Recently Mentioned Books

5. Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañia .  I tried this a few years ago in English, but it clicked for me only in Spanish.  It is a series of short, interconnected philosophical meditations on those who don’t write, have given up writing, or who cannot help but write.  One of the better novels of the new century, though note it does require some basic background knowledge of figures such as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger.

4. Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire .  As clear and understandable a treatment of this topic as you are likely to find, Wilson himself writes: “A major reason for the Empire’s relative scholarly neglect is that its history is so difficult to tell.  The Empire lacked the things giving shape to conventional national history: a stable heartland, a capital city, centralized political institutions and, perhaps most fundamentally, a single ‘nation.’  It was also ver...

3. Ken Gormley, editor, The Presidents and the Constitution .  An edited volume that is wonderful and deserving of the “best of the year” list.  The book considers how each American president in turn faced constitutional issues, and how those were resolved.  This is an excellent survey of constitutional law, and a very good refresher on American political history.  If you are a non-American, and looking to learn who all those lesser-known American presidents were, and what they did, and why and ...

2. Jon McGregor, Reservoir 13 .  This novel builds too slowly to fit my reading style in a somewhat busy time of year, but I suspect it would be wonderful read aloud in a monotone, or as an audio book.  A young girl disappears in England, and the story records how the town processes the event, and eventually forgets about it, over the course of 13 years.  Here is one good review , it is a quality work of some originality.

1. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Revolution: A New History .  Things might have been different, if you believe this book.  German support for Lenin was very important, and the author sticks to the main story lines.  Hard for me to judge, but at the very least it was interesting and also clearly written.

Those are all from David B. Roberts, Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City-State , an excellent book, just out, recommended reading for you all.

5. Thomas Pynchon should write a Qatar novel .  And a brief look at Qatar’s earlier history .  And a new book on the history of Qatar is coming out next week, I have pre-ordered.  Try this one too .

5. Thomas Pynchon should write a Qatar novel .  And a brief look at Qatar’s earlier history .  And a new book on the history of Qatar is coming out next week, I have pre-ordered.  Try this one too .

I am happy to have just written a blurb for Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Become Richer, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality , self-recommending.

Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, Cents and Sensibility: What Economists Can Learn from the Humanities , covers a topic I am greatly interested in; here is a partial review by David Henderson .  Related issues are considered by Mihir A. Desai, The Wisdom of Finance , with Charles Sanders Peirce and Wallace Stevens being two points of focus.

Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro, Cents and Sensibility: What Economists Can Learn from the Humanities , covers a topic I am greatly interested in; here is a partial review by David Henderson .  Related issues are considered by Mihir A. Desai, The Wisdom of Finance , with Charles Sanders Peirce and Wallace Stevens being two points of focus.

6. Fernando Vallejo, Our Lady of the Assassins .  This short and violent novel is about Colombia during the period of its troubles.  Full of life and vigor, makes the case for complacency.

5. Richard V. Reeves, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What To Do Abut It .  The top one percent is not the relevant group.

4. Javier Cercas, La verdad de Agamenón , selected essays about literature, Borges, Tijuana, Spanish political culture as expressed through history, and the life of an author.  About half of them are excellent, none of them bad.  Could Cercas be the least-known (in America) great author in the world today?

3. Jonathan Abrams, Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution .  A study of youth vs. experience, you can think of this as an excellent management book in addition to its basketball virtues.

2. Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War .  What is a city like after a nuclear bomb hits?  Beautifully written, both historical and anecdotal, and the ignoble record of the American government in this episode, with respect to cover-ups and poor treatment of survivors, extends well into the recovery period.

1. Gunther S. Stent, The Coming of the Golden Age: a view of the end of progress .  Starting on p.84 (!), this short 1969 tract becomes a remarkable disquisition on stagnation, through the lens of “Faustian Man,” the decline of romanticism, Ortega y Gasset, Kierkegaard, and the hippie beats of San Francisco.  At some point the social sciences won’t make that much more progress, and Stent portrays the Maori as the non-complacent branch of the Polynesians.

That is the new James C. Scott book , and so far it is the most interesting non-fiction read of the year (I am about halfway through).  You can think of it as an extended essay on which technologies actually gave rise to economies of scale, expressed through governance but not only.  Ultimately the focus settles on Mesopotamia, but the discussion is wide-ranging and the lessons are applicable to much of human history.  Here is an opening summary bit:

I’ll be interviewing Ed on June 13, 6-8 p.m., GMU Arlington campus, including about his new and very interesting book The Retreat of Western Liberalism .  Ed is also “chief American commentator” for The Financial Times , and author of one of the best general introductions to India, In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India .  Here is Ed’s Wikipedia page .  Here are event details .

I’ll be interviewing Ed on June 13, 6-8 p.m., GMU Arlington campus, including about his new and very interesting book The Retreat of Western Liberalism .  Ed is also “chief American commentator” for The Financial Times , and author of one of the best general introductions to India, In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India .  Here is Ed’s Wikipedia page .  Here are event details .

That is from Proust and His Banker: In Search of Time Squandered , by Gian Balsamo, via Ray Lopez.  Ray also passes along this from the book summary:

Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides .  This short book, revised, improved, and expanded, is so good it is wasted on almost all of you.  Here are various pieces of background information .

Rick Wartzman, The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America , is a densely-written but nonetheless useful history of how America moved from paternalistic big businesses to lower-benefit jobs.

4. Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America .  An intelligent and indeed reasonable basic approach to answering questions about class, including “Why don’t they push their kids harder to succeed?” and “Why don’t the people who benefit most from government help seem to appreciate it?”  I am not the intended audience, but still this was better than I was expecting.

3. Justin Yifu Lin and Celestin Monga, Beating the Odds: Jump-Starting Developing Countries .  An instructive look at how countries have to start growing before the right institutional framework is in place, and how they can get around that.  Haven’t you wondered how China racked up so many years of stellar growth with such a bad “Doing Business” ranking from the World Bank?  One of the better books on developing economies in the last few years.