Recently Mentioned Books

It was not exactly the book I wanted, but I hope you read it.  You can pre-order it here , or as I did have it shipped from UK Amazon .

Pittock stresses the importance of good education for the Scottish story, here is one good Guardian review noting that point.  Here is a good Scotsman review .  You can buy the book here , definitely recommended and interesting on virtually every page.

I have been predicting this will be an amazing year for fiction, most of all fiction in translation, and so far it is off to a wonderful start.  You can buy the book here .

It is not an airtight view, but it is also not the least plausible view.  Imagine a “basic needs” argument that suggests, a’ la David Braybrooke , that individuals truly have positive rights to a certain degree of sustenance, health care, shelter, and so on.  Yet above that basic needs level, individuals don’t have positive rights to much of anything at all.  They are left to fend for themselves, though of course they will benefit from social cooperation.  After all, positive rights have to stop...

The author is Karl Schlögel, and the subtitle is Archaeology of a Lost World .  Who else could have a whole chapter on Soviet-era doorknobs?  This is a fascinating book about the material loose ends, the pamphlets, the clothes, the non-existent phone books, the shop signs, the chest medals, and the bric-a-brac — among many other items — of the Soviet Union.  Excerpt:

The authors are Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, and the subtitle is Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism .  Due out April 4, pre-order now , here is my blurb:

He has an extensive publication record , including in political economy, economic history, and economic growth, he studied earlier Russian reforms , and he has books on science policy (with Jonathan Gruber) and the national debt (with Kwak).  Most notably his forthcoming book is with Daron Acemoglu and is titled Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity , due out in May.  He is a Brit of course.

He has an extensive publication record , including in political economy, economic history, and economic growth, he studied earlier Russian reforms , and he has books on science policy (with Jonathan Gruber) and the national debt (with Kwak).  Most notably his forthcoming book is with Daron Acemoglu and is titled Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity , due out in May.  He is a Brit of course.

He has an extensive publication record , including in political economy, economic history, and economic growth, he studied earlier Russian reforms , and he has books on science policy (with Jonathan Gruber) and the national debt (with Kwak).  Most notably his forthcoming book is with Daron Acemoglu and is titled Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity , due out in May.  He is a Brit of course.

There is a new and ambitious Philip Pettit book coming out, The State .

4. Adam Kuper, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions .  An excellent history of ethnographic museums, including their original visions, how they evolved, and their continuing import.  Good coverage of Leipzig, Pitt-Rivers, Paris, the Smithsonian, Mexico, and more.  The author is pro-heritage while wary of mainstream identity politics, for instance skewering the Museum of the American Indian in DC.  I like the book’s opening quotation: “There is no doc...

3. Ross Clark, Not Zero: How an Irrational target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet) .  Quite a good book, well-argued, and avoids the craziness and “denialism” that plague some of the other efforts in this direction.

2. Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England .  As with World War II, you can’t read enough books about 17th century England.  This new book has excellent coverage of the English Civil War, and overall the different fights between factions.  Political conflicts take center stage, though there is some coverage of the scientific revolution, the rise of commerce, and colonialization.  Still I found this very useful and also easy to read, if perhaps a bit dull on the...

1. Tara Zahra, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars .  A good book about anti-global sentiments in earlier times, most of all the 1920s, covering a broad span of countries, the flu pandemic, anti-Semitism, and gender (was globalization pro- or anti-woman, according to earlier thinkers?).  Does not make you feel better about current times.

You can buy it here .  There should be many more books just like this one, but for different topics — take note!

Of course not all of those predictions have come true, but many have or others are on the verge of realization.  The subtitle of the book is Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation .

p.104, here is the book (by me).

You can buy it here .  Here are various reviews .

Useful is The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India , by Manan Ahmed Asif.

There is also Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors that Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration, and Everything in Between .

Bill Hammack, The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans .  From an engineering perspective.

There is Daniel Akst, War by Other Means: The Pacifists of the Greatest Generation Who Revolutionized Resistance .

4. Philip Bowring, The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State is a good overview and in general I favor explanatory, country-specific books.  Once again, low productivity in agriculture is a big problem.

3. Philip K. Howard, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions .  I am not sure about the “unconstitutionality” point, but the rest of this critique is right on target.  Is this the next frontier for supply-side progressives?

2. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Call of the Tribe .  On the thinkers who have influenced him, including Adam Smith, Hayek, Berlin, Popper, and Ortega y Gasset, among others.  All of the chapters I quite liked.  The story of the meeting of Berlin and Akhmatova I had not known.  Not consummated, but intensely erotic and unforgettable for both of them.