Recently Mentioned Books

1. Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count , by Richard E. Nisbett.  A good compendium of the arguments for environmentalism in the IQ debates.  But this book has all the same flaws as The 10,000 Year Explosion — albeit from the other side of the issue — and egads are those people in the comments section touchy.  This book, by the way, offers the state of the art rebuttals to genetic explanations of Ashkenazi achievement, if you are looking to advance your understanding of...

I'm not sure if the book is interesting, have any of you read it?  But I remembered these sentences from a review:

The subtitle is How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution and the authors are Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending.  I do think that such topics should receive open debate but, as with Greg Clark's book, I'm not convinced.  There is plenty on dog breeding, lactose intolerance, Genghis Khan and his children, the difficulties of settling the Andean Highlands, and just-so stories about medieval Ashkenazi Jews.  What's missing is a sense of what the hypothesis does not explain, what its limitatio...

Here is much more .  I thank Bob, a loyal MR reader, for the pointer.  And don't forget about the new Sally Satel book on organ sales and why they are a good idea.

3. Feuchtgebiete , coming soon to a British country near you ; U.S. Amazon link here , note that the text of the first link is not for a "family blog" like MR .

My problem with movies is simple.  I can read faster than some people, but I can't watch a movie faster than anyone.  So the relative price of movie-watching for me is high (the marginal utility of books does not for me decline rapidly) and often I need the big screen to hold my interest.  Nonetheless I read Essential Cinema and the new David Thomson book — both superb — and decided I wanted to see a chunk of movies.  I've already blogged Satantango and Ruiz's Time Regained was a surprisingly go...

My problem with movies is simple.  I can read faster than some people, but I can't watch a movie faster than anyone.  So the relative price of movie-watching for me is high (the marginal utility of books does not for me decline rapidly) and often I need the big screen to hold my interest.  Nonetheless I read Essential Cinema and the new David Thomson book — both superb — and decided I wanted to see a chunk of movies.  I've already blogged Satantango and Ruiz's Time Regained was a surprisingly go...

The subtitle is Tales from the Dark Side of Japan and the author is Alex Kerr.  It is recommended reading for those who would have Obama expand his stimulus plan to include more construction.  Here are some strung-together excerpts:

Here is the book's home page with some sample free material.  Here is a list of contents .  Here is one summary of the book's contents .  The editors, Kenneth A. Reinert and Ramkishen S. Rahan, are from GMU School of Public Policy although note that is not the same as the economics department.  You can buy it here .

That is from the often quite interesting Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers , by Horace Kephart, recommended to me by a loyal MR reader.

A recent MR request asked me which book I wished I had written and now I have a recent answer: Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia .  And I'm not even a big Narnia fan ( this review aside ).  Most of all this is a book about what it means to love another book and how deep such a love can run.  It also covers the gap between children and adults, how storytelling works, what theology means in art, not to mention it gives an excellent portrait of Tolkien.  Every par...

4. Somewhere Towards the End , by Diana Athill.  A scary and effective memoir about how Athill, a famous editor, dealt with aging and the end of her sex life.

3. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory , by Torkel Klingberg.  When push comes to shove, the author fails to establish his major thesis.  Still, this book is way above average for how seriously it treats the actual science behind its argument.  I learned a great deal from it.

2. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective . This achieved (justified) rave reviews in the UK but it has hardly made a dent in the U.S. market.  It is non-fiction but written in a hybrid form and often feels more like a novel.

1. The Aztec World , by Elizabeth Brumfiel and Gary Feinman.  Long-time MR readers will know Aztec history is a special interest of mine.  This book, a companion volume to the Aztec exhibit from Chicago’s Field Museum, is perhaps the best introduction to the Aztecs to date.

By the way, on DRM and related issues, I recommend the new James Boyle book Public Domain .  The book is free and on-line here .  You can buy it from Amazon here .

Also known as Stairway to Heaven , directed by Michael Powell.  It’s one of the best movies, period, and it is finally on DVD , appearing today.  I’ve been waiting for years and I just ordered mine; I’ll also be teaching it in Law and Literature this spring .  It’s a law trial, a primer on Anglo-American relations, a love story, and a meditation on hope and death.  Here is a review .

That’s the book Yana gave me for Christmas.  I hadn’t realized how much the cuisine relies upon red onion and how many of the dishes require a full cup of red pepper paste.  Spiced butter is common too.  The recipe for red pepper paste starts by suggesting "15 lbs." of New Mexico red chiles.  I’m trying it with…15 red chiles.  We’ll see how that goes; I’ve also scaled back the "5 lbs. fresh ginger" to 5 pieces of fresh ginger.

The regular version , with "frustration packaging" (my phrase, not theirs), is in stock for $17.45.

5. East of Eden , by John Steinbeck.  I’ve long resisted Steinbeck, so we’ll see how far I get in this one.

4. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America (these subtitles are getting more and more all-encompassing!).  The author is Steven Johnson, another author always worth reading.  The topic is Joseph Priestley.  Here is Johnson’s blog .  Here is a good review .

3. Elsewhere, U.S.A. , by Dalton Conley.  Everything by Conley is worth reading.  The subtitle to this one is: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety.  The focus is on technology and markets.  Here are numerous earlier posts on Dalton Conley .

2. Tim Blanning, The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art .  An overview of the history of music, with many insights from an economic point of view.

1. The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst , by Kenneth Whyte.  A detailed revisionist account, arguing Hearst was a better progressive and better journalist than his reputation.

It’s the best book of the year and not just because it was my Christmas present.  It’s The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture (good photo excerpts at the link).  The book is 812 pp. and also several times larger than a normal book so it is like getting a 2000 pp. book or more.  (That’s why it costs $122!)  It is very heavy to carry around and it comes in its own plastic case.