Recently Mentioned Books

3. Dov H. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions .  “A fifth significant way in which the U.S. aided Adenauer’s reelection was achieved by Dulles publicly threatening, in an American press conference which took place two days before the elections, “disastrous effects” for Germany if Adenauer was not reelected.”  A non-partisan, academic work, “This study is the first book-length study of partisan electoral interventions as a discrete, stand-...

2. Jeremy England, Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things .  A fun and readable popular science book on why life may be likely to evolve from inanimate matter: “Living things…make copies of themselves, harvest and consume fuel, and accurately predict the surrounding environment.”  Who could be against that?

1. Stephen Hough, Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More . Scattered tidbits, about half of them very interesting, most of the rest at least decently good, mostly for fans of classical music and piano music. Should you develop the habit of warming up?  Why don’t they always have a piano in the “green room”?  How many recordings should you sample before trying to play a piece?  What kinds of relationships do pianists develop with their page turners?  That sort of thing.  I read the whole thin...

I did an Ask Me Anything for the South Asian chapter of Students for Liberty , based on their reading of my book Big Business: Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero .

If you have studied Steven Bram’s book Biblical Games (and his other writings), this film will flow naturally for you — otherwise not!

That is the new book by Michael Anton , the famed then pseudonymous author of the “Flight 93 piece.”

They have been so stingy with advance review copies that there are still no Amazon reviews .

The author is Paul Dickson, and the subtitle is The Forgotten Story of How America Forged a Powerful Army Before Pearl Harbor .

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe is a reprint of a 1980 classic, with an emphasis on the roots of liberalism in European religious thought.

I have not had a chance to read Adrian Goldworthy’s Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conqueror , but it appears promising.

7. Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening .  A few months ago I started reading this one, figuring it would win a Booker, and indeed it just did.  I read up through p.102, and quite liked it, but also figured that a Dutch farm tale of mucky perversion, flapping meats, and a mordant, vibrant nature did not in fact fit into my broader life plan.  Indeed it did not. But if you are considering this one, while likely I will not finish it, I still would nudge you slightly in the positive d...

6. William C. Summers, Félix d ‘ Hérelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology .  I wanted to read up on bacteriophages, in part as a broader proxy for abandoned lines of scientific inquiry (superseded by antibiotics, and did you recall they play a big role in Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith ?), and it seemed this was the right book for that.  Short enough and to the point, clear enough for the non-specialist, and it has plenty on the history of science more broadly.  It also covers d’Hérelle being i...

5. Richard E. Spear, Caravaggio’s Cardsharps on Trial: Thwaytes v. Sotheby’s .  A surprisingly taut and suspenseful treatment of a dispute and then lawsuit over whether a supposed Caravaggio was in fact “real” or not. NB : if they have to ask whether or not it is real, most of the time it ain’t.

4. Jeff Selingo, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions . Most books about college admissions do not confuse me (the reality already is so absurd), but this one informs me, consider that a recommendation.  Selingo has done actual extensive research, including a direct pipeline into the processes of several major institutions, and he puts informativeness above moralizing or exaggeration.

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.