Recently Mentioned Books

McCartney, Paul. The Lyrics .  A remarkably high quality production, again showing McCartney’s skill as manager and entrepreneur.  Perhaps the biggest revelation is when Paul insists that if not for the Beatles he would have been an English teacher.  He also claims that he and not John was the big reader in The Beatles.  It is also striking, but not surprising, when explaining his lyrics how many times he mentions his mother, who passed away when Paul was fourteen.  There is a good David Hajdu N...

Scott Sumner, The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy .

Alejandro Ruiz, Carla Altesor, et.al., The Food of Oaxaca: Recipes and Stories from Mexico’s Culinary Capital .

William Deresiewicz, The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech , brief discussion of it here .

Also noteworthy is Reviel Netz, Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture , which I hope to write more about.

As for retranslations of classics, I very much like the new Oedipus Rex trilogy and the new translation of the Kalevala .  I hope they are fiction!  And kudos to Sarah Ruden’s work on the Gospels , I am not sure where to put them…

As for retranslations of classics, I very much like the new Oedipus Rex trilogy and the new translation of the Kalevala .  I hope they are fiction!  And kudos to Sarah Ruden’s work on the Gospels , I am not sure where to put them…

As for retranslations of classics, I very much like the new Oedipus Rex trilogy and the new translation of the Kalevala .  I hope they are fiction!  And kudos to Sarah Ruden’s work on the Gospels , I am not sure where to put them…

Domenico Starnone, Trust .  The better of the two “Elena Ferrante” novels released in English this year?

Mario Levrero, The Luminous Novel .  The best Uruguayan novel of all time?

Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary .  At least as good as The Martian , and arguably more conceptual.

Marcel Proust, The Mysterious Correspondent: New Stories .  Not the very best Proust, but even so-so Proust is pretty superb.  These are fragments to be welcomed.

Bruce J. Dickson, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century is a good treatment of exactly what the title promises.

Useful is Paul Lockhart, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare .

Tao Jiang, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom .  Too detailed for me to have time to read right now, but very likely an excellent book (I have browsed it), full of careful study and insight.

Michael S. Weisbach, The Economist’s Craft: An Introduction to Research, Publishing, and Professional Development .  A straight-up rather than cynical take.

4. Michael Cholbi, Grief: A Philosophical Guide .  I like the book when it veers in this direction: “Antipathy toward grief is a common theme among ancient Mediterranean philosophers.  Greek and Roman philosophers were far more hostile toward grief than we moderns, tending to view grief as, at best, a state to be tolerated or minimized.  For these philosophers, grieving others’ deaths is an unruly condition, a sign that one had become overly dependent on others and lacked the rational self-contr...

3. Scottie Pippen, Unguarded , with Michael Arkush. “Michael Jordan was 1-9 in the playoffs before I joined the team.  In the postseason he missed, the Bulls went 6-4. The Last Dance was Michael’s chance to tell his story.  This is mine.”  Get the picture?

2. Bobby Duffy, The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think .  Millennials, Gen X, Gen Z, and so on.  The generations just don’t differ that much from each other, at least not in ways that show up as strong effects in the data, adjusting for other demographic features.  This book is a useful corrective to numerous media discussions of these topics.  And yet…I am not entirely convinced.  That I grew up without an internet, for instance, really does seem to shape a lot of...

1. John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand .  He went from Ayn Rand to Buckminster Fuller, was deeply involved in Native American issues, saw the San Francisco scene arrive, did his share of LSD, and heralded the birth of Bay Area tech culture and also open source software, among other achievements.  Sometimes reads Marginal Revolution.  I enjoyed this book, but of course would defer to Stewart’s own judgment.

5. New Doc Watson box set , and WSJ review here .  In fact, in today’s links, 4 out of the 5 are self-recommending.

3. New edition of Ilya Somin’s Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom .

Markus K. Brunnermeier, The Resilient Society .

Richard A. Williams, Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Unravels the Myths and Their Solutions , covers the food regulatory side of the FDA, and:

And Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law .