Recently Mentioned Books

3. Kiwis Might Fly , by Polly Evans, 1 out of 310 pp.

2. Kim MacQuarrie, The Last Days of the Incas , 169 out of 522 pp., it is actually quite good.

1. Taxi: A Social History of the New York Cabdriver , by Graham Hodges, 44 out of 240 pp.

That is from Alan Weisman’s truly excellent The World Without Us .  Here is my previous post on the book .

I do not treat this book as foundational because of personal experience.  I’ve spent much time in one rural Mexican village, San Agustin Oapan , and spent much time chatting with the people there.  They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring.  And that’s in their second language, Spanish.

How many more times will someone suggest this book in the comments section of this blog?  I like this book and I think it offers a real contribution.  Nonetheless I feel no need to suggest it in the comments sections of other peoples’ blogs.

By David Markson , fun, fun, fun.  Excerpt:

That is from Gerd Gigerenzer’s Gut Feelings: the Intelligence of the Unconscious .  It is a good microeconomics question to ponder the conditions under which a) this is efficient, and b) you would rather be the poorer patient or the non-lawyer than the lawyer.

5. Blankets , by Craig Thompson.  This I loved and read in one sitting; it is a very good introduction to graphic novels, especially if you are not thrilled by Alan Moore.

4. The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society , by Mark A. Smith.  The main thesis is that right wingers have made America a more conservative society by framing issues in terms of economic reasoning.  Maybe I am too close to the topic, but I didn’t learn anything from the book.  At the very least it should interest progressives looking to mimic the successes (?) of the right wing.

3. Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang , by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok.  Inflation vs. cyclic theories, the latter help you stay an agnotheist by resolving the Goldilocks problem; only some of the universes through time have order as we know it.  I enjoyed it, even though I am sick of popular physics books.  It’s also the first time I’ve understood anything about the Higgs field debates.  Recommended.

2. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconsciou s, by Gerd Gigerenzer.  The author is a smart guy and an accomplished scholar, but despite his best efforts this book is a few years too late .

1. Vie Francaise , by Jean-Paul Dubois.  He is the French Philip Roth; the bottom line is that I finished it, and not just because of the occasional mentions of Adam Smith.

Maybe this paper will help.  The more globalized parts of Mexico — most of all the north — have done extremely well since NAFTA passed.  The biggest problems remain in the least globalized parts, most of all the south and big chunks of the interior.  The paper has just appeared in the new NBER book on globalization and poverty .

Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion is a very exciting and important book.  It is rare to read something on economic development that is true, non-trivial, and potentially useful.  I recommend this book highly, it is also short and easy to read.  Here is a good review of the book by Niall Ferguson .

John Reader’s Africa: A Biography of a Continent .  Most of all it offers historical and geographic reasons why African development has proven so problematic.  The author very frequently thinks in terms of mechanism , so it will be congenial to most economically-oriented readers.  Have you wondered why slavery is so common in African history, or why African societies are so frequently conservative and obsessed with the veneration of elders?  Why parasites can feast on humans so easily in Africa?...

That is from Jeremy Haft’s cheesy-looking but at times interesting All the Tea in China: How to Buy, Sell, and Make Money on the Mainland .

A loyal MR reader asked for mbaqanga recommendations for iPod; start with The Indestructible Beat of Soweto , Mahlathini (best without the Mahotella Queens), and Township Jazz n’ Jive ; the last is not exactly mbqanga but you will love it anyway.

A loyal MR reader asked for mbaqanga recommendations for iPod; start with The Indestructible Beat of Soweto , Mahlathini (best without the Mahotella Queens), and Township Jazz n’ Jive ; the last is not exactly mbqanga but you will love it anyway.

A loyal MR reader asked for mbaqanga recommendations for iPod; start with The Indestructible Beat of Soweto , Mahlathini (best without the Mahotella Queens), and Township Jazz n’ Jive ; the last is not exactly mbqanga but you will love it anyway.

That is from Read Montague’s new and notable Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions , an in-depth look at neuroscience and the brain.

2. Fiction : I reject Kesey and Michener, so I’ll go with Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book , an excellent piece of fantasy/science fiction.

Dr. Yang didn’t even know that he is a character in a forthcoming book about how to motivate your dentist…

3. Jonathan Lethem, Gun with Occasional Music .  This is marketed as contemporary literature, which keeps away the science fiction fans.

2. Star Maker , by Olaf Stapledon.  Read Stapleton if you fervently believe that British Hegelianism is the missing element in most science fiction.  Yet this is probably my favorite science fiction novel of all time, who else can credibly skip over 20,000 years in a single breath?  "Civilizations rose and fell, yet now we must move on," or something like that.  Honorable mentions go to Stapledon’s Odd John and especially Sirius .