Recently Mentioned Books

3. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings .  This account of 1970s Jamaica, centered on a plot to shoot Bob Marley, shows a remarkable amount of talent, as well as a mastery of plot construction and different novelistic voices, some of which are in Jamaican patois.  If you pick up this book you will be impressed and indeed many of the reviews are glowing.  Yet somehow never did I care, feel entertained, or wish to read further.  I stopped.  I remain interested in that era, but will inst...

3. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings .  This account of 1970s Jamaica, centered on a plot to shoot Bob Marley, shows a remarkable amount of talent, as well as a mastery of plot construction and different novelistic voices, some of which are in Jamaican patois.  If you pick up this book you will be impressed and indeed many of the reviews are glowing.  Yet somehow never did I care, feel entertained, or wish to read further.  I stopped.  I remain interested in that era, but will inst...

2. Kenneth D. Durr, The Best Made Plans: Robert R. Nathan and 20th Century Liberalism .  I may be biased because I just gave a talk at the Nathan Foundation and received it as a gift copy.  I call this the “real history of economic thought.”  It’s a look at the career of a man who worked with Simon Kuznets to improve gdp statistics, helped lead the war effort in the 1940s, supported the civil rights movement, founded a major economic consulting firm, and supported the idea and practice of econom...

1. Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov, The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, A Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia .  Blends fiction, non-fiction, and occasional social science (was a non-corrupt transformation of the Soviet Union really possible?, Gaidar ultimately decided it wasn’t), but in terms of the subjective experience of the reader it is most like a novel.  Excellent and also entertaining.  I consider this a deep book about why lib...

That is from the new Joseph Berger book, The Pious Ones: The World of Hasidim and Their Battles with America .

5. Jan Swafford, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph .  A consistently excellent and engaging treatment of a figure you cannot read too many books about.  It does not seem like a book of 1000+ pages.  The funny thing is, this book does not come close to exhausting Beethoven, in fact it barely scratches the surface.  It’s as good as the classic Maynard Solomon biography.

4. Mark Metzler, Capital as Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle .  More interesting on Japanese economic history, and in particular postwar economic planning, than on Schumpeter.

3. Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness .  The best and most readable introduction to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments .

2. Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution .  At first I was bored but the book picks up and is then interesting throughout, most of all I enjoyed the portrait of Bill Gates.  It is a good overview of how some of the main pieces of today’s information technology world fell into place, starting with the invention of the computer and running up through the end of the 1990s.

In the early stages of this war, Amazon boycotts have often increased the buzz for a book, such as with Beth Macy’s Factory Man .  But if these practices continue, they will cease to be news stories and an Amazon refusal to carry or promote plausibly will damage how books will do, without much potential for upside.

He has written a book on telecommunications regulation (with Laffont) although I have never read that material.

He has a 1994 book with Mathias Dewatripont on the prudential regulation of banks and how to apply the proper incentives to make sure banks do not take too much risk at public expense.  Obviously this also has since become a much more important topic.  How many of you know his 1996 paper with Rochet on “ Interbank Lending and Systemic Risk “?  They show the contradictions which can plague a “too big to fail” policy and the attempts of central banks to maintain a “creative ambiguity” about what k...

5. Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman .  A charming tale for bibliophiles, centering around a Lebanese woman who translates one classic novel a year, but for herself only.

4. Virginia Woolf, Flush: A Biography .  This one doesn’t get huge amounts of play, but it’s actually an awesome book about…a dawg .  Recommended, beautifully written and easy to read, Straussian too though you can read it straight up for fun as well.

3. Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener, The Upside of Your Dark Side .  Only some people should read this book.

2. Sebastian Edwards, Toxic Aid: Economic Collapse and Recovery in Tanzania .  He gives foreign aid to Tanzania an “F” for the 1961-1981 period, a “B minus” for 1981-1994, and a B+ for the latter part of that period.  Edwards is a top international economist and this is one of the best thought out books on foreign aid.

1. David Sterling, Yucatán: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition .  This cookbook is “too good” to actually cook from, but as account of food from Yucatán, along with history, photos, and recipes, it has to count as one of the year’s most notable publications.

That is the new James K. Galbraith book, subtitled The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth .  It covers a lot of ground and everyone will find something to object to in here.  Still, I found it a good example of some fresh thinking, though it is not a tract which sees through its arguments with a lot of detail.  I am glad to have read it.

That is from Morris L. Bian, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change , p.205.  This book is useful for showing early Chinese moves in the direction of state planning and state-owned enterprises.

That is from the new and excellent When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 , by Ronald C. Rosbottom.

5. Author : Hmm…I don’t really like either Robert Penn Warren or Hunter S. Thompson.  So Thomas Merton wins a second category, try The Seven Storey Mountain .

Eric Kaplan, Does Santa Exist?: A Philosophical Investigation , by one of the producers of The Big Bang Theory.

Isabel Sawhill, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage .

Walter Mischel, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control .

That is from the new and excellent Nicholas Lardy book Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China .  In my view the truth lies somewhere between the arguments of Lardy and the thesis of Joe Zhang , see the first Amazon review for Zhang’s critique of Lardy, plus Zhang’s comments here .  Here is Scott Sumner criticizing Zhang .