Recently Mentioned Books

I learned a good deal reading Ramon H. Myers’s essay “The World Depression and the Chinese Economy 1930-6” in Ian Brown’s The Economies of Africa and Asia in the Inter-war Depression .  Here are a few of his points:

Overall, after sixty-one pages of reading, I would not dissuade the eager, nor would I attempt to convert the skeptical.  I am closer to the latter group, as the main theme, described by Sam Tanenhaus as “the false idolatry of the digital age,” is too close to my daily life to interest me further; it’s Raskolnikov, Captain Ahab, and Colonel Kurtz for me.  It is Beauty is a Wound , by Eka Kurniawan from Indonesia, that I am waiting for: “ There is much dying in the novel .”

Her new The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers is a tour de force of economics, anthropology, Pierre Bourdieu, management theory, and anecdotes about Sony and Facebook and UBS and Cleveland Clinic.

Jeremiah D. Lambert’s The Power Brokers: The Struggle to Shape and Control the Electric Power Industry is full of useful and interesting facts, organized by the stories of various personalities, including Paul Joskow and Kenneth Lay.  Cintra Wilson’s Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style is written in exactly the opposite manner, breezy and fun but at times could use more facts.

Jeremiah D. Lambert’s The Power Brokers: The Struggle to Shape and Control the Electric Power Industry is full of useful and interesting facts, organized by the stories of various personalities, including Paul Joskow and Kenneth Lay.  Cintra Wilson’s Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style is written in exactly the opposite manner, breezy and fun but at times could use more facts.

Patrick Modiano’s newly translated Pedigree: A Memoir is perhaps excellent in the original French, but I found very little in it to hold my attention.

I don’t currently have time to read it, but Robin Lane Fox’s forthcoming Augustine: Conversions to Confessions looks quite good.

4. Barry Allen, Vanishing into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition , is a consistently interesting take on the history of ideas in China, including Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and much more.  It is unusual for a book to both make scholarly contributions and engage the common educated reader, most of all on these sometimes arcane topics.

3. Padraig O’Malley, The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine — A Tale of Two Narratives .  This “substance on every page” book can be read profitably no matter what your point of view on this conflict.  It has lots of economics too, most of all a good discussion of what it would take for a Palestinian state to be economically viable.  Definitely recommended.

2. Bill Hayton, The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia .  If you wish to be convinced that no one has much of a good claim to the Spratlys, this is the place to go.  The best guide to current disputes.

1. William Skidelsky, Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession .  An excellent short book on how tennis has changed through technology, the nature of excellence in human performance, and why fans are interested in sports and sports stars at all.  There is no great tennis stagnation.

That is the new forthcoming Richard Posner book and the subtitle is The Academy and the Judiciary .  Virtually everything by Posner is worth reading, and this comparison of the worlds of the professor and the judge is no exception.

That is from the new and interesting The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I & Revolution , by Dominic Lieven.  I liked the first sentence of the book:

That is the title of my current column at The Upshot .  I very much enjoyed my read of William MacCaskill’s Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference .  The point of course is to apply science, reason, and data analysis to our philanthropic giving.

In my view she overstates what are essentially some worthwhile points.  For more you can read her book The Entrepreneurial State .  Here is her home page .  Here is her Wikipedia page .  Here is her TED talk .  She is here on Twitter .

The subtitle of the book is What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will .

That is the new and highly intelligent book by Stephen Macedo, and the subtitle is Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy & the Future of Marriage .  I balk at only one of his conclusions: he is pro-gay marriage, where I agree, but he does not believe in legal polygamy.  For instance he argues there is no polygamous orientation comparable to a same-sex orientation, rather polygamy is a preference.  He views polygamy as unstable, and also as leading to distributive injustice, with high status males reaping e...

Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine , is a very good general history of the country.

Also of interest to some of you may be Helen Vendler, The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar, essays on poets and poetry .

5. Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot , by Mark Vanhoenacker.  The idea and method behind this book basically work — imagine an analytic version of “pilot tells all” — so I am surprised this genre has not been explored in more detail before.

4. George Yeo on Bonsai, Banyan, and the Tao .  Speeches and writings by a Singaporean politician about the vision behind the country and why it has worked out relatively well.

3. Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay .  Volume three of the Neapolitan quadrology, these novels are getting better and better and stand as one of the major literary achievements of the last decade.

2. Han Kang, The Vegetarian: A Novel .  A novelistic equivalent of those weird “Asia extreme” Korean movies, compelling and easy to read, recommended.

1. Owen Hatherley, Landscapes of Communism: A History through Buildings .  A consistently interesting take on communist architecture, not entirely unsympathetic as indeed corresponds to my own attitude.  Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote a nice LRB review of the book , suggesting that the author must have visited those developments in summer rather than wintertime.

The author is Michael Booth and the subtitle is Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia ; please note the book is (at times) as much tribute as critique.  I found it interesting and informative throughout, here a few passages: