Recently Mentioned Books

1. Alexander C.R. Hammond, Heroes of Progress: 65 people who changed the world , with a forward by Steven Pinker.  Starts with Gutenberg, of course Norman Borlaug is included, don’t forget Cobden, Bentham, Frederick Douglass, and many others.  An Auto-Icon to those who spurred progress!  Who knew that Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, N.J.?  Well done.

The subtitle of this new and excellent book is How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Art of War .  It is written not by journalists but two insiders to the process, namely Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchoff .  Here you can read about Eric Schmidt, Brendan McCord, Anduril, Palantir, and much more.

Again, I am happy to recommend Benjamin’s latest book The Upside-Down World: Meetings with Dutch Masters .

The subtitle is Hw Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy .  I am happy to have blurbed this book, here is part of the Amazon description:

4. Henry Oliver’s Second Act is available in US now on Kindle, September in hardcover .

Two of those are really good!  They are from The Book of Predictions , by David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace.

The author is Kirk Goldsberry, and the subtitle is Mapping the Remarkable Transformation of the NBA .  I enjoyed this book very much, and the visual are excellent.  The prose reads well, but also sticks to the analytical.  Excerpt:

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

Here is one volume , here is another , here is a third .  Each is priced below $20, definitely recommended.

That is from a new paper by Bernt Bratsberg, Ole Rogeberg, and Marko Terviö.  You may recall that Daniel Gross and I made a similar claim in our book Talent , namely that the very top performers in virtually any field are extremely smart, even if the field is not an intellectual one in the traditional sense.

The book is recommended, you can pre-order here , most of American monetary history is covered.

That is from the new and quite interesting Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796-1912 , edited by Jessican Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell.

I’ve also been reading a cluster of books on the history of the transgender movement.  I don’t have a single go-to book to recommend, but you could start with Weininger and Magnus Hirschfeld, who are also interesting representatives of Austro-Hungarian and Germanic culture in the early twentieth century.  Overall, I am surprised how many of the key books are out of print, selling used for high prices on Amazon .

Gregory Makoff, Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina’s $100 Billion Debt Restructuring .  This is both a good book on how the law handles sovereign defaults and useful background to what Milei is trying to undo in Argentina.

Randy Barnett, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist , is a 616 pp. well-written memoir of a prominent libertarian legal theorist.

Alex Christofi has written Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean , which is the book I will take to Cyprus when I go there.

Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes & How They Rule Your Daily Life .  An excellent short book on the power of tax incentives, written by the former head of the National Tax Foundation.  Incentives matter!

Benjamin Nathans, To The Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement .  The definitive book on its topic, consisting largely of profiles of dissidents.  The title is taken from a longstanding dissident toast, and yet they won eventually, sort of.  So your cause isn’t hopeless either.

The author is Kathleen Duval, and the subtitle is A Millennium in North America .  This is an excellent book.  Here is one excerpt, strung together by me from three separate pages:

5. New Cass Sunstein book on campus free speech .

He has a new and excellent book out, namely American Civil Wars: A Continental History 1850-1873 .  Among his other virtues, he is renowned for tying in American history to developments in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.  So what should I ask him?

That is from his new book A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity .  I had not known that in the early 16th century Iran was still predominantly Sunni.  And:

6. Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity .  Mostly ends at 1800, this will become one of the standard, must-read histories of Islam and its multiple homes.  The section on India, which is what I have been reading, is strongly conceptual and novel compared to other survey books such as Hourani.  At the very least a good book, possibly a great book.

5. Austin Bush, The Food of Southern Thailand .  The best book I know of on southern Thailand flat out.  This one has recipes of course, but also photos, maps, anecdotes, and plenty of history.  The food is explained in conceptual terms.  Recommended, for all those with an interest.