Results for “best non-fiction”
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Comedy recommendations

Steve Hely writes to me:

I'm a real admirer of your blog.  You offer such great recommendations.  But it seems you rarely recommend any comedy.  Are there any books, TV shows, movies, etc. that have made you laugh in recent years?

It's well-known that comedy hits don't usually export well to other countries, because comedy is so culturally specific and also so subjective.  So these are not recommendations.  What I find funny is this:

1. On TVCurb Your Enthusiasm and the better ensemble pieces of Seinfeld and also The Ali G Show.  The best Monty Python skits are very funny to me, although I find their movies too long and labored.  I find stand-up comics funny only when I am there in person.

2. Movies: The last funny movie I saw was I Love You, Man.  I like most classic comedies, though without necessarily finding them very funny.  Danny Kaye's The Court Jester is a good comedy which most people don't watch any more.  I enjoy the chaotic side of W.C. Fields in short doses.  Jerry Lewis is funny sometimes, plus there is Pillow Talk.  I like the first forty minutes or so of Ferris BuellerStardust Memories is my favorite Woody Allen film, though I like many of them.

3. Books: I don't find books of fiction funny, blame it on me.  I do find David Hume, and other classic non-fiction authors, to be at times hilarious.

On YouTube, I find the economics comic Yoram Bauman funny.  Colbert can be very funny.

I wonder how many dimensions are required to explain or predict a person's taste in comedy?

What is emblematic of the 21st century?

A recent reader request was:

What things that are around today are most distinctively 21st century?  What will be the answer to this question in 10 years?

Here is what comes to mind and I think most of it will remain emblematic for some time:

Technology: iPhone, Wii, iPad, Kindle.  These are no-brainers and I do think it will go down in American history as "iPhone," not "iPhone and other smart phones."  Sorry people.

To read: blogs and Freakonomics, this is the age of non-fiction.  I don't think we have an emblematic and culturally central novel for the last ten years.  The Twilight series is a possible pick but I don't think they will last in our collective memory.  Harry Potter (the series started 1997) seems to belong too much to the 1990s.

Films: Avatar, Inception (for appropriately negative reviews of the latter, see here, here, and here).  Both will look and feel "of this time."  Overall there have been too many "spin-off" movies.  Keep in mind this question is not about "what is best."

Music: It's been a slow period, but I'll pick Lady Gaga, most of all for reflecting the YouTube era rather than for her music per se.  I don't think many musical performers from the last ten years will become canonical, even though the number of "good songs" is quite high.  Career lifecycles seem to be getting shorter, for one thing.

TelevisionThe Sopranos starts in 1999, so it comes closer to counting than Harry Potter does.  It reflects "the HBO era."  Lost was a major network show and at the very least people will laugh at it, maybe admire it too.  Battlestar Galactica.  Reality TV.

What am I missing?  What does this all add up to?  Pretty strange, no?

p.s. Need to add Facebook and Google somewhere!

*City on the Edge*

The author is Mark Goldman and the subtitle is Buffalo, New York.  I loved this book.  It is a splendid portrait of twentieth century America, the connection of industrialism and the arts, the decline of manufacturing and the resulting urban casualties, an applied study of the wisdom of Jane Jacobs, and on top of all that it is the best book I've read on how excess parking helped destroy an American downtown.  I recommend this book to all readers of serious non-fiction.

Is multi-tasking and modern information technology bad for us?

Here is one litany of complaints.  Nicholas Carr speaks to the issue and he recommends this summary piece, to defend his view that the internet is in some regards making our thoughts less focused and more superficial.

I've read the piece and I don't yet see the evidence.  There are plenty of studies where the experimenter imposes his or her own version of multitasking on the participants and then sees their performance fall.

I'm simply not convinced or even moved in my priors by these studies.  I can't operate a German Waschmaschine (imposed on me), and that's without an internet connection running in the background.  Nor would I do well if confronted by, say, the open internet windows of Brad DeLong, or his devices, whatever they may be, and in the broader scheme of things surely he counts as intellectually close to me.  Yet overall my life runs quite smoothly.

