Recently Mentioned Books

2. Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son . I ended up enjoying this more than I do his trendy fiction.  This supposed paean to family life collapses quickly into narcissism, but that's in fact what makes it work.  I was surprised but not shocked by the part where he deliberately tortures his infant son.

1. John Derbyshire, We are Doomed .  He complains because most Western culture today does not live up to the standards of Carol Burnett and Saturday Night Fever . Really.  If there's one thing that can be said, it is that yesterday's cultural pessimists were more interesting than the pessimists of today.

I should note that I liked the book more than that excerpt, taken alone, indicates.  As is often the case, the parts where I praise the work are simply less interesting.  You can order the book here .  In case you don't remember, he's the guy who did the first work on the "deadweight loss of Christmas."  The book has come out just in time for…the Christmas season.

The author is Sean Carroll and the subtitle is The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time .  This book-to-appear offers a very good summary of the paradoxes of time.  The new contribution (new to me, at least) is to offer an integrated discussion of the multiverse, the law of entropy, de Sitter space, and the foundations of the so-called "arrow of time."

3. Hayek opposed deflation ; he said the same in MTaTTC too.

That's the new book by Andrew Ross Sorkin and the subtitle is The Inside Story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves .  Last night I read through to p.132.  So far it seems to be the single best narrative of the crash and its aftermath.  I haven't seen anything theoretical or on root causes, etc.  I chuckled at reading this sentence, which starts with Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers picking up the phone:

Even since I wrote Create Your Own Economy , which was not so long ago, I've come around closer to Alex's position on on-line instruction.  Today I read :

That is from Graham Farmelow's excellent new book The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Physicist .  This isbook  one of my two must-read biographies of this year, the other being the book on Garcia Marquez .

That is from James Belich's Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World, 1783-1939 .

I'm also enjoying A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book , which has beautiful language and creates its own world; still, I can't find the thread of the plot at p.100.  And the new Pamuk (which I'm still reading, very slowly) remains sublime and it is becoming one of my favorites.

5. Danube , by Claudio Magris.  Now this is a splendid travel book.

4. The Thirty Years' War , by Peter H. Wilson.  I read about one-third of this lengthy and clearly written Belknap Press book.  After a while I realized I was learning what the War wasn't (not the beginning of religious toleration, not the beginning of the modern nation-state, etc.), but not what the War was .  I guess I'll never know.

3. Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel .  I found this a difficult book to get a grip on.  To my eye, most of the pages were a kind of empty.  Can you explain to me what made this book good?  The first page has a sentence like: "Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's streetlights."  That's not, to my ear, an ugly sentence, but ...

2. David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries .  The former member of Talking Heads, and compiler of Brazil Classics 1 , bicycles through ten cities and reports on them.  Most of the pages have something interesting.

2. David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries .  The former member of Talking Heads, and compiler of Brazil Classics 1 , bicycles through ten cities and reports on them.  Most of the pages have something interesting.

1. Ulysses and Us: The Art and Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece , by Declan Kiberd.  He argues that Ulysses is a fun book, a popular fiction, and easy to read.  I won't give away my copy to anyone, which you can take as an endorsement.

That is from James Belich's Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World, 1783-1939 .

She is slated to spend a week or two visiting with us this spring, through the sponsorship of the Mercatus Center.  Pete Boettke and Paul Dragos Aligica just published a book on her thought .

That is all from James Belich's Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 .  I'll discuss this book more soon, but I'll tip my hand and say it is one of the very best non-fiction books of the year.  Imagine Jared Diamond or Greg Clark (albeit more measured, in each case) but applied to the settlement of the colonies rather than to Europe itself.  This book also has perhaps the best explanation as to why the Argentina growth miracle fell apart.

The subtitle is Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System and the author is Paul Blustein.

The subtitle is How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football and the author is Wayne L. Winston.

Mexico City, Puebla, and Havana.  #2 is the hardest of the three to get.  My source is James Belich's superb Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 .

That is from Randolph Roth's new and notable American Homicide (no subtitle, yay!).  Here is a PW summary:

That is from Richard P. Bentall's Doctoring the Mind: Is Our Current Treatment of Mental Illness Any Good? You can think of this book as an updated, more traditionally empirical, less polemic version of Thomas Szasz.  It makes large claims which are difficult to evaluate.  Ultimately I don't find that it offers a persuasive alternative framework for thinking about either mental illness or "mental illness."  Nonetheless the book is stimulating, it relies on substantive argument, and it will induc...

That is from Michael Jones's compelling Leningrad: State of Siege .