Results for “best book” 1948 found
Books favored by British bookstore employees
Here goes, via Kevin Drum. It has some obvious losers on it, but it’s a good place to start if you are looking to read contemporary fiction.
The best sentence I read today
In Germany peak hour traffic on a Friday is 2 pm.
That is from Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline.
The best sentence I read this morning over breakfast
That is why in France, candidates not only kiss babies, they kiss cows.
That is by Stephen Clarke, in the New York Times Op-Ed page.
Best Sentence I Read Yesterday
I knew as a libertarian that it was imperative to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Until I walked into that convention hall, I had no idea how many alternatives there were.
Ed Crane on the first Libertarian Party convention in 1972. From Radicals for Capitalism.
Best Sentence Never Said by Milton Friedman
¨…may I advocate classical-liberal limited government, so that my son may advocate anarcho-capitalism, and that my grandson may plan to build new artificial countries in the ocean.¨
from Radicals for Capitalism.
What are the best novels about politics?
Queried here, I will simplify and make it books, period, but restrict it to fiction, not counting philosophy. My list of five:
1. Shakespeare’s Henriad, a no-brainer at #1, if you count it as more than one book it still should take up as many slots as it needs. Psychology is primary and stands above politics, and libertinism is by no means unrelated to power.
2. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, vanity, pride, and self-deception are the keys to understanding political behavior, plus Swift shows an understanding of "the rules of the game."
3. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, yikes, have you ever seen that Monty Python skit "Summarize Proust"?
4. Sophocles, Antigone, the claims of the family vs. the claims of the state continue to plague Iraq and many other places.
5. Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, the former is not just a good tale but also a profound comparative study of regimes, the latter is the brutal truths of war.
Interestingly none of these are proper novels. I read Kafka’s The Trial as more about theology than worldly affairs. As for politics as a profession, the source from The Economist recommends "Primary Colors", C.P. Snow’s "The Corridors of Power", and "All the King’s Men".
It is less fruitful and less fun to guess at the best novels about business and economics, perhaps because the relevant truths seem banal in a fictional context.
The best Portuguese Renaissance maxim I read last night
"When a poor man eats a chicken, one of the two is sick."
That is from The Culture of the Fork, by Giovanni Rebora.
Grab bag of books
1. Vicki Howard, Brides, Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition. Weddings have become big business; this book tells you how and why.
2. Matthew D. Adler and Eric A. Posner, New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis. There is not exactly a new thesis here, but it is the most intelligent discussion to date of the strengths and limits of cost-benefit analysis.
3. Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation, by Nathan M. Jensen. Rule of law and credibility, not low corporate taxes, are the key features in luring foreign investment. You pro-tax people might think this is good news, but it probably just means that the burden of those taxes falls on labor, or on consumers.
4. The Marketplace of Christianity, by Robert B. Ekelund, Robert Hebert, and Robert D. Tollison. This book is full of stimulating hypotheses, especially if you don’t flinch at chapters with titles like "The Counter-Reformation: Incumbent-Firm Reaction to Market Entry." The economics of religion remains one of the most exciting fields.
5. Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy: Analysis and Evidence, edited by Roger Congleton and Birgitta Swedenborg. This book offers the best minds in European public choice, Barry Weingast, and Roger.
If you read only one book by Orhan Pamuk
The White Castle is short, fun, and Calvinoesque. Not his best book but an excellent introduction and guaranteed to please. Snow is deep, political, and captures the nuances of modern Turkey; it is my personal favorite. The New Life isn’t read often enough; ideally it requires not only a knowledge of Dante, but also a knowledge of how Dante appropriated Islamic theological writings for his own ends. My Name is Red is a complex detective story, beloved by many, often considered his best, but for me it is a little fluffy behind the machinations. The Black Book is the one to read last, once you know the others. Istanbul: Memories and the City is a non-fictional memoir and a knock-out.
Random rants on music and books
1. Bob Dylan’s latest has received rave reviews just about everywhere. Who can doubt an honest effort from the elder statesman? In reality it is little more than a repackaged version of his last two (superb) albums and thus mostly predictable and mostly boring. By the way, it is becoming clearer — against all former odds — that he was often a horrible lyricist but he remains, even in his dotage, a remarkable vocalist.
2. I loved the first half of Samuel Beckett’s Watt, but then lost the thread of the book. Beckett’s fiction remains underread, if only because we’ve yet to figure out just how good it is (or isn’t). The best parts are astonishing, but at times I feel I am listening to one of those unfunny British radio comedy shows.
3. Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is a novel about thirty-somethings, in a pre- and post 9-11 NYC, transitioning (or not) into adulthood. That is a recipe for literary trouble. But I bought it anyway, trusting Meghan O’Rourke, and yes it deserves the sterling reviews. I kept expecting Megan McArdle to show up as a character and give them all a good talking-to about microeconomics, which is exactly what the characters need.
4. The best world music release of the last year or so remains Amadou and Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako. It is also the best pop album of the last year. The two Mali musicmakers are blind and also married to each other. I don’t see how anyone could help but love this music. After a year from its purchase, I’m still listening to it.
5. Steven Slivinki’s Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government is exactly what the subtitle suggests. How did that happen? One factor is that the Republicans found Democratic rule too horrible a prospect to bear and they became more populist. Let’s hope the Democrats don’t make a comparable mistake.
