Recently Mentioned Books

Richard M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age .  Among its other virtues, including excellent research, this book does a good job of recharacterizing the “Mughal” era as one of massive Persian influence in India.

Dan Slater and Joseph Wong, From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia is a good “state capacity” take on how democracies developed from strong states in Asia.

2. Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity .  This novel is not so famous, but it is one of his best and also most literary creations.  Like so many Asimov tales, it is fundamentally biblical in inspiration.  Of course Asimov wrote numerous books about the Bible, so he knew it well.  You can start with Adam and Eve, Abraham, and Samson, but it doesn’t end there.

1. Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Brazilian Authoritarianism: Past and Present .  One of the best general books on where Brazil is right now, and yes it is sad that you can say that about a book on political authoritarianism.  Don’t forget that most of the slaves brought to the New World were brought to Brazil, and the country now has the second largest African population in the world.  The problem with this book is that while the first half on Brazil is quite good, too much of the second half is social...

I had a chapter on this topic in my 2007 book Discover Your Inner Economist , with much of the material based on blog posts from 2004-2006 or so.  No, I was not recommending particular charities, but rather considering how to think about giving more generally.  Since that time there has been so much discussion of the topic in EA communities, I thought it would be interesting to see how well my earlier recommendations have held up.

5. The socialist version of the anti-alcohol campaign (it’s about time), book here .

7. New Helen DeWitt novel coming .

3. Geoff’s book The Economy of Esteem (with Philip Pettit), which analyzed approbational incentives, building upon Adam Smith’s TMS .

2. His arguments with Jim Buchanan about the limitations of optimal tax theory (Amazon, when I search for this book, why do you summon up as the first pick “ Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Bum Bum Body Cream “?).  If government policy is misaligned with social welfare, “more efficient” forms of taxation, such as the Ramsey rules, will not in general be more efficient.  In particular they can make it too easy for the government to maximize revenue and transfer resources to the public sector.  The profe...

1. His account of expressive voting with Loren Lomasky , showing how politics can generate a measured concern that people may not care about all that much.  That was also a big influence on Bryan Caplan’s book on voting.

The author is Louise Perry and the subtitle is A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century .  Definitely recommended, here is Louise’s brief summary of part of the book’s arguments:

The FDA usually follows a rigid process of interacting with the drug companies it regulates.  Normally, it can take months for a company to schedule an in-person meeting with the FDA.

The author is Peter Loftus, and the subtitle is Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World .  An excellent book, here is one very short excerpt:

Kissinger offers two explanations for this troubling silence. The first lies in the evolution of meritocracy. (Full disclosure: He mentions a book I have written on this subject). The six leaders were all born outside the pale of the aristocratic elite that had hitherto dominated politics, and particularly foreign policy: Adenauer and Sadat were the sons of clerks, Thatcher and Nixon were the children of storekeepers, Lee’s parents were downwardly mobile. But theirs was a meritocracy with an ari...

His new book is The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People .

4. Mustafa Akyol, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance .  Progress Studies for Muslims?  Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, argues that the values of the Western Enlightenment had Islamic counterparts in the broader sweep of history, and that it is possible to win them back.

3. Hugh Eakin, Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America .  John Quinn is the hero of this story.  Who’s he?  He was a wealthy Irish-American lawyer on Wall Street in the early part of the twentieth century.  He supported James Joyce, the various Yeatses, the later-famous Irish playwrights, Irish painters, and Pound and Eliot, all before they became accepted and then famous.  What a talent spotter.  He simply sent them money.  He was also very early on the Picasso and Henri Rousseau bandwago...

2. Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe, editors, Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South .  Many of the individuals essays here are quite interesting, such as the coverage of Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala, how Montenegro became a neoliberal outpost of sorts, Rothbardianism in Brazil, or the career of Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson of Iceland.  But the book would be much better if it reversed its mood affiliation and turned these essays into tributes.  There is a fair amount o...

1. Ann Mari May, Gender and the Dismal Science: Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession .  A good history of the injustices suffered by women in the earlier years of American economics.  It also serves indirectly as a good history of early journals, early academic practices, and the ongoing professionalization of American academia.

Is science really a source of social alpha? Well, science gave the world mRNA vaccines, though not to all societies at the same time. The U.S. and UK cashed in early there, in large part due to their domestic scientific achievements. Science helps keep the U.S. defense establishment strong. Superior science also was essential to the building of the United States as a wealthy, developed nation. If you are hoping that we cure cancer, or limit the problems of climate change, those issues too rely o...

The author is James Belich, and the subtitle is The Black Death and the Rise of Europe .  This is a fascinating but not entirely persuasive book.  In any case it is one of the books to read this year.  Here is a summary sentence:

The author is Raymond B. Craib and the subtitle is A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age .  This is really two books in one.  The first is a quite useful and well-researched history of various libertarian attempts to ease the costs of political exit, or sometimes to obtain exit altogether.  He is well-informed about the 1972 Michael Oliver attempt to set up the libertarian “Isle of Minerva,” nearby to Tonga.  The King of Tonga nixed it, but even Rothbar...

Here is a NYT obituary , here is a Guardian appreciation .  Here is Brook’s Wikipedia page .  He was one of the very greatest talents of our time.  He was most of all a theatre director, and so most of his output I have never seen.  I can report that his filmed Mahabharata ( 5.5 hours on YouTube ) is one of the great creations.  He and his co-workers spent eight years on the project.  I also give his King Lear , again on film, an A+.  At Lincoln Center I once saw his staging of The Magic Flute (...

5. New Deirdre McCloskey book .

The author is William C. Kirby and the subtitle is Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China .  The shocker is that this is actually a good book .  In contrast, hardly any books on these topics are good .  This book is substantive on virtually every page, the author actually understands how universities work, and, get this… you have to read the book to know what is inside it .  The material covers why early German universities became so successful, why they declined and sta...