Recently Mentioned Books

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.

That is from pp.442-3 of Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World , a truly timely book.

That is from Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World , which I am still enjoying.  Here is my previous post on the book .

I am enjoying this book very much, though it terrifies me as well.  I hadn’t known that Norman, later in his life, thought he could walk through walls.  Nor did I know that in the 1920s one-third of the population of the state of Colorado lived there as a (supposed) respite from tuberculosis.  You can buy it here .

On the popular music front, I’m now listening to Fleet Foxes at least once a day.  I’m also starting to like the new Bon Iver and the new Kanye West.

Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide Guitar , by Debashis Bhattacharya.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Gurrumal .  Aboriginal music from Australia, on acoustic guitar, truly moving.  I don’t regret having paid $40 for it.

Un Dia , Juana Molina.  Quirky, oddly textured songs from Argentina.  She’s not just a one-trick pony but she now has a string of excellent albums.

The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru ; I bought it in 2008 at least.

5. The history is fully consistent with an alternative interpretation, as I have discussed in my post on the fetishization of measured gdp .  Namely, the Japanese spent more money putting unemployed resources to work on construction projects.  Measured gdp went up, but the Japanese didn’t get much of value for their money.  (Japanese construction projects from this era are notoriously ugly, wasteful, and unpopular .)  The spending also didn’t set off any kind of lasting recovery.  It was the pro...

The kind of equilibrium stability theory that obsessed Franklin Fisher was written off as irrelevant some time ago.  Maybe people will start looking at it again.

The best place to start is his Sonata for Cello and Piano, the Double Concerto for Harpischord and Piano, and the Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harpischord, all collected here .  The string quartets and the sonata for violin and piano are also important, plus the short late works for solo instruments or small ensembles or voice; choose by which instruments you like best.

The Kevin Shields/Patti Smith two-CD collaboration , which oddly lots of people don’t seem to know about.

Neil Young’s 1968 acoustic takes on Buffalo Springfield songs, and

I’ve found one extant meta-list for popular music, here .  It is OK for a slow year; I won’t pass along the meta-list I came up with myself because I happen to believe its contents are mediocre, noting that my copy of Santogold has yet to arrive in the mail.  If you wish, scour these lists to construct your own meta-list.