Recently Mentioned Books

3. Amy Sackville, Orkney .  Not every honeymoon works out the way you planned.

2. Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs .  Great fun.

1. Karl Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book Two: Man in Love .

The author is Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey and that is a new book published by MIT Press.  The Amazon link is here .  Here is a bit from t he book’s home page :

The link is here , with review, a bargain I say, hire her!  And see if they will throw in free shipping…

Some of you will know that Average is Over contains an extensive discussion of “freestyle chess,” where humans can use any and all tools available — most of all computers and computer programs — to play the best chess game possible.  The book also notes that “man plus computer” is a stronger player than “computer alone,” at least provided the human knows what he is doing.  You will find a similar claim from Brynjolfsson and McAfee .

The subtitle is Schooling Ain’t Learning , and it is excellent, as one might expect.  Here is one excerpt:

That is the new book by Mark Lewisohn , and I was so keen to finish it that I neglected to see the Ender’s Game movie yesterday.  944 pp. and you only get up to 1962 and the beginnings of the first LP!  Despite the length, it is gripping throughout.  In addition to the obvious angles on The Beatles, it is a study of Liverpudlian history, the nature of poverty, why educating even really smart people can be problematic, why relative age matters so much for young people, how groups gel, the importa...

4. The Art of David Tudor , seven disc box set, caveat emptor on this one.

3. Klára Würtz and Kristóf Baráti, Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano .

2. Arvo Pärt, Creator Spiritus .

4. Bellini’s Norma , with Cecilia Bartoli.

3. Arvo Pärt, Adam’s Lament .

2. Haydn, The Creation , conducted by Martin Pearlman.

1. Meanwhile , by Eighth Blackbird., assorted contemporary pieces.

The author is Alan Taylor and the subtitle is Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 .

1. The paperback version of Daniel Klein’s Knowledge and Coordination is out .

The subtitle is Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion .  I believe this is her best and most compelling book.  It is wonderfully researched, very well written, the topic is understudied yet of universal import, and the accompanying visuals are striking.

4. I don’t usually enjoy political books, but Peter Baker’s Days of Fire , on the Bush-Cheney relationship, is excellent.

Many people are calling this book the novel of the year (reviews here ).  It’s pretty good and it held my attention — I read 780 pp. and was never tempted to quit.  It is an ideal plane read , but I don’t expect it will stick with me.  I put it in the “worth reading if you’ve read most of the other books you want to read” category, but that is not a space you should wish to inhabit.

I feel that with increasing inequality, using your youth well is all the more important, something I bet Tyler Cowen would agree with .

I’ve been preparing a class on Hayek for MRUniversity.com , and I was struck by my reread of this essay, which was presented at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting of 1947 (it was later published in Individualism and Economic Order , pdf of the book here ).

Some readers (or journalists) ask me if I have further principles for finding good food which are not outlined in my ethnic dining guide or in An Economist Gets Lunch .  Of course I do, though many of them are not easily articulated in the medium of print (some involve scent, for instance, others are about the intangible feel of a place).

Price Fishback, Jonathan Rose and Kenneth Snowden, Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership .

Cass R. Sunstein, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas .