Recently Mentioned Books

That is from Teju Cole, Known and Strange Things , a book of essays.

That is by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, published this November , a great book, could it be the very best book on the charm and importance of the Caribbean?  Not the Caribbean of the cruise, but rather the real cultural Caribbean as found in Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and Trinidad.  The Caribbean was open, globalized, multiracial, vulnerable, and deindustrialized before it was “cool” to be so, and so it stands as a warning to us all.  Yet so few seem to care.  The Caribbean cultural blossoming of the 20th ...

Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future , a Julian Simon-esque take on the case for optimism.

Niall Kishtainy, A Little History of Economics , a modern-day Heilbroner.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable , foreword by Bernie Sanders.

3. Philippe Girard, Toussaint Louverture .  One of the best and most readable treatments of the Haitian revolution, with a focus on Louverture of course.  Here is one good bit:

2. Ian Thomson, Primo Levi .  One of my favorite literary biographies, ever.  This is also a first-rate look at the history of the Holocaust, and the postwar Italian literary world.  Definitely recommended.

1. Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix, Beyond Earth; Our Path to a New Home in the Planets .  The core claim is that humans can (will?) colonize Titan, the moon of Saturn.  But what are we to make of sentences such as: “The temperature is around -180 Celsius (-290 Fahrenheit), but clothing with thick insulation or heating elements would keep you comfortable.  A rip wouldn’t kill you as long as you didn’t freeze.”  Pregnancy would be tricky too.

Here is his Wikipedia page , and his most recent book is David: The Divided Heart .

He was the driving force behind three of the best (non-Beatles) songs of the 1960s/early 1970s: Bluebird, Wooden Ships, and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes; in the process he anchored two of the major super-groups of that era.  “For What It’s Worth” is one of the most recognizable and oft-used iconic songs of the 1960s.  “Helplessly Hoping” is good too.  He was an underrated guitarist, try Super Session , with Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper.

Here you can order Joe’s book The Secret of our Success: How Culture is Driving Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making us Smarter .

That is from the quite good Herzl’s Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State , p.102.  For one thing, Herzl was attracted by the story line that featured a man wandering without a homeland.

I thought the contributions by Kanye West and Frank Orange mostly delivered, but were not their very best material, and I don’t think I will be listening to those works two or three years from now.  The albums by the old guys and also by the dead guys were pretty good, but ultimately sentimental picks and I refuse to make these lists about sentiment.  The album from last year I found myself still listening to more than I had expected was Small Town Heroes, Hurray For the Riff Raff .

Mitski, Puberty 2 , and Angel Olsen, My Woman .

Mitski, Puberty 2 , and Angel Olsen, My Woman .

Beyonce, Lemonade as a clear first choice.  Runners-up make it three women at the top:

5. Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis. Staying ahead of the Curve .  This is about how cities are failing the middle class throughout much of the world.  At the same time, suburbs are seeing a new poverty and urbanization is not always translating into rising living standards around the world.  This book is where the problems of urban economics “are at” right now.

4. Karl Ove Knausgaard and Fredrik Ekelund, Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game .  This book is a series of letters, mostly about soccer.  They are more substantive than you might be expecting, but still you have to love both Knausgaard and soccer to enjoy this one, on those I am only one for two.

3. Robert R. Reilly, Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music .  A highly useful and to the point guide to classical music for the periods you probably do not listen to.  It is strongest on the “intermediate” composers, such as Vagn Holmboe, Robert Simpson, and Edmund Rubbra.  It makes a persuasive case for the 17 string quartets of Heitor Villa-Lobos, we’ll see if that was $40 well-spent.

2. Michel Faber, Undying: A Love Story .  The pages are arranged like poems with stanzas, but it reads more like prose.  It is the moving story of the death of Faber’s wife by cancer, very short and interesting throughout.  So far published only in the UK.

1. Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds .  A super-fun but oddly uneven biography of Kahneman and Tversky, a meditation on the nature of collaboration, and a history of the early stages of behavioral economics (economics?) and for that matter a history of Israel in some of its early decades.  There are cameos from Rapaport, Thaler, Gigerenzer, and others.  Why did the Israelis take so readily to the idea of an economic psychology, compared to the Anglos?

I had never read The Jewish State before, so I was surprised to see how much economics it contained.  Here are a few points, most but not all economics:

You can buy it here .  Also useful, for different reasons, is the new book The Economics of Air Pollution in China: Achieving Better and Cleaner Growth , by Ma Jun.  It is funny (read: sad) how many people think the planet is at stake when it comes to climate change, and yet they will not deign to read a single book about air pollution in China.  Should they not read all of them?

You can buy it here .  Also useful, for different reasons, is the new book The Economics of Air Pollution in China: Achieving Better and Cleaner Growth , by Ma Jun.  It is funny (read: sad) how many people think the planet is at stake when it comes to climate change, and yet they will not deign to read a single book about air pollution in China.  Should they not read all of them?

Songs to fill the Void, and other works by American composers , most of all Virgil Thomson.