Recently Mentioned Books

2. Individualism and Economic Order , Counterrevolution of Science , and in particular Hayek's critique of rationalist constructivism, of which the EU and the euro are prime current examples.  If you wish to know why the euro is failing, or why not every Obama policy will work out, this is the #1 place to go.  The euro project was even driven by the French and resisted by the English, exactly as Hayek's approach would have predicted.

2. Individualism and Economic Order , Counterrevolution of Science , and in particular Hayek's critique of rationalist constructivism, of which the EU and the euro are prime current examples.  If you wish to know why the euro is failing, or why not every Obama policy will work out, this is the #1 place to go.  The euro project was even driven by the French and resisted by the English, exactly as Hayek's approach would have predicted.

The author is Larry Witham and the subtitle is How Economics Explains Religion .  It's a good book, and my favorite passage was this:

Here is Timur's home page .  You can buy the new book — which I strongly recommend – here .  Here is the book's home page .  Here is a related podcast .  Here is a video of Timur .  Here is a picture of Turkey:

His first book Private Truth, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (one of the best economics books of the last twenty years) is about how societies can stick with screwed up beliefs and defend them publicly, yet without everyone being evil or stupid, even if they sometimes sound as such.  It has major implications for the theory of revolution, and sudden flips of opinion, yet I read it as a defense of [fill in the blank] society. His work with Sunstein on availabilit...

I am still impressed by having watched Lars von Trier's Antichrist .  I believe no one (at least no male) can watch that movie straight through, for reasons which I cannot explain on a family blog (though perhaps it will someday be part of TSA procedures?).  Yet more than a month later I continue to think about the good parts of the movie and I am not overall a von Trier fan.  The film is dedicated to Tarkovsky.

7. Robert Alter, translator, The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes .  He is my favorite Biblical translator and this is a sure thing, I will read this one.

7. Bethany McLean and Joseph Nocera, All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis .  Alex liked it, Arnold Kling liked it, and I like it too.  It is more conceptual than most of the crisis books.

6. David Edwards, The Lab: Creativity and Culture .  He wants to revitalize labs with a blend of "Artscience" and encourage them to cultivate more ideas which appear impractical but may have long-term payoffs.

5. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Yo no vengo a decir un discurso .  Transcripts of some of his lectures, so far very eloquent although the level of substance remains to be seen.

4. They Live , by Jonathan Lethem.  Scene-by scene commentary on the John Carpenter movie of that name.  I'd like to see more books like this.  It's short.

3. Kaushik Basu, Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics .  The author is a smart guy and he writes clearly, but I object to the subtitle and what it implies.  I want The New Economics, not the Groundwork for a New Economics.

2. Erika S. Olson, Zero-Sum Game: The Rise of the World's Largest Derivatives Exchange .  Good inside the scenes account of the CME-CBOT merger, also with material on the rise of ICE.  I read some of it and was glad I did.

1. Hélène Cixous, Stigmata .  I didn't find anything of value here.  Probably the poetic element is better in the French but I wonder what the big deal is about.

The full story is here and for the pointer I thank J.C. Bradbury, who has a new book out The Hot Stove: Understanding Baseball's Second Season .

3. What will happen , and here is the book to come .

The author is Siddhartha Mukherjee and the subtitle is A Biography of Cancer .  This is not a typical excerpt, but it works as an excerpt for this blog:

The link is here , the point is from Paul Hsieh and Jeffrey Williams should be happy.  The locale is in India .

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Cannot Explain the Modern World .

4. Manuel de Lope, The Wrong Blood .  For those who love poignant Spanish meditations on memory, at the expense of plot.  I finished it, eagerly, but take the caveat seriously.  One good bit: "…no one on his way to a wedding seems like a dangerous man, and experience taught that dangerous men can come from a wedding…and so the owner of Etxarri's Bar gave no thought to his loaded shotgun."

3. The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry , edited by Patrick Crotty.  This is spectacular, covering both the medieval material (beautifully translated) and the last fifty years, and everything in between.  The volume looks like it should sell for $40, yet it goes for $15 on Amazon.  Definitely recommended, a real contribution and also a wonderful Christmas present.

2. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us .  This book is very well done, but it suffers from the "I already agree with it" problem; it shows for instance that religious people make better neighbors, even after making the relevant statistical adjustments.

1. Hector Abad, Oblivion: A Memoir .  A boy's, and then a man's, relationship with his father; it may put this bestselling Colombian author on the Anglo-American map.

5. Robert Schumann, Carneval, Kreisleriana, Arabeske, by Vassily Primakov .

4. Volkmar Andreae, conducting the Bruckner symphonies and Te Deum .  Remastered mono from the 1950s, supposed to be perfection.