To sound intentionally petulant, the only multitasking that works for me is mine, mine, mine!  Until I see a study showing that self-chosen multi-tasking programs lower performance, I don't see that the needle has budged.

I do see stronger evidence (as cited) that video games make people more aggressive.  I also see overwhelming evidence that the internet gets people to read and write more.  The latter is probably a good thing.  I also believe the internet leads to less interest in long novels and more interest in non-fiction.  I won't judge that one, but it's misleading to cite only the decline of interest in long novels and by the way don't forget Harry Potter, the form is hardly dead.

I do, by the way, ban laptops in my smaller classes.  But that's paternalism, and the desire to produce a class-level publc good, not fear of my students' cognitive decline.  I can well imagine that they are processing more information, and doing it more effectively, when they are not listening to me, and the other students, so intently.

For extensions of my argument, see my book Create Your Own Economy, soon to be released in paperback with the new and superior title The Age of the Infovore.

My favorite things Berlin

1. Movie, set in: One, Two, Three captures a bit of comedy from the Cold War and shows Jimmy Cagney to be a surprisingly versatile actor.  Wings of Desire has stunning moments, most of all in the Staatsbibliothek with the angels and in the indie music club.  Goodbye, Lenin! shows German movies can be funny, as does Run, Lola, Run!.  I don't like films about either the rise or fall of the Nazis and I couldn't get through Berlin Alexanderplatz.

2. Essayist: Kurt Tucholsky.  He is hardly read by Americans, and perhaps does not translate well, but is arguably one of the most eloquent and also funniest essayists of his century.  Heinreich Heine also spent time in the city, although he is not a "Berliner" in the same way.

3. Painter: George Grosz and Otto Dix have lost their shock value.  I'll pick Lucien Freud, who was born in Berlin, though he ended up in England.  Käthe Kollwitz deserves consideration, as well as for sculptor.

4. Symphonic performance: Furtwängler's 1942 performance of Beethoven's 9th, recorded live.  Has to be heard to be believed.  Obviously there was a lot at stake and furthermore Hitler was in the audience.  This performance will terrify you.

5. Sociologist: Georg Simmel, especially his book on the philosophy of money.

6. Political philosopher: Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, which to this day remains one of the best statements of libertarian political philosophy.  

7. Playwright: Lessing's Nathan the Wise is a beautiful plea for tolerance.  Bertolt Brecht was a compelling writer despite his communist politics. 

8. Architect: Walter Gropius or Erich Mendelsohn.

9. Philosopher: Schopenhauer and Hegel both taught in Berlin.  Even Hegel, while he is full of gobbledy-gook, is brilliant on a frequent basis.  Don't start with Phenomenology of Spirit.  At the very least, read Schopenhauer's aphorisms.

10. Film director: Ernst Lubitsch was born there, and filmed silents there, though he later had to leave.  His Trouble in Paradise (1932) is today an under-viewed movie, plus his later romantic features, such as The Shop Around the Corner, Heaven Can Wait, and To Be Or Not To Be, all merit attention.

11. Non-fiction book, about: Two that come to mind are Richard Grunberger's The 12-Year Reich and Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945.  I do like books about the rise and fall of the Nazis; I just don't think the topic lends itself well to film.

12. Novel, set in: Uwe Johnson, The Third Book About Achim [Das dritte Buch über Achim] and John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

13. Poet: Rilke.

Kurt Weill belongs somewhere, as does Christopher Isherwood, Gustav Grundgens, or for that matter E.T.A. Hoffmann.  In popular music there is Ricardo Villalobos (born in Chile, but a Berliner), Einstürzende Neubauten (start with Halber Mensch), and Peter and also Casper Brötzmann.  I confess that most Mendelssohn bores me.

The bottom line: How many countries could beat this line-up?  And most of it comes in a relatively short period of time.

My favorite things Turkey

1. Novelist: Orhan Pamuk.  My favorite books by Pamuk are the ones rooted most firmly in Istanbul and Turkey, namely The Museum of Innocence and Istanbul and also Snow.  Those are some of my very favorite books, period.

2. Non-fiction book, set in: There is Runciman and Kinross and Stephen Kinzer.  Is the Osman book good?

3. Movie, set in: From Russia With Love and Topkapi come to mind; my knowledge of Turkish cinema is weak.

4. Opera, set in: The Abduction from the Seraglio, maybe the Beecham recording, or Krips, plus I like the overture of the Harnoncourt version, much more Turkish-sounding than the others.  And I don't have to tell you my favorite Rondo.

Uh-oh, suddenly there is too much Orientalism in this post.  Reverse course!

5. Favorite recording showing the unities behind Turkish and classical music: Istanbul, Dimitrie Cantemir, by Jordi Savall.  Quite the revelation and it makes you wonder how well we understand the true story of classical music.

6. Singer: Tarkan comes to mind and he is well represented on YouTube.  There is an entire strand of Turkish popular song, in the direction of Sezen Aksu, YouTube here.  But overall my pick is Edip Akbayram, imagine a Turkish version of Tropicalia.

7. Economist: Dani Rodrik, Daron Acemoglu, Timur Kuran, and Faruk Gul are the best-known Turkish economists I can think of.  I believe Nouriel Roubini was born in Turkey but I don't think he counts as Turkish.

8. Music mogul: Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records.

9. Classical pianist: I still have mixed feelings about Fazil Say, who is very subjective with the score.  Idil Biret has some good recordings of romantic music and piano transcriptions.

10. Cynic: Diogenes, who in a few ways was an early version of Robin Hanson, though I am not suggesting Robin is a cynic in the lower case sense.

The bottom line: Textiles and the decorative arts weigh in as strong additional positives, but I wish there were more Turkish writers I liked.  

What I’ve been reading

1. The Aztec World, by Elizabeth Brumfiel and Gary Feinman.  Long-time MR readers will know Aztec history is a special interest of mine.  This book, a companion volume to the Aztec exhibit from Chicago’s Field Museum, is perhaps the best introduction to the Aztecs to date.

2. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. This achieved (justified) rave reviews in the UK but it has hardly made a dent in the U.S. market.  It is non-fiction but written in a hybrid form and often feels more like a novel.

3. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory, by Torkel Klingberg.  When push comes to shove, the author fails to establish his major thesis.  Still, this book is way above average for how seriously it treats the actual science behind its argument.  I learned a great deal from it.

4. Somewhere Towards the End, by Diana Athill.  A scary and effective memoir about how Athill, a famous editor, dealt with aging and the end of her sex life.

5. Not John Steinbeck.

Here are predicted hot reads for 2009

What I’ve been reading

1. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, by Victor Pelevin.  A fun Russian weird novel; here is a good review of it.  It’s one of the few works of fiction I’ve finished lately.

2. The Patron’s Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art, by Jonathan K. Nelson and Richard J. Zeckhauser.  Put together a collaborating art historian, a first-rate microeconomist, an interest in signaling and a preface by A. Michael Spence and this is what you get.

3. White Heat: The Friendship Between Emily Dicksinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by Brenda Wineapple.  Yes, this is a very good book.  But it has the same problem that most other Emily Dickinson books have.  Her poems are so short you can fit them into a narrative and they are so strong they tend to overwhelm any non-fiction context they are put in.

4. Geoffrey Heal, When Principles Pay:Corporate Social Responsibility and the Bottom Line.  The main point is that socially responsible behavior is often profitable for business in the long run.  I know that doesn’t sound like such a compelling message right now, but this is a highly intelligent and now a sadly neglected book.

5. Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin.  This is only the third best biography of Johnson (Walter Jackson Bate is #2) and it is still one of the best books of the year.  What does that say?

Markets in everything, Thorstein Veblen edition

A watch that doesn’t tell time.  Oh, it costs $300,000.  And:

He added that anyone can buy a watch that tells time – only a truly discerning customer can buy one that doesn’t.

And here’s the best part: The watch sold out within 48 hours of its launch.

I thank Darren Klein for the pointer.

Addendum: I am reminded of Borges on Veblen: "When, many years ago, I happened to read this book, I thought it was a satire.  I later learned it was the first work of an illustrious sociologist."

Kindle

It’s pretty good.

