Results for “best book” 1835 found
*Modern Paraguay: South America’s Best Kept Secret*
There should be more books serving as introductions to individual countries, and this one, written by Tomás Mandl, is a fine entry in the genre.
…Paraguay was South America’s first country to get electricity, railroads, and an iron foundry.
The Triple Alliance War of 1864-1870:
Although available data and sources remain contested, estimates put the figure at 25 percent of the Paraguayan population killed on the lower end, and upwards of 60 percent on the higher end…
For purposes of contrast, Poland during WWII saw “only” about 20 percent of the population killed.
Under Stroessner, the torture centers were neither secret nor undercover. And:
The clear pattern post-Stroessner is one of mild support for democracy: While in 2017 more Paraguayans agreed with the claim “democracy is preferable” than in 1995 (55 percent versus 52 percent, respectively), the average for the period was 46 percent….When Latinobarómetro asked Paraguayans to assess their country’s political regime on a range where 1 is “not democratic” and 10 is “fully democratic,” they have responded “5” consistently in almost every year of the twenty-first century.
With mandatory voting the average turnout rate is about 66 percent in recent times. And:
Notably, the largest center for Paraguayan studies is located in Argentina.
I enjoyed this sentence:
Unfamiliarity with Paraguay is not new.
Paraguay has very low FDI even by Latin American standards, it is typically rated as the most corrupt country on the continent, and a common saying is “¿Con factura o sin factura?”
Highly recommended, you can pre-order here, and yes the author does speak Guarani and he does also know the Solow growth model and why Singapore is interesting.
The new Michela Wrong book
It is called Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, and so far it is very good. Here is one bit:
As a Rwandan psychologist once told me: “To show emotional reserve is considered a sign of high standing. You do not just pour out your heart in Rwanda. You do not cry. It’s the opposite of Western oversharing, a form of stoicism.
A culture that glories in its impenetrability, that sees virtue in misleading: to someone proposing to write a nonfiction account embracing many of the most controversial episodes in Rwandan history, it posed a bit of a challenge.
Recommended, I will continue reading, and this one is likely to make the “best non-fiction of the year” list.
Best movies and films of 2020
I categorize them on the basis of when I watch them, so there is always some slippage at the beginning and the end of the year, all the more for foreign films, which can come to the U.S. as much as a year or two later than their original release dates. Of course this year was very different and there was hardly anything wonderful from Hollywood. Here is the list, as usual in the order I saw them:
Monos, Spanish-language, Lord of the Flies-type elements.
The Guilty, Danish police story, mainly talk, limited settings, really good.
Just 6.5, Iranian war on drugs movie, brutal at times, culturally fascinating.
The Wedding Plan, a few years older, a Rama Burshtein movie, imagine an Israeli woman setting out to get married by a particular date no matter what.
Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy. I think you need to have a preexisting connection to Mexico and Mexican food to enjoy it. I do.
Graduation, 2016 Romanian movie about trying to cheat on your kid’s exam. Excellent.
An American Pickle, Straussian critique of the Woke.
Tenet, if only to see a blockbuster again.
Cuties, yes it was really good, even if sometimes uncomfortably exploitative in its treatment of the source material, namely dancing young teen girls.
My Octopus Teacher, god-awful sentimental and storified, but everyone loved it.
The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, set in Cameroon, about cross-cultural differences.
Chez Jolie Coiffure, set in a Brussels hair salon, women from Cameroon and DRC talk to each other, from the same director as Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, they make a nice set piece and are both quite short.
The Wild Goose Lake, set in Wuhan, a kind of Chinese noir, you have to already like Chinese cinema for this one.
Talking About Trees, Sudanese movie about the reopening of cinema.
Lovers Rock, Small Axe, Jamaican emigres in 1980 London.
Usually I put this list out later in the year, but what is the point of waiting?
Favorite books by female authors
Elena Ferrante named her top forty, and I am not sure I approve of the exercise at all. Still, here are my top twenty, in no particular order, fiction only, not counting poetry:
1.Lady Murasaki, Tale of Genji.
2. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
3. Alice Munro, any and all.
4. Elena Ferrante, the Neapolitan quadrology.
5. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook.
6. Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis trilogy.
7. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
8. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
9. Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter.
10. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
11. Virginia Woolf, many.
12. Willa Cather, My Antonia.
13. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
14. Jane Austen, Persuasion.
15. Anne Rice, The Witching Hour, and #2 in the vampire series.
16. Anaïs Nin? P.D.James? A general award to the mystery genre?
17. Christa Wolf, Cassandra.
18. Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian.
19. Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise.
20. Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness.
