Results for “self-recommending” 168 found
Best fiction of 2016
I was disappointed by most of this year’s well-known releases, and did most of my rewarding fiction reading in past classics. But these are the fiction or fiction-related works I found to be outstanding this year:
Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians. A novel of an affair, with intoxicating Irish prose and a genuine energy on the page, though it is more a work of intensifying fervor than a traditional plot-based story.
Claire Louise-Bennett, Pond, more from Ireland, short, nominally fiction but more like a circular sensory experience of reading overlapping short stories, with a cumulative effect akin to that of poetry. I found this one mesmerizing.
Javier Marias, Thus Bad Begins. I have only started this, but so far I like it very much. I have enough faith in Marias to put in on the list.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Reputations, a short Colombian novel on memory — personal, historical, sexual, and otherwise, this was my favorite short work of the year.
The Complete Works of Primo Levi, in three volumes, edited by Ann Goldstein. By no means is all of this fiction, but I will put these books in this category. A revelation, as Levi has more works of interest, and a broader range of intellect and understanding, than I had realized. There is plenty of linguistics, economics, history, and social science in these literary pages as well as consistently beautiful writing and superb translations. This is technically from 2015, but I missed it last time around.
Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai. Review here. Strictly speaking, this is a reissue of an earlier published but neglected work. Maniacal, intense, super-smart, about a mother bringing up a prodigy.
Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller. The visual presentation of poetry matters too, plus she is one of the very best.
The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. LeGuin, self-recommending.
Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia. A revealing mismash look into the mind of the author, giving you an integrated picture of her world view, with carefully calculated feints thrown in. I should note this one works only if you know and love her novels already. Ferrante’s “children’s” story The Beach at Night is also worthwhile, very dark, you can read it in a small number of minutes. Here is a good NYT review.
Jean-Michael Rabaté, Think Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human. This work of criticism is grounded in literary theory, but informative and smart nonetheless.
Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review Guide to Literary Fiction. An amazingly comprehensive and informative work, mostly about literature in translation, from the creator of the Literary Saloon blog about fiction. I liked it so much I decided to do a Conversation with Michael Orthofer. If you could own only ten works on literature, this should be one of them.
If you give me only one pick, I opt for the Primo Levi, even if you think you already know his work.
A few I didn’t get to read yet, but have hopes for are Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, and Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk, caveat emptor in both cases, plus Invisible Planets, edited by Ken Liu, a collection of Chinese science fiction.
My post on best non-fiction of the year will be coming soon, plus I’ll do new entries for any excellent fiction between now and the end of the year.
My Conversation with Steven Pinker
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Steven of course was in top form. We started with irregular verbs, and then moved on to Chomsky, theories of language, the mind and Jon Haidt’s modules, reason, what unifies the thought and work of Steven Pinker, rap music, William Shatner (underrated, “although maybe not his singing”), Sontag on photography, the future of world peace, and the Ed Sullivan show.
Here is one bit:
COWEN: Let me now put on my economist’s hat and ask you about this. As you know, in George Orwell’s 1984, the Party bans all irregular verbs. It’s a kind of excess regulation. But from a social point of view, are there too many or too few irregular verbs in English?
PINKER: [laughs] I like the irregular verbs. I’d like to see more of them.
…One distinction that is vanishing that I think is sad is the three-way distinction in verbs like sink, sank, sunk; stink, stank, stunk; shrink, shrank, shrunk; where the shrank and the stank are giving way to their participle forms shrunkand stunk.
COWEN: No shrank and stank.
PINKER: No shrank and stank. Admittedly it would have been hard to have a movie called Honey, I Shrank the Kids instead of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In my style manual, The Sense of Style, I recommend hanging on to them. I think they’re nice.
And on Chomsky:
PINKER: It’s a moving target. Also, as you say, it was neither specified in a precise way nor field‑tested against a dataset of language variation, which I think is unfortunate in terms of ordinary scientific practice.
On peace:
COWEN: Let me ask you a general question. Let’s say it were possible by spending $10,000 and devoting a few months of your life to it that any person on earth could blow up a significant part of a major city.
They could buy something, some kind of explosive. It would cost them $10,000. How long would it take before someone actually did this?
…PINKER: I don’t know. My optimism doesn’t consist of prophecy in that sense. That is, my optimism consists of looking at what has happened and noting that, first of all, the pessimistic view is factually incorrect. Namely, people believe that we’re living in unusually violent times and we’re not.
How to project that into the future is a separate set of questions. There are many unknowns that I’m not arrogant enough to know the answer to. It’s something that we could debate. We could explore them. I am not an optimist in the sense of saying, “Well, let’s just extrapolate the curves in the future without asking questions like that.”
Self-recommending, to be sure…
Michael Strain’s new book *The US Labor Market*
It is an edited collection, I have an essay on inequality in the volume. Here is the Amazon link. Here is the book’s home page, which includes a full, free pdf. There are many famous contributors, including Jason Furman and Betsey Stevenson, Martin Feldstein, Justin Wolfers, Glenn Hubbard, George Borjas, Melissa Kearney, Casey Mulligan, and others. Here is Strain’s introduction and an organization of the book in sections. Self-recommending!
Arrived in my pile
Sebastian Mallaby, The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan.
Self-recommending, I will start it as soon as possible.
*Common Sense Economics*
The third edition is now out, and the authors are James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni H. Ferrarini, and Joseph P. Calhoun.
Self-recommending, this is a very good introduction to economics for say a smart high school student who reads books. Sadly, more and more politicians and indeed professional Ph.d. economists need this wisdom too.
Shopping at the Strand with Michael Orthofer
How should one approach an overwhelming bookstore, namely the famous Strand in New York City? Where to start, which books should you discard, and how do you make those final choices? What if you could pick only three books to take home?
Michael Orthofer and I spent an hour together in the store, and our interaction was distilled into this 7:59 video. Self-recommending! And kudos to Jeff Holmes for doing the real work.
Here is my Conversations with Tyler dialogue with Michael Orthofer, the man who wants to read everything.
Friday assorted links
1. Do you have a doppelganger? The chance is higher than you might think.
2. What do scientists report as some of the main problems facing science? Hint: one of them is “not enough money.”
3. Why pharma opposes pot legalization: “…in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant…”
4. Mike Pence’s economic voting record.
5. Is Britain done as a Western power? And the Financial Times and Cardiff Garcia do an overrated vs. underrated podcast with me, starts at 8:15. (Self-recommending.)
6. From last year, my chat with Peter Thiel.
The Great Chocolate Boom
The explosive growth of a mass market for chocolate from the 1880s transformed the world cocoa economy more radically than at any other time in history. The consumption of chocolate increased more rapidly than that of either coffee or tea in the West, and prices held up better…World imports of cocoa beans grew ninefold between 1870 and 1897, whereas those of tea doubled, and those of coffee rose only by about half…Consumption of cocoa per head rose by a factor of nearly six in Britain between 1870 and 1910, while that o f tea did not even double, and that of coffee actually fell by half.
That is William G. Clarence-Smith in the new, excellent, and self-recommending The Economics of Chocolate, edited by Mara P. Squicciarini and Johan Swinnen.
The Paradox of Disclosure
From Sunita Sah (NYT):
Disclosure can also cause perverse effects even when biases are unavoidable. For example, surgeons are more likely to recommend surgery than non-surgeons. Radiation-oncologists recommend radiation more than other physicians. This is known as specialty bias. Perhaps in an attempt to be transparent, some doctors spontaneously disclose their specialty bias. That is, surgeons may inform their patients that as surgeons, they are biased toward recommending surgery.
My latest research, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that patients with localized prostate cancer (a condition that has multiple effective treatment options) who heard their surgeon disclose his or her specialty bias were nearly three times more likely to have surgery than those patients who did not hear their surgeon reveal such a bias. Rather than discounting the surgeon’s recommendation, patients reported increased trust in physicians who disclosed their specialty bias.
Remarkably, I found that surgeons who disclosed their bias also behaved differently. They were more biased, not less. These surgeons gave stronger recommendations to have surgery, perhaps in an attempt to overcome any potential discounting they feared their patient would make on the recommendation as a result of the disclosure.
Surgeons also gave stronger recommendations to have surgery if they discussed the opportunity for the patient to meet with a radiation oncologist. This aligns with my previous research from randomized experiments, which showed that primary advisers gave more biased advice and felt it was more ethical to do so when they knew that their advisee might seek a second opinion.
The piece is…self-recommending!
My Conversation with Cass Sunstein
There is audio, video, and transcript at the link. I introduced Cass like this:
The Force is strong with this one. Cass is by far the most widely cited legal scholar of his generation. His older book, Nudge, and his new book on Star Wars are both best sellers, and he was head of OIRA [Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] under President Obama from 2009 to 2013. Powerful, you have become.
So tonight I’d like to start with a survey of Cass’s thought. We’re going to look at legal theory and then go to Nudge and then consider Star Wars, how it all ties together, and then we’re going to talk about everything.
