Recently Mentioned Books

I very much recommend the book, which you can purchase here .  Interviews are so often so much better than just letting everyone be a blowhard, and Ogden did a great job.

6. Gary Taubes, The Case Against Sugar .  My intuitions agree with this argument, plus jelly donuts don’t taste that good anyway.

5. Aurelian Craiutu, Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes .  A much-needed perspective these days, from a very thoughtful scholar.

4. Kevin Vallier, Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation , “…public reason liberalism, properly understood, realizes foundational liberal values while according religion a prominent and powerful role in public life.  I claim that, in theory and practice, public reason liberalism is far friendlier to religion in public life than both its proponents and opponents believe.”  There is a Straussian reading of this book too.

3. Mark R. Patterson, Google, Yelp, LIBOR, and the Control of Information .  Data fraud, data fraud, data fraud, welcome to 2016 yes you should be reading more books on this topic.

2. Sheelah Kolhatkar, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street .  I cannot vouch for the contents and allegations, which focus on Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund career, but this is a highly engaging and better researched than usual look at the legal case against him.

1. Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa .  This excellent book clarified many aspects of West African and also Nigerian history for me, most of all how it connects to the earlier North African civilizations.

I should note that on this topic I have been very much influenced by my colleague David Levy and also his work with Sandra J. Peart, see for instance their newly arrived book Escape from Democracy: The Role of Experts and the Public in Economic Policy .

Do read (or listen to) the whole thing .  Jhumpa’s last two books are excellent and highly underrated, both were written in Italian (!) and then translated.  One is on writing and reading in a foreign language , the other is on book covers .

Do read (or listen to) the whole thing .  Jhumpa’s last two books are excellent and highly underrated, both were written in Italian (!) and then translated.  One is on writing and reading in a foreign language , the other is on book covers .

Mozart, Don Giovanni , conducted by Teodor Currentzis.  I never thought I would be swept off my feet by an original instruments performance of this opera, but there you go. From Gramophone :

Rêve d’un Enfant, works by Franck, Ravel, and Ysaÿe , by Sophie Rosa and Benjamin Powell, the Franck is especially fine.

Franz Liszt, Transcendental Etudes , by Danil Trifonov.  Probably the most widely and best reviewed release of the last year, here is some background information on the etudes .

Domenico Scarlatti Sonatas , by Angela Hewitt.  This is the recording I feel most comfortable recommending to most of you.

Brahms Lieder and Liebeslieder Waltzes , by Andrea Rose, Thomas Quasthoff, et.al.  Finally a rendition as good as the classic Vronsky/Babin recording.

Inspired by Brahms: Music for Horn Trio , including works by Ewazen, Kellogg, and Brahms.  After German Requiem, the Horn Trio is perhaps my favorite work by Brahms.

The Complete Songs of Virgil Thomson for Voice and Piano , by the Florestan Recital Project.  This release wins the prize for “music I didn’t really know existed before.”  Here is one stellar review .

3. “If this book has one thesis, it’s that America suffers from a surfeit of representation, and a deficit of administration.” — that is from Parag Khanna , drawing from his new book Technocracy in America .

I.M. Lerner and Catherine L. Osornio, The Secret Under the Staircase , and The Hidden Entrance .  Here the age range seems to be higher, maybe 10-12?  I feel I could have read them younger than that, however.

I.M. Lerner and Catherine L. Osornio, The Secret Under the Staircase , and The Hidden Entrance .  Here the age range seems to be higher, maybe 10-12?  I feel I could have read them younger than that, however.

I cannot trace whether Obama’s Chinese publishers are state-owned companies, but most likely they are. Some of the other Obama foreign publishers might be too.  Does that count as a violation of the clause?  Presumably there are foreign translations of some of Trump’s books too, or there will be.  JFK also had published books before he became president, and likely there were foreign rights sales of those too.

I wanted to like this book, as I am keen to discover new perspectives on the arts, even if I don’t agree with them.  “False” books on the arts often illuminate the artworks themselves, sometimes more than do the “true” treatments.  Yet this work I had a tough time making sense of.  I will confess to having read only about a third of it, and browsed some more.  As I understand the book’s thesis, the plasticity of the brain, as it changes across historical eras, helps explain changes in the conten...

3. Novel : Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart .  Honorable mentions go to Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, and my colleague Helon Habila.  There are also the Nigerian-American writers, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie .  Teju Cole is worth reading, including his non-fiction.

You will note that some of this argument draws on earlier research by Paul Krugman , though I am not suggesting he necessarily agrees with my application or interpretation; here are his recent remarks .

That is from Hume’s History of England , via Dan Klein and also Andrew Sabl .