Recently Mentioned Books

Here is much more and I thank Eric John Barker for the pointer.  You will find similar themes in my The Age of the Infovore , the new title for the paperback version of Create Your Own Economy .

The full story is here , hat tip Yoram Bauman .  Is he still a Lecturer there ? This interesting Jonah Lehrer article , via Michelle Dawson, covers the U.S. goalie:

6. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses .  This one is a re-read, as I will teach it next spring in Law and Literature and I am studying it well in advance.  This is Rushdie's most significant achievement and one of the truly excellent novels of the last thirty years.  It's not an easy read, but worth the commitment if you haven't already done so.  Sadly, this book seems to have fallen into a commercial black hole; you can't even get it on Kindle.

5. Herta Müller, assorted.  When she won the Nobel Prize last year, I was skeptical.  In Berlin I've been reading her work, much of which is set in Berlin, and I like it.  It helps if you have a connection to those who have left formerly communist countries.  In English, I suggest The Land of Green Plums as a starting point.

4. William Voegeli, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State .  Voegeli has a good basic point, namely that a) the welfare state is here to stay, and b) we need to set limits to it.  At some point the book runs into diminishing returns.  Arnold Kling wrote a good review of the book , plus he had lunch with the author .

2. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic , an interview with Charles Saatchi.  Entertaining throughout, plus you can read it in a few minutes time.  This is the sort of book Felix Salmon would blog.  Saatchi claims that Pollock, Warhol, Judd, and Hirst are the four artists from recent times who will pass into history as the immortals.  The others will be swept away.

1. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy , by Eric D. Weitz.  A bit stolid, but a good general overview of an era I very much would like to be able to visit.  That said, deflation and fascist political movements make for an obviously nasty combination.

This is the paperback of Create Your Own Economy , with (to me) a better title and better cover.  I am pleased to have persuaded the publisher in this regard.  It is out this coming Tuesday, one week from today.  You can pre-order it on Amazon here (Kindle too ), Barnes&Noble here , and Borders.com here .

Remember when Bob Dylan was DJ for those XM satellite radio shows , spinning a melange of blues, folk songs, vaudeville, gospel, and general bizarreness, with generally American themes, in the process proving himself one of the world's great musical infovres ?  Some of those shows are collected on CD, in Germany, vol. I, II, and III, four discs a box, twelve discs in total.  The Amazon.de listings are here (they will ship to the US), or in German stores for about six dollars a disc, thank you Gr...

Here is one obituary .  Of his works, I find Blindness the most compelling, Ricardo Reis the deepest and most lyrical, and The Double as the most fun and the easiest.  Most of the others I do not like at all (if you've tried only the others I say try again), but those three I recommend very highly.

Here is one obituary .  Of his works, I find Blindness the most compelling, Ricardo Reis the deepest and most lyrical, and The Double as the most fun and the easiest.  Most of the others I do not like at all (if you've tried only the others I say try again), but those three I recommend very highly.

Here is one obituary .  Of his works, I find Blindness the most compelling, Ricardo Reis the deepest and most lyrical, and The Double as the most fun and the easiest.  Most of the others I do not like at all (if you've tried only the others I say try again), but those three I recommend very highly.

Edmund Silberner's classic treatment of trade and war remains relevant and of course he was also a prominent Zionist, albeit a mostly forgotten one today.

Living here feels natural.  I am happy but oddly unfascinated.  Most of all, I notice the changed routines of my life.  Every day I take mass transit and have cheese for breakfast, rather than the car and cereal.  I am more likely to take in information by walking around different parts of town than by reading.  I have only five CDs, a Kindle, and a few paperbacks, including the new (and good) David Mitchell novel .

For extensions of my argument, see my book Create Your Own Economy , soon to be released in paperback with the new and superior title The Age of the Infovore .

Kurt Weill belongs somewhere, as does Christopher Isherwood, Gustav Grundgens , or for that matter E.T.A. Hoffmann.  In popular music there is Ricardo Villalobos (born in Chile, but a Berliner), Einst ü rzende Neubauten (start with Halber Mensch ), and Peter and also Casper Br ö tzmann.  I confess that most Mendelssohn bores me.

11. Non-fiction book, about : Two that come to mind are Richard Grunberger's The 12-Year Reich and Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 .  I do like books about the rise and fall of the Nazis; I just don't think the topic lends itself well to film.

11. Non-fiction book, about : Two that come to mind are Richard Grunberger's The 12-Year Reich and Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 .  I do like books about the rise and fall of the Nazis; I just don't think the topic lends itself well to film.

10. Film director : Ernst Lubitsch was born there, and filmed silents there, though he later had to leave.  His Trouble in Paradise (1932) is today an under-viewed movie, plus his later romantic features, such as The Shop Around the Corner , Heaven Can Wait , and To Be Or Not To Be , all merit attention.

10. Film director : Ernst Lubitsch was born there, and filmed silents there, though he later had to leave.  His Trouble in Paradise (1932) is today an under-viewed movie, plus his later romantic features, such as The Shop Around the Corner , Heaven Can Wait , and To Be Or Not To Be , all merit attention.

10. Film director : Ernst Lubitsch was born there, and filmed silents there, though he later had to leave.  His Trouble in Paradise (1932) is today an under-viewed movie, plus his later romantic features, such as The Shop Around the Corner , Heaven Can Wait , and To Be Or Not To Be , all merit attention.

10. Film director : Ernst Lubitsch was born there, and filmed silents there, though he later had to leave.  His Trouble in Paradise (1932) is today an under-viewed movie, plus his later romantic features, such as The Shop Around the Corner , Heaven Can Wait , and To Be Or Not To Be , all merit attention.

7. Playwrigh t: Lessing's Nathan the Wise is a beautiful plea for tolerance.  Bertolt Brecht was a compelling writer despite his communist politics.

6. Political philosopher : Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action , which to this day remains one of the best statements of libertarian political philosophy.