Recently Mentioned Books

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 .

That's a new book by Russ Banham and the subtitle is A Struggle for a Great American County .  It is published by George Mason University Press.  Excerpt:

The subtitle of the book is Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance and you can pre-order it here .  The authors are…come on guys…need I tell you?

Robert Pozen's Too Big to Save: How to Fix the U.S. Financial System is the single best source for figuring out what happened.  It is the go-to book if you are a non-specialist and want to understand: how credit default swaps work, the significance of Basel II, mark-to-market, how the various Fed bailouts operated, the meaning of the toxic asset plans, and many other matters.

That passage is from Robert Pozen's new and notable Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System .

From Amazon :

In the pile is Robert Service's Trotsky , which is self-recommending.  On DVD, I very much enjoyed watching Tyson , which is chockful of social science in narrative form.

In the pile is Robert Service's Trotsky , which is self-recommending.  On DVD, I very much enjoyed watching Tyson , which is chockful of social science in narrative form.

5. Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist .  Sometimes Baker hits the spot, but this one didn't hold my interest.  Poets might like it.

3. To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise , by Bethany Moreton.  It sounds like one of those whiny books on Wal-Mart.  But I found it insightful throughout and also well-written; the main point is that Wal-Mart can be understood as driven by a Christian service ethos.  Parts of it serve as a good economic history of the South and of chain stores and big box stores.

2. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression , by Morris Dickstein.  I put it down.  I care about the topic but so much of the content is going through the motions rather than framing the argument around the author's original insights.

1. Arvind Panagariya, India: The Emerging Giant .  Why didn't this book get more attention?  It's by far the best treatment of the economics of contemporary India.

That is from Richard Polsky's new and fun i sold Andy Warhol (too soon) .  The book is a sequel of sorts to Polsky's earlier I Bought Andy Warhol .  I am also a fan of Polsky's earlier Art Market Guides .

That is from Richard Polsky's new and fun i sold Andy Warhol (too soon) .  The book is a sequel of sorts to Polsky's earlier I Bought Andy Warhol .  I am also a fan of Polsky's earlier Art Market Guides .

That is from the new book Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought , by James G. Workman.