Recently Mentioned Books

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...

Jonathan Swift tried to exorcise ­Baconian Antichrist-worship from England. Gulliver’s Travels agreed with New Atlantis on one point: The ancient hunger for knowledge of God had competition from the modern thirst for knowledge of science. In this quarrel between ancients and moderns, Swift sided with the former.

I enjoyed Maxim Samson, Earth Shapers: How We Mapped and Mastered the World, From the Panama Canal to the Baltic Way .

Luka Ivan Jukic, Central Europe: The Death of a Civilization and the Life of an Idea .  I took this sentence to encapsulate the main lesson of the book, namely that this does not usually work: “Central Europeans were, as ever, masterfully adept at rearranging polities into new configurations.”

Peter Baxter, Rhodesia: A Complete History 1890-1980 .  The most complete history of the country I have been able to find.  Many of the other books contain a few dominant, non-false narratives, but one gets tired of that?  I say LLMs come especially in handy for learning this history.

Very well researched is The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China , by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li, with Claire Cousineau.

Benjamin Wilson, Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex is both interesting and has plenty of information on early Thomas Schelling and his precursors.