Comments: No, I didn’t forget George Eliot, these are “my favorites,” not “the best.” Maybe Edith Wharton would have made #21? Or Byatt’s Possession? The other marginal picks mostly would have come from the Anglosphere. I learned my favorite Latin American writers are all male.
What is the single best volume to read on China?
I do not know! But this is one of the questions I receive most often, after “Can we have more of Tyrone?”, and “What do you mean by “Straussian”?”
I do find that Michael Wood’s new The Story of China: A Portrait of a Civilization and its People is a plausible contender for this designation. Consistently interesting, substantive, and conceptual, but without over-interpreting for the sake of imposing a narrative straitjacket.
Due out November 17, I am pleased I paid the extra shipping costs to get it from the UK.
Might you all have alternative suggestions for a single best book on China?
How do you shop for books in a bookstore?
Jason emails me:
I would be interested to read on your blog about how you would shop for books in Daunt (or any good bookstore, but Daunt since you mentioned it). Is there method to your browsing/do you ask for recommendations, etc. Is there a person there who you particularly rate? It sounds basic but I think readers would be interested in knowing your approach. I live in London and too often walk out of a bookstore with books I have already heard about rather than taking a chance on something new.
Daunt has about seven or eight main “pressure points” near the very front of the store, and they are easy to find, and that is where you should look for your books. My key advice for Daunt is simply to have a basket, and/or an arrangement with the front desk that you can rest your accumulating pile of books there while you continue to look for more.
The basement floor of Daunt is organized by country, rather than by genre of book, and each visit you should scour at least two country sections for new (or older) items of interest. Overall I find that “by country” is a better to organize the back titles than what any other bookstore does. So, for instance, Chinese fiction is put next to Chinese history, not next to other fiction.
What makes the Marylebone branch of Daunt the best bookstore is how they organize the store, and the quality of selections they put on the front tables, not the overall number of titles.
Making random purchases of featured fiction, if it looks vaguely intelligent, is not crazy in Daunt, yet it would be in literally any American bookstore, or even in Waterstone’s in London (another superb store, go to the Piccadilly branch, but use it for history and biography not fiction).
If you are in a Barnes and Noble, mostly focus on finding the “new non-fiction” section, which these days is increasingly difficult to come across and ever-smaller.
*False Alarm*, the new book by Bjorn Lomborg
The subtitle is How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
I agree with the author’s claim that climate change is not an existential risk for humanity. Still, both the title and subtitle bother me. The alarm does not seem to be a false one, even if many of the worriers make grossly overstated claims about the end of the earth. And right now “climate change panic” is not costing us “trillions,” rather virtually all countries are failing to reduce their carbon emissions and most are not even trying very hard.
There should be more of a focus on the insurance value of avoiding the worst plausible scenarios, which are still quite bad. There is no argument in this book which overturns the Weitzman-like calculations that preventive measures are desirable.
I can report that the author endorses a carbon tax, more investment in innovation, and greater adaptation, with geoengineering as a back-up plan, more or less the correct stance in my view.
There is much in this book of value, and the criticisms of the exaggerated worriers are mostly correct. Still, the oppositional framing of the material doesn’t seem appropriate these days, and Lomborg will have to choose whether he wishes to be “leader of the opposition,” or “provider of the best possible message.” Or has he already chosen?
Zachary Booker on bridge loans and bankruptcy
This is an email, all from him, I won’t add in any other formatting:
“Like you, I have an extraordinarily deep concern about the capacity for businesses – not only SMBs, but also larger, capital-intensive firms – to weather this path of suppression. I was quite surprised to hear Russ take a lighter note.
…I am deeply sceptical of the efficacy of bridge loans that you spoke about early this morning. While Brunnermeier, Landau, Pagano, and Reis have laid out the best transmission mechanism, I can not possibly envision it will move the needle enough for the majority of those businesses while also not leaving a wake of loss provisions for future generations. I suppose you could say I am partial to point two in your piece.
I also simply can’t understand the legal logistics of bridge loans in this scenario. Most companies will have a capital structure of some kind (perhaps without the most sophisticated lenders). How are you cramming down those who you are priming in the capital structure? You need consent. Who will be managing this incredibly laborious process of gaining consent and creating the terms? Cash grants are one thing, but bridge loans that aren’t unsecured at the bottom of the capital structure are an entirely different matter.”
“While the benefit of hindsight can be a hindrance to pontificating on novel circumstances, it strikes me as unequivocally true that the GFC had a much simpler – intellectually, if not politically – solution. Namely a solution that at its core involved taking known, marketable securities out of the system at haircuts or depressed valuations to abate panic, settle markets, and of course eventually sell at a profit.
