Recently Mentioned Books

3. Martyn Rady, The Habsburgs .  Most books about the Habsburgs confuse me, this one confuses me less than those other ones, consider that a recommendation.  I learned the most from the section about all of the early ties to what is now part of northern Switzerland.

2. Ken McNab, And in the End: The Last Days of the Beatles xxx.  I regularly opine that sports and entertainment books — provided you already have familiarity with the topic area — provide better management lessons than do management books.  This volume, as I read it, presents the Beatles story as a tale of two sequential founders — first John (who had most of the early excellent songs), and then Paul, the turning point in my view being when Paul commandeered the engineering of “Tomorrow Never K...

1. Daniel Halliday and John Thrasher, The Ethics of Capitalism: An Introduction .  This book is reasonable, empirical, non-dogmatic, readable, and largely but not uncritically pro-capitalist.  It is indeed “an introduction,” and not designed for say yours truly, but we need many more works like this.

In her new book China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption , Yuen Yuen Ang presents four reasons:

Notable are two new books on liberalism abroad.  The first is Ingemar Stahl: A Market Liberal in the Swedish Welfare State , edited by Christina and Lars Jonung, and The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory , by Karl Mittermaier, with other contributions, concerning South Africa, and free on Kindle at least for the time being.

5. Greg Woolf, The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History .  A very useful introduction and overview to its chosen topic, a good and readable book for urbanists who are looking for general historical background.

4. Robert D. Putnam, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again .  A fact-rich, well-reasoned and indeed reasonable take on numerous American trends, most of them related to social solidarity.  A good book, provided you are not looking too hard for what the title and subtitle would seem to promise.

3. Christopher I. Caterine, Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide .  Did you realize that most of the supposed advantages of academia, such as control over your own time, do not exist to the extent they once did?  The advice in this book, such as about how to prepare your resume, seems correct to me, although that it needs to be given does not convince me of the marketability of these academics in the private sector or indeed anywhere at all.

2. Chris Ferrie and Veronica Goodman, ABCs of Economics (Baby University) .  Is this for a 5 or 6 year old?  It seems good to me, though perhaps the part where they teach “Nash equilibrium” is a stretch.  I say calculus should be available in the fifth grade, stats in the eighth grade, so full steam ahead.

1. Fredrik deBoer, The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice .  A well-written, highly intelligent book, inveighing against various aspects of the current meritocracy, and how they contribute to what the author calls “social injustice.”  People who do educational policy, or who think about inequality should read this book.  But ultimately what is his remedy?  I would sooner attack homework, credentialism, and bureaucratization than testing.  And yes, IQ is o...

The full title is Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman ,” edited by B.H. Friedman.

That is from Josh P .  And here is the Amazon link .

Jacob Goldstein, Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing is a good introduction to its chosen topic.

I found David Broder’s First They Took Rome: How the Populist Right Conquered Italy to be a useful explainer of a complex situation.

Thomas A. Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography is consistently good and readable.

4. Despina Strategakos, Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway .  What did the Nazis have planned for Norway after a supposedly successful conclusion of the Second World War?  Lots of reformed urban townscapes, and with plenty of detail to boot.  Sometimes it is books like this, rather than the recounting of atrocities, that make WWII seem like the truly bizarre event it was.  I am still not sure if restructuring Norway is something fascinating to do, or still super-...

3. Charles Freeman, The Awakening: A History of the Western Mind AD 500-1700 .  A gargantuan work at over 800 big pp., the size and the breadth and title all might seem to herald trouble.  Yet it is really good.  It has chapters on whether England really had a scientific revolution, what was actually published with the new printing press, and how medieval universities really worked.  There were fewer tired summaries of “the usual” than I was expecting.  The author is a specialist on the ancient ...

2. Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet .  Perhaps my favorite novel of the year so far, noting this is from Northern Ireland and my #2 pick by Anne Enright is from Ireland proper.  Usually I dislike stories with a “gimmick” — this one recounts part of the life of Shakespeare’s family during plague times — but this one was tasteful, subtle, and suspenseful.

2. Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet .  Perhaps my favorite novel of the year so far, noting this is from Northern Ireland and my #2 pick by Anne Enright is from Ireland proper.  Usually I dislike stories with a “gimmick” — this one recounts part of the life of Shakespeare’s family during plague times — but this one was tasteful, subtle, and suspenseful.

1. Christopher Tugendhat, A History of Britain Through Books, 1900-1964 .  Most of all a look at the “well-known in their time, and reflecting their age, but not read any more” books from the stated period, using short, capsule portraits of each work.  It induced me to order some more Elizabeth Bowen, C.P. Snow, and other works.  There should be more books like this.

That is all from Jonathan Carr’s excellent book The Wagner Clan .

Forthcoming from Marc Levinson, the author of The Box, is a new book Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas , a more general history of globalization.

4. Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment .  “Though it is often thought that the scientists of the early Royal Society tested magic and found it wanting, this is a misconception.  In fact, the society avoided the issue because its members’ views on the subject were so divided, and it was only in retrospect that this silence was interpreted as judgmental.”

3. Callum Williams, The Classical School: The Turbulent Birth of Economics in Twenty Extraordinary Lives .  A clear, well-written, and useful introduction to the lives and thought of some of the leading classical economists.  The “unusual picks,” by the way, are Harriet Martineau, Rosa Luxemburg, and Dadabhai Naoroji .  The author is a senior economics writer for The Economist .

2. John Dickie, The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World .  Although it has a stereotypically bad subtitle, this is an excellent book.  It clarifies exactly where the Freemasons came from (dissident thought connected to James II), its connection to actual masons, how the movement got routed through Scotland, its prominence to the Enlightenment, its African-American component (Martin Delany), how it influenced Joseph Smith and Mormonism, why Castro tolerated it and the Shah of Iran enc...