Recently Mentioned Books

The author is Michael L. Ross and the subtitle is How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations .  It is an excellent book, here is the bottom line:

This is from Elias Canetti’s memoir, volume three, The Play of the Eyes :

That is the new and oddly underreported book by Mark Kurlansky , about Clarence Birdseye and the early history of frozen food.  I found it consistently good and enjoyable, here is one excerpt:

You can buy Conard’s stimulating book, Unintended Consequences , here .  Conard, by the way, does object to how the government implicitly subsidizes the short-term debt of the major U.S. banks and he views that as the root of the problem behind proprietary trading, not the trading itself.

Edward Conard, author of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy is Wrong , offers a hypothesis.  He suggests the underlying cause is the (relatively recent) prevalence of risk-averse foreign capital:

5. Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory During World War II .  I wish the book had more explicit economic content, but it is nonetheless an interesting look at the supply-side improvements which helped the American economy during World War II.

4. Nell Freudenberger, The Newlyweds .  For modern fiction this is not too trendy, and it ends up being deeper than one expects.  It is the story of an American man who meets his Bangladeshi bride over the internet and flies to Bangladesh to woo her and bring her back.

3. Michael Dirda, On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling .  Short meditation on both the merits of Doyle beyond Sherlock Holmes and why fiction, and our responses to it, are and should be deeply strange.  I very much liked it.

2. Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power .  It’s OK enough, and certainly informative, but I found it a little boring.  Somehow the organizing principles behind the material needed to be stronger.

1. Héctor Abad , Oblivion: A Memoir .  A charming and intense memoir of a boy and his relationship to his father.  It seems to be true, but it can be read profitably as either non-fiction or the equivalent of fiction.  Recommended.  Abad is still an underrated author in the United States.

That is the new book by James Fallows .  On the surface it is a book about aviation in China, but it is also one of the best books on China (ever), one of the best books on industrial organization in years, and an excellent treatment of economic growth.  It is also readable and fun.

Here is my essay from Washingtonian magazine , adapted from An Economist Gets Lunch , about what it is like to shop at a Chinese supermarket for a month.  Here is one bit about search theory:

3. The new Brian Doherty book on Ron Paul .

1. Schubert pianist : Radu Lupu .

More substantively, we know a fair amount about promoting growth, for instance read Alex’s The Innovation Renaissance , much of which has been endorsed by left-wing thinkers too.  Read the new Acemoglu and Robinson book.  Even Robin Wells thinks we know how to promote long-run growth .

That is the new book by Paul Zak, and the subtitle is The Source of Love and Prosperity , namely oxytocin.  Here is a recent article by Paul , related to the book.

The story is here . Will Koenig writes to me:

That is the new book from my colleague Peter Boettke, and the subtitle is Economics Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow .  Of all of his books, it best captures what Peter is all about.  He should now be considered the global leader of the Austrian School of Economics.  Here is a Jeff Tucker review of the book .

2. My favorite Desmond Dekker compilation , and the fiscal effects of the Federal Reserve (significant).

I very much enjoyed Josh’s new food book The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food , and I can recommend it for its pro-science stance, its interesting speculations, and its excellent reporting.  My prediction, by the way, based on demographics, is that the next big food trend will be more from the Latino cuisines, fused with American ideas to appeal to the (North) American palate.  Chipotle is but one step in this direction.  Sadly, in my view most Americans have room for only a...

Here is more , and for the pointer I thank Bruce Bartlett.  Once again, here is Bruce’s new book on taxation .

Recommended, you can buy it here .

Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life , revised and updated for the 21st century.

Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs .

By Robert Hetzel, market monetarist, now out , I very much liked the draft I read.  For the pointer I thank David Levey.