Recently Mentioned Books

That is the new book by Joe Studwell , my podcast with him should be coming out pretty soon.  Here is Oliver’s new review .  Excerpt:

The author is Brendan Greeley , and the subtitle is 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money .  A very well-timed book, excellent on the history of the dollar as it spans the centuries, I was happy to write a blurb for it.

That is the new Knausgaard book, excellent and moving.  Better than any Knausgaard work other than the first two volumes of My Struggle .  The ending is especially good and meaningful, revising much of what came before.  You can buy it here .

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is a Professor of History at Northwestern , specializing in Mexico and to some extent the Caribbean.  He has translated a Mexican book on Edgar Allan Poe .  I am learning a good deal from his new 700 pp. book Mexico: A 500-Year History , and I very much like his earlier work on Mexico and violence.  Here is an NYT review of the new book .

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He is a Professor of History at Northwestern , specializing in Mexico and to some extent the Caribbean.  He has translated a Mexican book on Edgar Allan Poe .  I am learning a good deal from his new 700 pp. book Mexico: A 500-Year History , and I very much like his earlier work on Mexico and violence.  Here is an NYT review of the new book .

He has a recent book Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000-2000 , co-authored with Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini.

I do not think it is crazy to regard Celan as standing in the very top tier of poets, noting the poems must be read in the German language.  Who has more important topics at a comparable level of quality?  This is an excellent biography of him, from the origins in Romania to his affair with Ingeborg Bachmann to his eventual madness and suicide.  Recommended, pre-order it here .  Definitely slated for the best non-fiction books of the year list.

I am pleased to see the McKinsey version of Progress Studies in the new book A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come .

There is Richard Sandor and Paula DiPerna, Carbon Hunters: Reflections and Forecasts of Climate Markets in the 21st Century .  Much of this is simply interesting material about Sandor himself.

Roland Lazenby, Michael Jordan: The Life .  I learned much more from this book than I was expecting, it is flat out an excellent biography.  Full of information and insight, and with a coherent narrative.

Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette, My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music .  Classical music is a wonderful area to read books in, much like World War II.  Most of the books are written by very smart people, such as Fleisher, a top pianist in his time (try Fleisher-Szell for the Beethoven piano concerti).  And they are written for very smart people.  You can always, with profit, just keep on reading books about classical music.

Jack Weatherford, Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China .  A fun and good book, think of it as explaining how Kublai Khan beat Song China but subsequently lost to Japan.  The Ainu play a role in a wide-ranging and still historically relevant story.

Stewart Brand, Maintenance: Of Everything: Part One .  Capital depreciation, while it receives attention in economics, arguably is still underrated in import?  Institutions can deteriorate or depreciate as well.  The great Stewart Brand tackles this topic with the expected panache.  And here is my earlier CWT with Stewart .  A Stripe Press book.

Indranil Chakravarty, The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Years in India .  Imagine a book that is interesting about both the cultures of Mexico and India.  In addition to the one by Octavio Paz, that is.  I lapped this one up eagerly, and I note it also has good coverage on the relationships between different Latin American writers and poets.  Paz by the way largely was at odds with the left-wingers.

Adrian Goldsworthy, Augustus: First Emperor of Rome .  A very clear and readable treatment of one of the most important Romans.  Exactly what you would expect from the author.

By Bryan Caplan, now on sale .  From Bryan’s Substack:

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She has a new and very good book out, namely Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia .  I will focus on that topic, but she has done much else as well.  From Wikipedia :

That is from the new and excellent book by Alan Allport, Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945 .

The book I was reading is titled Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete , here is one excerpt:

He has a new and excellent book coming out, namely How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier , which I consumed eagerly.  You probably know his earlier book How Asia Works .  So what should I ask him?

He has a new and excellent book coming out, namely How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier , which I consumed eagerly.  You probably know his earlier book How Asia Works .  So what should I ask him?

I expect I will very much agree with Brink Lindsey, The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing .

Eve MacDonald, Carthage: A New History covers what we do know about those people.  That isn’t much at the conceptual level, and I wonder why archaeology has not taught us more there.

Nicolas Niarchos, The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth is a good treatment of minerals issues as they relate to the Congo today.  It will not make you more bullish on Rwanda, or for that matter the Congo.

Alex Mayyasi, Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces that Shape Your Life is a useful introduction to economic concepts.