Recently Mentioned Books

There is also Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence , which I have not yet read.

Thomas H. Davenport and Steven M. Miller, Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration .  Actual examples!

Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, How to be a Founder: How entrepreneurs can identify, fund and launch their best ideas .  Do you have it in you to be a founder?  If you are asking that question, this book is maybe the best place to start looking for some answers.

Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology .  I liked this book and found it useful, though I wished for more on Taiwan and more recent times, and for less on the earlier years.  Just my subjective preference.

Frances Spalding, The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between the Two Wars .  Wonderful text, quality images, and the whole subject area remains underrated, so this book was a big plus for me.  The history of modernism is not just cubist and abstract art on the continent.

That is from the forthcoming Richard V. Reeves book , one of the most important of this year, perhaps the most important.

Due out September 6th in the United States , I loved Hamnet and so have pre-ordered.  Here is (gated) Times of London coverage .

Yes the composer John Adams, not the Founding Father.  I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Here is his Wikipedia page .  He is also an excellent conductor, wrote a thoughtful and substantive autobiography , and much more.  He has a premiere of Antony and Cleopatra — a new opera — coming to San Francisco.

Snigdha Poonam is a 38-year-old journalist and author from Delhi. She has written about identity politics, income inequality, tech culture, and crime.  Her first book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World , won 2018’s Crossword Award for nonfiction. She received an EV grant to travel across India to for her investigative work on scams and fraud in the contemporary Indian political economy.

Three volumes, $281.57 , totally worth it.  Picture books!  Asia only, the vanishing part of course.  Very wide coverage of various regions, including parts of western Asia such as Georgia.  And yes this is the same Kevin Kelly who is a Hayekian, tech commentator, and much more.  It is thus one of the most conceptual picture books, noting the text is minimal and descriptive.

Fascinating throughout.  Don’t forget Will’s excellent new book What We Owe the Future .

Out this week, I am looking forward to reading my copy, you can order it here .

That is from Tim Harford at the FT .  There will be more in Clifton’s forthcoming book Blind Spot .

Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great .  I only read part of this book, as it had more detail than what I was looking to consume, but it is clearly a major and very useful source on its topic.  It focuses on the progress, science, and state-building sides of the reign of Peter.

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: