Recently Mentioned Books

Lee J. Alston, Marcus Andre Melo, Bernardo Mueller, and Carlos Pereira, Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change .

4. Srinath Raghavan, India’s War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia .  Consistently well-written and interesting, the title says it all.

3. Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets .  A good book, and a good introduction to her writing.  I have to say though, I did not find this incredibly profound or original. Chernobyl is deeper and more philosophical.

3. Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets .  A good book, and a good introduction to her writing.  I have to say though, I did not find this incredibly profound or original. Chernobyl is deeper and more philosophical.

2. Adam Kucharski, The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling .  The subtitle is an exaggeration, nonetheless this is an interesting topic and book.  There is invariably a frustrating element to such an investigation, because the best schemes are hard to uncover or verify.  Nonetheless have you not thought — as I have — that a determined, Big Data-crunching, super smart entity could in fact beat the basketball odds just ever so slightly?

1. Andrej Svorencik and Harro Maas, editors, The Making of Experimental Economics: Witness Seminar on the Emergence of a Field .  Transcribed dialogue on the origins and history of a field, including many of the key players including Vernon Smith and Charles Plott, among others.  There should be a book like this — or better yet a web site — for every movement, major debate, new method, and school of thought.

3. Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew : I just ordered my copy .

That is the new Arnold Kling book , I very much liked the earlier draft I read.  Think of it as Fischer Black macro for 2016. Here is Arnold :

Here is the article , I just ordered the book here .  Here is my earlier post on this topic .  File under speculative .

Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition .

Carlos M.N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 , and

4. The Gene: An Intimate History , by Siddhartha Mukherjee.  This book filled in a number of gaps in my knowledge, plus it is engaging to read.  Overall it confirmed my impression of major advances in the science, but not matched by many medical products for general use.

3. Yuri Herrara, Signs Preceding the End of the World .  Sometimes considered Mexico’s greatest active writer, this novella draws upon the Juan Rulfo-Dante-Dia de los muertos tradition to create a convincing moral universe in 128 pages.  I find this more vivid and arresting than Cormac McCarthy’s treatment of the other side of the border.

2. China Mi é ville, Embassytown .  The first of his novels that has clicked with me, perhaps because it is the one that comes closest to being a true novel of ideas, Heideggerian ideas in this case.  A new prophecy is needed, and the nature of the new prophecy, like the old, will be shaped by language.  Just accept that upon your first reading you won’t enjoy the first one hundred pages and you should at some point go back and read them again.

1. Tom Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve .  Fun, engaging, and informative, worthy of the “best of the year non-fiction” list.

2. Ryan Avent has a book coming out in September .

You can order the book here .  Here is my earlier review .

I am looking forward to my copy, here is the Amazon link .

That is the title of his posthumous memoir , highly recommended.  It is one of the best books on the charm of studying Southeast Asia, and also a very good look at how American academia rose from mediocre to excellent in the postwar era.  It is short and can be consumed in a single gulp.

Recommended, due out in June from Princeton University Press .  And here is Timothy Taylor on polarization .

Sweet Tea Apothecaries sells Dead Writers Perfume , which promises to evoke the aroma of books old enough for their authors to have passed to the great writers’ retreat in the sky. Perfumer Christopher Brosius’s “ In the Library ” product line makes your home and body smell just like that. The high-end fragrance Paper Passion claims to capture the “unique olfactory pleasures of the freshly printed book,” though for roughly $200 per bottle it’s a lot cheaper to just buy a freshly printed book.

That is all from Krishnendu Ray, The Ethnic Restaurateur , which is intermittently quite interesting.  Here is the Google Books page .

3.George J. Borjas, We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative .  My favorite two-sentence sequence in this book is: “It is worth emphasizing that the distributional pain is the flip side of the economic gain.  And ironically, the greater the distributional pain, the greater the economic gain .”  Good for fans, etc.

2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe .  Recall that while Krugman is much more influential in America, Stiglitz is more influential in Europe and in most of the developing world, thus the topic of this book makes sense.  I agree with most of the arguments, though not the view that trade surpluses are essential for understanding the problem .  This book is good for fans, at the very least, but it will not convert the uninitiated.

1. Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life .  From this book one learns that young Beatle Paul had more sex with more women than most people had thought, his daily pot habit started earlier than most people had thought (it inspired “Got to Get You Into My Life”), and Paul not John was the musical innovator (duh).  I enjoyed this book (duh) and it had a reasonable amount of detail about his last twenty years.  Good for fans, at the very least, but it will not convert the uninitiated.