Results for “What I've Been Reading”
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What I’ve been reading

1. Jordan Mechner, The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993.  A memoir and game development journal from a game developer.  The content is foreign to me, but this is one of the most beautiful and artistic books I ever have seen and I suspect some of you will find the narrative gripping.  A product of Stripe Press — “Ideas for Progress.”

2. Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions.  This book is a series of lectures, based on Sachs’s earlier work on economic geography and development, yet somehow with a vaguely Yuval Harari sort of glow.  Some parts are a good introduction to the earlier work of Sachs, other parts are pitched a bit too low or too generally.  It is strange to see chapter subheadings such as “Thalassocracy and Tellurocracy.”  As an economist, I still maintain that Sachs is considerably underrated.

3. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi.  Yes this is a work of fiction.  Clarke of course wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a very long novel that I have read twice, an odd mix of fantasy, science, magic, and Enlightenment esotericism, the only novel I know with fascinating footnotes.  I was thrilled to receive this one, and on p.51 I am still excited.

4. Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs.  The hot new novel from Japan, it comes with a Murakami rave endorsement.  To me it seems like “ordinary feminism” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and so far it is a bore.  If it doesn’t get better soon, I’ll write it off as a “mood affiliation text,” not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It probably makes most sense read in a very specific cultural context.

5. Douglas Boin, Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome is a fun look at one part of ancient history through alternative eyes.  I always wonder what to trust about this era other than primary sources, and if you can’t understand them or grasp them intelligibly maybe that is itself the correct inference, namely that we have no idea what the **** went on back then.  Still, as imaginary reconstructions go, this is one that ought to be done and now it is.

6. Ryan Patrick Hanley, Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life.  Smith as a practical moral philosopher, this short volume pulls out the side of Smith closest to Montaigne and the Stoics.  You can ponder Smithian sentences such as “The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another.”

7. Sonia Jaffe, Robert Minton, Casey B. Mulligan, Kevin M. Murphy, Chicago Price Theory.  A very good intermediate micro text, patterned after how Econ 301 is taught at Chicago.  Apparently in the current Coasean equilibrum, this book ends up published by Princeton University Press.  Get the picture?

From a legal perspective there is Ron Harris, Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700.

What I’ve been reading

1. Ethan Sherwood Strauss, The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty.  On top of everything else this is an excellent book on management, and the random events along the way to making a team (the Warriors once wanted to trade both Curry and Thompson for Chris Paul).  Kevin Durant ends up as the fall guy, recommended to those who care.

2. Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World — and Globalization Began.  Worth reading, my favorite part was the discussion of how Cahokia in Mississippi was connected to the Mayans.  And Chichen Itza is probably the world’s best preserved city from the year 1000.

3. Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.  “Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz’s own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought.”

4. Alaine Polcz, One Woman in the War: Hungary 1944-1945.  I am surprised this book is not better known.  I found it deeper and more gripping than many of the more broadly recommended wartime memoirs, such as Viktor Frankl.  And more honest about the toll of war on women.

5. Adam Thierer, Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments.  A very good libertarian, “permissionless innovation” look at tech.

I have browsed Judith Herrin’s Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe, and it seems to be the definitive book on the early history of that city (one of my favorite one-day visits in the whole world).

What I’ve been reading

1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, quite a good book.

2. Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell, Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp and Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995. Imagine a book with both Vannevar Bush and Maurice Hilleman as leading and indeed intersecting characters.  How is this for a sentence?: “Hilleman had spent his boyhood on a farm on which the German-American tradition was to “work like hell and live by the tenets of Martin Luther.””

3. John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health.  A little boring, and not conceptual enough, but is anything on this topic entirely boring at the current moment in time?  Nonetheless this is a very useful overview and survey of public health issues in American history, and so I do not hesitate to recommend it.

4. Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.  Remarkably fair-minded and substantive, here is my blurb: “”Who are the Never Trumpers, what do they want, and what are their stories? Robert P. Saldin and Steven Teles have produced the go-to work on a movement that will likely prove of enduring influence in American politics.”  Here is a relevant Atlantic article by Saldin and Teles.  Recommended.

5. Anne Enright, Actress: A Novel. A subtle Irish story of a woman telling the tale of her now-departed famous, charismatic mother and her career in the theater.  Unpeels like an onion as you read it, and reveals successively deeper layers of the story, it would make my “favorite fiction of the year” list pretty much any year.  But please note it has not have the “upfront attention-grabbing style” that many of us have been trained to enjoy.

What I’ve been reading

1. Nicholas Hewitt, Wicked City: The Many Cultures of Marseille.  Every city should have a good book about it, and now Marseille does.  I would say you have to already know the city, however, to appreciate this one.

2. Peter Johnson, Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959.  British Columbia had a quarantine station that late, and this is its story.  Leprosy, smallpox, and meningitis are a few of the drivers of the narrative.  It continues to startle me how much pandemics and quarantines are a kind of lost history, though they are extremely prominent in 19th century fiction.

3. Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story.  Probably the best history of the company were are going to get, at least for the earlier years of the company.  Even the jabs at the company seem perfunctory, for the most part this is quite objective as a treatment.

4. Katie Roiphe, The Power Notebooks.  Power, sex, dating, and romance, but surprisingly substantive.  Much of it is written in paragraph-long segments, and willing to be politically incorrect.  “Rebecca West: “Since men don’t love us nearly as much as we love them that leaves them a lot more spare vitality to be wonderful with.”

5. Sean Masaki Flynn, The Cure That Works: How to have the World’s Best Healthcare — at a Quarter of the Price.  A look at how to translate ideas from Singapore’s health care system into the United States.  It overreaches, but still a useful overview and analysis.

6. Paul R. Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, The Siberian City of Science.  Imagine the Soviets trying to build a “city of science,” and meeting problem after problem.  Yet “Marchuk acknowledged that in a number of fields researchers had contributed to…the speeding up of scientific technological progress.  The physicists built synchroton radiation sources with broad applications; the biologists tacked plant and animal husbandry with vigor; the mathematicians, computer specialists, and economists were engaged in modeling and management systems.”

What I’ve been reading

1. David Nutt, Drink? The New Science of Alcohol + Your Health.

A very good introduction to the growing body of evidence about the harms of alcohol, in all walks of life.

2. Samuel Zipp, The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World.

Who cares about Wendell Willkie? I received this review copy determined not to read it, but of course I could not help but crack open the cover and sample a few pages, and then I was hooked.  The first thirty pages alone had excellent discussions of early aviation (Willkie was an aviation pioneer of sorts with a cross-world flight), Midwestern family and achievement culture of the time, and the rise of the United States.

3. I was happy to write a blurb for Michael R. Strain’s The American Dream is Not Dead (But Populism Could Kill It).

4. Simon W. Bowmaker, When the President Calls: Conversations with Economic Policymakers.

The interviewed subjects include Feldstein, Boskin, Rubin, Summers, Stiglitz, Rivlin, Yellen, John Taylor, Lazear, Harvey Rosen, Goolsbee, Orszag, Brainard, Alan Krueger, Furman, Hassett, and others.

4. Cheryl Misak, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers.

Thorough and useful, though not exciting to read.

5. Gabriel Said Reynolds, Allah, God in the Qur’an.

A very good treatment of what it promises, with an emphasis on the concept of mercy in Islam.

6. Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia.

A wonderful book if you care about the lost pianos of Siberia and indeed I do: “Roberts reminds us in this fresh book that there are still some mysterious parts of our world.” (link here)  Also of note is Varlam Shalamov, Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories, the first third being remarkably moving and incisive as well.

There is also Sidney Powell and Harvey A. Silverman, Conviction Machine: Standing Up to Federal Prosecutorial Abuse is a frank and brutal documentation of why you should never trust a prosecutor or speak to the FBI.

Also new and notable is Lily Collison, Spastic Diplegia–Bilateral Cerebral Palsy: Understanding the Motor Problems, Their Impact on Walking, and Management Throughout Life: a Practical Guide for Families.

What I’ve been reading

1. Lane Kenworthy, Social Democratic Capitalism.  A very smart, well-written, well-argued book, and an argued book indeed it is.  As the title suggests, Kenworthy tries to persuade the reader to embrace social democratic capitalism, but with an emphasis on what government can do, not the market.  One rebuttal: responding to the Swiss experience requires far more than the two short paragraphs on pp.105-106, and furthermore Switzerland has done very well in many sectors above and beyond being a financial safe haven (which in some regards hurts those other sectors through exchange rate effects).

Laurence Louër, Sunnis and Shi’a: A Political History of Discord.  Captures the complexities, and in fact pulls the reader away from the usual tired dichotomy.

Neil Price, A History of the Vikings: Children of Ash and Elm.  I have only browsed this book, yet it appears to have much more information about the Vikings than other books I know, yet without getting squirrelly.  That said, I find it difficult to connect books on the Vikings with the broader conceptual narratives I know, and thus I do not retain their content very well.  So I am never sure if I should read another book on the Vikings.

John Took’s Dante is the book to read on Dante after you’ve read all the other books (an interesting designation, by the way, I wonder how many areas have such books?  In most cases, if you’ve read all the other books you shouldn’t bother with the next one!).

Fred Kaplan, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, is not a secret history, but it is a good general overall introduction to its chosen topic.

Dietrich Vollrath, Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy is a Sign of Success is now out, my previous review is at that link, an excellent book on economic growth and it will make my best of the year list.

What I’ve been reading

Randy Shaw, Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America.  A YIMBY book, with good historical material on San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other locales involved in the struggle to build more.

Conor Daugherty, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America.  Coming out in February, this is a very good book about the YIMBY movement and its struggles, with a focus on contemporary California, written by a NYT correspondent.

Jennifer Delton, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism.  Why don’t more books fit this model: take one topic and explain it well?

Economists, Photographs by Mariana Cook, edited with an introduction by Robert M. Solow.  Self-recommending.  Interestingly, I recall an old University of Chicago calendar of economist photographs, still buried in my office somewhere, with pictures of Frank Hyneman Knight, Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, and others.  At least in terms of personality types, as might be revealed through photographs, the older collection seems to me far more diverse.  Or is the homogenization instead only in terms of photograph poses?

Michael E. O’Hanlon, The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes.  A very useful practical book about what options a U.S. government would have — short of full war — to deal with international grabs by China or Russia.  There should be thirty more books on this topic (#ProgressStudies).

Christopher Caldwell, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.  This is both a very old thesis, but these days quite new, namely the claim that 1965 and the Civil Rights movement created a “new constitution” for America, at variance with the old, and the two constitutions have been at war with each other ever since.  It will be one of the influential books “on the Right” this year, I already linked to this Park MacDougald review of the book.

Robert H. Frank, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work.  From the Princeton University Press catalog: “Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. It reveals how our environments encourage smoking, bullying, tax cheating, sexual predation, problem drinking, and wasteful energy use. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet—mainly because that’s what friends and neighbors do.”

What I’ve been reading

Chris W. Surprenant and Jason Brennan, Injustice For All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System.  A good and clear introduction to exactly what the title promises.  Possible reforms are “End Policing for Profit,” “Stop Electing Prosecutors and Judges,” “Required Rotation of Public Defenders and Prosecutors,” and others.

Laurence B. Siegel, Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance.  A Julian Simon-esque take on the nature and benefits of economic growth and progress.

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution traces how Washington created a cabinet more than two years into his first term, and modeled after the military councils of the Continental army.

Maxine Eichner, The Free-Market Family: How the Market Crushed the American Dream (and How It Can Be Restored). There are so many anti-market books floating around these days, but this one is more likely to be true than most (the book is not as exaggerated as the subtitle).  The author takes too much of a “kitchen sink” approach for my taste, and doesn’t carefully enough consider trade-offs (U.S. as Finland is not actually a dream), but still I would rather spend time with this book than most of what is coming out these days.

Peter Andreas, Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs, does a good job of restoring drugs and alcohol to their rightful place in the history of war.

What I’ve been reading

1. Ben Cohen, The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks.  An intelligent popular social science book covering everything from Stephen Curry to Shakespeare to The Princess Bride, David Booth, Eugene Fama, and more.  I am not sure the book is actually about “the hot hand” as a unified phenomenon, as opposed to mere talent persistence, but still I will take intelligence over the alternative.

