Recently Mentioned Books

That is from Daniel Tudor, Korea: The Impossible Country , which is quite a good overview of the place.

I would add this: I am grateful for Jefferson’s contributions to this country in the form of the Declaration and also the Louisiana Purchase, to cite the two biggest.  But as a thinker I find him decidedly mediocre, other than that the Declaration is truly stirring in parts and of course of major historical importance.  (That said, I don’t think it was obvious ex ante that independence was a good idea, so even there Jefferson may be open to criticism.)  Reading the rest is a chore and for me the...

3. Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets .  Deirdre McCloskey had a good review of that book here .

2. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 , already out in the UK not yet out in the US.

1. John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays .  I enjoyed this one too.

I am thus a little nervous when Ben Goldacre entitles his recent book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients .  (I have a UK copy, and it is due out in the U.S. this February.)  I do in fact agree with Goldacre’s portrait of a sector wracked with massive corruption and shoddy scientific standards.  And I see many aspects of this book as deserving an “A” or “A+” rating, which I would not hand out lightly.  But I won’t continue down that track, because I suspect the book ...

I quite liked this book , which is by Jon Meacham.  Here is the bit best suited to MR :

The TNR essay is here , prompted by the publication of Angus Burgin’s The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Great Depression .  Excerpt:

That is the new book by Charles Morris and the subtitle is The First American Industrial Revolution .  Excerpt:

Alice Munro, Dear Life: Stories .  I can confidently put this on my list without having read it yet.

Peter Sis, The Conference of the Birds .  Mostly illustrated, beautiful in any case.

Alonso Cueto, The Blue Hour .

Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography .

Michael Dirda, On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling .

Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 .

Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History .

Day Night Day Night (from five years ago, but a real stunner, underrated and a wonderful study of Nudge of top of everything else)

Samsara (makes sense on a big screen only, I suspect)

Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry

Margaret

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Take This Waltz

Circo , Mexican circus movie

Your Sister’s Sister (Straussian)

The Raid: Redemption (better Indonesian martial arts you will not see)