Recently Mentioned Books

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...

As I have stressed in Average is Over , improved measurement of worker value is very likely to increase income inequality.  When contributions are relatively vague, the natural tendency is to have weak egalitarian norms and relatively egalitarian pay structures.  When relative contributions are more clear, pay structures will follow, in the longer run dragging norms along with them.

That is the new banking book by Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber and the subtitle is The Political Origins of Banking Crises & Scarce Credit .  I went to review it, but came back to the thought that I liked Arnold Kling’s review better than what I was coming up with, here goes:

2. Joel Slemrod and Christian Gillitzer, Tax Systems .

1. Michael Szenberg and Lall Ramrattan, editors, Secrets of Economics Editors .

You will find related ideas in my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures .  And here are by the way are my previous posts on horse nationalism .

That is the new book by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi and the subtitle is How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again .  As the title suggests, the argument focuses on household debt and also its subsequent effects on aggregate demand.  Here is one bit:

He was the director of Babette’s Feast and he just passed away at age 95.  What stuck with me most from that movie, and what is one of my favorite sentences ever, Axel himself cited upon receiving an Oscar:

5. Alen Mattich, Killing Pilgrim , Euro noir, but written by a financial journalist.

4. Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving ?  Parts of this book were interesting, but I think if I were a Muslim women I would have found it offensive, including the title.  What if someone wrote a book “Does Tyler Cowen Need Saving?” and decided “no.”  But then multiply by more than 500 million.  I can think of better questions to ask.  The author means well but the provocative title is a representation of what is in essence a re-colonialising the object of study.  Here is another, very d...

3. Scott Phillips, University of America: A Non-Linear Blueprint for Higher Education in the 21st Century .  A new and interesting short eBook on reforming higher education:

2. Richard Marshall, Philosophy at 3 a.m.: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers .  They are all smart, most of the interviews are fun, and pretty early on in this book you realize they are not going to get anywhere at all.

2. Thursday night, a dialogue between me and Megan McArdle about her new book .

That is the new book by Benjamin Baumer and Andrew Zimbalist and the subtitle is Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball .  It is an excellent and well-written look at where sabermetric knowledge stands today, here is one excerpt: