Recently Mentioned Books

1. Film : A rich and rapidly improving genre.  My favorites are Lebanon or Waltz with Bashir , with a sentimental nod to Yana’s Friends , which isn’t great but I saw it on my second date with Natasha.

I have not yet seen a copy of Erik Angner, A Course in Behavioral Economics , but perhaps it is of interest.

5. Benoit Peeters, Derrida: A Biography .  An excellent book, though I find it hard to care.  Easier than reading Derrida, and the author doesn’t make the mistake of trying to tell you what Derrida is all about.

4. Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds: A Novel .  Everyone else loved it, though for me it was too impressionistic.  Call it my fault.

3. Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork:  A History of How We Cook and Eat .  The first 61% of this book, as measured by Kindle, is fascinating and superbly original.  The rest is a well-done retread of other intelligent popular food books.  That is for me a high ratio of excellent to good.

2. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 .  It is stunningly good, not just “stunningly good for a 90-year-old .”

1. Rwanda, Inc ., by Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond.  The positive story on that country, though I don’t buy it, given that the broader region still is not close to peace.  Governance problems will do them in.

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)