Results for “best non-fiction”
144 found

What I’ve been reading

1. Tom Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve.  Fun, engaging, and informative, worthy of the “best of the year non-fiction” list.

2. China Miéville, Embassytown.  The first of his novels that has clicked with me, perhaps because it is the one that comes closest to being a true novel of ideas, Heideggerian ideas in this case.  A new prophecy is needed, and the nature of the new prophecy, like the old, will be shaped by language.  Just accept that upon your first reading you won’t enjoy the first one hundred pages and you should at some point go back and read them again.

3. Yuri Herrara, Signs Preceding the End of the World.  Sometimes considered Mexico’s greatest active writer, this novella draws upon the Juan Rulfo-Dante-Dia de los muertos tradition to create a convincing moral universe in 128 pages.  I find this more vivid and arresting than Cormac McCarthy’s treatment of the other side of the border.

4. The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.  This book filled in a number of gaps in my knowledge, plus it is engaging to read.  Overall it confirmed my impression of major advances in the science, but not matched by many medical products for general use.

The other books I read weren’t as good as these.

What caught my attention in 2015

This was the year when it became clear that much of Eastern Europe probably won’t end up as free societies.  It’s not just semi-fascism in Hungary.  Poland and Slovakia, arguably the two most successful economies and societies in Eastern Europe, took big steps backward toward illiberal governance.  How can one be optimistic about the Balkans?  I imagine a future where African and North African refugees are bottled up there, and Balkan politics becomes slowly worse.  As for Ukraine, a mix of Russia and an “own goal” has made the place ungovernable.  Where is the bright spot in this part of the world?

Nothing good happened in China’s economy, although more fingers have been inserted into more dikes.  I am not hopeful on the cyclical side, though longer term I remain optimistic, due to their investments in human capital and the growing importance of scale.

I have grown accustomed to the idea that Asian mega-cities represent the future of the world — have you?

Syria won’t recover.

This was the year of the rise of Ted Cruz.

It was an awful year for movies, decent but unpredictable for books.  The idea that Facebook and social media rob the rest of our culture of its centrality, or its ability to find traction, is the default status quo.  Not even that idea has gained much traction.  Cable TV started to receive its financial comeuppance.  Yet on the aesthetic side, television is at an all-time peak, with lots of experimentation and independent content provision, all for the better.  I suspect this is one reason why movies are worse, namely brain drain, but I am hoping for longer-run elasticities of adjustment into the broader talent pool.

Against all odds, Homeland was excellent in its fifth season.

I became even more afraid to move my cursor around a web page, and in terms of content, more MSM sites became worse than better.  Banning photos would solve twenty percent of this problem.

Stephen Curry and Magnus Carlsen were the two (public) individuals I thought about the most and followed the most closely.  Each has a unique talent which no one had come close to before.  For Curry it is three point shooting at great range and with little warning; for Carlsen it is a deep understanding of the endgame as the true tactical phase of chess, and how to use the middlegame as prep to get there.  It wasn’t long ago Curry’s weapons were “trick” shots, perhaps suitable for the Harlem Globetrotters; similarly, players such as Aronian thought Carlsen’s “grind ’em down” style could not succeed at a top five level.  Everyone was wrong.

But here’s what I am wondering.  Standard theory claims that with a thicker market, the #2 talents, or for that matter the #5s, will move ever closer to the #1s.  That is not what we are seeing in basketball or chess.  So what feature of the problem is the standard model missing?  And how general is this phenomenon of a truly special #1 who breaks some of the old rules?  Does Mark Zuckerberg count too?

I realized Western China is the best part of the world to visit right now.  The food trends where I live were Filipino and Yemeni, which I found welcome.  Virginia now has a Uighur restaurant in Crystal City, and the aging San Antonio Spurs continue to defy all expectations.  Kobe Bryant, who “ranks among the league’s top 5 percent of shot-takers and its bottom 5 percent of shot-makers,” has redefined the retirement announcement, among other things.

Top curling teams say they won’t use high-tech brooms.  Just wait.

AnandCarlsen

What I’ve been reading

1. Deep South, by Paul Theroux.  It’s OK enough, but Theroux’s best writing was motivated by bile and unfortunately he has matured.  Still, he can’t get past p.9 without mention Naipaul’s “rival book” A Turn in the South.  My favorite Theroux book is his Sir Vidia’s Shadow, a delicious story of human rivalry and one of my favorite non-fiction books period.

2. Elmira Bayrasli, From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places.  A well-written, completely spot on analysis about how the quality of the business climate needs to be improved in emerging economies, and about how much potential for entrepreneurship there is.  If economists were to do nothing else but repeat this message, the quality and usefulness of our profession likely would rise dramatically.

3. Michael White, Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir.  Nominated in the non-fiction National Book Award category, I actually enjoyed reading this one, all of it except the parts about…Vermeer.  It’s better as a memoir of alcoholism and divorce, interspersed with visits to art museums.

Tom Gjelten’s A Nation of Nations is an interesting “immigration history” of Fairfax County.  I enjoyed Deirdre Clemente’s Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style.

Jennifer Mittelstadt’s The Rise of the Military Welfare State is a useful history of how a social welfare state for the military was first created, for recruitment purposes, and then  later dismantled.

I recommend L. Randall Wray’s Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist, forthcoming in November.  Minsky isn’t so readable, but Wray is.  I’ve just started my review copy, I hope to report more on it soon.

Don’t Fear the CRISPR

I’m honored to be here guest-blogging for the week. Thanks, Alex, for the warm welcome.

I want to start with a topic recently in the news, and that I’ve written about in both fiction and non-fiction.

In April, Chinese scientists announced that they’d used the CRISPR gene editing technique to modify non-viable human embryos. The experiment focused on modifying the gene that causes the quite serious hereditary blood disease Beta-thalassemia.

You can read the paper here. Carl Zimmer has an excellent write-up here. Tyler has blogged about it here. And Alex here.

Marginal Revolution aside, the response to this experiment has been largely negative. Science and Nature, the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, reportedly rejected the paper on ethical grounds. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, announced that NIH will not fund any CRISPR experiments that involve human embryos.

NIH will not fund any use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos. The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes has been debated over many years from many different perspectives, and has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.

This is a mistake, for several reasons.

  1. The technology isn’t as mature as reported. Most responses to it are over-reactions.
  2. Parents are likely to use genetic technologies in the best interests of their children.
  3. Using gene editing to create ‘superhumans’ will be tremendously harder, riskier, and less likely to be embraced by parents than using it to prevent disease.
  4. A ban on research funding or clinical application will only worsen safety, inequality, and other concerns expressed about the research.

Today I’ll talk about the maturity of the technology. Tomorrow I’ll be back to discuss the other points. (You can read that now in Part 2: Don’t Fear Genetically Engineered Babies.)

CRISPR Babies Aren’t Near

Despite the public reaction (and the very real progress with CRISPR in other domains) we are not near a world of CRISPR gene-edited children.

First, the technique was focused on very early stage embryos made up of just a few cells. Genetically engineering an embryo at that very early stage is the only realistic way to ensure that the genetic changes reach all or most cells in the body. That limits the possible parents to those willing to go through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). It takes an average of roughly 3 IVF cycles, with numerous hormone injections and a painful egg extraction at each cycle, to produce a live birth. In some cases, it takes as many as 6 cycles. Even after 6 cycles, perhaps a third of women going through IVF will not have become pregnant (see table 3, here). IVF itself is a non-trivial deterrent to genetically engineering children.

Second, the Chinese experiment resulted in more dead embryos than successfully gene edited embryos. Of 86 original embryos, only 71 survived the process. 54 of those were tested to see if the gene had successfully inserted. Press reports have mentioned that 28 of those 54 tested embryos showed signs of CRISPR/Cas9 activity.

Yet only 4 embryos showed the intended genetic change. And even those 4 showed the new gene in only some of their cells, becoming ‘mosaics’ of multiple different genomes.

From the paper:

~80% of the embryos remained viable 48 h after injection (Fig. 2A), in agreement with low toxicity of Cas9 injection in mouse embryos  […]

ssDNA-mediated editing occurred only in 4 embryos… and the edited embryos were mosaic, similar to findings in other model systems.

So the risk of destroying an embryo (~20%) was substantially higher than the likelihood of successfully inserting a gene into the embryo (~5%) and much higher than the chance of inserting the gene into all of the embryo’s cells (0%).

There were also off-target mutations. Doug Mortlock believes the off-target mutation rate was actually much lower than the scientists believed, but in general CRISPR has a significantly non-zero chance of inducing an unintended genetic change.

CRISPR is a remarkable breakthrough in gene editing, with applications to agriculture, gene therapy, pharmaceutical production, basic science, and more. But in many of those scenarios, error can be tolerated. Cells with off-target mutations can be weeded out to find the few perfectly edited ones. Getting one complete success out of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of modified cells can suffice, when that one cell can then be replicated to create a new cell line or seed line.