On every point Cass responded clearly and without evasion. We talked about judicial minimalism, Bob Dylan’s best album, the metaphysics of nudging, Possession, the ideal size of the Supreme Court, the wisdom of Yoda, Hayek, why people should choose their own path, the merits of a banned products store, James Joyce, why the prequels are underrated, and which of the first six movies is the worst of the lot. Here is one bit:
COWEN: Let’s take a concrete example from real life: Jedi mind tricks. Obi-Wan comes along and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” And what does the stormtroooper do? He goes away. Now, is that a nudge?
SUNSTEIN: No, it’s a form of manipulation. So — .
[laughter]
COWEN: OK, but how do you draw the metaphysical categories? It seems like a nudge that just happens to work all the time.
SUNSTEIN: OK. I’ll give you a quick and dirty way of getting at that…
Here is another:
COWEN: If you were to pick one character from Star Wars who would nudge you — you get to elect them; you’re the only vote. Even Samantha doesn’t get a vote, just Cass — not your children — which character would you pick? Whom would you trust with that nudge? It’s a universe full of Jedi here, right?
SUNSTEIN: Yoda.
COWEN: Yoda?
SUNSTEIN: I trust that guy.
COWEN: But I worry about Yoda.
SUNSTEIN: I trust him.
Finally:
SUNSTEIN: Thank God for libertarian paternalism, that Luke has a choice. The Sith, by the way, like the Jedi, respect freedom of choice. In the crucial scene in Episode III where the question is whether Anakin is going to save the person who would be emperor, he says, “You must choose.” And so there’s full respect for freedom of choice. Nudgers have that. Good for them.
COWEN: Bad guys always tell you the deal, and then they say, “Choose evil.” It seems the good guys always mislead you.
There’s this funny tension. Star Wars makes me more nervous about nudge. I’m not like this huge anti-nudge guy, but when I look at Obi-Wan and Yoda lying to Luke — “Ben, Ben, Ben, why didn’t you tell me?” How many times have I heard that in these movies?
…SUNSTEIN: It’s fair to ask whether Obi-Wan and Yoda had it right.
There is much, more more…self-recommending!
https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/cass-sunstein-star-wars-nudge-a7c874f3ce8c#.am5grz4nh
*Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China*
That will be the new Fuchsia Dunlop book, due out in October, July in the UK, self-recommending. Her work is far more than recipes, but rather an extended meditation on food, history, culture and many other things. She is one of my favorite authors on any subject. Here is previous MR coverage of Fuchsia Dunlop.
The Stigler Center at the University of Chicago now has a blog
Here is a Luigi Zingales post, “Why this blog?”:
By gathering information on the nature and cost of this subversion of competition, by distributing this information among the public at large, and by making this information salient, media outlets can reduce the power of vested interests. By exposing the distortions created by special interests, they can create the political demand for a competitive capitalism.
This is the goal of our Pro-Market blog: to educate the public about the many ways competition can be subverted. In this exercise our only goal is to make the market system work better. In the finest University of Chicago tradition, we will do it with data. We will try to do it with the rigor of the best academic work, but without the pedantry that often accompanies it. This blog will collect opinions, summarize work, and report on relevant research by Chicago faculty and Stigler fellows. We will use every medium at our disposal, because the message is our medium.
Self-recommending…
What I’ve been reading
1. Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture. A genuinely good and fun introduction to South Korea today.
2. Clyde Prestowitz, Japan Restored: How Japan Can Reinvent Itself and Why This is Important for America and the World. A not-absurd view of how Japan could be fully back on its feet by 2050. Imagine a Japan which employs women at an especially high rate, moves almost completely to green energy independence, and revitalizes its investment and corporate governance; I found the chapter on “Englishnization” least plausible, however.
3. Leila S. Chudori, Home. A classic Indonesian novel, recently translated, about Indonesian exiles in Paris, post-1965, and how they are unable to cut their emotional ties with the homeland. If you are only going to read a few Indonesian novels, this should be one of them.
4. David Stubbs, Future Days: Krautrock and the Birth of a Revolutionary New Music. Self-recommending.
5. Frits Gierstberg, European Portrait Photography Since 1990. Mostly photos, not much text, the artists include Rineke Dijkstra, Jurgen Teller, Thomas Ruff, Nikos Markou, Anders Petersen, and Clare Strand. This book made a strong impression on me, and I find it to be one of the best meditative tools for thinking about what Europe really is these days. By the way, the under-representation of Islam (not popular with collectors?) is striking.
My conversation with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Here is the video, the podcast, and the transcript. Kareem really opened up. Here is the summary:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joins Tyler Cowen for a conversation on segregation, Islam, Harlem vs. LA, Earl Manigault, jazz, fighting Bruce Lee, Kareem’s conservatism, dancing with Thelonious Monk, and why no one today can shoot a skyhook.
