Recently Mentioned Books
Showing 25 of 6793 mentions, ordered by most recent.
5. Charles Seife, Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking . An excellent and compulsively readable history of the attempts to make fusion power work; I thank Gordon for the original pointer.
4. Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned . This Jonathan Miles quotation is better than anything I will come up with: “Tower’s stories [have] the kind of torque that’s so damnably rare these days in American short fiction, where the payoff tends to be the faint, jewel-box click of epiphany, the small tilting of a life. Tower’s ambition is greater and brawnier than that.”
3. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years . Do you seek an overly verbose, sometimes fascinating synthesis of economic anthropology, early 20th century credit theories of money, and the history of debt? The book overinterprets early historical evidence and falls apart as it approaches contemporary times, still it has a vitality which many other tracts lack. Here is a chat with the author .
2. Sergio Chejfec, My Two Worlds . Are you deeply interested in how an Argentinean observer might phenomenologically regard a southern Brazilian city, combined with his philosophy of walking, in fictional form? I am. This may or may not be of general interest.
1. Andes , by Michael Jacobs. Most travel books disappoint me, but I found this one interesting throughout, most of all the section on Venezuela. It is conceptually strong and overall enthralling.
The editor is Paulo Mauro and the subtitle is Sources of Failure and Keys to Success in Fiscal Adjustment . It provides useful background on the debt crises, or lack thereof, in today’s major economies, including Italy, Japan, Canada, the UK, and the United States.
That’s a question from Zoe Pollock , who links to lots of discussion. My nomination is John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls . Here is one YouTube performance , here is another , though admittedly it sounds more impressive on a good stereo or better yet live.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow . It is due out October 25th.
That is from David A. Hounshell’s excellent From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 . Here is a related article , possibly gated, here is another .
That is the new book by Ezra F. Vogel , excerpt:
That is from Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II , by Anna Reid. Here is my previous post on the book .
1. The Gated City , new Kindle eSingle by Ryan Avent, on urban economics.
There is also a new paperback edition out of the excellent Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz book out, now entitled Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work . The book has new forecasts…
This is an excellent book, you can order it here . You can find reviews here .
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
I agree with the Simon Reynolds thesis of aesthetic musical stagnation , nonetheless I’ve been listening to: Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge , Cecil Taylor Feel Trio, 2 T’s for a Lovely T (lots of discs, all wonderful, lasts for years), Rose of Sharon (American vocal music), Scarlatti vol. I by Carlo Granta (my favorite of any Scarlatti recording), anything by Isabelle Faust , Diabelli Variations by Paul Lewis , Ravinahits y, by Damily (acoustic guitar music from Madagascar, an underrated categ...
Those points can be found in Lieberman’s quite interesting Strange Parallels, Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830, volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands . The book is even longer than that title, clocking in at 947 pp. and that is only the second part of the whole.
I again stress that microfoundations matter. And please don’t read this post the wrong way. I still favor looser monetary policy, but I view myself as lacking in real influence on the world and thus I am “ working through the available variations ” rather than propagadizing for my favorite policy. If I were President of the United States, my blog posts would read somewhat differently.
The Blueprint: Reviving Innovation, Rediscovering Risk, and Rescuing the Free Market , by Garry Kasparov, Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel.