Recently Mentioned Books

4. The Bad Girl , Mario Vargas Llosa.  That makes two wonderful novels in one week.  I don’t enjoy all of his recent work, but this one is very fun, hearkening back to the tradition of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter .  The Edith Grossman translation is first-rate as always.

4. The Bad Girl , Mario Vargas Llosa.  That makes two wonderful novels in one week.  I don’t enjoy all of his recent work, but this one is very fun, hearkening back to the tradition of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter .  The Edith Grossman translation is first-rate as always.

3. Free Trade Reimagined , by Roberto Unger.  This is the fourth book this year to challenge the doctrine of comparative advantage, a more important fact than any argument in the books themselves.  The book is weak on empirics but it does present the sophisticated version of the anti-free trade arguments.  I don’t believe in open borders , so I suppose I’m not a free trader either.  Unger is smart, smart, smart, but that doesn’t mean he should be Minister of Long-Term Planning in Brazil, which h...

2. Theory of Clouds , by Stephane Audeguy .  I loved this novel, which was the rage in France but sadly will die here stillborn.  Think Julian Barnes, Sten Nadolny, or Kazuo Ishiguro.  Short, fun, dreamy, and conceptual. Its quality illustrates one of my favorite book-buying algorithms, which is to snap up serious foreign fiction translated into English, if only because the selection pressures are so severe.

1. Days on the Family Farm , by Carrie Meyer.  An interesting economic study of life on an early twentieth American family farm, based on personal diaries, and an antidote to anyone who thinks that all GMU economics faculty are like the bloggers you know.

That is from Richard Rhodes’s interesting Arsenals of Folly: the Making of the Nuclear Arms Race .  I’ve never seen a good quantitative study of how leadership biography matters for policy outcomes, and I expect that solid results are as hard to find as in birth order studies.  Does anyone know of a good, concrete stylized fact here?

That is from the new and sometimes intriguing Chic Ironic Bitterness , by R. Jay Magill .  The focus is on how America didn’t much change after 9-11, how the supply and demand for irony stayed pretty much the same, and how Stephen Colbert refutes or at least counters Kierkegaard’s critique of Schlegel.  ( Not everyone liked the book .)  Every now and then there is an author’s cartoon (e.g., "Immanuel Kant Bobble-Head Doll"), and on p.5 he stops and writes a stand-alone paragraph:

That is from the new and fascinating The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War .  Most of all, this book shows just how recently our modern notions of France were formed, and how late particularism persisted in the French psyche and ways of life.

That is from Patricia Beard, from Blue Blood & Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley .

That’s the new book by Cass Sunstein , and yes it works through how choice theory should approach disasters and irreversible events.  It is the most accessible presentation of this material to date and it is recommended to anyone who follows issues of global warming, pandemics, asteroid impacts, and the like.

And it’s simple: just cook the cheeseburger in milk, what’s so hard about that?  Do note the burnt milk will ruin any good pan you use.  If you’d like to read some Doris Lessing , The Golden Notebook is compelling even though it is one of those books which old school feminists feel no man can possibly like.  Just be wary of the date who tells you it is his all-time favorite book.  I’ve never been persuaded by Lessing’s science fiction but some of you will wish to try it.

And it’s simple: just cook the cheeseburger in milk, what’s so hard about that?  Do note the burnt milk will ruin any good pan you use.  If you’d like to read some Doris Lessing , The Golden Notebook is compelling even though it is one of those books which old school feminists feel no man can possibly like.  Just be wary of the date who tells you it is his all-time favorite book.  I’ve never been persuaded by Lessing’s science fiction but some of you will wish to try it.

7. Composer : Walter Piston is the only one I can think of, try this disc .

Most of all he has rotten diction (odd for a former actor), plus he had no idea what the market-oriented crowd wanted to hear.  Sell short.  I’m still predicting Giuliani ; Hillary will do worse once the attack dogs gear up.  The fascinating but overlong Into the Wild is about, among other things, the weaknesses of family ties in the United States, and how people seek artificial family in response.  In a free society people must, to some extent, put principles of justice and political order abov...

Most of all he has rotten diction (odd for a former actor), plus he had no idea what the market-oriented crowd wanted to hear.  Sell short.  I’m still predicting Giuliani ; Hillary will do worse once the attack dogs gear up.  The fascinating but overlong Into the Wild is about, among other things, the weaknesses of family ties in the United States, and how people seek artificial family in response.  In a free society people must, to some extent, put principles of justice and political order abov...

Speaking of John, here is a Reason dialogue with John , covering his new book and also his description of GMU lunches.

That is from Therese Delpech’s fascinating Savage Century: Back to Barbarism .  This book made a splash in France but has been virtually ignored in the U.S.  There haven’t been many reviews but here are some endorsements .

The Conscience of a Liberal is um…not that polemic.  It’s not that shrill.  There is an argument , to be sure, but the book has much more economic history than I had expected, and much more political history.

Here is the link .  Over the last week I went back and listened to their major works again; I’m not that impressed.  Try Christopher O’Riley’s album of piano arrangements , and you will see just how thin and unmemorable their compositions are.  Admittedly not all great music would transfer well to the piano, but the Radiohead "sound" isn’t that original either, at least not compared to the frontiers of electronica or for that matter punk.  This morning I put on Boris’s Pink ; it is hardly my fav...

Here is the link .  Over the last week I went back and listened to their major works again; I’m not that impressed.  Try Christopher O’Riley’s album of piano arrangements , and you will see just how thin and unmemorable their compositions are.  Admittedly not all great music would transfer well to the piano, but the Radiohead "sound" isn’t that original either, at least not compared to the frontiers of electronica or for that matter punk.  This morning I put on Boris’s Pink ; it is hardly my fav...

Here is the link .  Over the last week I went back and listened to their major works again; I’m not that impressed.  Try Christopher O’Riley’s album of piano arrangements , and you will see just how thin and unmemorable their compositions are.  Admittedly not all great music would transfer well to the piano, but the Radiohead "sound" isn’t that original either, at least not compared to the frontiers of electronica or for that matter punk.  This morning I put on Boris’s Pink ; it is hardly my fav...

If you agree with the sentiments expressed in this post, you should read David Harsanyi’s new and forceful Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning American into a Nation of Children .

Battle Royale : Why do so few people know this 2000 Japanese cult classic?  The underlying political theme is that totalitarianism can end only in a war of all against all.  This classic of resistance and liberation shows how tyrannous circumstances degrade mankind.

What we will see is lots of lesser bands (and authors) giving their work away for free, but that trend has been underway for some time .  And by the way, Radiohead’s best album is Kid A .

Including Stephen Dubner’s new The Boy With Two Belly Buttons , which I just ordered.