6. Stephen Miller’s Conversation: The History of a Declining Art. I loved the title, hated the subtitle. Much of the book, which considers the preconditions of good conversation, is fascinating and, despite its popular level, goes beyond the muddled arguments of Habermas. It collapses when it argues that the quality of conversation is declining in the modern world. The evidence consists solely of examples of bad modern conversations.
Lynne Munson reviews my book
She covers Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding, in The Weekly Standard. Here is the link, which offers only a bit of the review to non-subscribers. Here is an excerpt from the critical part of her review:
…few critical observers would agree that contemporary American art has put its best work forward in recent decades, when our artists and art institutions have enjoyed more riches than at any other time in history. Contemporary American artmaking has been monopolized for nearly a half-century by postmodernism, a politics-obsessed formulaic approach that has yielded such shock-art masterpieces as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (which finds itself in numerous museum collections). Artists who do not work in the postmodern mode are excluded from museum exhibitions and the best galleries.
Of course, no better can be said of the products of the European art world, whose denizens have, at best, striven to vie with their postmodern American counterparts for the prize of Most Shocking. But to argue, as Cowen does, that "the American model encourages artistic creativity [and] keeps the politicization of art to a minimum," is to be unaware of how narrow and prescriptive American artmaking has become. The simple fact is that artmaking in America has been taken over by a single bad idea, despite the ample and diverse funding it receives.
Her last sentence is a good illustration of how two people can look at the same facts and see such very different patterns.
The 20 best songs of the 1960s
Here is a list from Pitchfork; the Beach Boys’ "God Only Knows" takes first place. The selections are excellent (head to iTunes), but I would have opted for the Beatles’ "Rain" and the Byrds’ "Eight Miles High." You’ll find links to their top 200 picks as well.
Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession — is a new book on how music affects our brains. Here is an introduction to the book.
Addendum: Here is an interview with Levitin.
Random rants about books
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. I am a big fan of what Acemoglu is trying to do, namely integrating history with an economic account of the rise of the West. But this doesn’t work as a book. There is too much thicket and they should have been forced to cut the equations.
George Lodge and Craig Wilson, A Corporate Solution to Global Poverty: How Multinationals can Help the Poor and Invigorate Their Own Legitimacy. The title is wonderful, but this boils down to a call for a World Development Corporation, a’ la Felix Rohatyn but on a global scale. Underargued.
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. He makes bold claims: for instance Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics might be identical to the multiverse of some versions of inflation theory. He seems to be making all this up, but I applaud the boldness. I wouldn’t have understood the truth anyway.
Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena. What is left to be said? Our beliefs are endogenous, so how can we trust our beliefs? We can’t.
Kyle Gann, Music Downtown, Writings from the Village Voice. I loved this book, but you won’t. For people who think Philip Glass and Robert Ashley are geniuses.
Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons. His first mega-novel to fail. None of the dialogue rings true and the author comes across as a dirty old man.
Jose Saramago, Blindness. The Death of Ricardo Reis may be his deepest book, but this is the one most guaranteed to impress. To appreciate him, you have to get over the fact that most of his novels are boring stinkers.
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None. Does anyone find this suspenseful? I didn’t. But I loved the film when I was ten.
John Banville, The Sea. No way did this dirge deserve the Booker Prize. That pick was strictly a lifetime achievement award.
Stephen King, Song of Susannah. I adore I-IV of The Dark Tower series, but by this point the plot has fallen apart.
Robert Wuthnow, American Mythos: Why Our Best Efforts to Be a Better Nation Fall Short. He is a remarkably powerful mind, but in this book he is spinning his wheels.
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point. I reread this one, just to remind myself how beautifully constructed it is.
Toni Morrison, Beloved. I used to hate this book, but now I see the appeal. Read Part Three first and work backwards.
Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun. Excellent. I had never read this one, and don’t forget that his robot stories are commentary on Judaic theology and law.
What are independent bookstores really good for?
Here is my new Slate piece. Excerpt:
If you don’t like the superstores, it is easy enough to expand your
viewing horizons through other means. Just go to new sections of your
superstore (the best popular book on geology, gardening, or basketball
is very good, whether or not you like the topic). Stoop or
stretch to slightly uncomfortable levels. Use the stool. Peruse books
randomly. Look at other peoples’ discard piles. Spend more time in
public libraries, which offer many of the best features of indie
bookshops, including informed staff, diversity, and offbeat titles. Of
course, public libraries aren’t exactly atmospherically "cool." The
clientele is often young children, women over 40, and retired men. I
visit five public libraries on a regular basis, and each one makes me
feel old. But they deliver the goods.
The best sentences I read Sunday
In an economy of stuff, the laws of property govern who owns stuff. In an attention economy, it is the laws of intellectual property that govern who gets attention.
The center of gravity for formal inquiry changes places too. In an economy of stuff, the disciplines that govern extracting material from the earth’s crust and making stuff out of it naturally stand at the center: the physical sciences, engineering, and economics as usuallly written. The arts and letters, however, vital we all agree them to be, are peripheral. But in an attention economy, the two change places. The arts and letters now stand at the center. They are the disciplines that study how attention is allocated, how cultural capital is created and traded. When your children come home and tell us that they have decided to major in English or art history, no longer need we tremble for their economic future.
That is all from Richard Lanham’s excellent The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. The truly discerning will in particular appreciate the merits of pp.39-40 in this book, but I am not going to give them away…