.  The lower your social discount rate, the more you should worry about (growth-reducing) storms, and the less you should worry about one-time adjustments, such as moving islanders to a mainland.  In other words, you should worry about storms.

3. Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969, by Dan Nadel.  Some of the best evidence that comic books are valuable art.

4. Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne.  On this rereading, I am obsessed by the notion that it is actually Uncle Toby who is Tristram’s biological father.  In any case this book has held up very well.

5. Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, by Alex von Tunzelmann.  Yet another high quality book on modern Indian history, here the theme is the departure of the British, the establishment of modern India, and of course partition.

1. Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert Frank (the economist Robert Frank).  The best statement of the Frankian world view; every book of his is full of ideas and there are very few authors you can say that about.

2. John Lanchester, A Family Romance.  Imagine finding out your mother was once a nun and then that she led a life of lies.  I would have liked this book much better had it not been fiction.  It felt so real and even has good photos but I am disappointed to keep on thinking it is only a story. 

3. Gunther Grass, Peeling the Onion.  Why oh why oh why do I let myself be fooled.  There is only one author I find flat out too obnoxious to read, and it is this guy.  And that was before I learned of the whole SS business.  I had heard this one is different, but it isn’t.  Or it is, but he’s still too far over the line for that to matter.

4. Elizabeth Currid, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion Art & Music Drive New York City.  The title says it all.

5. The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, by Christine Kenneally.  The early chapters have excellent material on the contributions of Chomsky and Pinker, but after that it bored me.

1. Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean.  My consumer surplus from this book was huge.  The author calls it an "economic history" of the graphic novel; he hasn’t read Bob Fogel but it remains one of the best introductions to any topic.

2. Martin Krause, La Economia Explicada a Mis Hijos, and Por el ojo de una aguja.  Economics, explained through the medium of literature and fables, from an Argentinian classical liberal.

3. Jennifer Michael Hecht, The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think is Right is Wrong.  The claim is that happiness follows from self-knowledge, self-control, self-realization, and awareness of death.  There is little consideration of what is the proper margin for each.

4. Alfredo Jose Estrada, Havana: Autobiography of a City.  One of the best city biographies, almost as good as the books on Cairo.

5. Ruth Rendell, The Water’s Lovely.  I used to think she was past her peak, but the first third of this is superb and the rest stays pretty good.

1. Vie Francaise, by Jean-Paul Dubois.  He is the French Philip Roth; the bottom line is that I finished it, and not just because of the occasional mentions of Adam Smith.

2. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, by Gerd Gigerenzer.  The author is a smart guy and an accomplished scholar, but despite his best efforts this book is a few years too late.

3. Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok.  Inflation vs. cyclic theories, the latter help you stay an agnotheist by resolving the Goldilocks problem; only some of the universes through time have order as we know it.  I enjoyed it, even though I am sick of popular physics books.  It’s also the first time I’ve understood anything about the Higgs field debates.  Recommended.

4. The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society, by Mark A. Smith.  The main thesis is that right wingers have made America a more conservative society by framing issues in terms of economic reasoning.  Maybe I am too close to the topic, but I didn’t learn anything from the book.  At the very least it should interest progressives looking to mimic the successes (?) of the right wing.

5. Blankets, by Craig Thompson.  This I loved and read in one sitting; it is a very good introduction to graphic novels, especially if you are not thrilled by Alan Moore.

Lots of catch-up from time abroad:

1. Liza Mundy, Everything is Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction is Changing Men, Women, and the World.  Excellent stories, even-handed, and surprisingly philosophical.  How can you not read a good book on this topic?

2. Janos Kornai, By Force of Thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey.  Charming memoirs of one of the major economists from the Communist bloc.  An intellectual autobiography, an account of how and why human beings change their minds, and an explanation of why he was more creative in Hungary than with the mainstream at Harvard.

3. Trevor Corson, The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket.  The first few chapters are an excellent overview and history of sushi, after that the book is a lame account of a bunch of losers taking a sushi course.

4. Brink Lindsey, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture, on how America became so libertarian, reviewed here by George Will.

5. Hermann Broch, Die Schlafwandler (The Sleepwalkers).  Broch remains one of the most underrated authors of the 20th century, this may be his masterpiece but start with his shorter Death of Virgil.

1. House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski.  This experimental novel, written with varying typefaces, page layouts, and interjected footnotes, is a fun mock of the academization of literature.  It has a large cult following but can be enjoyed by the general reader.  Don’t be intimidated by the heft, a third of the pages are essentially blank.  It felt great making so much progress so quickly.

2. The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, by Phillip F. Schewe.  Better than no book at all, but this important topic still awaits its definitive treatment.

3. The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction, by Patrick Anderson.  A good guide and overview, the author argues that Raymond Chandler is overrated relative to say Macdonald or Kehane.

4. Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate.  This Soviet-era masterpiece, which covers the Battle of Stalingrad, bored me.  I have no complaint about its quality, I simply felt the time in my life is past to further digest those themes in an emotionally meaningful way.

5. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel.  This comic detective story is based on an alternative reality in which Israel loses the 1948 war and the surviving Jews settle in Alaska.  It’s the first book of his I’ve liked, though I don’t think it has much substance.

6. Don Boudreaux recommends ten books.

1. Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and its Secret Past, by Giles Tremlett.  An engaging survey of contemporary Spain.

2. Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil, by John Ghazvinian.  Why Africa is even more messed up than you think; this book has lots of good economics.

3. Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives.  I’ve gone on about him before, but this newly translated work (the translation gets an A+) is one of the major Latin American novels of the twentieth century. 

4. It’s enough to think you are exercising.

5. Persistence running.

6. Thomas McNamee, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse.  A good history of the restaurant, plus it makes you wonder what percent of the female population is motivated primarily by ***ual desire.

1. Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography, by Georgi Derluguian.  How did the Soviet Union come to be, come to collapse, and was the ethnic trouble in the Caucasus brought on by globalization?  This book has a unique narrative style, while the content draws upon Wallerstein, Tilly, Randall Collins, and others.  There is wisdom and analysis on virtually every page.

2. Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, by Bruce Clark.  The sad story of how murder and population exchanges have made the nations of the modern Mediterranean more monocultural; someone needs to write on Egypt as well.

3. Good Bread is Back, by Steven Kaplan; the subtitle says it all: A Contemporary History of French bread, the way it is made, and the people who make it.  Here is Alex’s earlier post on French bread.

4. On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan.  This short novel is about young British newlyweds trying to have/trying to not have sex in 1962.  Critics are calling it a return to form, but it feels slightly overwrought to me.  Can the British really be like that?  If so, do I have to read about it?  I did find the last ten pages strikingly beautiful.  I got my copy early on Amazon.co.uk, the American edition is out in June.

1. Ice, by Vladimir Sorokin.  A totally lurid, highly sexed, contemporary Russian, pre-apocalyptic mix of science fiction and horror.  I finished it.

2. The Once and Future King, T.H. White.  Oddly absent from Law and Literature syllabi, I’m teaching this in my next class.  This is many people’s favorite book.  It’s written in a simple manner, but it cumulates in an oddly beautiful way.

3. What economists should learn from sociology, not to mention Arnold Kling on me, and Brad DeLong on Milton Friedman.

4. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, by Patricia Love and Steven Stosny.  The claim: talking about relationship problems is an inherently shameful activity for the man and thus it will fail; the couple should just read this book and do what is best.

5. Econoblog with Ed Glaeser and Daron Acemoglu, on democracy and economic growth.  If Greg Mankiw can debate Jacqueline Passey, Ed can cite Borat as evidence in a dialog with a world-class economist.

6. Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War, 1846-1848 by Joseph Wheelan.  If you wish to embarrass your friends (and yourself), ask them whether they would in retrospect support the U.S. conquest of territory from Mexico.