2. Richard J. Lazarus, The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court.  A genuinely interesting and well-presented history of how climate change became a partisan issue in the United States, somewhat broader than its title may indicate.

3. Ryan H. Murphy, Markets Against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private.  The book has blurbs from Bryan Caplan and Scott Sumner, and I think of it as an ecological, historically reconstructed account of the demand for irrationality as it relates to the environment, interest in “do-it-yourself,” and the love for small scale enterprise.  Interesting, but overpriced.

4. Juan Du, The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City.  An actual history, as opposed to the usual blah-blah-blah you find in so many China books.  The author has a background in architecture and urban planning, and stresses the import of the Pearl River Delta before Deng’s reforms (Shenzhen wasn’t just a run-down fishing village), decentralization in Chinese reforms, and fits and starts in the city’s post-reform history.  Anyone who reads books on China should consider this one.

Gordon Teskey, Spenserian Moments, The Master is finally receiving his poetic due.

Toby Ord’s forthcoming The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity is a comprehensive look at existential risk, written by an Oxford philosopher and student of Derek Parfit.

What I’ve been reading

Roderick Floud, An Economic History of the English Garden.  Every page of this book does indeed have economics.  It just does not have interesting economics.  Which may mean that gardens are not so interesting from an economic point of view.  Which in turn would make this a good book.  But not an interesting book.

Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India.  A critique of casteism and growing inequality, this book also doubles as a fascinating history of IIT.  Best read in Straussian fashion as a sympathetic story of origins.

Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion & The Future of Clothes.  Some parts of this book have bad economics and extreme mood affiliation, but in general it has more actual information than other books on the same topic and at times the author makes decent external cost arguments against the current system of clothes production.  So a qualified recommendation, at least I am glad I read it, even though some parts are obviously too sloppy.

Razeen Sally, Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Island.  People do not think enough about Sri Lanka, including in the social sciences!  It is a richer and nicer country than what most people are expecting, and it is good for studying both conflict and ethnic tensions.  This memoir — information rich rather than just blather — is one good place to get you started.

David Goldblatt, The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-First Century.  Football meaning soccer of course, this book covers how soccer interacts with politics in many particular countries, including Africa, and just how much the game has grown in global markets.  Mostly informative, good if you wish to read a book about this topic (I don’t).

Conversations with Zizek.  Maybe the best introduction to why Žižek is a richer thinker than his critics allege?  The book serves up insights on a consistent basis, and there is a minimum of jargon.  Marcus Pound had a good blurb: “Audacious and vertiginous, this book is everything one expects from him, a heady mix of psychoanalysis, politics, theology, philosophy, and cultural studies that will leave the reader both exhausted and exhilarated.”

What I’ve been reading

Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner, and Henry M. Paulson, editors, with Nellie Liang.  First Responders: Inside the U.S. Strategy For Fighting the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis.  Too many people will judge this volume by its editors, for better or worse.  In reality, almost everything here is by other people, and well-informed ones too.  This is one of the best comprehensive books on the crisis, and it is usefully organized by topic (“Crisis-Era Housing Programs,” or say Jason Furman on fiscal policy).  I haven’t read through the whole thing, but there is a good chance this is the best overall volume on the response to the crisis, though again I suspect opinions on the book will follow whatever opinions the reviewers have of the editors.

Justin Marozzi, Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization.  Did the Islamic Middle East invent the notion of a truly splendid city?  This book makes the case for yes, starting with 7th century Mecca, moving to Damascus, Baghdad, and Cordoba, and finishing in 21st century Doha, “City of Pearls.”

Todd S. Purdum, Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution.  Of course the music is worth learning about, but this volume is also a splendid take on managerial teamwork in a duo.

Greta Thunberg, No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. Some of her speeches, transcribed.  Call me crazy, but I think of her and Donald Trump as the two great orators of our generation, regardless of what you think of their content.

Vicky Pryce, Women vs. Capitalism: Why We Can’t Have It All in a Free Market Economy.  Compared to what, I am inclined to ask?  Still, if you are looking for a readable book on how and why capitalism does not lead to gender equality, this is now the place to go.

