Recently Mentioned Books

Here is my NYT column from today , on themes relevant to The Great Stagnation .  I won't rehash this entire discussion, but I would like to focus on this one column excerpt:

Diane Rehm is Egyptian-American but I don't know her show. The new biography of Cleopatra is smooth but the narratives made me suspicious.  Was Euclid Egyptian?

8. Opera, about : Philip Glass, Akhnaten .  But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas .  And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt .  Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare .

8. Opera, about : Philip Glass, Akhnaten .  But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas .  And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt .  Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare .

8. Opera, about : Philip Glass, Akhnaten .  But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas .  And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt .  Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare .

3. Non-fiction book, about : Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious .  Few cities have a book this good.  There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967 .  Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?

3. Non-fiction book, about : Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious .  Few cities have a book this good.  There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967 .  Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?

3. Non-fiction book, about : Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious .  Few cities have a book this good.  There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967 .  Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?

2. Musical CD : The Music of Islam, vol.1: Al-Qahirah, Classical Music of Cairo, Egypt .  The opening sweep of this is a stunner, and it shows both the Islamic and European influences on Egyptian music. Musicians of the Nile are a good group, there is Hamza El Din , and there is plenty of rai.  What else?  I can't say I actually enjoy listening to Um Kalthoum, but her voice and phrasing are impressive.

Also new on the market is Ronald Dworkin's Justice for Hedgehogs .  I like the title and I like most of his previous books, but I am not finding this one rewarding to read.  Here is one previous debate on related material.

That is the title, the author is Gerald Gaus of U. Arizona, and the subtitle is A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World .  This is a big and ambitious work, broadly in the liberaltarian tradition, mixing Rawls and Hayek, pondering the implications of disagreement, and experimenting with the idea that morality itself has a coercive element.  It is Gaus's attempt to lay out the proper foundations for a liberal society and he summarizes the hard-to-summarize book a bit here ...

Tyler Cowen’s new ebook How The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a bravura performance by one of the most interesting thinkers out there. I also think it’s a great innovation in current affairs publishing–much shorter and cheaper than a conventional book in a way that actually leaves you wanting to read more once you finish it. My guess is that this is the future of books.

One obiturary is here . Tragic Songs of Life , by the Louvin Brothers, is one of my favorite recordings of all time, any genre.  I'm often surprised how many people do not know this music.

We need units which produce public goods and we need people willing to declare their income and pay their taxes and, sometimes, fight and die for those units.  Therefore we need some amount of irrational belief in the idea of sovereignty, nation, and the like.  (Read Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities .)  Today's distributional pattern of nation-states probably isn't ideal (I would prefer smaller units on the whole), but when it comes to OECD nations it works well enough.  We also don't kn...

Lately I have been "reading" Ottoman Architecture , by Dogan Kuban, Toyokuni (oddly I can't find it on Amazon or remember the author's name), Textiles: Collection of the Museum of International Folk Art , by Bobbie Sumberg, and Architectura , by Miles Lewis.  You can walk into any public library and take home more splendid picture books than you will have time for.  How many you can carry is another constraint.

Lately I have been "reading" Ottoman Architecture , by Dogan Kuban, Toyokuni (oddly I can't find it on Amazon or remember the author's name), Textiles: Collection of the Museum of International Folk Art , by Bobbie Sumberg, and Architectura , by Miles Lewis.  You can walk into any public library and take home more splendid picture books than you will have time for.  How many you can carry is another constraint.

Lately I have been "reading" Ottoman Architecture , by Dogan Kuban, Toyokuni (oddly I can't find it on Amazon or remember the author's name), Textiles: Collection of the Museum of International Folk Art , by Bobbie Sumberg, and Architectura , by Miles Lewis.  You can walk into any public library and take home more splendid picture books than you will have time for.  How many you can carry is another constraint.

You can buy the eBook here .

It seems unlikely to me that we have reached a true peak, rather a temporary plateau with slower-than-average growth, until the next breakthrough in training, technique, genetic manipulation, or whatever.  Does that sound familiar ?

That is from Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 , which is one of the scariest books I have read.  Here is another passage, I am not sure how well it is sourced:

The data are from the new and interesting book Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market , by Noah Horowitz.

Bill Viola's Eternal Return sold for $712,452 in 2000.  The rest of the top ten is all by Viola, Nam June Paik, Matthew Barney, and Bruce Nauman, with the #10 work going for $234,814.  I like video art, but to buy it…to me that is one very expensive movie ticket.  I did, however, shell out for a Netflix subscription, so at the margin I can watch Black Narcissus for nothing.

You can pre-order the eBook; the Amazon link is here , Barnes&Noble here , $4.00.  I offer further information on the book here .

The author is the excellent Douglas A. Irwin and the subtitle is Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression .  The book's home page is here .  Excerpt:

That is a new pocket-sized book by the excellent Daniel Drezner and it is indeed about zombies: