Recently Mentioned Books

That is from the new and excellent book by Samuel Arbesman, The Half-Life of Facts:Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date .

I would have thought Karl Marx was the origin, or perhaps one of the utopian socialists.  Any better ideas?  Maybe this expensive book can tell us .

Here is one appreciation , here is Wikipedia .  You should read Roll, Jordan, Roll , if you have not already.

That is from the new, excellent and to the point Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity , by Lester R. Brown.

That is the new book by Rob Atkinson and Stephen Ezell .  It is far more mercantilist than I feel comfortable with, yet it is full of information and argumentation, and it is a book one can profitably engage with.  Here is one excerpt:

That is the new Jason Brennan book , which has yet to arrive on my doorstep.

Here is more .  File under “ Makers vs. Takers .”  Here is Will Wilkinson on making vs. taking .

From the new James R. Flynn book :

James R. Flynn recommends this paper, by Fox and Mitchum, in his new book :

There is also an excellent recent essay by Jeremy Grantham on agriculture (pdf), too pessimistic in my view but still more right than wrong.  For an interesting look at why future gains from GMOs may be limited, at least in the short run, read R. Ford Denison’s Darwinian Agriculture .  Nature already has done a lot of the optimization.

The source is Frank Dikötter, Things Modern: Material Culture and Everyday Life in China , which is also a good book.  Wikipedia offers a more complex story about the possible inventors , with some candidates for the inventor being Japanese.  In any case, I had thought of it as a more ancient device than it turns out to be.

The author is Robert D. Kaplan and the subtitle is What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate .  I thought it was an excellent and also highly readable book, though without agreeing with every claim or the rather relentless method.  Here is one excerpt:

2. Par Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan .

1. Wesley R. Fishel, The End of Extraterritoriality in China , and

9. Favorite Neil Young album : Everybody Knows this is Nowhere .

4. Novelist : Margaret Atwood, especially Cat’s Eye .  I used to like Robertson Davies, but somehow his novels have not stuck with me.

3. Director : After Cronenberg there is James Cameron, hate me if you want but I find his movies splendid.  Sarah Polley remains underrated in the United States, start with Away From Her , another of my all-time favorites.

2. Movie, set in : Dead Ringers , by David Cronenberg, one of my favorite films period.

1. Short story author : Alice Munro I consider one of the very best writers ever, from anywhere or any period.  Read them all, and there is a new collection coming this November .  Here is one place to start .

1. Short story author : Alice Munro I consider one of the very best writers ever, from anywhere or any period.  Read them all, and there is a new collection coming this November .  Here is one place to start .

Perhaps “In a Landscape,” on this CD .

That is from Jayeeta Sharma’s Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India , a book which I am finding very useful for background on current troubles concerning Assam.

The article is interesting throughout.  The new Hanna Rosin book is here .

Edited by John B. Taylor, Lee E. Ohanian, and Ian J. Wright, Amazon link here .  For the pointer I thank Rich Berger.

Richard Caves collects Picasso, Bill Landes collects Charles Burchfield, and William Baumol did a good deal of wood sculpture, but I do not know that any of them have served as patrons of living artists.  Assar Lindbeck also works as a painter , as does Robert Mundell.  Spencer MacCallum (not an economist but he has written on economic issues) has been an important patron and promoter of Mexican pottery , and my own patronage efforts in Mexico are discussed in my book on the economics of Mexican...