Results for “What I've Been Reading”

442 found

1. Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, edited by Ed Stringham.  712 pages of debate about libertarian anarchy, just about everything intelligent written on the topic, and then some.  The book has two essays by yours truly on why libertarian anarchy cannot avoid reevolution back to government; you’ll also find them on my home page.

2. Daniel Drezner, All Politics is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes.  An underexplored topic in public choice, Dan shows it still all boils down to national politics.  Here is chapter one.

3. Dan Simmons, The Terror.  One of his best books, a thrilling Arctic adventure, well-paced, 769 pp., but ultimately not conceptual.  My decision to stop reading at p.200 or so marks a watershed in my life.

4. Christoph Peters, The Fabric of Life.  A German vacationer witnesses a murder in Istanbul and delves into seamy society to figure out what happened.  It is so hard to get a translation into English published these days that a rule of reading only translated contemporary literature is one of the better filters.  Recommended.

5. Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows.  Reader’s feast of subtle and penetrating observations, dysfunctional family, etc.

6. Spence on Schelling, via Greg Mankiw.

7. Maybe I’m Amazed.

1. Lynn Freed, Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home – Her message is that to be a great writer you must be brutal in exposing the truth and somewhat brutal period; a short memoir of female South African ambition, recommended.

2. Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents – Western study of Orientalism was not always racist or biased, a useful corrective to Edward Said.

3. Roy Richard Grinker, Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism – One of the better books on the topic, by an anthropologist with an autistic daughter, most interesting for its cross-cultural perspectives.

4. Charles Clover, The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat.  Yes the topic is "overfished," but this book stands above the others.  Among other virtues, it has a good treatment of which regulations and property rights management systems are actually working.

5. ESPN-NBA; there is more logic on this site than almost any blog, worth the price.

1. Michael Crichton, Next. Yes it is "writing-by-numbers," yes it is better than his recent work, but no, it is not nearly as good as Jurassic Park, Sphere (my favorite), Congo, or for that matter his book on Jasper Johns.  Some critics like it.  The start is OK but it falls apart as it proceeds.  By the way, here is my previous post on human-chimp hybrids. 

2. Robert Bolaño, Distant Star.  A minor masterpiece.  He is another of those first-tier Latin writers, along with Asturias and Rulfo, who for mysterious reasons no one in the United States seems to read.

3. Richard Powers, The Echo Maker.  A deserving winner of a National Book Award, plus I am interested in the neurology theme.  I find many of Power’s earlier books too intellectualized, but this one held my attention throughout.  By the way, I also tried the non-fiction National Book winner, the book about the Dust Bowl years, but it didn’t hold my interest.

4. The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story, by Asif Dowla and Dipal Barua.  A very good look at the micro-credit movement.

Addendum: The NYT picks its ten best books of the year.

1. Dave Eggers, What is the What.  Despite its preciousness, I quite liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  Sadly this quasi-fictional tale of a Sudanese refugee reveals that most contemporary writers are lightweights, pure and simple.

2. Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir.  I loved Palimpset, volume 1, but this follow-up is junk.  Julian is his best book, but overall he has more misses than hits.

3. Othello.  I’ll teach this in my spring Law and Literature class.  I read Shakespeare as despising the Moor for turning his back on his natural Muslim allies and fighting them in Cyprus.  In a strange way Othello deserves some of the bad treatment he receives — why should anyone trust him?

4. The new Stephen Dubner book…I am not reading it yet, but I don’t want to be slow with the news.  Discover the other Dubner.

5. Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic.  This is from the guy who brought us Everything Bad is Good for You, except it turns out that cholera isn’t good for you, it is bad for you.  A brisk and readable story of public health issues in Victorian London.

6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold [Crónica de una muerte anunciada].  I regard One Hundred Years of Solitude as a good but overrated book; this slim volume may well be his most exciting fiction and it is clearly the most humorous.  I’m also fond on his non-fiction book about the kidnapping and volume one of his memoirs, plus of course the short stories; that is what he will be known for.

1. Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic, by Ray Takeyh.  A good implicit "public choice" treatment of how the different factions in the Iranian government fit together.  Surprisingly readable.

2. The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, by David Kamp.  Terrible title, good content, awkward writing style, terrible font, little economics, still good for foodies but only for foodies.

3. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. "Post-apocalyptic masterpiece."  Fair enough, but is it better than The Dark Tower?  I’m not sure, but even to pose that question is to favor Stephen King.  Here is the NYT review.

4. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, by Rashid Khalidi.  Some of the apologetics and omissions really bugged me.  But as to why the Palestinians failed to construct their own state — before the creation of Israel — I learned a great deal.

5. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.  His best novel.  Fun from the outset, and you can test your knowledge of Bollywood and Islamic theology.  Too famous as a political dispute, too little known as a book.

1. The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love, by Richard Restak.  A good summary of a bunch of results I already knew, but a suitable introduction for most readers.  It doesn’t cover neuroeconomics.

2. Light in August, by William Faulkner.  I am rereading this, wondering whether I should use it for my Law and Literature class in the spring.  My memory was that this is the "easy" classic Faulkner but the text is tricker than I had remembered.  Not quite as good as As I Lay Dying or Absalom, Absalom.

3. Matthew Kahn, Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment.  From Brookings, a good and balanced treatment of the intersection between environmental and urban economics.  Here is Matt’s blog.

4. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.  I’m still at p = .05, if only because I fear such a heavy reliance on the anthropic principle.  This book didn’t sway me one way or the other.  And while I am not religious myself, I am suspicious of anti-religious tracts which do not recognize great profundity in the Bible.  Furthermore, as Dawkins recognizes, civilization requires strong loyalties to abstract principles; I’m still waiting to see a list of the relevant contenders to choose the best.  Here is Dawkins speaking.

5. Michael Lewis, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.  I loved Liar’s Poker and Moneyball but this one did not grab me at all.  I stopped.  Perhaps the reader needs to love football.  Here is a radio interview with the author.  Here is his NYT article.

1. The People’s Act of Love, by James Meek.  You wouldn’t think a Brit could imitate a 19th century Russian novel, but he pulls it off.  Excellent mid-brow fiction, give it a few chapters to grab you.

2. The Singing Neanderthals, by Stephen Mithen.  The author starts with sexual selection theories of the arts, and then asks why we sing in large groups rather than exclusively one-to-one.  The Neanderthals are portrayed as a static culture, dependent on music for their communication, and thus unable to come up with new ideas.   Recommended for those who like just-so stories and yes that includes me.

3. Capital and Collusion: The Political Logic of Global Economic Development, by Hilton Root.  Here is the book’s web page.  Hilton will be moving full time to George Mason, School of Public Policy.

4. Polio: An American Story, by David Oskhinski.  There are few Pulitzer Prize-winning works you can gulp down and enjoy in a single brief sitting, but this is one of them.

5. You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir, by Wole Soyinka.  Wonderfully written, sadly he doesn’t seem to see why capitalist enterprise is important for Africa.

6. The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You Never Will Read, by Stuart Kelly.  Aeschylus, Dante, Kafka, and many others wrote works that were lost, destroyed, or never finished.  (Hey, what about the missing second volume of Hayek’s Pure Theory of Capital?  You know, the one where he integrates the theory of money and capital?)  Here is the history of those works, in bit-sized, ready-to-consume form.  Here is one good review.  If you are tired of popular literary treatments which simply recycle material you already know, this book is for you.  A gem.

7. "The only irreducible reward"…

1. Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking, by Fuchsia Dunlop.  The other night I made a sauce with five chopped green onions, blended to a smooth paste with one tablespoon sichuan peppers (first dunked into hot water).  Add three tablespoons chicken stock, one teaspoon light soy sauce, one and one half teaspoons sesame oil.  Apply to cooked chicken.  More generally, buy Chinese cooking wine and black (Chinese) vinegar and you are almost ready to go.

2. Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, seventh edition.  This is not just a reference work, it is also the best book on jazz, period.  The main drawback is a lack of material on Norwegian jazz, a recent interest of mine.

3. This NYT article on previously-covered Dana Schutz.  Or try this article on nuns and the origins of reggae.

4. Recent books by Julian Barnes and Zadie Smith, while entertaining enough, won’t attract interest thirty years from now.  Question: What is the optimal lag time before deciding a work of fiction is worth reading?  Few novels require urgent reading, so how about fifteen years?  Why do I violate this rule so regularly?

5. Swallowing Clouds: A Playful Journey Through Chinese Culture, Language, and Cuisine, by A. Zee.  This unique book lives up to its subtitle; it teaches you how to make sense of Chinese characters, how the Chinese think about food, and how it all fits into a bigger picture.

Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions, by Lisa Randall.  Have you ever tried to read those Scientific American articles on the weak and strong forces, or on how we might live in a three-dimensional universe on a 3 + n dimensional brane?  This book is the closest you will get to understanding such matters.  You can skip the chunk which recaps Einstein and quantum mechanics.  Alternatively, you might wait until scientists figure out the apparent paradoxes, and then read a book with the answers.

Veronica: A Novel, by Mary Gaitskill.  If I like a novel about an aging hippie temptress with hepatitis, and her older AIDS-ridden friend, and the sadomasochism of the fashion world, it must have something going for it.  Nominated for a National Book Award, and rightfully so.

Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000, by James McCann.  If you are ever bored, go out and read all the books about the history of corn you can find.  Start here.

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, by Tony Judt.  I know what you are thinking.  "I read Tony Judt all the time.  I already know lots about Europe after 1945.  Why do I need this 800-page book?  Why should I pay almost $40?"  Don’t be lured down that fallacious path.  Go for the excellent book by the excellent author, every time.

How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, by Mark Bittman.  If you could only own one cookbook, this would probably be it.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body: The title says it all, this book is not for the squeamish.

Hunger’s Brides: A Novel of the Baroque, by Paul Anderson.  I’m a sucker for 1400-page Canadian novels about Mexican nun/poetesses who are learning to speak Nahuatl and are involved in murders.  The New York Times ran an article on how to deal with the book’s size and weight.

Chronicles, volume I, by Bob Dylan.  No, I don’t care about him anymore either, but  nonetheless this was one of the best books I read all summer.  A primer on what it means to be American and why low rents are good for artistic creativity.

Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, by Michael Cannon and Michael Tanner, published by the Cato Institute.

Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkish World, by Hugh Pope.  A useful and entertaining book on modern Turkey and how it relates to Azerbaijan and the "stan" countries.  Short of actual travel, this is your best hope of gaining a knowledge foothold in these areas.

My favorite book this summer remains the accessible yet deeply philosophic The Time Traveler’s Wife.  More generally, Michael at www.2blowhards.com offers a comprehensive set of links on what is new in the world of books.

The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, by Edward Jay Epstein.  Why is opening weekend so important?  "The benefits of prolonging a film’s run in the theaters are now negated by the loss that would be sustained by delaying its video opening past the point at which it can benefit from the movie’s advertising campaign."  This is the best available work on the economics of cinema.  How many books cite both Arnold Schwarzneger and Mises’s discussion of non-pecuniary goods?

King Lear: This is about my fifth reading.  I had never fully realized that Lear had incestuous relationships with at least one of his daughters (for instance check out 1:2, 150-152, 1:4, 176-182, plus the entire Oedipus analogy).  Furthermore he was ready to sell out his country to the French.  Edmund, Goneril and Regan were not so bad after all.

Handbook of Economic Sociology, second edition, edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg.  Yelp if you wish, but I see sociology as the most underrated social science.  It is (some) sociologists who are the problem.  Most of the advances in economics over the last fifteen years have actually come in sociology done by economists.  Just look at Steve Levitt or behavioral economics.  Since economists have not discovered any new "core mechanisms" since herd behavior (circa 1989 or so), I expect quantitative sociology to whup our collective behinds over the next twenty years.  The only question is who will be doing it, us or them.

Art: A Field Guide, by Robert Cumming.  This has been my favorite bedtime reading book of the last twenty years.  The book gives two or three succinct paragraphs on why each of about 1500 famous artists is good, bad, or somewhere in between.  No cultural relativism here, and obviously the guy should start a blog.  Few good pictures are included, so you do need to know the works of the artists.

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, by Philip Short. One of the best studies of the anatomy of evil, the psychology of colonialism, and twentieth century Cambodian history.

What I wish I was reading: Going Sane, by Adam Phillips.  I read all his books the day they fall into my hands.  Phillips, a psychoanalyst for children, is the master of witty and paradoxical observations about human nature.  I am told that this new book offers a partial "recipe for contentment," but so far it is available only in the U.K. and perhaps Commonwealth countries.

Garry Kasparov – Garry Kasparov on Fischer, My Great Predecessors, volume 4 – Fascinating, just imagine if Beethoven had written a book on Mozart.  Most of the page is chess games, but the remaining text is alone worth the price.  Kasparov makes a convincing case that Fischer relied heavily on his opponent’s major blunders, and that he would have a hard time beating many of the best post-1972 players.  Can a subsequent champion make such an argument and keep a gracious tone?  That is just part of what makes the book so interesting.  Here is one review, including an interview.

Ron Chernow – Alexander Hamilton – I’ve reached the point where I hate books on the Founding Fathers, and I vowed I would not touch this one.  But I weakened and it won me over.  It stands as one of the best biographies I have read, plus it is full of economic history.

Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo – He’s Just Not That Into You – Natasha reads me excerpts from this at night.  Recast in rational choice terms, the main point is that women suffer from weakness of will, and require exhortation to adopt higher standards.  They should split up with more guys, most of whom have no intention of marrying them. 

Is the postulated problem — namely excessively low female standards — well-suited for genetic fitness but not utility maximization?  Or was it well-suited for hunter-gatherer society but no longer today?  How elastic is the supply of quality manhood, in response to higher standards from females?  Must we revise the standard economic account that males will invest too much in signaling quality?

Gregory Conko and Gregory Miller – The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the BioTech Revolution – The title says it all, recommended.  Here is a summary interview.

Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson – Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior – Main point: animals are smarter and more sensitive than you think, most of them just happen to be autistic.  After you read the book, this suddenly seems intuitively obvious.  This book I could not put down, and note that one of the authors is herself autistic.