Recently Mentioned Books

Wolf Totem , by Jiang Rong, is the most widely read book in China since Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.  In the United States it’s been out since March 27 and still it has only one Amazon review and a negative one at that.  So far I find it compelling and I am enjoying its panpsychic vulgarities.  It’s also a good guide to how the Chinese think about their foreign policy.

That’s by Matt Yglesias ( son of Rafael Yglesias ) and the subtitle is How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats .  Anyone who reads books on foreign policy should buy this book.  Most of all it is a critique of recent practice and a defense of liberal internationalism.  He calls for negotiating with Iran, not digging in deeper in Iraq, and more generally accepting multilateral frameworks for the use of American military power.  I agree with the polic...

5. Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe , revised and updated, by Robin Kerrod and Carole Stott.  Stunning.  Most smart people make the mistake of not reading enough picture books.  It’s not just that the pictures are good; the text must concentrate on what is truly essential.

4. Francisco Goldman, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? .  Maybe the best book on why Guatemala is such a mess but also on why there is hope.  Make sure you read the dissenting reviews on Amazon.

3. 2666: A Novel , by Roberto Bolaño, you can pre-order it here.  So far I’m only reading the Amazon site every few days or so, thinking about when the book will come.

2. Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters .  This one blew me away; you don’t even have to like poetry, it is more like reading letters.  You do need to know a little about his life with Sylvia Plath to appreciate it.  A modern masterpiece, highly recommended.

1. Steven Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement .  It covers the Federalist Society, GMU School of Law, Institute for Justice, among other institutions.  The material rang true to what I know; Orin Kerr comments .

That’s the subtitle, the title is Bound for Freedom and it is by Douglas Flamming.  This book is a good antidote to libertarians who assign too much blame to state governments, and not enough blame to voluntary norms, when it comes to Southern segregation and Jim Crow.  Early in the twentieth century, Los Angeles was devoid of the oppressive Jim Crow laws that were so common in the South.  In fact California had some (unenforced) laws prohibiting discrimination according to race.  Yet according ...

That is from Peter Moskos’s Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District ; here is my previous post on the book .

5. Novel, set in : Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song .  The first half in particular is a knockout.

3. Best Robert Redford movie : Out of Africa , schmaltz yes but I love it.

1. Author : Orson Scott Card’s The Ender Trilogy (start with Ender’s Game ) is a modern landmark which will be read for years to come.  Next on my list is Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose .

1. Author : Orson Scott Card’s The Ender Trilogy (start with Ender’s Game ) is a modern landmark which will be read for years to come.  Next on my list is Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose .

4. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: A Saudi Family in the American Century .  So far it’s great.  I know you’re sick of reading about Bin Laden; just think of it as a (partial) history of the Saudis.

3. Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa , by Robert Paarlberg.  The point is unassailable, the subtitle says it all.

2. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations .  Yes, that’s the Clay Shirky .  This is (implicitly) a very good Hayekian, spontaneous order treatment of social software on the web.  The book poses a simple and important question: what happens when it is virtually costless to organize people into groups?

1. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness , by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.

Every year there are five or six books that just wow me.  This is one of them.  It is as gripping as a first-rate novel and I learned something on almost every page.  Here is one review .  You can buy it here .

Chapter five of Common Wealth is called "Securing Our Water Needs," an important topic but one neglected by most economists.  One lesson is that climate change will put a big stress on water supplies.  So far, so good, but the recommendations start with greater international cooperation:

3. How Judges Think ,  by Richard A. Posner.  Every sentence in this book is substance, to a remarkable degree.  It’s hard to find a central thread to the argument, but I blame that on the topic rather than on any failing of the author.  After all, judges think in some pretty complicated ways and Posner goes out of his way to minimize the role of conscious theory in judicial behavior.  Content aside (which reflects all of Posner’s usual erudition), anyone interested in non-fiction should take a ...

2. The Dawn of Indian Music in the West , by Peter Lavezzoli.  You need to care about the topic, but today this became one of my favorite non-fiction books, ever.  I bought a copy just to express my loyalty to the author.  I’ve said this before, but lack of knowledge of Indian classical music is the biggest gap in the education — and enjoyment — of many many smart people.  This is one very good introduction but it offers much to the veteran as well.

We have molecular gastronomy, so why not apply science to…other things, as does Mary Roach .  The subtitle is "The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex."  Here is the author’s home page ; she also wrote Spook and Stiff , both of which are good.  This isn’t a "how to" book, it is a real popular science book on its topic and I predict it will be successful.

Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China , by Fuchsia Dunlop, due out in mid-April.

That is from the new book The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics , by Isaac Martin.  The main thesis of this book is overstated, namely that the professionalization of property tax assessments is the root cause of American exceptionalism on tax politics; nonetheless I found this a very informative and stimulating read.

That’s the new Jeff Sachs book .  It promotes resource pessimism, Nordic-style social democracy, foreign aid, and a fundamental rethinking of U.S. foreign policy.  Most of all it expresses a faith in global cooperation.  Sachs is very smart and, though I do not agree with him, there is often more to his views than his critics admit.  But my browsing of this book never gave me the feeling that I had access to the mind of Jeffrey Sachs.  It doesn’t even read like a popularization.  Imagine a smart...