Recently Mentioned Books

2. Dieter Helm, Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels .  That’s not the right title, because most of this book covers the game rather than the endgame.  This is a careful and conceptual look at how different sectors of energy production are likely to evolve, taking good care to distinguish different parts of the world and stationary vs. mobile energy sources.

1. Philippe Desan, Montaigne: A Life .  Knotty, complex, and almost 800 pp., the bottom line nonetheless is that I will not liberate this book but rather keep it forever.  I’ve read only about 200 pp. so far, but it is one of the best guides to understanding its main topic, most of all when it comes to integrating how his written texts sprang from his actual life.

That is from the rewarding Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey , by Madeleine Bunting.

My take on all this is to prefer a higher-trust-in-experts equilibrium for its practical properties, yet without believing the trust actually is deserved, giving me again a slight affinity with Strauss .  Is there an equilibrium where a high level of trust can be maintained more or less forever?  Or is it like an optimal resource extraction problem, namely that most kinds of trust end up being cashed in, you just hope it was for some good purpose (public support for the bailouts to avoid another...

The subtitle of this new and fascinating volume is How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas .  Think of this as an update of Richard Posner’s work on public intellectuals, but explaining where a world of social media and higher income inequality and greater polarization has put us.  Wisely, Drezner does not idealize the milieu of Susan Sontag and the Commentary crowd, but still some things have become worse, due largely to the lack of trusted gatekeeper...

That is by Ray Fisman and Miriam A. Golden, an excellent book , the subtitle says it all.  And yes it does also cover how to stop or at least limit corruption.

That is from the quite good and surprisingly substantive Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today , by Ilana Gershon.

These chains of ideological influence can be remarkably indirect. For instance, it is commonly believed that the collapse of Soviet communism led to a softening of positions within the Irish Republican Army. It’s not that anyone ever expected the Soviets to intervene in the Irish conflict, but rather a role model of resistance had been taken away, and this ultimately made the peace process easier.

Here is the full piece , Mark is reviewing Aldo Schiavone’s The End of the Past .

That is from Colin Woodard’s American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America , a book worth rereading in light of recent events.

My colleague Philip E. Auerswald has just published the very useful The Code Economy: A Forty-Thousand Year History .

Jonathan Schwabish, Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks , is specific in all the right ways, most of all when it comes to Powerpoint slides.

5. Jok Madut Jok, Breaking Sudan: The Search for Peace .  I’ve read a few books on South Sudan lately, to try to figure out, if only in broad terms, what is going on there.  This is the one that actually does a good job explaining things!  Above all else, I now have some sense of just how historically deeply rooted the current conflict is.  Recommended.

4. Arguments for Liberty , edited by Aaron Ross Powell and Grant Babcock.  I do not think the arguments in this book succeed as arguments for liberty, with the exception of some of the utilitarian arguments, noting that I am only a “2/3s utilitarian.”  Still, you get Eric Mack, Jason Kuznicki, Kevin Vallier, Neera Badhwar, Michael Huemer, and Jason Brennan, and so this is the rare edited volume that lives up to what you ideally might want it to be.

3. Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth .  This is a look at the significance of violence in American history, focusing on the Revolution itself, and it is a good way to remind foreigners how screwed up (and dynamic) we are.

2. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America .  Volume one of the Penguin History of the United States, this book is especially good at tying in “settlement issues” to later “governance issues.”  It is compulsively readable and has an excellent annotated bibliography.  Circa 1770, exports were about 10% of American gdp (p.311); today exports are a bit over 12% of gdp .

1. Erica Benner, Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli’s Lifelong Quest for Freedom .  A useful and readable introduction to the practical issues of Florentine politics and how they influenced the life and writings of Machiavelli.

George Steiner, with Laure Adler, A Long Saturday: Conversations .  Steiner is one of the most knowledgeable people, even into his 90s.  From these conversations I learned that he started working for The Economist as an economics reporter after WWII, computers drive us to a notion of “minimal language,” “God is Kafka’s uncle,” he recommends North , by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , and Ben-Gurion once told him “Only one thing matters: send me your children.”  By the way, “Malraux predicted that the re...

George Steiner, with Laure Adler, A Long Saturday: Conversations .  Steiner is one of the most knowledgeable people, even into his 90s.  From these conversations I learned that he started working for The Economist as an economics reporter after WWII, computers drive us to a notion of “minimal language,” “God is Kafka’s uncle,” he recommends North , by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , and Ben-Gurion once told him “Only one thing matters: send me your children.”  By the way, “Malraux predicted that the re...

Here is the Amazon link . This Rachel Donadio NYT review provides some very useful background knowledge.

…I interviewed Eric Schmidt of Google fame, who has been leading a civilian panel of technologists looking at how the Pentagon can better innovate. He said something I hadn’t heard before, which is that artificial intelligence helps the defense better than the offense. This is because AI always learns, and so constantly monitors patterns of incoming threats. This made me think that the next big war will be more like World War I (when the defense dominated) than World War II (when the offense did...

If you recall, Robert D. Putnam, in his last book , expressed surprise that Chetty and Hendren, et.al. (2014) did not find evidence of a decline in intergenerational mobility.  Putnam predicted that researchers would find such evidence soon enough.  After all, it seems the returns to education have been rising, geographic mobility has been falling, market concentration is up slightly, life expectancy is behaving in funny ways, and regional disparities seem to have grown. Chetty and Grusky, et.al...

Here is Lotta Moberg’s home page .  Here is a related article of hers on special economic zones .  Here is the Amazon link .

6. Derek Parfit, On What Matters, volume three, is now out .

I will be doing a Conversation with Tyler with her, podcast only no public event.  She is one of the best known historians, teaching at Harvard , the author of numerous books , and also writing a column for The New Yorker .  Much of her work is on 18th century America, though since then she has become an Americanist more broadly.  Perhaps her most popular book is on the history and origins of the Wonder Woman character .  Here is Wikipedia on Jill Lepore .