Recently Mentioned Books

6. Book, set in, fiction (not by Chinese author): Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China .  Pearl Buck I find boring.

5. Book, non-fiction : James Fallows, China Airborne .  I am also a fan of the book where the guy drives a car around China. The Private Life of Chairman Mao is a stunner, maybe the best book I know on tyranny.

5. Book, non-fiction : James Fallows, China Airborne .  I am also a fan of the book where the guy drives a car around China. The Private Life of Chairman Mao is a stunner, maybe the best book I know on tyranny.

2. Movie : The Story of Qiu Ju .  A real charmer.

1. Novel : Soul Mountain , by Gao Xingjian.  Parts of Dream of the Red Chamber are splendid, but it is hard to keep track of the whole thing and also I wonder whether any of the available editions in English are satisfactory.

Everything by Gary Gorton is worth reading.  I am not sure when this book is due out (Amazon claims Nov.2012), but it is not out yet.  The link is here .

Edited by Aaron Edlin and Joseph Stiglitz, the book has many fine short essays by various luminaries…

The author is Martin Gilens and the subtitle is Economic Inequality and Political Power in America .  A few points:

The author is David Wessel, of The Wall Street Journal , and the subtitle is Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget .   You can pre-order it here , due out July 31.  I very much look forward to reading my copy.

You can buy the book here .

Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World .  Excerpt:

That is the new book by Angus Burgin and the subtitle is Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression .  As I had suspected, it is interesting.  Here is the core thesis:

That is a new book out by Jim Lacey .  Here is one good review by Christopher Tassava :

Just yesterday on my doorstep I received the book The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression , by Angus Burgin, which offers a lengthy contrast between Hayek and Friedman, among other matters.  It looks interesting: “Postwar conservative thought was more dynamic and cosmopolitan than has previously been understood.”

You can buy it here .  Rossman blogs here , and he is on Twitter here .

That is the new book by Greg Woolf .  Could it now be the best single-volume introduction to the history of ancient Rome?  It is conceptual yet avoids the pitfalls of overgeneralizing, a difficult balance to strike.  It also has a superb (useful rather than exhaustive) bibliography.  A good measure of books such as this is whether they induce you to read or order other books on the same topic and this one did.

Here is a short excerpt from the review , and the gate is there for subscribers.  You can order the book here .

They can be fired for donating a kidney to their boss (fired by the same boss, that is), refusing to have their person and effects searched , calling the boss a “cheapskate” in a personal letter , and more.

That is the new novel by Gillian Flynn , which has found great favor among readers.  It does not present itself as an intellectual book, yet by the end it turned out to be clever in a very different way than what had been promised up front.  Recommended, if you are looking for a page turner and an excellent novel about both crime and marriage.

Hypocrites and Half-Wits: A Daily Dose of Sanity from Cafe Hayek , by Donald J. Boudreaux.

You can buy An Economist Gets Lunch here .

That is from The Hour Between Dog and Wolf .  The author is John Coates and you can buy the book here .  I would consider that hypothesis speculative, but nonetheless I found the passage of interest.

I also have received William L. Silber’s Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence , which looks quite interesting.

Thomas K. McCraw, The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy .

There is also The Kipper und Wipper Inflation, 1619-23, An Economic History with Contemporary German Broadsheets , by Martha White Paas, John Roger Paas, and translations by George Schoolfield.  The origins of German monetary thought turn out to be more important than might have been expected…