Recently Mentioned Books

That is a classic and beautifully written nature book by J.A. Baker , here is my favorite passage:

That is from Merrill’s Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment , and the passage was sent to me by Daniel Klein, who describes the book as “new and highly recommended.”

4. Eka Kurniawan, Beauty is a Wound .  It’s been called the Garcia Marquez of Indonesia, and it is one of the country’s classic novels, newly translated into English.  Here is a good NYT review .

3. Pallavi Aiyar, New Old World: An Indian Journalist Discovers the Changing Face of Europe .  I’ve been waiting for a book like this to be written, and now it exists.  It’s fun, and full of good humor.

2. James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 .  What was the political and social setting in which Lear was composed?  Recommended, substantive throughout with hardly a wasted page.

1. Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World .  Haven’t I read too many recent books about him already?  Well, this is the best one and will make my “best of the year” list.  Now if we could only have a renaissance of interest in his brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt…

Recommended, due out in January .

Here is Martin Sandbu of the FT in his new book Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt on that topic:

I had to order my copy from UK , in the US it comes out in December and can be pre-ordered .

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream , and here is a piece derived from the book .

That is from Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created , second edition, p.56.  And here is Alex’s earlier post on textbooks and slavery .

That is from his 1940 book The Dynamics of War and Revolution , p.53.  It’s an ever so slightly fascistic version of a common critique of neoclassical economics.  Is it entirely wrong?

Definitely recommended, buy it here .

That is the new book from Lanny Ebenstein , I found it well-written and useful.  You can read about Henry Simons, the Cowles Commission, Hayek, Jacob Marschak, of course Milton Friedman, and much mmore.  Friedman, by the way, originally had intended to become an actuary.

That is from Emmanuel Todd, Who is Charlie? , pp.162-163.  Here is my previous post on the book .

That is from new and intriguing Mark Twain in China , by Selina Lai-Henderson.

That is from Anna Katharina Schaffner’s review of Rosenfeld’s Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture , September 11th issue of the TLS.

5. Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction .  What makes some people very good at forecasting?  Self-recommending, here is a good Q&A with Tetlock .  The real question of course is why isn’t everyone working on this?

4. Harry G. Frankfurt, On Inequality .  A very short book, but longer than the blurb I wrote for it: “Economic equality is one of today’s most overrated ideas, and Harry G. Frankfurt’s highly compelling book explains exactly why.”

3. J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz, The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy .  A running dialogue between Coetzee and a psychotherapist, some of it is interesting.  Some of it.  But after the early sections on the dangers of storytelling, I got bored.  Surely at some point empiricial psychology deserved a mention.

2. Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 .  I read only about a fifth of this one.  I thought it was a very high quality treatment of how German citizens perceived WWII, and also quite readable.  It didn’t match my interests at the moment, but I am happy to recommend it.

1. Larissa MacFarquhar, Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help .  Profiles of people who are obsessed with helping others.  That is a wonderful premise for a book, somehow for my taste it didn’t run quite deep enough.  Still, many people will like this one a great deal.

The way the movie is good is almost the opposite of the way the book is good, so re-gear your expectations.  It is the most convincing portrayal of a planet I have seen in cinema.  (Planets, by the way, create erotic bonds stronger than those of actual marriages.)  I enjoyed the homage shots to Bruce Dern and Silent Running , Brian De Palma’s underrated Mars film too.  The horizon images of earth toward the end come as an ecstatic jarring relief.  They are, by the way, aiming for the China marke...

You should all buy and read Dani’s new book, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science , which I can recommend wholeheartedly and which I wrote a blurb for.

The subtitle is 1923-1968: The Idealist , and the author is Niall Ferguson.  This is really an impressive book and we all should be envious that we did not write it ourselves.