Recently Mentioned Books

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (boring for most people, big screen only I suspect)

A Separation

Expecting Better: How to Fight the Pregnancy Establishment with Facts .

Solomon is a very smart guy.  But overall this book leaves one with a sense of being tired of the value of the individual, written by an author overwhelmed by what comes across as, despite Solomon’s quest for nobility, a rogue’s gallery of misfits, baroque style, and without the writing itself coming to terms with the book’s own underlying emotional tenor.  Is it unfair to read this as still being, ultimately, a book about depression ?

That is from Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity .

I have just pre-ordered his forthcoming book Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It .

Bach, St. John’s Passion, conducted by Monica Huggett , with a stripped-down orchestra, not just a stripped-down choir.  Here is one good review , here is another .

The Gramophone best classical CD of the year was Heinrich Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien , conducted by Lionel Meunier, which I enjoy very much.

Busoni’s Doktor Faust , conducted by Adrian Boult.

John Adams, Harmonielehre, Short Ride in a Fast Machine .

Hector Berlioz, Requiem , conducted by Paul McCreesh.

Havergal Brian, The Gothic Symphony , conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

That is the new book by the excellent Gurcharan Das and it makes an excellent case for the relevance of a classical liberal approach to the problems of India.  Note the subtitle!  You can buy the book here .

That is a new and forthcoming book from Wayne A. Leighton and Edward L. Lopez, and the subtitle is The Economic Engine of Political Change .  Here is my blurb:

Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease .  Here is a short related piece by the author .

I loved his Schumpeter biography , and he had a long and distinguished career as an economic and business historian at Harvard.  Here are previous MR posts on McCraw .  Here is an obituary .

2. Elliott Carter passes away at 103 ; here is my favorite Carter CD .

That’s the new book by Casey Mulligan , and the subtitle is How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy .  To get to the point, it’s quite good.

He taught me Ph.d Micro I at Harvard, so it’s too bad he wants to wreck both Spain and Europe, and for so little in return.  Didn’t one of his theorems suggest this was a bad idea?  It’s not as if Catalonia is treated like Tibet.  (Haven’t I spent a few nice days walking around Barcelona in my time?  Didn’t Air Genius Gary Leff get a decent meal at El Bulli? Didn’t they once make a young people’s movie about the place in which no one has to do any work?)  Don’t we have bigger problems to worry a...

Mary Morgan, The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think .  And here is chapter one on-line (pdf).

Here is Rodriguez’s eBook guide to happiness .  For pointers I thank Cass Sunstein and also Angus.

In any case that excerpt is from Barry Eichengreen, Dwight H. Perkins, and Khanho Shin, From Miracle to Maturity: The Growth of the Korean Economy .

Here is a further Mark Bittman column on GMOs , arguing against GMOs on the grounds that they lead to greater use of chemicals and pesticides.  I would start with quite a simple point, namely to the extent there is a problem with chemicals and pesticides (as there may be with or without GMOs), let’s regulate that problem directly.  Somehow that option is not put on the table as an alternative to what is widely recognized as a rather dubious referendum .  In any case, I posed the question about G...

That is the new eBook edited by Kurt Schuler and Andrew Rosenberg.  I cannot open the file they sent along to me, but Amazon summarizes:

Read the whole thing.  You can buy Tim Congdon’s book here .  Here is my final take on the book itself: