Recently Mentioned Books

That is all from the new and interesting The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids , by Alexandra Lange.

Ashoka Mody, Eurotragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts , has produced the best book yet on that “not quite yet in our rear view mirror” episode.

Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal considers Roosevelt’s early plans for the New Deal, before his election, and also how Hoover started laying the groundwork for opposition.

On herding and social influence, there is Michelle Baddeley, Copycats & Contrarians: Why We Follow Others…and When We Don’t .

Lincoln Ballard and Matthew Bengtson, with John Bell Young, The Alexander Scriabin Companion , the definitive treatment of its topic.  Bengston is also my favorite Scriabin pianist.

Elhanan Helpman, Globalization and Inequality .  A very well done survey of what we know about this issue, from a leader in the field.

Geoffrey B. Robinson, The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 .  Hardcore excellent across both the factual and conceptual dimensions.  It is striking that as of 1965 Indonesia had the world’s largest non-governing communist party, until this episode that is.  At least half a million people were killed and “…the vast majority were felled with knives, sickles, machetes, swords, ice picks, bamboo spears, iron rods, and other everyday implements.”  Not so much high tech, ...

Jesse Norman, Adam Smith: Father of Economics . Written by an MP, impressive, though I remain closer to a traditional classical liberal view of Smith.

That is from Gerard N. Magliocca, The Heart of the Constitution: How the Bill of Rights Became the Bill of Rights .

Here is the longer list , via Adam.  You can order the book here .

I will be doing a Conversation with Tyler with him, no associated public event.  Here is his home page , and the About section .  Here is Wikipedia on Pollan .  Here is a Sean Iling Vox interview with Pollan , on his recent work on LSD and other psychedelics, and his most recent book is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence .  Pollan is perhaps best known for his books on food, cooking, and fo...

Great Lakes region: this was actually good https://www.amazon.com/Great-Lakes-Africa-Thousand-History/dp/1890951358/

Those are all from the frank interviews with Arrow in On Ethics and Economics: Conversations with Kenneth J. Arrow , by Arrow of course and also by Kristen Renwick Monroe and Nicholas Monroe Lampros.  Interesting throughout.

Self-recommending, you can order it here.

All that and more is from the new and fun book The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English , by Lynne Murphy.

The author is Priya Satia, and the subtitle is The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution .  Here is one good bit:

5. Thomas Weber, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi .  Perhaps you, like me, are totally sick of Hitler books.  But how exactly did his ideas morph into…what they became?  This book is detailed, well-documented, psychologically insightful, at times even brilliant.

4. James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age .  Delivers on exactly what it promises, a strong look at India’s wealthy class.

3. Matthew Polly, Bruce Lee: A Life .  A quite good, serious, and well-researched biography of the master, especially good in setting up the context of the martial arts in Lee’s time.  I hadn’t known that James Coburn took 106 private lessons with Bruce, nor that Steve McQueen was another notable pupil.  Nor had I known how much Bruce studied the fights of Muhammad Ali for some of his film sequences .

2. Helen DeWitt, Some Trick .  Conceptual and informationally dense short stories for highly intelligent people.  Here is a good James Wood review .

1. Susan Napier, Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art .  A thorough and serious treatment of Miyazaki’s career, focusing on his creative works rather than biography per se.

By Robert L. Bradley, this is the first of several volumes, covering the entire history of the company. Due out in August , it will be definitive.

This is a depressing but thought-provoking book.  Bangladesh, by the way, is smaller than the state of Florida, but has 165 million people.  And I had not known there are about 800,000 Nigerians in South Africa.  You can order the book here .

The authors are Primavera De Filipp and Aaron Wright, and the subtitle is The Rule of Code and it is published by Harvard University Press.  I am sent many books on crypto and blockchains, but this is the one I feel is useful to an educated readership.  It’s not for specialists, but if you have a good general economics and also law background, as one would expect from MR readers, but don’t “get” crypto, this is the book-length treatment for you.  It sees merit and potential in crypto, without bu...

Dean Keith Simonton springs readily to mind, noting he has a new book coming out this year on genius.  Here are some overview pieces on simultaneous discovery , and of course those tend to stress environmental factors.  Here are some approaches to the multiplicative model of creative achievement .  I am a fan of that one.  What else?