Recently Mentioned Books

The author is John Long and the subtitle is What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology .  Excerpt:

The author is Luigi Zingales, and the subtitle is Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity .  I know you have book fatigue, popular economics book fatigue, policy book fatigue, and books-with-subtitles-like-this fatigue, all at once.  But this book is really, really good.  It hits all the right notes, is clearly written, and refers to academics as the new crony capitalists.”  I agreed with almost all of it.

The authors are Angel Cabrera and Gregory Unruh, and the subtitle is How to Think, Act, and Lead in a Transformed World .  Cabrera is the incoming president of GMU, as of this summer, so of course I am keen to read this book, which arrived in my pile today.

The author is Peter Kaminsky and the subtitle is The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well) .  I enjoyed this book, here is one bit:

That is from Liza Mundy’s The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family .  It is an interesting book, though it does not always focus on the questions that I would.  The core thesis is that women will learn to marry down and men will learn to marry up.

That is from the forthcoming excellent book by Lawrence H. White, Amazon link here .  The book is not mostly about India, but it is about the role of economic ideas in shaping economic outcomes.  The chapter on India is my favorite, however, and it is perhaps the very best place to start to understand the failures of India’s planning period.

Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty .  Not their only co-authorship, now out in paperback.

James K. Galbraith, Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis .

Jonathan Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make .

That is from Jon Gertner’s The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation .  Here is my previous post on the book , which I recommend highly.

That is a discussion from Justin L. Barrett’s new and interesting Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief .  He gives more than equal time to how to raise your child to be religious, but we’re already pretty good at that.  Here are his atheism tips, noting that I am excerpting and paraphrasing:

By Edward O. Wilson, Amazon link here .  I am a big Wilson fan, but I didn’t find anything new in it, although for some readers it might be a good introduction to a variety of ideas such as eusociality.

The subtitle is America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It .  His policy conclusions are:

I loved this book and devoured it in a single sitting.  The author is Jon Gertner and the subtitle is Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation .  Here is one excerpt:

There is persistence to spending, although this study does not create a category for stimulus spending per se , however that concept might be defined. The work of Robert Higgs also provides a clear look at ratchet effects on government spending, control, and regulation, although Higgs focuses on war rather than spending.  State governments also seem to exhibit a ratchet effect, whereby good times bring about permanently higher budgetary demands, if only through endowment effects, lock-in, and st...

Contemporary American fiction faces an ongoing problem of what to write about.  Yuppie life in Brooklyn doesn’t have the gravitas, suburban ennui is long since overdone, and so much of American life — mostly  for the better — doesn’t face serious moral choices.  Sergio de la Pava has solved this problem by writing about the American legal system, set in New York City and with a Colombian immigrant public defender.  At first I was skeptical but at page 256 (out of 678) it is still getting better....

The Righteous Mind: Why People are Divided by Religion and Politics .

4. Music : James Tenney , most of all his Postal Pieces .

The author is George Dyson and the subtitle is The Origins of the Digital Universe .  It is a first-rate, splendid book, causing us to rethink the origins of computing systems, the connections between early computers and nuclear weapons systems, how to motivate geniuses, and also the career of John von Neumann.  Here is one excerpt, I may be giving you more:

It is called Finance and the Good Society , you can buy it here .  The book’s home page is here .

What is the most serious estimate of how much denser agglomeration — boosted by lower rents — would increase productivity?  I do not take the urban wage premium as the correct measure here, since at the margin the extra worker currently does not move in.  I would like to read a good study of this issue, which I have discussed with Ryan Avent as well.

Julianna Barwick, The Magic Place .

Diamond Mine , by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins,

The new eBook from Matt Yglesias is out today, I will likely read (and finish!) my copy tonight.  Self-recommending, you can get one here .

The very good The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Economy , by my colleague Philip Auerswald, will be out very soon.