Recently Mentioned Books

The end of my review considers in more detail why so many drugs are still illegal while alcohol is not.  You can buy the book — which is very good — here .

4. Popular music : The Everly Brothers, most of all their 1968 album Roots .

3. Film director : Tod Browning, see Freaks to blow your mind.  "Goo-bah, Ga-bah, one of us, one of us!" is one of my favorite moments in all of cinema.  There is also John Carpenter's The Thing.

That's the title of the new Rob Feenstra book .  In the first section, he, like Paul Krugman, tries to resurrect the view that trade patterns explain recent wage movements.  For a published book, however, I'm not sure how much he has come up with:

The Huffington Post asked me to write a quasi-review of the new Simon Johnson and James Kwak book, 13 Bankers .  I also am allowed to cross-post it with a lag, so here it is (the original source is here , with HP comments, since it is me thre is no point in indenting the whole thing):

Lieven's earlier Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals is one of my favorite non-fiction books.

That's the title of the new and excellent Dominic Lieven book and the subtitle is The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace .  Excerpt:

Both of those questions are from the new and excellent book Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History , by Thomas Barfield.  Most of all this is a conceptual treatment of the history of the country and its different regions.  The book's home page is here .

Nonetheless you can purchase it here .  You can find a good review here .

The subtitle is Two Economists Expose the Pitfalls on the Road to Victory in Professional Sports and the authors are David Berri and Martin Schmidt.  I liked this bit (p.21) about the factors which do not explain free agents' salaries in the NBA:

You can buy the book here .

5. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche , by Haruki Murakami.  This remains one of the classic studies of collective action, although it is hardly ever recognized as such.

4. The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880-2000 , by Thomas A. Stapleford.  No, I'm not actually reading this one, but I should be.

3. Wolf Hall: A Novel , by Hilary Mantel.  Usually I'm willing to blame myself when I don't like "classics," but on this one I'll push back.  I started thinking "magisterial" (itself a mixed blessing) and then found myself slipping to "dutiful."  It's good — not great — and it doesn't beat reading non-fiction about British history.  The second Amazon review hits the mark.

2. Solar , by Ian McEwan.  Maybe this is still better than most people's stuff, but I didn't finish it.  He's lost his intellectual edge.

1. King Kong Theory , by Virginie Despentes.  An excellent short book on feminism, rape, and prostitution.  Given how much ink has been spilt on these issues, it's more vital than you would expect; "full of energy," as they say.

Albion's Seed is an excellent book but it is too long.  What have I forgotten?  Should I have more on Mormons?

8. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America .

7. Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How American and Europe are Alike .  I disagree with the premise of this book but nonetheless it may shake them out of their dogmatic slumbers.

6. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword , by Seymour Martin Lipset.

5. State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America , by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey.

4. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. ; a longstanding favorite of mine.

3. The American Religion , by Harold Bloom.

2. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System , by Paul Fussell.

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America .