Recently Mentioned Books

And here is the new forthcoming Robert Kaplan book Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific .  I have pre-ordered it.

Earlier today I was reading John Hauer’s excellent The Natural Superiority of Mules .  It is a deliberately species-ist book, without a shred of objectivity, and the title reveals the blatant biases of the author.  The book has data, but is not data-driven.  It is “advocacy of mules driven.”  Get the subtitle: “A Celebration of One of the Most Intelligent, Sure-Footed, and Misunderstood Animals in the World” (eyes roll).  Yet I learned a great deal from it, and I will read any web site that can ...

The author is my colleague F.H. Buckley and the subtitle is The Rise of Crown Government in America .  I am very enthusiastic about this book, which is a comparative study of American and Canadian systems of government with respect to the abilities to produce varying degrees of tyranny, in the former case mostly through the executive branch.  Buckley is himself from Canada and overall favors that system of government.  Here are two excerpts:

That is the new book by Daniel Hannan and the subtitle is How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World .

That is the new forthcoming Charles Murray book and the subtitle is Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life .

Overall the text offers a strongly non-sentimental account, does not whitewash any of the participants in the disputes, and it communicates how much early American policymakers , including Truman, were skeptical about what ended up happening.  Today’s often-unquestioned assumptions were very often historically quite contingent.  You can buy the book here .

The author is Christopher Hale and the subtitle is the rather misleading Exposing Britain’s My Lai .

Here is an older (free) historical book on the employment of plebiscites to determine sovereignty .  Here is the new, well-timed, and not free March 2014 book by Matt Qvortrupp , on same topic.  Qvortrup, by the way, helped design the referendum for South Sudan.

Sadly, Sherwin Nuland has passed away too .  His How We Die: Reflections of Life’s Final Chapter is one of my favorite books, recommended to all.

The great Robert Ashley, one of the musical geniuses of the last forty years, has passed away .  He is one of the few who did something truly new in music.  Here is NPR on Ashley .  Here is the opera Perfect Lives , perhaps his greatest contribution.  Here are parts of that opera on YouTube .  Here is Ashley on Wikipedia .

This Drezner piece (pdf) indicates that applied sanctions don’t usually work, but the threat of sanctions can be effective.  Here is Dan on “smart sanctions,” (pdf)  which are not in general effective.  Here is Dan’s book The Sanctions Paradox .  Here is Dan on Twitter .  I hereby request a new article from Dan on sanctions, as they might be applied to Russia.  Here is a short BBC piece on the possible economic impact of sanctions today.

As I had predicted, this is proving to be a breakout book for Megan.  You can buy her book here .  There is more on the book here .

Vassily Aksyonov, The Island of Crimea , discussed here : “Written in 1979, Vassily Aksyonov’s “The Island of Crimea” imagines an alternative history (abetted by alternative geography—the Crimea is a peninsula) wherein the Russian civil war ends with the tsarist forces able to hold onto this southern scrap of the old empire. “

Orlando Figes, A Crimean War .

Anatol Lieven, Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry .  And here is a short essay of his on Ukraine today .

That is a new and highly useful book by Stuart J. Hillmon , here is one bit from it:

That is the new and excellent book by Daniel W. Drezner and the subtitle is How the World Stopped Another Great Depression .  It is largely if not entirely correct, here is a summary excerpt:

5. Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches .  And Dinner Party Economics is now on-line at Amazon .

I recently read Noel’s book on political polarization and enjoyed it, especially his discussion of how intellectual elites have led the process of polarization.  Still, I would trade in having read that book for a five minute chat with Bill Clinton.

The author is William Easterly and the subtitle is Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor .

Åslund has much more on Ukraine here , including this 2009 book .  For a while now he has been predicting the end of Yanukovych , for instance in this piece .  In any case he is the most prominent economist who writes regularly on Ukraine.

That is published in The Washington Post , and I can recommend both books.  Coyle’s book is GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History and Karabell’s is The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World .  My opening sentences are this:

That is published in The Washington Post , and I can recommend both books.  Coyle’s book is GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History and Karabell’s is The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World .  My opening sentences are this:

In general regional demand effects are strong, as I argue in An Economist Gets Lunch. People outside of southern Ohio don’t understand good Cincinnati chili and so they don’t get it.  The ingredients can in fact be transferred to North Carolina but they aren’t, least of all with the proper applications.  A lot of good Sichuan dishes can be reproduced reasonably well in the United States, but you don’t get them until the properly demanding clientele is in place (by the way Gourmet Kingdom in Carr...

7. Gordon still fails to credit the originators of the growth slowdown idea, as applied to contemporary times, namely Michael Mandel and Peter Thiel.  The first sentence of his paper reads: “A controversy about the future of U.S. economic growth was ignited by my paper released in late summer 2012.”  I would add, perhaps with a bit of peevishness, that a lot of the actual debate was kicked off by my own The Great Stagnation , published in January of 2011 and which was covered and commented on ex...