Recently Mentioned Books

Bjorn Lomborg’s Best Things First delivers the expected dose of correct common sense.

The author is Richard N. Langlois, and the subtitle is The History of American Business Enterprise .  551 pp. of text.  I’ve taught Ph.D Industrial Organization for a good while now, and have always wanted a text that provides an overview and introduction to U.S. business history, with sophistication and good economics, and without being out of date.  This is that book, so I am happy indeed.

I am pleased to see Bryan Caplan reviewing the new Louis Perry book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution .  He opens with this:

By Philip A. Wallach, of the American Enterprise Institute.  Here is the book’s home page .  Here is a review of the book .  A very good book.  As I read Phil, he is suggesting that Congress is even a wee bit underrated .  You can buy it here .

The author is Daniel Rachel, and the subtitle is What if The Beatles Hadn’t Split Up? This is perfectly fine as a music book (for Beatle fans, it won’t convince the unconverted), but I couldn’t stop thinking of the Lucas critique.

I am very glad this book now exists, you can pre-order it here .

The author is Cihan Tuğal, and the subtitle is How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism , though the book is more concretely a comparison across Egypt and Tunisia as well, with frequent remarks on Iran.  Here is one excerpt:

I am looking forward to reading the rest, you can buy it here .

I can’t pretend to evaluate the more controversial claims of the author, but at the very least I learned a great deal reading this book and it has stimulated my interest in the topic areas more generally.  You can buy it here .

And yes the book does have an insightful discussion of Laibach , the Slovenian hard-to-describe musical band.  You can buy it here .

Recommended.  And here is Kevin’s new book Excellent Advice: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier .

I will be doing a Conversation with him, in honor of the new edition of his Animal Liberation .

And Is Social Justice Just? , edited by Robert M. Whaples, Michael C. Munger, and Christopher J. Coyne.

I will not have time to read Chris Wickham’s massive tome The Donkey & the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180 , but surely it is worthy of note and it appears to be a major achievement.

There is Shanker A. Singham and Alden F. Abbott, Trade, Competition and Domestic Regulatory Policy: Trade Liberalisation, Competitive Markets and Property Rights Protection .

Simone and Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion , the authors lay out what their version of a pro-natalist world and philosophy would have to look like.

Lionel Page, Optimally Irrational: The Good Reasons We Behave the Way We Do , argues that many behavioral “imperfections” in economics are in fact rational in a broader perspective.

I have only browsed Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations that Built British Colonialism , but it seems to be a very good and serious treatment of its chosen topics.

Peter Attia, with Bill Gifford, has now published Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity .

Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, Superman Brainiac , Superman wins, but is that plausible?  Yes.  The writers note there is too much that Brainiac cannot control, most of all on Earth.

Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income , is a good history of ideas on the basic concept.

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? The authors are skeptical on the actual settlement of space, and so am I, so I am glad this book exists.  I hope somebody proves them wrong, but that is not my bet.

Claire Hughes Johnson, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building is that rare thing — a good and also useful management book.  She was COO at Stripe, this is a Stripe Press title, and I was happy to see it make the WSJ bestseller list.

Marcel Proust, The Seventy-Five Folios & Other Unpublished Manuscripts .  Early drafts of In Search of Lost Time, fragments, but still of interest to Proust lovers.

An excellent book, the author is Sebastian Edwards, and the subtitle is The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism .  This is the only book on this topic where I feel I am finally getting to the bottom of what happened.  Here are a few points: