Recently Mentioned Books

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)

The Three Stooges

The Dictator

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (boring for most people, big screen only I suspect)

A Separation

Expecting Better: How to Fight the Pregnancy Establishment with Facts .

Solomon is a very smart guy.  But overall this book leaves one with a sense of being tired of the value of the individual, written by an author overwhelmed by what comes across as, despite Solomon’s quest for nobility, a rogue’s gallery of misfits, baroque style, and without the writing itself coming to terms with the book’s own underlying emotional tenor.  Is it unfair to read this as still being, ultimately, a book about depression ?

That is from Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity .

I have just pre-ordered his forthcoming book Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do about It .

Bach, St. John’s Passion, conducted by Monica Huggett , with a stripped-down orchestra, not just a stripped-down choir.  Here is one good review , here is another .

The Gramophone best classical CD of the year was Heinrich Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien , conducted by Lionel Meunier, which I enjoy very much.

Busoni’s Doktor Faust , conducted by Adrian Boult.

John Adams, Harmonielehre, Short Ride in a Fast Machine .

Hector Berlioz, Requiem , conducted by Paul McCreesh.

Havergal Brian, The Gothic Symphony , conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

That is the new book by the excellent Gurcharan Das and it makes an excellent case for the relevance of a classical liberal approach to the problems of India.  Note the subtitle!  You can buy the book here .

That is a new and forthcoming book from Wayne A. Leighton and Edward L. Lopez, and the subtitle is The Economic Engine of Political Change .  Here is my blurb:

Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease .  Here is a short related piece by the author .

I loved his Schumpeter biography , and he had a long and distinguished career as an economic and business historian at Harvard.  Here are previous MR posts on McCraw .  Here is an obituary .