Recently Mentioned Books

I just pre-ordered my copy .

4. Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past .  Imagine TGS applied to musical aesthetics, excerpt: “ Pitchfork writer Eric Harvey recently observed that the 2000s may be destined to be “the first decade of pop music…remembered by history for its musical technology rather than the actual music itself.”  Napster Soulseek Limewrire Gnutella iPod YouTube Last.fm Pandora MySpace Spotify…these super-brands took the place of super-bands…It’s glaringly obvious that all the ast...

3. E.A. Wrigley, Energy and the Industrial Revolution .  This is both one of the best books on the history of energy and one of the best books on the Industrial Revolution, definitely recommended to anyone who reads in economic history.

2. Robert F. Moss, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution .  This is in fact the first serious history of barbecue, as a historian might write it, and it is a good one.

1. David Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War .  This would appear to be a new angle on WWII, arguing that Britain circa 1940 was not the lame duck — either economically or technologically — that it is often made out to be.  Readable, persuasive to this non-expert, and it does help explain why the Nazis didn’t just take them over.

Cathy N. Davidson, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn .

Daniel S. Hamermesh, Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful .

The editor is Ruth Towse and the Amazon link to this now-definitive edition is here .  Contributors include William Baumol, David Throsby, Mark Blaug, yours truly (“Creative Economy”), Dick Netzer, Ruth Towse, Orley Ashenfelter, Michael Rushton, William Landes, and other luminaries from the field.

The author is Douglas W. Allen and the subtitle is Measurement & the Economic Emergence of the Modern World .  I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent book, here is a summary paragraph:

3. Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia .  I have yet to read this one.

2. Tom Orlik, Understanding China’s Economic Indicators: Translating the Data into Investment Opportunities .  A very useful book, the title is much more accurate than the last three words of the subtitle.  I wish the book had more on believability, however.

1. Run of the Red Queen: Government, Innovation, Globalization, and Economic Growth in China , by Dan Breznitz and Michael Murphree.  This book argues that China is not on the verge of making major product innovations, but is coming up with a healthy stream of product-cheapening process innovations.  Here is a good interview with one of the authors .  Reading it is not always a thrill, but it is full of substance and an important book.  It provides lots of evidence — from novel corners — for the...

It is Pinched: How the Great Recession has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It .  Here is his Atlantic cover story on the future of the middle class , think of it as TGS from a more left-wing point of view, excerpt:

Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World .

4. Kate Christensen, The Astral: A Novel .  About marriage, self-deception, and general decay and destruction.  Her best book so far.

3. Tim Congdon, Money in a Free Society .  Neo-monetarist tract!  With plenty on all the different notions of the liquidity trap out there, which are often confused.

2. Félix J. Palma , The Map of Time .  Spanish speculative fiction, now in English.  It never feels deep, but finally we have a time travel novel chock full of new (and good) ideas.  Recommended to all those who find that sufficient, but not for those who don’t.

1. Jo Nesbø, The Redbreast .  These days it’s odd to read a fictional book about neo-Nazi cults in Norway, including a murderous villain who leaves behind a manuscript explaining his ideas and purpose.  I didn’t love it, but I liked it and I never considered putting it down; I will likely try another book by Nesbø.  The author, by the way, graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics.

The excellent Charles C. Mann reviews a new book on the history of Easter Island, The Statues That Walked , excerpts:

In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s , during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.

That is the new book by Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Robert D. Tollison ; I have not yet read it.  It is listed as due out August 15th, although Amazon seems to have one in stock now.

5. The Last Werewolf , by Glen Duncan.  Half of this is quite fun, the other half is quite stupid.  Your call, but half fun is actually a lot.

4. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor .  There is a splendid new Oxford University Press edition.  Browsing or reading this book is one of the best ways to get a feel for Victorian England (circa 1850-51), or for how labor markets have changed.

1. Gavin Maxwell, A Reed Shaken: Travels Among the Marsh Arabs of Iraq .  One of my favorite travel books.  It avoids both being too impressionistic and being too didactic.  It never assumes that the writer’s state of mind is interesting to the reader per se .  It brings a little-known and by now largely destroyed corner of the world to light.

Time to blast the Brahms !  In all fairness to the plan, maybe that’s the only disc in anyone’s collection these days.