Recently Mentioned Books

Here is one very positive review of the book .  In the United States the book comes out February 2014 under a different title .  You also can buy the British edition for U.S. Kindle now.

Here is one very positive review of the book .  In the United States the book comes out February 2014 under a different title .  You also can buy the British edition for U.S. Kindle now.

I am also starting to like Churches, Bones of What You Believe .  My favorite jazz album of the year has been Charles Lloyd and Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song .  I have more on order.

5. Matangi , by M.I.A.  Her first album had enough posturing that I figured that was it, but by now she has compiled an impressive streak.

4. Wed 21 , by Juana Molina.  Why isn’t she better known?

2. MBV , by My Bloody Valentine, there is a good short review here .  If you had to ask who did better after a 20-year hiatus, Kevin Shields or Bobby Fischer , this is decisive evidence in favor of Shields.  A totally unexpected renaissance.

1. Kanye West, Yeezus .  His best album by quite a bit.

That is all from Richard Thalheimer’s “The Economics of Racetrack-Casino (Racino) Gambling,” from The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Gambling , edited by Leighton Vaughan Williams and Donald S. Siegel.

While we are on the topic, I very recently received a review copy of The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Gambling , edited by Leighton Vaughan Williams and Donald S. Siegel, which appears to be excellent.

The author is Natasha Dow Schüll and the subtitle is Machine Gambling in Las Vegas .  I read this on the flight back home and it is a good choice for one of the very best books of the year, as well as one of the best books on “behavioral economics” and “nudge.”

You can buy it here , the book’s home page is here .

5. There is a new Hilton Root book: Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and Development in Modern States .  The MIT Press website is here , and the book’s own home page is here .

That passage is from a Leah Price review of Lucy Lethbridge’s new book Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain From the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times .

4. John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven .  One of the world’s greatest Bach conductors is also one of the greatest Bach writers, with an emphasis on the vocal music and also what we know about Bach’s life.  Especially noteworthy is the lengthy case for the John Passion and the discussion of the B Minor Mass.  Definitely worthy of the “best books of the year” list and perhaps in the top tier too.  I’m not going to liberate this volume, I am going to keep it.

3. Iain MacDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future .  A clear and conceptually argued account of Ferguson’s thought, which will convince you he is not the lightweight of the Scottish Enlightenment.  Starting with a comparison with Montesquieu, MacDaniel emphasizes Ferguson as a critic of the idea of progress and a historical pessimist, focusing on issues of war and martial virtue.  This book is also useful for understanding the subtleties of Smith ...

2. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain .  An engaging and well written book about Thomas Macaulay’s father Zachary and then Thomas himself, focusing on themes of slavery, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and empire, not to mention the education of children.  A good read on why some strands of liberalism hit such a dead end when confronted with the realities of the British empire.

1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720 , edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller.  A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text.  Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly , “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.”  Recommended...

I loved the documentary In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey , although perhaps it is for fans only.

In Another Country , Korean and French juxtaposed.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceacescu , “is mesmerizing, like watching one of the great silent films of the past, and the scenes where the Chinese communists praise the Romanian communists are some of the best ever filmed.”

Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House .

Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia gets rave reviews, although I have not yet read my copy.  From the UK I’ve ordered the new Holland translation of Herodotus and Richard Overy’s The Bombing War and have high expectations for both.

From books “close at hand,” I very much liked John List and Uri Gneezy , Virginia Postrel on glamour , Lant Pritchett, The Rebirth of Education , and Tim Harford on macroeconomics .

Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: An Authorized Biography, from Grantham to the Falklands .

Clare Jacobson, New Museums in China .  Good text but mostly a picture book, stunning architecture, no art, full of lessons.