In short, I’m partial to the view that mark-to-market accounting was both a central impetus for why the crisis was so severe and why action could be taken so decisively without burdening tax payers for generations to come (see Ball’s very good book here and Fragile by Design, both of which you’re likely familiar with). This crisis provides no such “simple” solutions that can be concentrated against a singular sector of the economy by taking decisive action.
I, of course, have no grand unified theory to share with you. However, I did want to pass along some thoughts I had upon reading your bridge loan piece that came to mind.
Like you, I am also worried about how broad the demand shock is currently and will be moving forward. Affecting not only every industry severely, but also every locality in the economy (e.g. leaving no state or municipality without deep, painful bruises). This raises the question of how the economy – when this is all said and done – reconstitutes itself in an orderly, efficient fashion.
While I’m partial…I believe one of the incredible strengths of the United States is its bankruptcy code. In particular, the out-of-court and Chapter 11 processes.
I would perhaps mull over how the United States can leverage the bankruptcy code to provide support, both out-of-court (e.g. before filing) and to expedite the process while in-court (e.g. by utilizing pre-packs, which are very popular, very quick, and incredibly effective at providing sustainable balance sheets).
The United States could explore offering – or backstopping – DIP Financing for firms that file Chapter 11 (see explainer on DIP financing from Davis Polk here). DIP Financing has been around for many decades, is incredibly safe, and deeply effective.
- The US could offer DIP Financing at favourable terms directly and automatically under preset conditions (e.g. a firm that was FCF positive in 2018 with EBITDA +$[10]mln, but needing to file Chapter 11 in 2020, would immediately get a facility at L+[100]). This would also give the US the highest seniority in the cap stack with very favourable terms upon a potential future Chapter 11 (Chapter 22) or a future Chapter 7 (liquidation). For firms that have not been in distress prior to the crisis, this would have the US assuming very little real credit risk.
- The US could backstop private DIP providers – to get credit rolling again – by guaranteeing [95] cents on the dollar for any facility extended within the next [X] months. Historically, DIPs have returned much more than this so this is reasonably safe from a credit perspective. Note: this could also be done for TL1s or revolvers out-of-court. Same principle applies regarding seniority, lessened credit risk, etc. although you’d need consent down the capital structure.
- The United States could explore offering participation in pre-packs whereby:
- The US would inject $[X]mln in senior secured notes if;
- Existing Senior Secured take a [5]% haircut
- Unsecured take a [15]% haircut
- Equity take a [50]% haircut
- Again, the idea would be for pre-packs to be, well, pre-done. The idea would be that if your business is hurling towards bankruptcy, it may be best to bite the bullet and recapitalize (via the US notes) while re-working your balance sheet right now. If your firm meets the FCF, EBITDA, or whatever criteria is determined then the US would offer this package automatically. Contingent only on those within the capital structure consenting to taking at least [X]% haircuts (as consent is required by law). Note: you may want to say that any financing put in – or backstopped by – the US will not be additive to the covenant ratios underpinning the rest of the capital structure (or these covenants can just be amended, if necessary, to allow for this new capital injection as is commonplace anyway).
- The United States could explore offering participation in pre-packs whereby:
One would hope that if The United States does something like this it could serve three useful functions:
- Providing confidence to market participants that there will be a financing backstop – for otherwise healthy firms blindsided by COVID-19 – by the United States, which will likely have the paradoxical affect of freeing up credit from private participants and stopping the explosion in credit spreads and the halting of credit extension we’re currently seeing.
- Allowing firms, without much relative credit risk to the United States, to obtain a runway through the fresh injection of capital along with a modest restructuring that will help them weather the storm if it is to be prolonged.
- Providing an automatic, guaranteed solution that is widely accessible to firms as all qualifications and terms would be preset and thus remove any uncertainty as to what firms would be able to qualify for or ultimately obtain.
Using the bankruptcy code in this way would allow the United States to help firms (albeit, likely slightly larger ones than mom-and-pops) in a predictable, known, guaranteed way while also protecting tax payers from taking significant downside risk positions in an ad-hoc and convoluted matter via bridge loans (if they are feasible at all, which I doubt). In short, the United States would leverage the incredibly strong institutional and intellectual framework of its existing bankruptcy code.
I believe – as I believe you do as well – that we are in for a much lengthier protraction than many anticipate…I do not believe Goldman’s forecast…that we’ll see 13% GDP growth in Q3. I do not believe demand will return so quickly or in such force, because I do not believe we will return to normalcy as quickly as we have just departed it.
As I said previously, I have no grand unified theory to get American business through this crisis. However, we both agree in the general goodness of Big Business as a driver of America. What I’ve just laid out is perhaps the most politically palpable solution (because it involves bankruptcy, even if only in name only) that can give a strong life line to those currently in need while not exposing taxpayers to absurd (albeit still large) credit risk. This solution also can be worked to protect pension liabilities and other essential worker benefits.
I think it’s inevitable that we have mass insolvencies, dislocations, and mismatches moving forward. For small businesses, there are solutions around the edges, but I simply cannot comprehend how the United States would be able to figure out and then extend the appropriate levels of credit via bridge loans en masse to these folks. It is surreal to imagine it possibly working and I worry deeply about what such a program – if tried, almost certainly with less dollars than would be required – would do to the social fabric and psyche of the American people when firms inevitably still buckle and break.
I haven’t given much thought to how to leverage the institutional framework of America to best ameliorate this crisis, but I’ve seen no one speak much about how out-of-court or in-court restructuring could be a partial solution. So I figured I’d pass this along as something to keep in the back of your mind and mull over.”
Zachary tells me you can reach him at [email protected].
How can you best volunteer?
David Brooks writes:
If you know someone who lives alone ask them to join NextDoor, which is Facebook for neighborhoods. It helps them stay in touch with those right around them. Vital in a crisis.
I am not familiar with that project, but I would trust David’s judgment in such matters. How else can people volunteer usefully, especially if they do not wish to leave their homes? Keep in mind that useful volunteering is also a good way to keep people occupied and at home!
Please do leave your suggestions in the comments. if nothing else, even “placebo volunteering” could be highly worthwhile. I will put up some of the best ideas in a later post.
In praise of art books
Running out of things to read? Do you ever have the sneaky feeling that books might be overrated? Well, for some variation at the margin try reading art books. That’s right, books about art. Not “how to draw,” but books about the content and history of art. Some of them you might call art history, but that term makes me a little nervous. Just go into a good art museum, and look at what they are stocking in their bookstore. Many of them will be picture books, rather than art history in the narrower, more scholarly sense of that word.
Art books offer the following advantages:
1. They are among the best ways to learn history, politics, and yes science too (advances in art often followed advances in science and technology). Even economic history. Since the main focus is the art, they will give you “straight talk” about the historical period in question, rather than trying to organize the narrative around some vague novelty that only the peer reviewers care about.
2. They are often very pretty to look at. You also feel you can read them in small bites, or you can read only a single chapter or section. The compulsion to finish is relatively weak, a good thing. You can feel you have consumed them without reading them at all, a true liberation, which in turns means you will read them as you wish to.
3. They have passed through different filters than most other books, precisely because they are often “sold into the market” on the basis of their visuals, or copyright permissions, or connection with a museum exhibit, or whatever. Thus they introduce variation into your reading life, compared to say traditional academic tomes or “trade books,” which increasingly are about gender, race, and DT in an ever-more homogenized fashion.
4. They are among the best ways of learning about the sociology of creativity and also “the small group theory” of history.
5. These books tend not to be politically contentious, or if they are it is in a superficial way that is easily brushed off. (Note there is a whole subgenre of art books, from theory-laden, left-wing presses, with weird covers, displayed in small, funky Manhattan or Brooklyn bookstores where you can’t believe they can make the rent, where politics is all they are about. Avoid those.)
6. A bookstore of art books is almost always excellent, no matter how small. It’s not about comprehensiveness, rather you can always find numerous books there of interest.
7. Major reviewing outlets either do not cover too many art books, or they review them poorly and inaccurately. That suggests your “marginal best book” in the art books category is really quite good, because you didn’t have an easy means to discover it.
8. You might even wish to learn about art.
9. This whole genre is not about assembling a reading list of “the best art books.” Go to a good public library, or museum bookstore, and start grabbing titles. The best museum bookstore I know of is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
10. It is also a very good introduction to the histories and cultures of locations such as China and India, where “straight up” political histories numb you with a succession of names, periods, and dynasties, only barely embedded in contexts that make any sense to you.
*Serious Noticing*, the new James Wood book
The subtitle is Selected Essays 1997-2019, here is one excerpt:
A genre is hardening. It is becoming possible to describe the contemporary ‘big, ambitious novel’. Familial resemblances are asserting themselves, and a parent can be named: Dickens. Such recent novels as Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, DeLillo’s Underworld, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth overlap rather as the pages of an atlas expire into each other at their edges.
The big contemporary novel is a perpetual motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish stillness, as if ashamed of silence. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, and these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all costs. Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are concerned.
I do not love the big, ambitious novel, as portrayed here. As for Wood, the best parts of this book are excellent, and none of the lesser parts would seem to lower the sustainable growth rate of gdp.
Best movies 2019
I am happy to recommend these selections, the links going to my earlier remarks about them:
Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse (animated)
Campernaum (Ethiopian refugee in Beirut)
Us
Ash is Purest White (Chinese, obscure)
High Life (best science fiction movie of the year?)
Long Day’s Journey into Night (big screen only, Chinese obscure)
Woman at War (Icelandic, wacky)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (duh)
Booksmart (full of energy on the screen)
Echo in the Canyon (L.A. music scene in the 1960s and beyond)
The Farewell (American-Chinese, about a dying relative)
Honeyland (Macedonian, about bee keepers)
Inside Bill’s Brain (Bill Gates, short documentary)
Parasite (Korean, the Straussian reading is anti-egalitarian)
JoJo Rabbit (modern-day anti-Nazi comedy, mostly they pull it off)
Marriage Story
The Rise of Skywalker
A Hidden Life
From those my top picks would be Marriage Story — the American redo of Scenes from a Marriage, and then Honeyland. Overall it was a much better year for movies than last year.
As for marginal choices, Ad Astra and Knives Out were two movies I liked, and came close to making this list, but didn’t.
As for historic cinema, I am very glad I purchased the complete Blu-Ray set of Ingmar Bergman movies, spectacular transfers and the American viewer can watch the true, complete version of Persona for the first time.
As for the rest of the year, I have high hopes for The Souvenir, Little Women and also the new Adam Sandler movie, but I have not yet seen them. The documentary For Sama has potential too.
What am I forgetting?
Facebook and privacy
Oops, this blog post isn’t about Facebook at all! Here goes:
Records and interviews show that colleges are building vast repositories of data on prospective students — scanning test scores, Zip codes, high school transcripts, academic interests, Web browsing histories, ethnic backgrounds and household incomes for clues about which students would make the best candidates for admission. At many schools, this data is used to give students a score from 1 to 100, which determines how much attention colleges pay them in the recruiting process.
Admissions consulting companies charge schools tens of thousands of dollars a year to collect and analyze the data of millions of students. In emails reviewed by The Post, employees of Louisville-based Capture Higher Ed urged school administrators to hand over all data they felt comfortable sharing.
“We love data, so the more the merrier,” one of Capture’s consultants wrote in a 2017 email to the admissions director at UW-Stout.
The more the merrier! And did you know that The New York Times will sell subscriber data about you?
Here is the full article, via the excellent Samir Varma.
The two must-read books on Pakistan
Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country.
Christophe Jaffrelot, The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience.
They won’t make my best of the year list, because neither is fresh out, but they are two of the best books I have read this year, Lieven being a reread.
*Talking to Strangers*, the new Malcolm Gladwell book
Definitely recommended, talking to strangers is one of the most important things you do and it can even save your life. This book is the very best entry point for thinking about this topic. Here is a summary excerpt:
We have strategies for dealing with strangers that are deeply flawed, but they are also socially necessary. We need the criminal justice system and the hiring process and the selection of babysitters to be human. But the requirement of humanity means that we have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. That is the paradox of talking to strangers. We need to talk to them. But we’re terrible at it — and, as we’ll see in the next two chapters, we’re not always honest with each other about just how terrible at it we are.
One recurring theme is just how bad we are at spotting liars. On another note, I found this interesting:
…the heavy drinkers of today drink far more than the heavy drinkers of 50 years ago. “When you talk to students [today] about four drinks or five drinks, they just sort of go, “Pft, that’s just getting started,'” the alcohol researcher Kim Fromme says. She says that the heavy binge drinking category now routinely includes people who have had twenty drinks in a sitting. Blackouts, once rare, have become common. Aaron White recently surveyed more than 700 students at Duke University. Of the drinkers in the group, over half had suffered a blackout at some point in their lives, 40 percent had had a blackout in the previous year, and almost one in ten had had a blackout in the previous two weeks.
And:
Poets die young. That is not just a cliche. The life expectancy of poets, as a group, trails playwrights, novelists, and non-fiction writers by a considerable margin. They have higher rates of “emotional disorders” than actors, musicians, composers, and novelists. And of every occupational category, they have far and away the highest suicide rates — as much as five times higher than the general population.
It also turns out that the immediate availability of particular methods of suicide significantly raises the suicide rate; it is not the case that an individual is committed to suicide regardless of the means available at hand.
Returning to the theme of talking with strangers, one approach I recommend is to apply a much higher degree of arbitrary specificity, when relating facts and details, than you would with someone you know.
In any case, self-recommending, this book shows that Malcolm Gladwell remains on an upward trajectory. You can pre-order it here.