Recently Mentioned Books

That is from Paul Hoffman’s King’s Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World’s Most Dangerous Game .  I loved this one, it’s one of the few great chess books.  It’s also a tale of how Manhattan has changed, how sons become independent, the nature of psychological warfare, and why obsession never really dies.  Note that author Hoffman is also editor of Discover magazine, which I enjoy as well.

That is from the new and quite interesting Proust Was A Neuroscientist , by Jonah Lehrer.

Here is a new list from The Guardian (I’ll second the call for Alasdair Gray’s Lanark ).  Here is an only slightly older list from New York magazine , I like David Markson too.

The subtitle is How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich , written by financial journalist Jason Zweig .  I enjoyed the content of this book, and would recommend it as a stimulating source of ideas, but with some caveats:

Yesterday’s haul from Arlington Public Library included You Never Call! You Never Write! , and Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening , neither of which I expect to finish (though I will if I love them).  The real question is should I read more on-line book reviews (which are free), or do my own "reviews" by pawing the free book for a few minutes?

Yesterday’s haul from Arlington Public Library included You Never Call! You Never Write! , and Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening , neither of which I expect to finish (though I will if I love them).  The real question is should I read more on-line book reviews (which are free), or do my own "reviews" by pawing the free book for a few minutes?

That is from Karen Stabiner’s The Empty Nest: 31 Parents Tell the Truth About Relationships, Love, and Freedom After the Kids Fly the Coop .  For one thing, I don’t drink much tea.

There are many other prediction tools here (do click), from Ian Ayres .  Ayres requests that you email him other prediction applets, which he will add to the page.  Ayres also has a new book out, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by Numbers is the New Way to be Smart ; it is highly readable and also endorsed by Steve Levitt.

Is her Goldberg Variations as good as The New York Times (and other reviews ) claims ?  In a word, yes.

I don’t pretend to have any good arguments for this idea, and I understand (to some degree) how and why it fell apart .  I also understand that historic India was itself not very unified .  That is in part what makes my attachment irrational, and perhaps the irrationality is part of the attachment itself.

I don’t pretend to have any good arguments for this idea, and I understand (to some degree) how and why it fell apart .  I also understand that historic India was itself not very unified .  That is in part what makes my attachment irrational, and perhaps the irrationality is part of the attachment itself.

4. Do Economists Make Markets? , an edited collection of essays.  How could they not cite Alex’s Entrepreneurial Economics ?  Or pay homage to Robin Hanson and prediction markets?  Still, this is a useful introduction to how economists have tried to shape real world markets, from spectrum auctions to options pricing.

4. Do Economists Make Markets? , an edited collection of essays.  How could they not cite Alex’s Entrepreneurial Economics ?  Or pay homage to Robin Hanson and prediction markets?  Still, this is a useful introduction to how economists have tried to shape real world markets, from spectrum auctions to options pricing.

3. The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by CrackpotEconomics , by Jonathan Chait.  I’ve taught Ph.d. macroeconomics to some of the people referred to, either directly or indirectly, in this book.  They didn’t all get A pluses.  So I see the talk of conspiracy as way, way overblown.  This book catalogs many good criticisms of the Bush administration, and in that sense is valuable, but it does not raise the level of debate.

2. One Economics, Many Recipes , by Dani Rodrik.  I agree with much of the substance of this book, namely that we know a lot less about the causes of economic growth than we like to think.  I am less happy with the implied rhetorical choices; in particular I wish Rodrik were more consistently agnostic.  For instance Rodrik defends industrial policy, but at times this just translates into lower (or no) taxes for export zones.  So why frame it as a larger rather than a smaller claim?

1. Open Secrets of American Foreign Policy , by Gordon Tullock.  A history of the bloopers and stupidities of American foreign policy, from virtually day one.  If you think Gordon embraces a narrow, reductionist rational choice view of the world, here is the antidote.  Gordon tells me that foreign policy has long been his number one interest, although he has written on the topic only now.

I view Discover Your Inner Economist as largely Thomist and more Catholic than anything else.

The guy who heard that — I won’t tell you his name — is reading the audiobook CD book and audiocassette versions of Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist .

The guy who heard that — I won’t tell you his name — is reading the audiobook CD book and audiocassette versions of Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist .

I saw this and thought I should buy the book — Kate Christensen’s novel The Great Man — just because I liked the cover.  As an experiment, I deliberately did not scan the contents or read the blurbs on the back.  The title isn’t very descriptive either.  I then bought the book.

5. Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire , by Alex von Tunzelmann.  Yet another high quality book on modern Indian history, here the theme is the departure of the British, the establishment of modern India, and of course partition.

4. Tristram Shandy , by Laurence Sterne.  On this rereading, I am obsessed by the notion that it is actually Uncle Toby who is Tristram’s biological father.  In any case this book has held up very well.

3. Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 , by Dan Nadel.  Some of the best evidence that comic books are valuable art.

2. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming , by Chris Mooney.  The lower your social discount rate, the more you should worry about (growth-reducing) storms, and the less you should worry about one-time adjustments, such as moving islanders to a mainland.  In other words, you should worry about storms.

1. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium , by Robert Friedel.  A very good treatment of the history of Western technology, although it is not accessible reading for most non-specialists.