Recently Mentioned Books

2. John Gimlette, Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka .  An informative and entertaining look at an under-covered country.  (If you’d like a critical review instead, try this one , but I followed up on some of the criticisms and was not persuaded by the attempted takedown.) This NYT article suggests (correctly) that now is the time to visit Sri Lanka.

1. Ronald Bailey, The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century .  Good arguments all around, and he covers climate change too.  My worry is a political economy one: if we can’t handle small amounts of immigration or trade competition from China without flipping out, how will we fare with forthcoming environmental problems?

The authors are Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog and the subtitle is The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education .  This is an interesting and important book, and the core message is pretty simple:

That is his new book and the subtitle is A New Approach for the Age of Globalization .

Erwin Dekker’s The Viennese Students of Civilization: The Meaning and Context of Austrian Economics Reconsidered is an original and interesting look at the foundations of the Austrian School of Economics, properly situating it in the context of its time.  Here is one bit:

That is the new book by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, and the subtitle is How the War on Government Led Us To Forget What Made America Prosper .  It is well written and will appeal to many people.  It is somewhat at variance with my own views, however.  Most of all I would challenge the premise of a “war on government,” at least a successful war.  How about a “Dunkirk on government”?

3. The twenty best Taiwanese movies ?  By the way, Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day is being released soon on disc for the U.S. market.

Richard L. McCormick discusses this question in his The Party Period and Public Policy (the quoted chapter is reproduced in jstor ):

5. Frits Gierstberg, European Portrait Photography Since 1990 .  Mostly photos, not much text, the artists include Rineke Dijkstra, Jurgen Teller, Thomas Ruff, Nikos Markou, Anders Petersen, and Clare Strand.  This book made a strong impression on me, and I find it to be one of the best meditative tools for thinking about what Europe really is these days.  By the way, the under-representation of Islam (not popular with collectors?) is striking.

4. David Stubbs, Future Days: Krautrock and the Birth of a Revolutionary New Music .  Self-recommending.

3. Leila S. Chudori, Home .  A classic Indonesian novel, recently translated, about Indonesian exiles in Paris, post-1965, and how they are unable to cut their emotional ties with the homeland.  If you are only going to read a few Indonesian novels, this should be one of them.

2. Clyde Prestowitz, Japan Restored: How Japan Can Reinvent Itself and Why This is Important for America and the World .  A not-absurd view of how Japan could be fully back on its feet by 2050.  Imagine a Japan which employs women at an especially high rate, moves almost completely to green energy independence, and revitalizes its investment and corporate governance; I found the chapter on “Englishnization” least plausible, however.

1. Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture .  A genuinely good and fun introduction to South Korea today.

You’ll find it here , ungated.  Ilya’s book, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter , argues we pay a heavy price for democratic ignorance .  In this symposium, a variety of academics dissent from his argument. Thomas Christiano’s piece for instance is entitled “Voter Ignorance is Not Necessarily a Problem,” here is one bit:

I do know that Philip Hamburger’s book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? occasioned some critical reviews .  I certainly don’t think the title frames the argument properly and by no means do I agree with everything he said.  But these days, the notion that the regulatory state could prove dangerous to individual liberties, and not just to economic growth, needs to be taken more seriously, and he has written the “go to” book on that topic.

Todd G. Buchholz, The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them .  This one I haven’t pawed through yet.

Dennis Hale, The Jury in America: Triumph and Decline .  Appears to be a quite good survey and overview, from the beginning of the republic up through the present day.

Aileen M. Kelly, The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen .  A “fully-rounded” study of a thinker who is not read enough by Anglo-Americans.

Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong, Concrete Economics: The Hamiltonian Approach to Economic Growth and Policy ; “And so America needs another redesign — and it needs it right now.”  My browse impressions are all positive, although perhaps I see larger roles for spontaneous order, and luck, in any new Hamiltonian redesign.

Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History .  Lots on Timothy Leary and the Whole Earth Catalog, among other topics, my browse of it was interesting.

She wrote the classic book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change , still worth reading.  Here is the NYT obituary . The Washington Post obituary introduced me to another side of her life:

Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism .

Timothy P. Hubbard and Harry J. Paarsch, Auctions , from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.

That is the subtitle, the proper title of David Lough’s new book is No More Champagne .  I had not known the extent of the story here, namely that Churchill had appalling standards for money management and exercised extremely poor judgment over most of his adult life.  Here is one bit from the opening:

3. Martin Gurri and Scott Adams as early understanders of the Trump phenomenon.  And using “The Apprentice” to teach a managerial economics class .