The worst part: On day one the screen froze and it wouldn’t even turn off.  Natasha had to read the instructions and press on a battery point with a pin to reboot it.  What if that happened to me on an airplane?  Must I now always carry around a small, sharp pin?

The best part: For fiction — that is fiction I’m actually going to read — I would rather use this screen than a traditional book.  It is somehow easier to have a more focused appreciation of the words without being distracted by the book as a whole.

The actual worst part: For non-fiction it is not fast enough for real scrolling, flipping through, browsing and reading.  The machine is best for linear, sequential consumption of the text.

I’m not sure if this entry should go under the "Books" or the "Web/Tech" category.

Meta-recommendations

I’ve spent lots of time scouring this year’s "Best of" lists, and I thought I should pass along what I have learned.  These are not my recommendations (though I often approve), these are what I have gleaned from the recommendations of media critics.  They are my judgment of the most common selections on the "Best of" lists, noting that I did not check the lists from publications I do not enjoy and thus there is an implicit filter being applied.

So here is my aggregation:

1. Non-fiction book: Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise.

2. Fiction book: Tree of Smoke, or The Savage Detectives.

2. Miscellaneous book: Letters of Ted Hughes.  Everyone loves this, I haven’t read it yet.

3. Movie: No Country for Old MenThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly gets lots of picks, given that it is playing in only two cities.

4. Classical CD: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Sings Peter Lieberson, "Neruda Songs."  Read the excellent Ed Uyeshima review on Amazon, it is first.

5. Popular music: LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver, or possibly Neon Bible, by Arcade Fire.

I still can’t figure out the consensus jazz CD of the year.  Any help?

I might add that the non-meta me basically approves of this list, with two caveats.  First, the Lieberson CD, while quite good, in part received so many mentions because the singer, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, met a young and tragic death this last year.  It was her husband who composed these songs for her.  Second, I don’t myself have clear picks for popular music.  I do a lot of my popular music buying in December, when the "Best of" lists come out.  I did put on LCD Soundsystem this morning but was bored by it on first listening.

What I’ve Been Reading

1. Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet, by John Armstrong.  The author does not demonstrate overwhelming expertise but this is nonetheless not a bad place to start on the most neglected of all the great writers.

2. The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, by Mark Lilla.  Why Schleiermacher really matters, how Kant painted himself into a corner trying to solve the problems laid out by Rousseau, and why it all springs from Hobbes.  I found this well above average for its genre, though you must have a taste for Straussian-like books where big ideas clash at the macro level and there is little attempt at any kind of empirical resolution.

3. How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom, by Garry Kasparov.  This is a fun book, except that life mostly doesn’t imitate chess.  Chess is characteristic for its lack of self-deception; it is hard to avoid knowing where you stand in the hierarchy and excuses are few and far between.  That’s why most chess players are depressed.  Kasparov seems to save his self-deception for politics; let’s hope he is still alive a year from now.

4. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes.  This favorite book of Jason Kottke is first-rate non-fiction, it is also one of the best books on the Cold War.

5. The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa.  One of the best studies of the psychology of political power and the connection between tyranny and the erotic.  A fun albeit sometimes harrowing read.  Another superb translation by Edith Grossman, might she be the best translator ever?

The theology of popular economics

Once I pick up a popular economics book, I ask myself: what is this book’s implicit theology?  (How would you in this regard classify FreakonomicsUndercover Economist?  Steve Landsburg?)

That is one of the best first questions to ask about any non-fiction book. 

I view Discover Your Inner Economist as largely Thomist and more Catholic than anything else.

It is suggested that people are capable of simply doing the right thing, although we should not necessarily expect them to do the right thing.

It is suggested that a unified perspective of faith and reason, applied in voluntarist fashion, can indeed give people better and more complete lives.

It is suggested that not everything can be bought and sold, yet markets have a very important role in human life.

The chapters on food, or the seven deadly sins, are too obvious to require explanation.

The book is highly cosmopolitan, and it is suggested that acts of will and understanding can open up the sacraments to us.  The possibility of those sacraments lies right before our very eyes, and they are literally available for free.  Except the relevant sacraments are those of culture, and not of the Roman Church.

