Recently Mentioned Books

All of these movies are underwatched these days.  There is also Winter Light .

7. Léon Morin, Priest , by Jean-Pierre Melville.

6. Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew .

5. Black Narcissus (the most secular of the lot, and it’s about nuns).

3. The Last Temptation of Christ .

2. Simon of the Desert .

1. Of Gods and Men .

I believe this period in economic history deserves a closer look, starting with S.B. Saul’s book The Myth of the Great Depression .

That is from a review of Jordan Conn’s The Defender , a new Kindle Single biography of Manute Bol .  I bought my copy right away.  There is an explanatory photo here .

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.