Matthew D. Adler’s Measuring Social Welfare: An Introduction is a very good take on its chosen topic.

What I’ve been reading and browsing

1. Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.  I read this one straight through, it does more to bring the Aztecs (a misnomer, by the way, as it is technically the name of the military alliance…a bit like referring to “NATO people”) to life than any other book I know.

2. Daniel M. Russell, The Joy of Search: A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the Basics.  I don’t need this, but I suspect useful for many.

3. Thomas O. McGarity, Pollution, Politics, and Power: The Struggle for Sustainable Electricity.  A very useful of the last four decades of transformation in the electricity industry.

4. Norman Lebrecht, Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World 1847-1947.  An informative and engaging account of what the title promises (you can learn more about Heine and Alkan and Moholy-Nagy).  Nonetheless the author never really addresses the question of why that period was quite so remarkable for Jewish achievement, relative to the rest of world history.

5. Edmund Morris, Edison.  Lots of impressive research, but this book didn’t have the emphasis on innovation and institutions that I was looking for.

There is also Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.

What I’ve been reading

C. Bradley Thompson’s America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, is a beautifully written history of exactly what the title and subtitle claim.

Also noteworthy is Richard Brookhiser, Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Essays, a kind of companion volume.  Can you beat the title, especially given world trends today?

Eric Schwitzgebel, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.  Collected essays, interesting throughout, and among other points Schwitzgebel shows that ethicists do not in fact behave better than other human beings, higher rates of vegetarianism aside.

I do not have time to read David Abulafia’s The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, but based on a browse it is 918 pp. of substance on everything from the Polynesians to the monsoon to sailing across the Atlantic, and then some.

I am a big fan of Yuval Levin, and now he has a new forthcoming book A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.

What I’ve been reading

Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent.  A very nice history of earlier post-war European migration, such as Turks and Greeks moving to West Germany, Cape Verdeans settling in Portugal, and so on.  Excellent background for the current debates.

Cristiano Bianchi and Kristina Drapić, Model City Pyongyang.  An excellent picture book, mostly of architecture, presenting Pyongyang as yet another installment in the 20th century series of deeply weird cities.

Jason Lyall, Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War.  Perhaps the most thorough look at how cohesion has made some armies and fighting forces stronger than others.  For instance there is a chapter “African World Wars: Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo on the Modern Battlefield.”  I view this more as a cohesion story than an “inequality” story (current U.S. forces seem pretty sharp), in any case a good integration of military history with modern social science.

Paul Blustein, Schism: China, America and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System.  Given the import and timing on the topic, I am surprised this book has not received more attention.  It is “more boring” than Blustein’s earlier works, such as on Argentina, but full of facts and substance on every page.  For now it is the go-to book on this topic.

Four very good books!

What I’ve been reading

Thomas J. Campanella, Brooklyn: The Once and Future City. More detailed than what I am looking for on this topic at 552 pp., but some of you will find this an interesting resource.

Nicholas Lemann, Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream.  Lots of mood affiliation in this one, but the chapter on finance economist Michael Jensen and his longstanding connection with “guru” Werner Erhard is excellent material you cannot find elsewhere.

Tom Segev, A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion.  I read about one-third of this one.  A fine book, beautifully written, but somehow too much of the material felt familiar given other accounts I had consumed.

Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Innovation and Equality: How to Create a Future That is More Star Trek and Less Terminator.  A very useful 131 pp. introduction to those issues, most of all arguing that a future full of innovation does not have to push inequality to untenable levels.

Matthew Gale and Natalia Sidlina, Natalia Goncharova.  The images in this book I found mind-blowing, claiming a place for Goncharova as one of the very best artists of her time (and what a time for the visual arts it was).

Edward Snowden, Permanent Record.  Starts slow, but an interesting read no matter what you think of him, most of all of how one can step by step be led to actions one did not originally intend.  I thought his own case for what he did was weaker than I had been expecting.  Embedding it in an “the internet used to be so much better” narrative doesn’t help.  Nonetheless, I read through to the end eagerly.