Recently Mentioned Books

3. Miles, Ornette, Cecil , by Howard Mandel.  I never considered putting this one down.  It appeals to readers who are already fans but it is also a good start for expanding your horizons beyond "traditional" jazz.

2. 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die , by Tom Moon.  It's mostly popular music but a mix of everything.  I was amazed how much this guy's taste, including on particular classical recordings, matched my own.  This is a more serious book than the packaging indicates.

1. Gail Hareven, The Confessions of Noa Weber .  This newly translated Israeli novel was a great deal of fun, without being too light.  Recommended.

The subtitle is Forty Tales From the Afterlives .  This bestseller looks thin and unsubstantial but I would recommend it to some of you.

Pirates and economics may not be sexy subjects for a book, but economists tend to see things and do things a bit differently. So it made sense for Peter Leeson, an economist at George Mason University, to propose to his girlfriend in the preface of his forthcoming book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates . He presented the finished book (and a ring) to her on Friday–and she said yes.

The subtitle is Democracy in Dangerous Places and the author is Paul Collier.  Here are three bits:

2. New Paul Collier book , reviewed here .

Addendum : Buy Peter's book here .

5. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding .  Does our cooperative nature come from our love of babies?  Maybe my expectations were too high, but I found her earlier book more revelatory.

5. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding .  Does our cooperative nature come from our love of babies?  Maybe my expectations were too high, but I found her earlier book more revelatory.

4. Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles .  Another mega-book on Africa, with mixed results.  At least half of it is worth reading, and I learned a great deal (or at least I think I did) from the analysis of how Somalia is a relatively ethnically unified nation, by African standards at least.

3. The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency , by David Marsh.  I can't say this book is fun to read, but it is the new go-to source on an increasingly up-for-grabs topic.  It's at least as much about the EMS as about the Euro.

2. Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture .  A very clear and readable book on a still underrated thinker.

1. The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum , by Lawrence Rothfield.  The definitive book on its topic.

Not everyone assumes that Jim Cramer is smart but in fact Jim Cramer is smart (though his advice is no smarter than that of a monkey's).  Watch the early Jim Cramer and you will see (can anyone find a good YouTube link?).  But take the smartest person you know and put him or her on TV for hours a week, for years, and see what happens.  (See my book What Price Fame? .)  Usually only very smart people get to experience such fates.  Lots of screaming is an added bonus.

I enjoyed this book, which is written by Stephen Axilrod and has the subtitle Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin Through Greenspan to Bernanke .

I've read only fifteen or so pages and I'm already convinced it's one of the must-read books relevant to the financial crisis.  The other two books which come to mind are Lords of Finance and The Partnership , neither of which covers the crisis directly but both offer essential background.

The author is William D. Cohan and the subtitle is A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street .  It's the story of the recent history of Bear Stearns.  Here is an NYT review .  Here is a Business Week review .  Here is an L.A. Times review ; note that all reviews are very positive.

5. Bonsai , Alejandro Zambra, 83 pp., the next literary rage to come from Chile since Roberto Bolaño.

3. Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression .

2. Imagining India, The Idea of a Renewed Nation , by Nandan Nilekani.  An excellent study of the microeconomics of entrepreneurship in India; I thank Carl Schramm for the pointer.

1. The Enormity of the Tragedy , by Quim Monzó.  Originally written in Catalan, this short novel is popular throughout Europe for its priapic good humor.

That is from Harold G. Vatter's The U.S. Economy in World War II , one of the better treatments of that era.

The original tip is from 1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die , an excellent book for reading or browsing.

That is from Donald Markwell's generally quite interesting John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace .  And you will find the essay here .  Keynes, of course, did snap out of that phase.  One thing I learned from this book is that international relations is the key topic for tracing the evolution of Keynes's thought over his entire career.