Recently Mentioned Books

3. Naomi Duguid, Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan .  Not only an excellent cookbook, but a good regional study in its own right.

2. Jeffrey Edward Green, The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship .  “The ocular model, by contrast, is grounded on the People’s eyes and its capacity for vision, rather than on the People’s voice and its capacity for speech.”  Think of it as Exit, View, and Loyalty, for the contemporary age.

1. Europe Since 1989: A History , by Philipp Ther.  And yet it is all told through the vantage point of central and eastern Europe.  Recommended, not just the usual and interesting to see “the West” treated as the periphery.  Makes you wonder if eastern Europe ever had a chance.

In 2003, long before Uber, Airbnb, or serious talk of driverless cars, Klein published The Half-Life of Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues . This remarkable work explores how technological change keeps making old markets failures – and the regulations that arguably address them – obsolete.  (Here’s the intro , co-authored with Fred Foldvary).  Fourteen years later, the relevance of Klein’s thesis is all around us.  Transactions costs no longer preclude peakload prici...

In 1999, when internet commerce was still in its infancy, Klein published Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct . Seventeen years later, e-commerce towers before us, resting on a foundation of reputational incentives – everything from old-fashioned repeat business to two-sided smartphone reviews.

Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds .

I read only a fragment of Chris Wickham’s Medieval Europe , but found it well-written, to the point, and illuminating for both the specialist and general reader.

I don’t think I will have time to get to Lynne B. Sagalyn’s Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan , but it looks very good.

4. William Domnarski, Richard Posner .  This biography focuses on Posner the infovore, and is itself a big pile of information.  We should not forget Posner’s role in founding the Journal of Legal Studies and Lexecon when awarding him a much-deserved Nobel Prize.  Every page of this book has information , recommended, even if (because?) it is a bit of a splat.  Here is one cited account of Judge Posner: “One of my favorite lines is when he would characterize a lawyer’s answer as “mere words” whe...

3. Harvey Cox, The Market as God .  Harvard theologian argues that economists have started to argue as theologians do.  The closing sentence is “When The Market does not have to be God anymore, it might be a lot happier.”

2. The Blind Photographer , edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding.  Here is an article on Pedro Martinez , one such photographer from Oaxaca.  An excellent book, thought-provoking about both the nature of disability and photography, and also the mind’s eye.  Here is a good National Geographic article on the volume .

1. Against Everything , Essays, by Mark Greif.  The worst of these are still well-written and interesting, and the best are among the best essays being written today.  There are many good sentences: “Were “In the Penal Colony” to be written today, Kafka could only be speaking of an exercise machine.”

There is much more!  But that is a taste from the new and excellent Becoming Jane Jacobs , a runs-up-through 1972 biography by Peter L. Laurence, definitely one of the best books of the year.  This is the biography of Jacobs I have wanted to read for forty years.

That is from Matthew C. Klein , who is riffing on Ryan Avent, don’t forget Ryan’s new book .

That is from Mark Lilla’s new book The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction .  There is also this bit from the book:

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column , which focuses on Edward Conard’s new book The Upside of Inequality (not a good descriptive title for the book, in my view).  Conard’s central idea is that risk-bearing equity capital is the truly scarce asset in most economic situations, and economic analysis should adapt accordingly.  He is very creative in seeing some of the implications of this view, for instance:

I loved this book, the author is Andrew Scott Cooper, and the subtitle is The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran .  It is the best book I know for understanding the Iranian revolution, and it is compulsively readable throughout.  Did you know for instance that the Ayatollahs were deeply disturbed by the presence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and also Rhoda on Iranian TV?

That is from Barry Latzer’s new and interesting The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America .

There is much more at the link , including an assessment of Peru’s current economic prospects, and also how much the quality of national leadership matters at all.  And do read his book Peruvian Democracy under Economic Stress — it is one of the most underrated works on both Latin American development and in development economics more generally.

5. Marc Raboy, Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World .  A very good, very detailed, 863 pp. but still conceptual and history-of-science rich biography.  Compared to Marconi’s earlier fame, you actually don’t hear so much about him any more.

4. Nathan Hill, The Nix .  This is the trendy novel right now, and usually I don’t like those, but after one hundred or so pages I am still enjoying it.  It is both smart and genuinely funny, and doesn’t (yet?) grate on my nerves.  And what is “the Nix”?  Amazon says: “In Nathan Hill’s remarkable first novel, a Nix is anything you love that one day disappears, taking with it a piece of your heart.”  I say it’s the best mother-son story to come along in a long time.

3. Edward B. Foley, Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States .  A serious yet also readable look at rigged and semi-rigged elections in the United States, including in the recent past.

2. Philip Ball, The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China .  I am glad to see the Grand Canal finally get its due.  “An epic portrait of China’s water management history,” says one blurb.  I found half of this book fascinating and the other half not terrible.

1. Alex Cuadros, Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country .  One of the best looks at contemporary Brazil, and it’s not just about the country’s billionaires.

The subtitle is The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives , and it is Tim’s best and deepest book.  You’ll be hearing more about it in due time, the publication date is October 4, you can pre-order it here .