Recently Mentioned Books

2. Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression .  The best and most readable book I have found on the deportation of Mexicans during the Great Depression, most of all during the 1931-1935 period.  Reading up on this era puts today’s America in useful perspective .

1. Samuel Fleischacker, The Good and the Good Book: Revelation as a Guide to Life .  A nice, articulate, and well-reasoned account of how a reasonable person might turn to faith and believe that faith and reason are compatible.  The author is a well-known Adam Smith scholar.

The third edition is now out , and the authors are James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni H. Ferrarini, and Joseph P. Calhoun.

There are two new and interesting books with that same title.  The first is by William I. Brustein and Louisa Roberts, and it has the subtitle Leftist Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism .  Think of it as a short overview of what the subtitle promises, with chapters on the Enlightenment, France, Germany, and Great Britain.  The second, by Michele Battini, has the subtitle Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism , and is longer and perhaps more exotic.  Here is one summary sentence: “My hypothesis is tha...

There are two new and interesting books with that same title.  The first is by William I. Brustein and Louisa Roberts, and it has the subtitle Leftist Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism .  Think of it as a short overview of what the subtitle promises, with chapters on the Enlightenment, France, Germany, and Great Britain.  The second, by Michele Battini, has the subtitle Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism , and is longer and perhaps more exotic.  Here is one summary sentence: “My hypothesis is tha...

5. Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai .  First published in 2000 to strong critical acclaim, the publisher ended up going bankrupt and this more or less fell off the map, until its recent reissue.  If I count it as a new edition, it is my favorite fiction book of the year so far.  I don’t think all parts of the novel work equally well, but the best parts are superb and most of all it is a book written for smart people .  Even before finishing, I went and ordered everything else she has done .  That ...

4. Samuel Arbesman, Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension .  I was very happy to blurb this book: “Why can’t we understand technology anymore? In this consistently entertaining and insightful book, Arbesman offers a necessary guide to where we are headed and why everything seems so strange along the way.”  Here are a variety of positive reviews .

3. Adolfo Bioy Cesares, La invención de Morel .  One of the better short Spanish-language novels, ever.  I’ve already started my reread.  Borges, Cortázar, Carpentier, and García Márquez all expressed their admiration for it .  Imagine a mysterious island that becomes more rather than less strange as the story develops, and characters start to wonder if they are living inside a simulation.

2. Christopher Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam .  The best general history of Vietnam I know, and it does not obsess over “the Vietnam War.”  Readable and instructive on pretty much every page.

1. Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism .  Lots of detail, not just the usual BS, scary too.  Too much detail, too scary, thus a good book.

3. eBook sale on Virginia Postrel’s The Future and its Enemies .  They’re still with us!

Here is the link , and my previous extra book offer still stands (for now!).

Statement : During the 1930s, a large number of New Deal Democrats admired the fascism of Mussolini’s Italy , and less commonly but still sometimes Hitler’s Germany in its earlier years.

That is the new Joel Mokyr book , due out in November, file under Arrived in My Pile.

Here is my short review of Michael’s big book on world literature : “If you measure book quality by the actual marginal product of the text, this is one of the best books written, ever.  Reading the manuscript in draft form induced me to a) write an enthusiastic blurb, and b) order about forty items through Amazon, mostly used of course.  The book is basically a comprehensive guide to what is valuable and interesting in recently translated world literature, a meta-book so to speak, with extensiv...

Thank you all for making the first day of The Complacent Class such a success; pre-orders were strong and according to one standard metric it was the #1 best-selling book for Monday .

Do read the whole thing .  You can order Glahn’s book here , it is one of my favorites of the year so far.

Philipp Ther, Europe Since 1989 .

Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, Europe Isn’t Working .

Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau, The Euro and the Battle of Ideas .

That is the new and excellent book by Kerry Brown .  Almost all books on China are either bad or mediocre, but this one is the best book I ever have read on the exercise of power in contemporary China.  Every page is good, here is a short excerpt:

5. Matthew D. Adler and Mac Fleurbaey, The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy .  A superb collection on contemporary welfare economics, and I usually dislike edited collections.

4. Marc Levinson, An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy .  There need to be many more books on this critical topic.

3. Lawrence Rosen, Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew .  A very fine work of anthropology about Morocco, focusing on the lives of four men, read this very good review .

2. Marc-William Palen, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalization, 1846-1896 .  On how free trade debates reshaped America’s political parties and also how free trade and anti-imperialist views were connected.  Interesting in parts, but too dependent on concepts such as “neoliberalism.”