Recently Mentioned Books

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 .

Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left .

Last night I read the new and excellent Michael Pettis book Avoiding the Fall: China’s Economic Restructuring .  It is the single best treatment I know for understanding the dilemmas of the current Chinese economy and the need for restructuring.  My favorite bits are those comparing the current Chinese economy to the Brazilian growth of the 1960s and 70s, also investment-driven, and lasting longer than most people thought possible, and culminating in the crack-up of the 1980s, which turned out t...

One intriguing side of Shiller is his advocacy of derivatives and prediction markets to help individuals better hedge risk.  On that see Shiller’s book Finance and the Good Society .  Shiller for instance would like to see explicit futures or forward markets in gdp, and individuals could hedge with those markets to bet against bad business prospects.  One also can imagine laborers insuring their future income by transacting in indicators of economic health.  Shiller has raised the idea of using ...

It’s good — really — and it is called The Signature of All Things .  I also find the book was nearly ideal for a long plane flight.  It has enough ideas to keep one’s interest, as I find that truly schlocky fiction bores me after a short while (it is better for short flights than for long ones).  But it is also easy enough to read and the print is suitably large.

She is one of my favorite authors.  If you are looking for one place to start try Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories , but all of her books are worth reading.  As writers go, she falls into the “behavioral” camp, so to speak.  Here is a story on Alice Munro retiring , as of earlier this year.  Here is an associated slide show .  I liked this article about her decision to retire .  She was 37 when her first collection of stories was published, her first story was publish...

6. Dwight H. Perkins, East Asian Development: Foundations and Strategies .

5. Brigitte Granville, Remembering Inflation , and

4. Jonathan Franzen, editor, The Kraus Project .  The Karl Kraus texts in German are energetically written, but one remembers how cantankerous and idiosyncratic he was.  The Kraus translated into English doesn’t work and probably the works are untranslatable.  The Franzen in English is cringe-worthy.  The Michael Hofmann review in TNYRB is one of the best book reviews I have read, ever, gated here .

2. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony .  This is a remarkably good, serious, detailed, and documented work on what we (possibly) know about the Gospels, if we read them through the lens of being eyewitness testimony.  Anyone interested in The New Testament should read this book.

1. Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants .  Not thrilling, but a well-informed, readable book, full of good information, about a part of the world which is growing in importance rapidly.

6. Dwight H. Perkins, East Asian Development: Foundations and Strategies .

5. Brigitte Granville, Remembering Inflation , and

4. Jonathan Franzen, editor, The Kraus Project .  The Karl Kraus texts in German are energetically written, but one remembers how cantankerous and idiosyncratic he was.  The Kraus translated into English doesn’t work and probably the works are untranslatable.  The Franzen in English is cringe-worthy.  The Michael Hofmann review in TNYRB is one of the best book reviews I have read, ever, gated here .