Recently Mentioned Books

3. Steven C.A. Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution .  A clearly written, well-argued book, which on top of everything else is better than most books on the Industrial Revolution, hardly its main area of focus.  The main point is that the Glorious Revolution was more radical than is commonly portrayed and it represented the culmination of a struggle between two very different kinds of modernizing forces in England.  Chapter 12 — "Revolution in Political Economy" — is a gem.  This is a very ...

2. Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless .  It's odd that such a splendid author is read so little in this country.  Beware, though — this one lies in the territory somewhere between Ulysses and Finnegans Wake . It is very powerful for those inclined in this direction and now I can see why his name in mentioned in connection with a Nobel Prize.

1. R.W. Johnson, South Africa's Brave New World .  In the U.S. there is only the Kindle edition, but I ordered a British edition through the library.  This is a comprehensive political history of the country since the fall of apartheid; I thought I wouldn't finish it but I did.

The subtitle is Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System and the author is (?) Henry M. Paulson, Jr.

For the pointer I thank Lawrence Rothfield, author of this excellent book .

Here is my previous post on Menand's new book .

Anyway, that's the proposal in the new Louis Menand book, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University .

I also recommend the new book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea , by Barbara Demick.  Excerpt:

This is a very interesting book about the ideologies behind North Korea.  The author is B.R. Myers and the subtitle is How North Koreans See Themselves — and Why it Matters .  Excerpt:

There is another new book on the Industrial Revolution, namely Robert C. Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective .  It's all about how the British had high wages and cheap energy, a kind of Heckscher-Ohlin approach to why we're not eating mud cakes.  It's good enough on its own terms, but it's a) question-begging in parts, and b) startling what a small role ideas play in the basic story.  Indirectly, this book is proof that Mokyr's contribution is an important one.

The subtitle is An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 and the author is Joel Mokyr.  This is now the most comprehensive and indeed the currently definitive history of the British Industrial Revolution.  Here is a short excerpt:

Some of you may recall the third and fourth sentences in my book Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures (now on Kindle by the way):

9. Best Haitian rara collection : That's the noisy. discordant music they play leading up to Carnival. This would be my pick.  Overall it's a vibrant genre.

7. The most comprehensive historic collection : Alan Lomax in Haiti , 9 CDs, of highly varying quality but always interesting.

3. The best Haitian collection : the Konbit! CD .  The voodoo-linked Rhythms of Rapture is quite good, as is the more acoustic Haitian Troubadours .

1. The best song to start with : Buy Wyclef Jean's Welcome to Haiti .  "Ou Marye" (track 8) is my single favorite song these days, sadly I cannot find it on YouTube but you can download it.  Start there. This one also has strong Haitian influence.  This is a kind of Haitian rap , with a good video.  Here's a super-fun mix of ragga and compas , with Buju Banton and T-Vice.

All this is from the truly excellent new book Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly , by Michael D. Gordin.  Here is one very accurate review of the book .

It's still a book I mostly disagree with.  You can buy the book here ; too bad it isn't on Kindle yet.  Reviews are here .

That's about Clinton State Prison, built in 1845 and the anecdote is from Timothy Gilfoyle's A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York .  Here is my previous post on the book .

That's from Timothy Gilfoyle's excellent A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth Century New York .

I don't buy into the genetic explanations but still I view "family structure which encourages an obsession with education" as very hard to replicate through policy.  Emmanuel Todd's The Causes of Progress has many problems, but it is an under-mined book when it comes to the causes of both liberty and economic growth.

Coming out in paperback, March 2010, for only $20. You can pre-order now .

The book is now out and yes it does add to her blog .

That's from the 21 December issue of Variety .  One difference, of course, is that the best-selling album of this decade — but not the 1950s — was by The Beatles .

5. Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics .  The critics include Bernard Williams, David Schmidtz, Jan Narveson, Michael Huemer, and myself'; Singer responds to each essay.