Maybe you think of Kareem as a basketball player, but here is my introduction:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of America’s leading public intellectuals. I would describe him as an offshoot of the Harlem Renaissance, and what he and I share in common is a fascination with the character of Mycroft Holmes, the subject of Kareem’s latest book — and that of course, is Sherlock Holmes’s brother.
Here is Kareem:
I did know Amiri [Baraka]. I think the difference is I believe in what happened in Europe during what they call the Enlightenment. That needs to happen to black Americans, absolutely a type of enlightenment where they get a grasp of what is afflicting them and what the cures are.
I think that the American model is the best in the world but in order to get everybody involved in it we have to have it open to everyone. That hasn’t always been the case.
The most under-appreciated Miles Davis album?
For me [Kareem], the most under-appreciated one is Seven Steps to Heaven. And that shows, I think, Miles’ best group. There’s a big argument, what was Miles’ best group, the one that had Cannonball Adderley, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Philly Joe Jones and Red Garland or Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter?…number two is Porgy and Bess.
He cites Chester Himes as the underappreciated figure of the Harlem Renaissance. And Kareem thinks like an economist:
It [my instruction] was going well with Andrew Bynum, but Andrew finally got to sign his contract for $50 million, and then at that point Andrew thought that I didn’t know anything and that he didn’t have to listen to me, and we don’t know where Andrew is right now.
Read or hear also his very interesting remarks on Islam, and where its next Enlightenment is likely to come from, not to mention Kareem on the resource curse and of course his new book (and my Straussian read of it). And Kareem on his favorite movies, starting with The Maltese Falcon. Self-recommending!
Best non-fiction books of 2015
These are in the order I read them, more or less, not in terms of preference. And I would say this year had more good entries than ever before. Here goes, noting that most of the links go to my earlier reviews of them:
First, here are the economics books:
Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect, by Joshua D. Angrist and Jörn Steffen-Pischke, technically late 2014 but it was too late to make that list.
Dani Rodrik, Economics Rules.
Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics. Self-recommending.
Garett Jones, The Hive Mind. Why national IQ matters.
Scott Sumner, The Midas Paradox. Boo to the gold standard during the Great Depression.
Greg Ip, Foolproof: Why Safety Can be Dangerous, and How Danger Makes Us Safe.
And the rest, more or less the non-economics books:
Robert Tombs, The English and Their History.
R. Taggart Murphy, Japan and the Shackles of the Past. The last section is brilliant on current Japanese politics.
Michael Meyer, In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China. Adam Minter has a very good and useful review of a good book.
Ian Bostridge, Schubert’s Winter Journey. Will improve your listening.
The Mahabarata, by Carole Satyamurti. Rewritten and edited to be easier to digest, intelligible and rewarding. As “an achievement,” this book does have some claim to be number one.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers. You can never read enough commentary on the Torah.
Daniel Tudor and James Pearson, North Korea Confidential, how things really work there (speculative), rain boots for instance are a fashion item and black markets are rife.
Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, a good general history of the country.
Guantánamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. He’s a very smart guy.
Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
Sebastian Strangio, Hun Sen’s Cambodia. Goes deep into a place most people are ignoring.
Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People. The Nordics, that is.
Timothy Snyder, Black Earth. He succeeded in writing an original book about the Holocaust, which is hard to do.
Emmanuel Todd, Who is Charlie? Background on France being screwed up.
Niall Ferguson, Henry Kissinger, vol. I. Background on America being screwed up.
Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane. How to talk, think, and write about the British countryside.
Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. The best of the various recent books on Humboldt.
Frank McLynn, Genghis Khan. Background on a whole bunch of other places being screwed up.
Daniel P. Todes, Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science. I didn’t have time to read all of this book, but it seemed very good in the fifth or so I was able to read. By the way, the whole salivating dog at the bell story is a fiction.
Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War, readable and useful.
Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: At her Zenith: In London, Washington, and Moscow, vol.2 of the biography, 1984-1987. This one I haven’t finished yet. I ordered my copy advance from UK Amazon, it doesn’t come out in the U.S. until early January. There is some chance this is the very best book of the year.
I don’t quite see a clear first prize. If I had to pick, I would opt for a joint prize to the biographies of Musk, Kissinger, Thatcher, and Genghis Khan. This was the year of the biography.
Sorry if I forgot yours, this list is imperfect in various ways! And the year isn’t over yet, so I’ll post an update on the very good books I read between now and the end of the year, probably on December 31.