Recently Mentioned Books

1. Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution .  Excellent author, the chapters on the time period before the Constitution are good enough to make the “best books of the year list,” the rest is a much above-average summary and distillation, but of more familiar material.  At 880 pp. of clear, limpid, and instructive prose, it is a winner in any case.

Third, individuals should read and cultivate Stoic philosophy in themselves, whether explicitly or as they might pick up from a best-seller . More self-reliance and less dependence on social cues for doing the right thing will increase economic performance.

The author is Rob Sheffield and the subtitle is The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World .  So far this year this is my favorite book, in part because it stretches genres in a creative way.  In addition to being a study of fandom, celebrity, 1960s history, “how boys think about girls,” and of course the music itself, it is most of all a splendid take on small group cooperation, management, and the dynamic between John and Paul.  I enjoyed every page of this book, and learned a great deal, ...

Here is the link .  Here is the Amazon link , you can request to be emailed when it becomes available.  I thank Peter Boettke for the pointer, and I look forward to reading the book.

The author is Richard E. Ocejo, and the subtitle is Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy .   Here is one summary bit:

4. Andrew Marr, We British: The Poetry of a People .  A good introduction to its topic, most of all for the mid-twentieth century, with plenty of poems reproduced.  Here is a Louis MacNeice poem, Snow :

3. Edward T. O’Donnell, Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age .  This focuses more on George’s connection to social and labor movements, and less on George as an economist or land theorist, than I would have liked.  Still, it is an information-rich narrative that most of all brings the times and movements surrounding George to life.

2. Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs .  A novel about the consequences of a Delhi terrorist bombing that is both deep and compelling to read, full of surprises as well.  Here is a useful NYT review .

1. Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy .  LitHub wrote: “Even in the wake of Knausgaard and Ferrante it is hard to find a literary phenomenon that has swept Europe quite like the autobiographical project of Édouard Louis.”  I don’t know that I enjoyed this book very much, but it was an effective fictional experience.  Most of all it scared me that such a tale of poverty and abuse could be so popular in Europe these days.  Recommended, but in a sobering way; I would rather this had been a bestseller i...

Early in his career, he was accepted into mainstream American intellectual life and hung out with elites, rising to the top through the State Department and Wall Street.  As the 1930s passed, he became more extreme and the center became more hostile to fascist and semi-fascist ideas, especially if bundled with tolerance for potentially hostile foreign powers.  His career had a long downward trajectory, and during World War II he was tried for sedition, though he got off and later died in obscuri...

Dennis was actually the first stagnation theorist I read, at about the age of eighteen, due to a recommendation from Walter Grinder.  His strength is to tie stagnationist claims into the political economy of war.  This is from 1940 (book link here ), I hope it is no longer relevant:

That is from the new book by Michael Breen, The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation , a very good introductory treatment to that part of the world.

6. Julie Schumacher, Doodling for Academics: A Coloring and Activity Book .  It’s funny, for instance one panel has the heading “Find and color the many readers who will enjoy your dissertation.”  The images include a rat and a snake in the grass, but there aren’t even so many of those.

5. Johan Chistensen, The Power of Economists Within the State .  I haven’t read this one, but it appears to be a very interesting look at the role of economists within government, for the case studies of New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and other cases (in less detail).  “Economists in government” remains an underappreciated topic, so I expect this book is a real contribution.

4. Jace Clayton, Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture .  An original and consistently interesting extended essay on how “World Music” is evolving in digital times.  A must-read for me, at least.

3. Mary Gaitskill, Somebody with a Little Hammer, Essays .  Short pieces, never too long, strong throughout, mostly on literature (Nicholson Baker, Peter Pan , Norman Mailer, Bleak House ) with some essays on movies too.  This will make my best of the year list, and she remains an underrated author more generally.

2. Historically Inevitable: Turning Points of the Russian Revolution , edited by Tony Brenton, contributors include Dominic Lieven, Orlando Figes, and Richard Pipes.  I, for one, often find it easier to learn history through counterfactual reasoning.  “What if they hadn’t put Lenin into that train?, and so on, and so this is my favorite from the recent spate of books on 1917 in Russia.

1. Mark Zupan, Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest .  This is now the very best book on how special interest groups subvert the quality of public policy.

The authors are Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, and the subtitle is Harnessing Our Digital Future .  Arguably McAfee and Brynjolfsson have become America’s leading authors of business/management books (with an economic slant).  This one is due out June 27, I am eager to read it.

Garry’s forthcoming book Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins is just superb, and the podcast will be released around the time of book publication in early May.

For much of the 18th and early 19th centuries, under British rule, Indian economic performance was mediocre at best. It has been estimated that the yearly agricultural wage was higher in 1810 than in 1946. It’s difficult to prove how much of that decline was because of the British, but it is hardly a ringing endorsement.

That is the new and fascinating book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, with the subtitle Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are .  Here is one of many interesting bits:

Nadia Hillard’s The Accountability State: US Federal Inspectors General and the Pursuit of Democratic Integrity , is a thorough and useful account of what the title promises.

4. Kevin N. Laland, Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind .  If you read and profited from Joe Henrich’s The Secret of Success , this book is the next step.  Here are remarks by Robin Hanson on the book .

3. John F. Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform .  A very good and readable book on a much misunderstood topic.  Upon a close read of the data, it turns out the War on Drugs and private prisons are overemphasized as causes of overincarceration, whereas much of the actual blame should be placed on altered incentives for prosecutors.  Note that Pfaff also has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in addition to his JD.