Recently Mentioned Books

Helen Vendler, Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays .  She wrote these for Leon Wieseltier’s magazine, and they are now collected after her passing.  Self-recommending.

Benjamin Schneider, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution .  How do we make urban transformation succeed in America’s largest and most important cities?  What are the main obstacles to such success?  Schneider calls for resurrecting the “lost art of city-building” to achieve abundant housing, good public transit, and streets for people instead of cars.

Marc S. Ryan, The Healthcare Labyrinth: A Guide to Navigating Health Plans and Fixing American Health Insurance is a very good and balanced book on the economics of health care.

David Nasaw, The Wounded Generaton: Coming Home After World War II .  A good book showing just how much post-traumatic stress disorder there was during and after WWII.

Jonathan Healey, The Blood in Winter: England on the Brink of Civil War, 1642 .  What I found so compelling about this book was the step-by-step narrative of how the whole thing collapsed into very direct conflict and then an execution.  Recommended.

Terry Eagleton, Modernism: A Literature in Crisis .  The book is short, its quality unevenly distributed, and the subtitle misleading (plenty of it is not about literature).  It remains the case that Eagleton is one of the people who knows enough that he is almost always worth reading.

That is the new Helen C. Epstein book , which I found very instructive and useful.  My main wish is that it would be longer, in any case here is one very interesting excerpt of many:

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  He has a recent book out on the history of sexuality and Christianity , but of course is renowned for a much longer series of books and writings on Christianity, the Reformation, and Tudor British history, just for a start.

Recommended, you can pre-order it here .

You can order it here .

This is risk-based business cycle theory , people, much of it derived originally from Fischer Black.  I wish us luck people!

Recommended, informative throughout.  I am happy to recommend George’s new and excellent book False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933-1947 .  Plus George now owns a rather large number of donkeys…

6. The great Brian Potter, The Origins of Efficiency, is now out .

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread o...

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread o...

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread o...

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread o...

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread o...

Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer.  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good threa...

Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer.  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good threa...

Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer.  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good threa...

Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer.  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good threa...

Here is Mokyr in scholar.google.com .  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth .  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 .  You can ask Joel just about anything concerning the Industrial Revolution and he will have an amazingly well-thought answer.  He has a new book coming out in November , with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good threa...

Yes he used to run Rhodesia, and yes it is costly to buy this book because no one wants to reprint it, for obvious reasons.  Nonetheless it is a fascinating look into an era and its dissolution.

Gulliver claims he is a good Christian. We doubt him, as we doubt Bacon’s chaplain. Gulliver’s first name, Lemuel, translates from Hebrew as “devoted to God.” But “Gulliver” sounds like “gullible.” Swift quotes Lucretius on the title page of the 1735 edition: “ vulgus abhorret ab his .” In its original context, Lucretius’s quote describes the horrors of a godless cosmos, horrors to which Swift will expose us. The words “ splendide mendax ” appear below Gulliver’s frontispiece portrait—“nobly unt...