Recently Mentioned Books

6. Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 , by Roberto Bolano.  Will make you want to read a lot more Latin American fiction.

5. The Anatomy of Influence , Harold Bloom.  In part this is a lifetime achievement award, but his best passages are still stunning.

4. Habibi , by Craig Thompson.  I don’t enjoy many graphic novels, but this is my favorite of all those I have read.

3. Audur Ava Olafsdottir, The Greenhouse .  From Iceland, it’s funny and sheer fun to read and short and easy yet deep and moving.

2. Steve Sem-Samberg, The Emperor of Lies, A Novel .  “I don’t want to read any more about the Holocaust” is not good enough reason to neglect this stunning Swedish novel.  A fictionalized account of the Lodz Ghetto, it looks at the lives of the ghetto rulers and whether they were heroes or collaborators.  I found it tough to read more than one hundred pages of this at a time; by focusing on the suicides rather than the murder victims, it is especially brutal.  Get up the gumption.

1. Murakami I now have finished it, don’t think it adds up to anything but it is consistently fun for 900+ pages.  How many other books can claim that?

5. Douglas A. Irwin, Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s , self-recommending.  Another new and self-recommending book is Mark Miller’s Salsas of the World , he is one of my cooking and restaurant heroes.

5. Douglas A. Irwin, Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s , self-recommending.  Another new and self-recommending book is Mark Miller’s Salsas of the World , he is one of my cooking and restaurant heroes.

4. Robert L. Bradley, Jr. Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies , home page here .  The second part of a three-volume series on the history of American energy, told through the distinction between productive and predatory capitalism.  Bradley is a very much underrated economic historian, largely because of his “amateur” status, but there is a remarkable amount of learning in his books..

3. Robert Levine, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back .  An important book in cultural economics, this clear, energetically written tract is perhaps the best critique of where our culture is at today.  It’s about parasitism more generally, not just copyright violation.  Everyone who follows cultural economics should read this book.

1. Habibi , by Craig Thompson.  I don’t enjoy most graphic novels, but this is my favorite of the ones I’ve read.

The author is Jacques Pepin and this is a splendid book .  It is a remarkably thorough epidemiological detective story, which breaks new ground, and on top of that it serves up an excellent (partial) history of Zaire, history of the African sex trade, and history of Haiti.  Excerpt:

That is from the new and interesting book Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia , by Thant Myint-U.

3. Haruki Murakami, IQ84 .  I haven’t finished it yet, but I feel confident putting it on the list (I’m about one-third through).  I even agree with many of the reservations expressed in this review but the book is nonetheless a major achievement.  There are dozens of reviews here .

2. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs , interesting on every page and lives up to the hype.  Here is a good review by Michael Rosenwald .

1. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined .  My review is here .

That book is from Belknap; Oxford University Press sent me a new short book by Allan H. Meltzer, Why Capitalism? Thomas Hazlett’s new, short The Fallacy of Net Neutrality is a clear take in line with its title.  Also noteworthy is Richard B. McKenzie’s new Heavy! The Surprising Reasons America is the Land of the Free — and the Home of the Fat .

That book is from Belknap; Oxford University Press sent me a new short book by Allan H. Meltzer, Why Capitalism? Thomas Hazlett’s new, short The Fallacy of Net Neutrality is a clear take in line with its title.  Also noteworthy is Richard B. McKenzie’s new Heavy! The Surprising Reasons America is the Land of the Free — and the Home of the Fat .

That book is from Belknap; Oxford University Press sent me a new short book by Allan H. Meltzer, Why Capitalism? Thomas Hazlett’s new, short The Fallacy of Net Neutrality is a clear take in line with its title.  Also noteworthy is Richard B. McKenzie’s new Heavy! The Surprising Reasons America is the Land of the Free — and the Home of the Fat .

That is the new book by Sean McMeekin ; I enjoyed it and found this passage striking:

Scarlatti, volume I , by Carlo Grante (the most significant achievement), Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ by Robert Quinney (probably my favorite of the entire year), and Shostakovich Symphony #10 , by Vasily Petrenko.

Scarlatti, volume I , by Carlo Grante (the most significant achievement), Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ by Robert Quinney (probably my favorite of the entire year), and Shostakovich Symphony #10 , by Vasily Petrenko.

Scarlatti, volume I , by Carlo Grante (the most significant achievement), Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ by Robert Quinney (probably my favorite of the entire year), and Shostakovich Symphony #10 , by Vasily Petrenko.

Scarlatti, volume I , by Carlo Grante (the most significant achievement), Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ by Robert Quinney (probably my favorite of the entire year), and Shostakovich Symphony #10 , by Vasily Petrenko.

3. Claude Frank: 85th Birthday Celebration .