Recently Mentioned Books

You can buy it here .

The author is Candice Millard, the subtitle is A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President , and the topic is James Garfield, with good bits on Alexander Graham Bell.  Excerpt:

The New North: The World in 2050 , by Laurence Smith.

The book has a remarkable density of information, as virtually every sentence tries to teach you something.  I have never read a book quite like it, definitely recommended.

John Sutherland, Lives of the Novelists, A History of Fiction in 294 Lives .  I’ll blog about this remarkable book soon.

Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution .

John Gimlette, Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge .  This book covers Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.  A revelation, I loved it.  Could Gimlette be my favorite current travel writer?

Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything .  Funny thing is, I read this on Kindle, didn’t have a physical copy to put in “my pile,” had no visual cue as to the continuing existence of the book, and thus I forget to cover it on MR .  I enjoyed it very much.

David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Peoples, and their Regions .

Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men .

Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life .  This vivid biography brings its subject to life through the extensive use of correspondence and quotation.  The reader gets an excellent feeling of how Bismarck’s government actually worked, his intensity and also his mediocrities, and also the importance of Bismarck in building up Germany as a European power.  The story is as gripping as a good novel.  Sadly, almost no attention is paid to the origins of the welfare state.  Still, this has received rave r...

Javier Cercas, The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination .  In the waning of Franco’s time, how did Spain turn away from military rule and toward democracy?  Can a mediocre man make a difference in history simply by retreating at the right moment?  Can a political life boil down to a single response, under gunfire at that?  Half of this book is brilliant writing, the other half is brilliant writing combined with obscure, hard-to-follow 1970s Spanish politics (does A...

Frank Brady, Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall — from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness .

The author is James Rickards and the subtitle is The Making of the Next Global Crisis .  This book is rapidly proving influential, though you will not see it reviewed in all of the major mainstream outlets.  The so-called “Right” is walking away from “1990s WSJ Op-Ed CPI bias what’s so bad about poverty anyway?” narrative and looking for alternatives.  This is one of them, excerpt:

5. Melancholia ; I liked this one, even though I agree with all the negative things that have been said about it .  See it on the big screen.

4. Even the Rain , Spanish movie filmed in Bolivia.

3. Of Gods and Men .

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives , from Thailand.

1. Incendies ; a French-Canadian movie set mostly in Lebanon, with Greek themes.

The author is Ian W. Toll and the subtitle is War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 .  I loved this book and it should join my list of the very best books of the year .  Every page was gripping and instructive.  Here is an excerpt on “how to leave the dollar zone”:

The author is Tanni Haas and the subtitle is The World’s Political Bloggers Share the Secrets to Success .  There are interviews with Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Nick Gillespie, Lew Rockwell, Juan Cole, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, yours truly, and others.  Here is a comment from Kevin Drum:

The author is Vaclav Smil and the subtitle is Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production , excerpt:

Race Against the Machine is compared to TGS in this forthcoming Economist article , and see this earlier piece .  Short bit:

5. Best Austrian or Austrian-influenced book of the year: Daniel B. Klein, Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation .  It’s not out yet, I’ll cover it more when it appears, more information here .

3. Second best eBook of the year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. By the way, here is my recent debate with Erik ; we both agreed in advance to mix things up and generate controversy, so interpret the exchange accordingly.  In reality, Erik and I agree about many many things and Matt Yglesias notes as much .  (We do, however, seem t...