I am not a Catholic or for that matter a believer, but as I tried to solve various problems in the exposition, the argument fell naturally into religious ideas.  Religion has so much power over the human mind, in part, because its basic teachings about life are largely true.  Furthermore classical liberalism is far more of an intellectual offshoot of Christianity than most non-Christians are keen to admit.  (Muslims and Chinese often see this more clearly.)

So when I realized that Inner Economist had this strongly Thomist philosophic flavor, I was greatly comforted.

In this post the Episcopalians ponder their Inner Economists.

I hope to write more soon on political philosophy in Discover Your Inner Economist.

My favorite things Brazil

1. Painter: Candido Portinari is the obvious choice, try this one, or here, but he is not well-represented on-line.  Jose Antonio da Silva, the naive painter, is a personal favorite; here is one image, here are two more.

2. Movie: Black Orpheus, if seen on a big screen, is splendid from beginning to end.  Imagine Rio with empty, unpopulated hills.  More recently, I am fond of Central Station, and regard City of God as just a bit overrated.

3. Music: This topic needs a post all its own, and you will get one soon enough.

4. Novel: Brazil (or is it the translators?) is oddly weak in this category.  I’ll nominate Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor, or Machado de Assis, his still underrated Epitaph of a Small Winner.  Here are more authors, but I await your guidance.  By the way, I think Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes is a good read but I haven’t been able to finish any of the others by him.

5. Natural wonder: Iguassu is one of the best natural sights in the world.  Imagine a big waterfall 17 km long, and with coatimundis, amazing butterflies, and churrascaria nearby.

6. Non-fiction books about: I love Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s transcendent Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil.  My runner-up pick would be Alex Shoumanoff, Capital of Hope, about Brasilia.  The classic works of Gilbert Freyre are good background on the country, as is Brazil: Once and Future Country.

7. Sculptor: Avant-garde Helio Oiticica is all the rage these days.  They put two of his works out at MOMA, a big Tropicalia show in the Bronx, plus a big solo show is coming to Houston, I hope to see it there.  The on-line images destroy the angles and the content of the boxes, maybe try this one, but best to see it live.

8. Favorite food: The small towns near Curitiba, in the south, have the world’s best beef plus amazing pasta.

The bottom line: Might Brazil be the best place, period?  To visit, that is.

How to read fast

I am unfamiliar with speed reading techniques, so I cannot evaluate them.

The best way to read quickly is to read lots.  And lots.  And to have started a long time ago.  Then maybe you know what is coming in the current book.  Reading quickly is often, in a margin-relevant way, close to not reading much at all. 

Note that when you add up the time costs of reading lots, quick readers don’t consume information as efficiently as you might think.  They’ve chosen a path with high upfront costs and low marginal costs.  "It took me 44 years to read this book" is not a bad answer to many questions about reading speed.

Another way to read quickly is to cut bait on the losers.  I start ten or so books for every one I finish.  I don’t mind disliking a book, and I never regret having picked it up and started it.  I am ruthless in my discards.

Fairfax and Arlington counties have wonderful public library systems, and I go about five times a week to one branch or another.  Usually I scan the New Books shelf and look at nothing else.  I can go shopping at the best store in the world, almost any day, for free. 

I am both interested and compulsive.  How can I let that book go unread or at least unsampled?  I can’t.

Virtually every Tuesday I visit the New Books table at Borders.  Tuesday is when most new books arrive.  Who knows what might be there?  How can I let that New Books table go unvisited?  I can’t.  About half the time I buy something, but I always walk away happy.

Here is another reading tip: do less of other activities.

Blogging hasn’t hurt my writing, it has helped by non-fiction reading, but I read fewer novels.  That is the biggest intellectual opportunity cost of MR, though for the last month I’ve made a concerted effort to read more fiction.  But it is not like the old days when I would set aside two months to work through The Inferno, Aeneid, and the like, with multiple secondary sources and multiple translations at hand.  I no longer have the time or the mood, and I miss this.

Here are two earlier posts on time management.

Addendum: Jane Galt comments.  And here is Daniel Akst.