Recently Mentioned Books

The author is Rose George and the subtitle is Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate .  Here is one excerpt:

The author is Edmund Phelps and the subtitle is How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change .

The new (November 2012) book is War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics , and yes it is an important work.  It is also difficult to excerpt.  Nonetheless I especially liked these two sentences about Afghanistan:

The author is Maury Klein and the subtitle is Mobilizing America for World War II , and it weighs in at almost 900 pp.  So far it is quite good, and well-written, though fairly slow in getting off the ground.  Here is one bit:

I’ve browsed the “above 10k” category and virtually all of it seems a) aesthetically absymal and b) drastically overpriced.  It looks like dealers trying to unload unwanted, hard to sell inventory at sucker prices.  I’m guessing that many of these are being sold at multiples of three or four over auction price histories.  Is this unexceptional John Frost worth even a third of the 150k asking price? Maybe not .

Their Warhols are weak and overpriced , even if you like Warhol.  Are they so sure that this rather grisly Monet is actually the real thing?  I say the reviews of that item get it right.  At least the shipping is free and you can leave feedback.

Should you buy this mediocre Mary Cassatt lithograph for “Price: $185,000.00 + $4.49 shipping”?  (Jeff, is WaPo charging you $250 million plus $4.49 shipping ?  I don’t think so. )

The first sentence of this MIT Press book — entitled Wu Jinglian — reads “Wu Jinglian is widely acknowledged to be China’s most influential and celebrated economist.”

7. Jacob N. Shapiro, The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations .

6. Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History .

5. Tomoko Shiroyama, China During the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937 .  A good introduction to an understudied but increasingly relevant topic.

4. Javier Marías, The Infatuations .  I’m not sold on the ending, but most of the time this feels like one of his two or three best books.  I don’t think it will be his breakthrough book to “truly famous like Rushdie or Coetzee global author” status, but that moment likely will come.

3. Alyn Shipton, Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter .  Very good for fans .

2. John le Carré, The Naive and Sentimental Lover .  This is supposed to be one of his failed works, and it should have been much shorter, but at least half of it is pretty damned good.  It’s also a classic literary text on attitudes toward business and commerce.  No spies.

1. Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger .  It is an above-average Booker Prize winner and probably her best novel.  She remains undervalued in the United States.

The story is here , and here is a good geopolitical analysis of the film.  I actually preferred the often unheralded Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II , and no sequels are not always worse.  Just ask Cervantes.

The author is Angus Deaton and the subtitle is Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality .  It is a very good book, as you might expect.  Here are two bits I found especially interesting:

3. Mark Leibovich, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!, in America’s Gilded Capital .  I feared this would bore me with atheoretical mud-slinging and gossip, but it is actually an astute look at “behavioral public choice” and how a lot of D.C. politics actually operates.  If you think you might want to read it, you should, although you can stop somewhere in the middle just fine.  My main objection is the subtitle.

2. David Soll, Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply .  A good overview of the history, plus it makes it clear just how much the growth of the City required somewhat rapacious behavior with respect to the water rights of upper New York State.  The early history of the Groton Reservoir is interesting too.

1. The Childhood of Jesus , by J.M. Coetzee.  Two-thirds of this is superb, although as a whole it doesn’t quite hang together.  It’s still much better than most of what is published.

The author is Mohsin Hamid and you can order the book here .

Interior design seems to be their area of greatest accomplishment .  The relevant sites are numerous but spread out.

3. Author : Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, I like but do not love his work.  Two quite recent Sri Lankan novels are Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel , and Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane , both noteworthy.

3. Author : Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, I like but do not love his work.  Two quite recent Sri Lankan novels are Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel , and Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane , both noteworthy.

1. Popular music : M.I.A. , with Arular and then Kala being my favorite works by her.