Recently Mentioned Books

That is from Robert B. Cialdini’s fascinating Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive .  Cialdini’s earlier Influence remains one of my favorite social science books.  Here is a link to Flynn’s paper and related work .

That is from Robert B. Cialdini’s fascinating Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive .  Cialdini’s earlier Influence remains one of my favorite social science books.  Here is a link to Flynn’s paper and related work .

The author is Taras Grescoe and the subtitle is "How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood," buy it here .  Yes this is one of the best non-fiction books this year so far and yes I say that after having read (and mostly liked) the last five books on the exact same topic.  I hope it does well because this book is an object lesson in how to best your competitors and we’ll see whether or not that matters.

That is from the excellent What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America , 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe.  The rate of desertion in the Mexican-American War was the highest in American history and twice that of Vietnam.

4. Paul A. Offit, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure .  This superb book details how pseudo-science can attain such a grip on the human mind.  It is a level better than the other books on the same topic and it is one of my favorite non-fiction books so far this year.

3. Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture , by Grant McCracken, our leading practitioner of anthropology and marketing; he is always interesting so far I am just browsing this one.

2. Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It , by Elizabeth Royte.  This is a subtler than expected treatment of the economics of bottled water.

1. The Book of Love: The Story of the Kama Sutra , by James McConnachie.  A serious book about…another serious book.  It’s good.

That is from A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano , by Katie Hafner.  This is an excellent book showing that the choice of piano really matters.  For the pointer I thank Kat.

And the subtitle is "(and What It Says About Us)".  The author is Tom Vanderbilt and here is the Amazon link .  I wrote the following blurb for it:

In the U.S., we have low gas taxes, low car taxes, few tolls, strict zoning that leads developers to provide lots of free parking , low speed limits, lots of traffic enforcement, and lots of congestion.

6. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels .  I read this (yet again) on the flight back from Japan, it is still one of the best books and one of the most important books for aspiring social scientists.  A must-read if you don’t already know it.

5. Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective , by Andrew Lo.  Finally a serious book on hedge funds based on real data, written by a leading financial economist, and covering August 2007.  I’ve only browsed the book but it is a must for anyone who follows this area.

4. Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight From the Greatest Manhunt of World War II , by Brendan I. Koerner.  The story of a black WWII GI who goes AWOL and marries into a Burmese hill tribe.  This could have been a great book but as it stands it is a "good enough to read" book.  The digressions are often more interesting than the main story.

3. Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others , by Marco Iacoboni.  This is now the go-to popular science book on mirror neutrons.  I especially liked the discussion of why we find conversation easier than giving monologues (well, not everyone does), even though a priori you might expect the opposite.

2. Netherland , by Joseph O’Neill.  Many critics are claiming this is the first great 9-11 novel.  It grips your attention immediately and has a strong craft but philosophically does it have anywhere to go?  It is rare that I put a book down after the halfway mark but that was the case here.  Some of you will like this but I look for something more exotic from my fiction.

1. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey , by Jill Bolte Taylor.  What’s it like to lose half your brain in a stroke, be aware of the entire process, be unable to reason coherently, and then recover your faculties over the course of years?  This first person account is written by a Harvard neuroscientist.

2. Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life .  One of the best popular science books I’ve read in the last few years.  Among other matters he explains why curing aging isn’t so easy, why eukaryotes seem to have evolved only once, and why it often should be "The Selfish Cell" and not always "The Selfish Gene."  His book Oxygen is excellent as well.

2. Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life .  One of the best popular science books I’ve read in the last few years.  Among other matters he explains why curing aging isn’t so easy, why eukaryotes seem to have evolved only once, and why it often should be "The Selfish Cell" and not always "The Selfish Gene."  His book Oxygen is excellent as well.

1. Henning Mankel, Depths .  I loved this story.  Have I mentioned that Mankell is one of my favorite contemporary writers?

3. Pakistani Pomade , by Alexander von Schlippenbach; the sort of jazz that hurts most people’s ears.

2. Saudades , by Trio Beyond.  Excellent guitar work on every cut; bluesy, lots of organ.

1. Anything by Brad Mehldau; he is a very subtle pianist, broadly in the mold of Bill Evans.  Start with his CD with Pat Metheny .

4. I very much like Charles Taylor’s book on Hegel .  I do not think it is what "Hegel really meant" but perhaps it is what "Hegel would have had to have really meant, had some smart people like Robin Hanson pinned his back against the wall, lectured him about futarchy, and made him write shorter sentences to boot."

Here is the link and right here you can buy Discover Your Inner Economist in Kindle form (it’s also available as a Sony eBook) and paperback as well, here is the Amazon link .