Recently Mentioned Books

My picks would have been Mission to Mars and Titan A.E . Sunshine is also quite good and not so well known.  At times I regard What Dreams May Come as science fiction.  Can I call John Carpenter’s The Thing underrated?  (Is Gattaca underrated?  I don’t think so, not any more.  Is the wonderful eXistenZ underrated?)  Then there are the three Stars Wars prequels, each deeply underrated (unlike The Clone Wars , which defies every rational choice theory known to mankind).  But we’ve had other commen...

My picks would have been Mission to Mars and Titan A.E . Sunshine is also quite good and not so well known.  At times I regard What Dreams May Come as science fiction.  Can I call John Carpenter’s The Thing underrated?  (Is Gattaca underrated?  I don’t think so, not any more.  Is the wonderful eXistenZ underrated?)  Then there are the three Stars Wars prequels, each deeply underrated (unlike The Clone Wars , which defies every rational choice theory known to mankind).  But we’ve had other commen...

That is from Kate Jackson’s Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science and Survival in the Congo .  It is an excellent and very fun book on fieldwork and on the topics mentioned in its subtitle.  I think of this as "a Chris Blattman book" and yes you should be reading Chris’s blog .

Don’t forget "And I Love Her," among a bunch of others.  And by egomania I am referring to the audience not (only) the performers.  This passage is from Daniel J. Levitin’s new and quite interesting The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature .

That’s the title of the forthcoming Jeff Madrick book .  "Don’t we already have big government?" was my first reaction.  This book is a good summary of one point of view, but if you’re already familiar with the basic arguments it won’t extend your understanding of the debates.  There’s not much on the public choice arguments (e.g., self-serving special interests and irrational and underinformed voters) against growing state power, only a general sense that we "should" do good things with governm...

1. Encyclopedia of Libertarianism , edited by Ronald Hamowy, Amazon link here .

4. Playwright : Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden is good.

3. Poetry : My favorite Neruda is Canto General , his retelling of Whitman’s America but covering the entire hemisphere.  A masterpiece. Estravagario is excellent and while I haven’t read Residencia de la Tierra , it is considered another one of his classics.  The love poems are very nice though perhaps not his best material.  In any case he is one of the three or four best poets of the twentieth century.  Gabriela Mistral is talented but I cannot say I love her work.

3. Poetry : My favorite Neruda is Canto General , his retelling of Whitman’s America but covering the entire hemisphere.  A masterpiece. Estravagario is excellent and while I haven’t read Residencia de la Tierra , it is considered another one of his classics.  The love poems are very nice though perhaps not his best material.  In any case he is one of the three or four best poets of the twentieth century.  Gabriela Mistral is talented but I cannot say I love her work.

2. Popular music : Ricardo Villalobos is the lead figure of Chilean techno, which is now I hear quite a vibrant genre; Taka Taka is quite a good mix album.  What else can you point me to?

1. Fiction : I’ve already covered Roberto Bolaño plenty on MR; The Savage Detectives is his masterpiece but it’s all worth reading.  The massive 2666 is due out later this year.  José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night , while hardly read in the U.S., seems to me one of the most gripping novels of the 20th century.  If you read the Amazon reviews you’ll that others who have read it agree.  This is one of the least read first-rate novels I know.  It’s not easy going, however, and it’s taking me a...

1. Fiction : I’ve already covered Roberto Bolaño plenty on MR; The Savage Detectives is his masterpiece but it’s all worth reading.  The massive 2666 is due out later this year.  José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night , while hardly read in the U.S., seems to me one of the most gripping novels of the 20th century.  If you read the Amazon reviews you’ll that others who have read it agree.  This is one of the least read first-rate novels I know.  It’s not easy going, however, and it’s taking me a...

1. Fiction : I’ve already covered Roberto Bolaño plenty on MR; The Savage Detectives is his masterpiece but it’s all worth reading.  The massive 2666 is due out later this year.  José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night , while hardly read in the U.S., seems to me one of the most gripping novels of the 20th century.  If you read the Amazon reviews you’ll that others who have read it agree.  This is one of the least read first-rate novels I know.  It’s not easy going, however, and it’s taking me a...

1. Fiction : I’ve already covered Roberto Bolaño plenty on MR; The Savage Detectives is his masterpiece but it’s all worth reading.  The massive 2666 is due out later this year.  José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night , while hardly read in the U.S., seems to me one of the most gripping novels of the 20th century.  If you read the Amazon reviews you’ll that others who have read it agree.  This is one of the least read first-rate novels I know.  It’s not easy going, however, and it’s taking me a...

Here is the full interview , via Finoculous .  It contains further revelations.  A few months ago I spent some time browsing his latest book in Borders.  He can’t simply admit: "I was a fool to follow Mao and Stalin" but instead he has to push the line "I just need to reinterpret everybody more and I will still find some movement for "egalitarian terror" [those two words are his] to sign on to."  Grow up, I say, yet he is almost sixty years old .

This information is from the fun to browse The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009 , a Colombia/SSRC book.

That is from the very fun Seven Days in the Art World , by Sarah Thornton.  Here is Felix Salmon on the book .  How about this part?:

It’s also cited in the new Paul Theroux book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star , which is occasionally entertaining but not up to his best material.

And the transit of fossil fuels through Georgia endangers the profit of which country?  You have three guesses.  If you don’t know the word " Transneft " you will soon.  Here is more .  See also Marshall Goldman’s new book Petrostate on the Georgia-Russia relationship and the economic factors involved.  In my view today’s series of events is very, very bad news.  Not only are the events bad, but it is a bad signal of type about the new (is it new?) Russian government.

That is from my 2000 book What Price Fame?

The whole review is excellent; it covers a new Chinese regional cookbook Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China .

By the way, Larry Mason wrote a novel which he claims is a model; I haven’t had time to read it yet.  Plus the new novel by Russ Roberts, which illustrates economic concepts, seems to be out now .

That’s the new book edited by David Levy and Sandra Peart; the subtitle is Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism , an issue which arises frequently on this blog.  The book offers an excellent dialogue between Buchanan and Warren Samuels, the best essay on Adam Smith’s theory of usury, Deirdre McCloskey on "Sacred Economics," my essay on " Is a Novel a Model? ", Crampton and Farrant reinterpreting the socialist calculation debate, and the Rawls-Buchanan correspondence, among other treats.  I...

6. Classical music recording : George Szell’s Beethoven’s 3rd remains a landmark recording, or try his Piano Concerti set with Leon Fleisher.

5. Jazz : There is Art Tatum, especially the early Capitol work , not so much the later Pablo recordings.  Billy Strayhorn was often behind the best Duke Ellington arrangements.