Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6797 mentions, ordered by most recent.
Eldar Shafir, editor, The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy .
That is from the new and quite interesting Planet of Cities , by Shlomo Angel. My takeaway is that the Avent-Yglesias push for greater urban density, which I sympathize with, is unlikely to happen on a significant scale. If you are looking for hopeful signs, there is this:
That is the new book by David Goldhill and the subtitle is How American Health Care Killed My Father — and How We Can Fix It . I don’t actually like that subtitle, but still this is the best popular health care book from recent times. It has a crystal clear account of what has gone wrong and how to fix it, with the author settling upon a version of the Singaporean system. I would describe Goldhill as a market-friendly Democrat who is skeptical about ACA and for the right reasons.
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star .
Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co.
His Better than Plowing is one of the underrated autobiographies of economics.
1. Writer : Miguel Ángel Asturias. I don’t see why he isn’t a bigger deal with U.S. readers, given that he won a Nobel Prize for literature. His Hombres de maíz is a beautiful book. There is also Francisco Goldman .
Tim is a frequent (unofficial) member of the GMU lunch crew, and you can buy his book here . Here is Tim’s Wikipedia page .
That is the new book by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig and the subtitle is What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about it . Here is their bottom line:
The author is Jared Diamond and the subtitle is What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies?
4. The next Cass Sunstein book: Simpler: The Future of Government .
The authors are John Mackey (the John Mackey) and Raj Sisodia and the subtitle is Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business .
4. A lot of the surplus from Ricardian progress will end up captured by land, so we should follow Matt Yglesias’s recommendations in The Rent is Too Damn High .
2. Intellectual property rights of many kinds should be weaker, as Alex discusses in his Launching the Innovation Renaissance . That is one way to “tax” some forms of capital. But do not expect the main action here to be found in easy-to-reproduce forms of capital, rather look to the more durable rents.
Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey .
Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood, Becoming Right: How Campuses shape Young Conservatives .
By the way, here is Diamond’s forthcoming book (Dec.31) The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?
That is from Daniel Tudor’s very good book, Korea: The Impossible Country .
Jane Jacobs. Spencer McCallum . Donald Lavoie’s National Economic Planning: What is Left? . David Friedman on Iceland , and Joseph Peden on medieval Ireland . Proudhon, and the Eric Frank Russell version of left anarchism, as found in The Great Explosion . Auberon Herbert and Gustav de Molinari. Kropotkin on mutual aid. Proudhon and also Chomsky . Karl Hess and Kirkpatrick Sale. And don’t forget Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country .
Jane Jacobs. Spencer McCallum . Donald Lavoie’s National Economic Planning: What is Left? . David Friedman on Iceland , and Joseph Peden on medieval Ireland . Proudhon, and the Eric Frank Russell version of left anarchism, as found in The Great Explosion . Auberon Herbert and Gustav de Molinari. Kropotkin on mutual aid. Proudhon and also Chomsky . Karl Hess and Kirkpatrick Sale. And don’t forget Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country .
Jane Jacobs. Spencer McCallum . Donald Lavoie’s National Economic Planning: What is Left? . David Friedman on Iceland , and Joseph Peden on medieval Ireland . Proudhon, and the Eric Frank Russell version of left anarchism, as found in The Great Explosion . Auberon Herbert and Gustav de Molinari. Kropotkin on mutual aid. Proudhon and also Chomsky . Karl Hess and Kirkpatrick Sale. And don’t forget Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country .
The author is Ian Morris and the subtitle is How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations . I don’t like the subtitle of this book, which I feel should include the word “energy.” While a number of topics are covered, the core parts of the book concern the importance of energy sources for early economic development.
Imagine a Norwegian Proust, albeit more concrete and with less repetition. The Amazon link is here , and you will notice that all nine Amazon reviews give it five stars. Here is a James Wood review from The New Yorker . Here is Wikipedia on the author . Here is a good blog review . Note this is only one out of six volumes, from Norway.
7. Non-fiction author : Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow is splendid. Tom Segev could be a runner-up.
6. Philosopher : Joseph Raz, especially his The Morality of Freedom .