Recently Mentioned Books

The source paper is here .  You can, and should, buy Bryan’s new book here .

My favorite book by him is Prime Movers of Globalization: The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines , a better title and subtitle there never was.

His Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate is depressing, excerpt:

The author is Daniel K. Richter and the subtitle is America’s Ancient Pasts .  I admit I am a sucker for books on this topic, but so far it is one of my two or three favorite non-fiction titles of the year.  Excerpt:

[TC: And yet we still did not quite achieve our war aims.]  That is from the new and interesting book by Sarah E. Kreps, Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions After the Cold War .

That is the new, short, and readable survey book by Elhanan Helpman , self-recommending of course.  Here is Helpman’s home page .

That is from the new and interesting book by Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy , the book’s home page, with free chapter one, is here .  Speaking of which, Garth Saloner is another very good South African economist and he is now Dean of Stanford Business School.

Drawing a direct analogy with the effect of vouchers in the education system, Messrs. Seeman and Luciani suggest “healthy-living vouchers” [TC: book is here ] that could be redeemed from different (certified) places—gyms, diet classes, vegetable sellers and more. Education vouchers, they point out, are generally disliked by rich whites as being bad for poor blacks—and generally liked by poor blacks. A bottom-up solution empowers people better than top-down government fiat.

The information is from Bruce Gardner’s American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How it Flourished and What it Cost , pp.20-21, p.44.

7. Economists: Ludwig Lachmann was an early teacher of mine and I owe him my interest in post Keynesianism and also financial fragility hypotheses. G.F Thirlby remains underrated.  W.H. Hutt was one of the most perceptive critics of Keynes and his insights still are not absorbed into the Keynesian mainstream. His book on the economics of the colour bar remains a liberal classic.  Who am I forgetting?

6. Music: Where to start? Malanthini , for one.  As for mbqanga collections, The Indestructible Beat of Soweto series is consistently excellent. Singing in an Open Space, Zulu Rhythm and Harmony 1962-1982 is a favorite.  Random gospel and jazz collections often repay the purchase price and in general random CD purchases in these areas bring high expected returns.

6. Music: Where to start? Malanthini , for one.  As for mbqanga collections, The Indestructible Beat of Soweto series is consistently excellent. Singing in an Open Space, Zulu Rhythm and Harmony 1962-1982 is a favorite.  Random gospel and jazz collections often repay the purchase price and in general random CD purchases in these areas bring high expected returns.

5. Novels : My favorite Coetzee is Disgrace , though I like most of them very much, including the early Life and Times of Michael K and Waiting for the Barbarians and the later semi-autobiographical works.  Nadine Gordimer I find unreadable, call the fault mine.  Same with Alan Paton.  A dark horse pick is Trionf . Agaat sits in my pile, waiting for the trip of the right length.

5. Novels : My favorite Coetzee is Disgrace , though I like most of them very much, including the early Life and Times of Michael K and Waiting for the Barbarians and the later semi-autobiographical works.  Nadine Gordimer I find unreadable, call the fault mine.  Same with Alan Paton.  A dark horse pick is Trionf . Agaat sits in my pile, waiting for the trip of the right length.

5. Novels : My favorite Coetzee is Disgrace , though I like most of them very much, including the early Life and Times of Michael K and Waiting for the Barbarians and the later semi-autobiographical works.  Nadine Gordimer I find unreadable, call the fault mine.  Same with Alan Paton.  A dark horse pick is Trionf . Agaat sits in my pile, waiting for the trip of the right length.

4. Movie, set in : Zulu , 1964 with Michael Caine.

2. Home design : I am an admirer of the Ndebele , some photos of their colorful homes are here .  They are better represented in picture books than on the web.

I’ll be there too, your recommendations are welcome.  Looking for a hotel there has been a side-splitting experience.  No one seems to mind that few of them are any good, and they’ll plunk perfectly good ones on the side of a lake, next to nothing, many miles from the city center.  Nonetheless visiting Brasilia has long been a dream of mine and I do have a room.  I’ve already read Shoumatoff’s excellent Capital of Hope .

A fellow with almost the same name — rsanders — requested a book on Romanian political history .

3. John Gray, The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death .  A bunch of weird guys, in the early 20th century, thought they could cheat death but they couldn’t!  And it all has something to do with H.G. Wells and a Russian spy.  When is the cutting polemic against rationalism going to fall?  It doesn’t, and when the book ends it feels as if it is only one-third over.  The mood is wistful.  I recall once predicting to Jim Buchanan that Gray would someday end up co...

2. Robin Fox, The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind .  Great themes, namely Hayek plus Levi-Strauss.  But it’s too diffuse for me to get a handle on.

1. Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires, An Eighteenth Century History .  The story of the Johnstones, in Scotland and around the globe.  It appears to have lots of useful information, but it is too far from my current interests for me to read it now.

The pointer is from Michael Rosenwald, who recently published The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese .

That is from Tetlock and Gardner, here is more .  On that general, theme, here is Dan Gardner’s new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions are Next to Worthless, and You Can do Better .

It turns out that in 23 U.S. states, the government will automatically shut down in the event that the governor and the legislature fail to agree on a budget. In his work on budget rules , David Primo examined the theoretical impact of these provisions from a game theoretic perspective. He noted that in states with an automatic shutdown provision, “the legislature will be able to achieve its ideal budget, so long as the governor prefers it to no spending.” (p. 102)