In human fertility, where embryos are created in single digit quantities rather than hundreds or thousands – and where we hope at least one of those embryos comes to term as a child – our tolerance for error is dramatically lower. The efficiency, survivability, and precision of CRISPR all need to rise substantially before many parents are likely to consider using it for an unborn embryo, even to prevent disease.

That is, indeed, the conclusion of the Chinese researchers, who wrote, “Our study underscores the challenges facing clinical applications of CRISPR/Cas9.”

More in part two of this post on the ethics of allowing genetic editing of the unborn, and why a ban in this area is counterproductive.

Assorted links

1. The detailed program for the Coase conference, late March in DC.

2. The concept of tipping is spreading.

3. I am very happy to see my former Ph.D student, Shawn DuBravac, who recently finished his degree, at #10 on the NYT non-fiction bestseller list.  His book Digital Destiny is here.

4. “The most unforgivable sin in the world,” Mr. McKuen told The Washington Post in 1969, “is to be a best-selling poet.”  An excellent obituary.

5. Paul Krugman on how blogging is changing, or not.

6. “Semanas atrás, durante un viaje a Panamá, el economista estadounidense Tyler Cowen estaba aburrido y se puso a ver en la TV un viejo partido de básquet de 1980 entre Los Angeles Lakers y Portland.

7. Can you have a Chinese Communist Party without an ideology?

Top Ten MR Posts of 2014

Here is my annual rundown of the top MR posts of 2014 as measured by page views, tweets and shares.

1. Ferguson and the Debtor’s Prison–I’d been tracking the issue of predatory fining since my post on debtor’s prisons in 2012 so when the larger background of Ferguson came to light I was able to provide a new take on a timely topic, the blogging sweet spot.

2. Tyler’s post on Tirole’s win of the Nobel prize offered an authoritative overview of Tirole’s work just when people wanted it. Tyler’s summary, “many of his papers show “it’s complicated,” became the consensus.

3. Why I am not Persuaded by Thomas Piketty’s Argument, Tyler’s post which links to his longer review of the most talked about economics book of the year. Other Piketty posts were also highly linked including Tyler’s discussion of Rognlie and Piketty and my two posts, Piketty v. Solow and The Piketty Bubble?. Less linked but one of my personal favorites was Two Surefire Solutions to Inequality.

4. Tesla versus the Rent Seekers–a review of franchise theory applied to the timely issue of regulatory restrictions on Tesla, plus good guys and bad guys!

5. How much have whites benefited from slavery and its legacy–an excellent post from Tyler full of meaty economics and its consequences. Much to think about in this post. Read it (again).

6. Tyler’s post Keynes is slowly losing (winning?) drew attention as did my post The Austerity Flip Flop, Krugman critiques often do.

7. The SAT, Test Prep, Income and Race–some facts about SAT Test Prep that run contrary to conventional wisdom.

8. Average Stock Returns Aren’t Average–“Lady luck is a bitch, she takes from the many and gives to the few. Here is the histogram of payoffs.”

9. Tyler’s picks for Best non fiction books of 2014.

10. A simple rule for making every restaurant meal better. Tyler’s post. Disputed but clearly correct.

Some other 2014 posts worth revisiting; Tyler on Modeling Vladimir PutinWhat should a Bayesian infer from the Antikythera Mechanism?, and network neutrality and me on Inequality and Masters of Money.

Many posts from previous years continue to attract attention including my post from 2012, Firefighters don’t fight fires, which some newspapers covered again this year and Tyler’s 2013 post How and why Bitcoin will plummet in price which certainly hasn’t been falsified!

What I’ve been reading

1. Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov, The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, A Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia.  Blends fiction, non-fiction, and occasional social science (was a non-corrupt transformation of the Soviet Union really possible?, Gaidar ultimately decided it wasn’t), but in terms of the subjective experience of the reader it is most like a novel.  Excellent and also entertaining.  I consider this a deep book about why liberalism will never quite win over human nature.  Here is an interesting Julian Barnes review, although in my opinion it is insufficiently appreciative.

2. Kenneth D. Durr, The Best Made Plans: Robert R. Nathan and 20th Century Liberalism.  I may be biased because I just gave a talk at the Nathan Foundation and received it as a gift copy.  I call this the “real history of economic thought.”  It’s a look at the career of a man who worked with Simon Kuznets to improve gdp statistics, helped lead the war effort in the 1940s, supported the civil rights movement, founded a major economic consulting firm, and supported the idea and practice of economic development, most of all for South Korea and Myanmar.  It’s a splendid look at twentieth century economics as it actually influenced the world, without centering the story on academia.  By the way, here is Diane Coyle on Walter Lippmann.

3. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings.  This account of 1970s Jamaica, centered on a plot to shoot Bob Marley, shows a remarkable amount of talent, as well as a mastery of plot construction and different novelistic voices, some of which are in Jamaican patois.  If you pick up this book you will be impressed and indeed many of the reviews are glowing.  Yet somehow never did I care, feel entertained, or wish to read further.  I stopped.  I remain interested in that era, but will instead recommend a viewing — or reviewing — of The Harder They Come or Marley.

4. John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element.  That element would be Providence, and this work looks at how Scholastic insights can serve as a foundation for economic thought.  Loyal MR readers will know that is not exactly my brew, but some of you will find this of interest.

What I’ve been reading

1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720, edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller.  A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text.  Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly, “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.”  Recommended to anyone with an interest in the economic history of bubbles.

2. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain.  An engaging and well written book about Thomas Macaulay’s father Zachary and then Thomas himself, focusing on themes of slavery, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and empire, not to mention the education of children.  A good read on why some strands of liberalism hit such a dead end when confronted with the realities of the British empire.

3. Iain MacDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future.  A clear and conceptually argued account of Ferguson’s thought, which will convince you he is not the lightweight of the Scottish Enlightenment.  Starting with a comparison with Montesquieu, MacDaniel emphasizes Ferguson as a critic of the idea of progress and a historical pessimist, focusing on issues of war and martial virtue.  This book is also useful for understanding the subtleties of Smith on the ancients vs. the moderns and why he was more sanguine about Britain than about the Romans (no slavery, for one thing).

4. John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.  One of the world’s greatest Bach conductors is also one of the greatest Bach writers, with an emphasis on the vocal music and also what we know about Bach’s life.  Especially noteworthy is the lengthy case for the John Passion and the discussion of the B Minor Mass.  Definitely worthy of the “best books of the year” list and perhaps in the top tier too.  I’m not going to liberate this volume, I am going to keep it.

My favorite things China

1. Novel: Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian.  Parts of Dream of the Red Chamber are splendid, but it is hard to keep track of the whole thing and also I wonder whether any of the available editions in English are satisfactory.

2. Movie: The Story of Qiu Ju.  A real charmer.

3. Comedian: Jackie Chan.

4. Movie, set in, but not a Chinese movie: How about TranssiberianShanghai Noon?  Are any of those old movies set in China any good?

5. Book, non-fiction: James Fallows, China Airborne.  I am also a fan of the book where the guy drives a car around China.  The Private Life of Chairman Mao is a stunner, maybe the best book I know on tyranny.

6. Book, set in, fiction (not by Chinese author): Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China.  Pearl Buck I find boring.

7. Sculpture: Tang horses, some images are here.

8. Contemporary Chinese artist: Cai Guo-Qiang, images here.  His one man show at the Guggenheim is one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen.  Try this video, apologies for the ad at the beginning.

9. Chinese traditional music: I am interested in Chinese opera, but don’t quite feel I’ve heard the real thing.  I once heard an electrified performance, but my sense is the music is all about the timbre and needs to be heard in an nowadays-almost-impossible-to-achieve setting, given that I am not a 17th century Chinese noble.  Any advice?  By the way, here is a good article on recent developments in Chinese (semi-classical) music.

10. Cookbooks: Fuchsia Dunlop’s two Chinese cookbooks are not only two of the best cookbooks ever they are two of the best books ever.

11. Best book about Chinese fiction: Sabina Knight, Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction.  This short book is a marvel of economy, substance, and style.

12. Pianist: Yundi Li, try this video of Chopin’s 2nd Scherzo.

13. Architect: I.M. Pei.  We have friends who live in a Pei-designed house, and it is splendid.

14. Movie director: John Woo was born in China.  The Killer might be his best movie, but Once a Thief is arguably the most underrated.  WindTalkers is quite good too and also underrated.

I am not counting either Hong Kong or Taiwan for these categories.  I also am not counting American-born, ethnic Chinese, such as Maya Lin.  And J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai, but what category do I put him in?

What I’ve been reading

1. Dave Prager, Delirious Delhi: Inside India’s Incredible Capital.  An excellent book on India, an excellent book on a city, and an excellent book on Delhi, all rolled into one.  Unlike many travel books, it tells you a lot about the city.  Here is a short excerpt.  I believe it does not yet have full availability in the United States; order it from the first link above, the author tells me that the current Amazon link is actually a fraud.

