Recently Mentioned Books

That is a reader query, I take it there is no point in my trotting through the obvious picks, starting with I, Robot and Her .  Sophisticates will ponder Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad , which very well understood the quirky and semi-religious potential in LLMs, even though he was writing in Communist Poland a very long time ago (those people loved to talk about cybernetics).

The author is Bjorn Lomborg, and the subtitle is The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises .  I missed this book when it first came out last year.  Here is what Lomborg presents as the twelve best global investments, in no particular order:

4. As a practical matter, the experiment shows us that you can do relatively well looking for talent in some new or unusual places.  I agree, and Daniel Gross and I pushed that theme in our book on talent .

In return for a referee report, I requested Chen-Pang Yeang, Transforming Noise: A History of Science and Technology from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955 .  This book is good background for understanding late Fischer Black, as ideas derived from Brownian motion lie behind both options pricing theory and Black’s essay “ Noise. “

Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice is not a book for me right now (thus I haven’t read it), but the authors are very smart and thus it is worthy of mention.

4. Kunal Purohit, H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars .  If you are an outsider and looking for a good “micro-study” to understand India, this is a good place to start.  Trying to better understand a country typically should consist of both macro overviews and micro-studies, of course.

3. Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan, Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War .  Clear and to the point, the best book I know on this topic.  It is also especially clear on the roles of Eritrea and Somalia.

2. Cixin Liu, Supernova Era .  An A+ plot premise (I won’t spoil it), the story goes downhill somewhat but still worth reading.

1. Alexander C.R. Hammond, Heroes of Progress: 65 people who changed the world , with a forward by Steven Pinker.  Starts with Gutenberg, of course Norman Borlaug is included, don’t forget Cobden, Bentham, Frederick Douglass, and many others.  An Auto-Icon to those who spurred progress!  Who knew that Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, N.J.?  Well done.

The subtitle of this new and excellent book is How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Art of War .  It is written not by journalists but two insiders to the process, namely Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchoff .  Here you can read about Eric Schmidt, Brendan McCord, Anduril, Palantir, and much more.

Again, I am happy to recommend Benjamin’s latest book The Upside-Down World: Meetings with Dutch Masters .

The subtitle is Hw Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy .  I am happy to have blurbed this book, here is part of the Amazon description:

4. Henry Oliver’s Second Act is available in US now on Kindle, September in hardcover .

Two of those are really good!  They are from The Book of Predictions , by David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace.

The author is Kirk Goldsberry, and the subtitle is Mapping the Remarkable Transformation of the NBA .  I enjoyed this book very much, and the visual are excellent.  The prose reads well, but also sticks to the analytical.  Excerpt:

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

That is from a new paper by Bernt Bratsberg, Ole Rogeberg, and Marko Terviö.  You may recall that Daniel Gross and I made a similar claim in our book Talent , namely that the very top performers in virtually any field are extremely smart, even if the field is not an intellectual one in the traditional sense.

The book is recommended, you can pre-order here , most of American monetary history is covered.

That is from the new and quite interesting Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796-1912 , edited by Jessican Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell.

I’ve also been reading a cluster of books on the history of the transgender movement.  I don’t have a single go-to book to recommend, but you could start with Weininger and Magnus Hirschfeld, who are also interesting representatives of Austro-Hungarian and Germanic culture in the early twentieth century.  Overall, I am surprised how many of the key books are out of print, selling used for high prices on Amazon .

Gregory Makoff, Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina’s $100 Billion Debt Restructuring .  This is both a good book on how the law handles sovereign defaults and useful background to what Milei is trying to undo in Argentina.

Randy Barnett, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist , is a 616 pp. well-written memoir of a prominent libertarian legal theorist.

Alex Christofi has written Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean , which is the book I will take to Cyprus when I go there.