Recently Mentioned Books

I still think Michael Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science is an important book on an important topic.

Johan van Overtveldt’s The End of the Euro is a very good book on the background leading up to the current euro crisis; also useful is David Marsh’s The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency .

Johan van Overtveldt’s The End of the Euro is a very good book on the background leading up to the current euro crisis; also useful is David Marsh’s The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency .

Daniel Hausman’s Preference, Value, Choice and Welfare reflects his characteristic intelligence and judgment and it should be read by anyone with an interest in economic methodology.

I cannot say I am personally so interested in the topic of Ed Leamer’s The Craft of Economics: Lessons from the Heckscher-Ohlin Framework , but he is a master of exposition for complex economic results and this book is no exception.

I am learning a good deal from Stephen Bainbridge’s Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis :

This neglected gem of a book was written by Harriet Martineau, best known for her 19th century tracts on political economy.  Now I learn she was a forerunner of behavioral economics, occupying a space somewhere between Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the pain meditations of Dan Ariely, excerpt:

He writes for The Economist and the subtitle is Debt, Money, and The New World Order .  It is a very good and sensible introduction to the history of the recent economic crisis, with an emphasis on debt and also historical perspective.  It is due out February 7, recommended.

That is from D. Graham Burnett’s very impressive The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century .  Here is a NYT review , and here is a WSJ review .  It could be the most detailed study of a commons problem ever written, with plenty on the corruption of science along the way.

That is the new book by Justin Yifu Lin , who is also Chief Economist of the World Bank.  It is derived from lectures delivered in China.  Much of the book is an OK survey, though I did not find it added much insight to extant accounts.

There is also the self-explanatory Emrys Westacott, The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits .

5. John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent .  Unlike George Steiner’s claim, this is not comparable to Tolstoy.  Still, it is an excellent if uneven 1920s novel that ought to be read more widely.  The best passages are frequent and striking.  The bottom line is that I can imagine someday reading it again.  If you are tempted, give it a try.

4. Michael Erard, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners .  A fun and useful book, you can take the subtitle literally.  You need to ignore the very weak material on neurodevelopmental issues.

3. David Roodman, Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance .  Puts microfinance into a broader historical perspective, balanced and insightful throughout, informationally dense, recommended.  A good model for many other non-fiction books.

2. Katerina Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941 .  A detailed and insightful revisionist look at Soviet culture during that period, asking whether it really can all be boiled down to communism or if there was more behind it and it turns out there was.

I have been reading and enjoying Laurent Dubois’s new Haiti: The Aftershocks of History , one of the very best books on the history of the country.  In 1914-15, about eighty percent of the government’s revenue went to debt service.  It is one of those rare books where you can know a lot about the topic, and yet still learn something interesting on virtually every page.

My next book — An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies — is out this coming April.

Addendum : If you are interested in these issues, you also should read Leo Katz’s new and fascinating book , more applied than Temkin’s, also rejecting transitivity as a universal principle of reasoning but focused on explaining the content of the law and its apparent paradoxes.

The subtitle is Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning .  Without hesitation I paid full price for this book, in this case $74 though since then the price is falling.  While not an easy read, it is the most important work in choice theory and social choice in some time.

The author is the highly intelligent Philip Auerswald and the subtitle is How Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Economy .  I am less optimistic about the next ten years, but this is a very well-argued book.  I am hoping to have a chance to work more with Phil, my colleague at George Mason, in the near-term future.

I have been enjoying Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 , which covers the British role in World War I.  My favorite section details how the British responded when it turned out they had a drastic shortage of binoculars, which at that time were very important for fighting the war.  They turned to the world’s leading manufacturer of “precision optics,” namely Germany.  The German War Office immediately supplied 8,000 to 10,000 binoculars to Britain, dir...

4. Indian agricultural productivity is abysmal, in large part due to legal restrictions.  I discuss this in more detail in my next book An Economist Gets Lunch , due out in April.  That hurts the quality of life and opportunities for hundreds of millions of Indians, including of course children.

In my pile of review copies are Jonathan Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make , and Paula Stephan, How Economics Shapes Science .

In my pile of review copies are Jonathan Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make , and Paula Stephan, How Economics Shapes Science .

8. Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station .  So good (and short) that I read it twice in a row, it is a mock of “creative” slackers who decide they wish to live abroad.  One of my favorite novels of the year.