2. Katerina Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941.  A detailed and insightful revisionist look at Soviet culture during that period, asking whether it really can all be boiled down to communism or if there was more behind it and it turns out there was.

3. David Roodman, Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance.  Puts microfinance into a broader historical perspective, balanced and insightful throughout, informationally dense, recommended.  A good model for many other non-fiction books.

4. Michael Erard, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.  A fun and useful book, you can take the subtitle literally.  You need to ignore the very weak material on neurodevelopmental issues.

5. John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent.  Unlike George Steiner’s claim, this is not comparable to Tolstoy.  Still, it is an excellent if uneven 1920s novel that ought to be read more widely.  The best passages are frequent and striking.  The bottom line is that I can imagine someday reading it again.  If you are tempted, give it a try.

There is also the self-explanatory Emrys Westacott, The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits.

Assorted links

1. Kevin Drum reviews TGS.  And Lane Kenworthy.  And Nick Schulz at Forbes: "It’s possible the most important non-fiction book this year won’t be published on paper."

2. Megan on the 1954 kitchen.  And "densifying" to get more low-hanging fruit, from Ryan Avent.  And more from Scott Sumner on the book: "Tyler Cowen’s book has been both a marketing coup and an intellectual game changer.  It has gotten people to focus on issues they intuitively knew were out there, but for which they lacked a framework for thinking about."

3. Eric Falkenstein on TGS.

4. "Mobile money," in Kenya.

5. Index method?  why not just read the thing?

6. Do "Best Actress" winners have shorter marriages?

7. More on Iceland vs. Ireland.

*The Return*

The author is Daniel Treisman and the subtitle is Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev.  Is this the first non-fiction book to be making my "Best of 2011" list?  Most of all, it argues persuasively that, rather than botching the transition away from communism, the Russians/Soviets did a remarkably good job, relative to what could have been expected.  It's also the best all-round book-length treatment of what the subtitle indicates and it is readable as well.  Excerpt:

But [under Putin] did the bureaucracy become more effective and the population safer?  The state certainly grew.  In Putin's eight years as president, about 363,000 additional bureaucrats were hired, mostly federal agents stationed in the regions.  Law enforcement mushroomed.  In the United States, there are two judges and prosecutorial employees per 10,000 residents.  When Putin took over, Russia had eight; when he left, it had fourteen.  Federal spending on law enforcement and national security rose from $4 billion in 1998 to $26 billion in 2007.

Despite this influx of resources, most indicators suggest the state became less, not more, effective.  It built less housing, paved fewer roads, and laid fewer water mains and gas lines per year than under Yeltsin.  The number of public schools and buses in service fell faster than before.  Reforms of the education and health systems were repeatedly postponed…As for keeping citizens safe, few saw any improvement.

Here is a recent review of the book from the WSJ; I liked the book more than he did.

Observations about Rio

I'm no expert on Rio, but I have visited the city twice, have taken a favela tour, been in a police vs. drug gang shoot out (not as a shooter), and read quite a few books about the place, so here are my observations on the latest events:

1. The authorities will not win until they have a superior ability to supply local public goods in the favelas.  That is a ways away.  (The broader lesson is you should not take in more immigrants than you can supply local public goods for, and that is why fully open borders is not a good idea in every setting.)

2. On a day-to-day basis, the police are outmatched in terms of weaponry and also will to win.  The military cannot remain deployed forever and a tank cannot rule a neighborhood.  I am skeptical about current victory claims, which from my comfortable perch in Fairfax I suspect are temporary at best.

3. Sometimes the Rio police push out the drug gangs, but the alternative is paramilitary groups which then run the drug trade.  (Those groups, by the way, employ a lot of former policemen.)  A police victory is not always the solution.  Here are the different types of police in Brazil.

4. The Brazilian state has extended its governance, throughout the country, much less than you might think.  The current battles are, among other things, an exercise in nation-state building, which historically has not come easily to most regions.  Furthermore relying on the military for a (partial) victory is in the longer run a double-edged sword, especially in a nation with a history of military coups and military rule.

5. For a different and now shocking look at Rio (the hills are mostly empty), watch the stunning 1959 film Black Orpheus.  Very good trailer here.

6. One of my favorite non-fiction books is Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, highly recommended.

7. The Brazilians are now building high-speed rail between Rio and Sao Paulo.