Recently Mentioned Books

June 9 it is coming out in a physical edition, hard cover.  Amazon pre-order is here .  Barnes&Noble pre-order is here .  The text is exactly the same as the eBook edition, although I made a minor addition to one footnote.  If you’ve read Borges’s Pierre Menard , you’ll know why I regard the electronic edition as “the real book” and this volume as a kind of postmodern satire.  Still, many people demanded a physical edition, sometimes for classroom use, and so now there is one.

5. Markets in everything: Barbara’s Bakery Peanut Butter Puffin Cereal .

That poem is cited in the new and enjoyable book by David Orr, Beautiful & Pointless {A  Guide to Modern Poetry} .

Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science, by Philip Mirowski.

The authors is Michael Spence (yes, the Michael Spence and he used to be “A. Michael Spence”) and the subtitle is The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World .  The book’s home page is here .

The authors are Roderick Floud, Nobel Laureate Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris, and Sok Chul Hong, and the subtitle is Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 .  Here is one key sentence:

That’s the new Harold Bloom book , which has all the strengths and weakness of Harold Bloom books (I am a fan).  Excerpt:

The author is Michael S. Neiberg and the subtitle is Europe and the Outbreak of World War I .  This book stunned me, in a positive way.  It argues for six main propositions, a few of which can be summarized quickly:

David Brooks (don’t forget his new book ) writes :

Another pick would be Pato Fu’s Televisao De Cachorro , which has only two Amazon reviews.  It is better known in Brazil, though it still sounds as if it should have serious crossover potential.  Some of the songs are in English, too.

Pop Said… , by The Darling Buds .

You may have your favorite neglected microtonal drone guitar album , but let’s take this in another direction.  What’s the best accessible pop album that never caught on with listeners and buyers?

All are worthy of purchase, we will see how they develop.  I found The Windup Girl , by Paolo Bacigalupi, the most enjoyable science fiction novel I’ve read in a few years, and it should appeal to fans of Thailand too.

4. Zoo City , by Lauren Beukes; so far I love it, imagine a mix of Raymond Chandler, near-future science fiction, and South African grit.

3. Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and his Fifteen Quartets , by Wendy Lesser.

2. The Moral Lives of Animals , by Dale Peterson.  It looks like Adam Smith’s TMS applied to the moral sense of non-human animals, making the point that the moral sense is not unique to human beings.

1. Food Trucks: Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels , by Heather Shouse.  I’ve read enough of this book to know it is true to its title.

You can buy Field’s excellent book here and here is my previous post on the work .  Here is Kling on Field , very useful.

That is the new and excellent book by Anatol Lieven , and there is now more reason than ever to read it.  Here are a few things I learned from the book:

The bottom line: I was never reading this because it will be popular and I wanted to review it, I was always reading it to ponder the ideas.  You can buy the book here .

Tim is probably the single best economist to follow on Twitter , arguably today’s best active popular economics writer , and now I have in my hands his new book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure .  Self-recommending!  (If page one is good, should I worry about the rest of the book?)

Overall, it is neglected knowledge just how much the “Green Revolution” has slowed down since the 1990s.  In Africa, measured heights have stagnated or declined in recent times .  Robert Paarlberg’s Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa is an excellent book on its title topic and more generally on falling TFP in global agriculture.

That is the new book by F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk, and the subtitle is The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare .  A few facts:

Here is an interview with Field .  You can buy the book here .

3. Earl B. Hunt, Human Intelligence , a good introduction to current debates.