Recently Mentioned Books

From a legal perspective there is Ron Harris, Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700 .

7. Sonia Jaffe, Robert Minton, Casey B. Mulligan, Kevin M. Murphy, Chicago Price Theory .  A very good intermediate micro text, patterned after how Econ 301 is taught at Chicago.  Apparently in the current Coasean equilibrum, this book ends up published by Princeton University Press.  Get the picture?

6. Ryan Patrick Hanley, Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life .  Smith as a practical moral philosopher, this short volume pulls out the side of Smith closest to Montaigne and the Stoics.  You can ponder Smithian sentences such as “The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another.”

5. Douglas Boin, Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome is a fun look at one part of ancient history through alternative eyes.  I always wonder what to trust about this era other than primary sources, and if you can’t understand them or grasp them intelligibly maybe that is itself the correct inference, namely that we have no idea what the **** went on back then.  Still, as imaginary reconstructions go, this is one that ought to be done and now it is.

4. Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs .  The hot new novel from Japan, it comes with a Murakami rave endorsement.  To me it seems like “ordinary feminism” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and so far it is a bore.  If it doesn’t get better soon, I’ll write it off as a “mood affiliation text,” not that there’s anything wrong with that.  It probably makes most sense read in a very specific cultural context.

3. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi .  Yes this is a work of fiction.  Clarke of course wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , a very long novel that I have read twice, an odd mix of fantasy, science, magic, and Enlightenment esotericism, the only novel I know with fascinating footnotes.  I was thrilled to receive this one, and on p.51 I am still excited.

3. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi .  Yes this is a work of fiction.  Clarke of course wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , a very long novel that I have read twice, an odd mix of fantasy, science, magic, and Enlightenment esotericism, the only novel I know with fascinating footnotes.  I was thrilled to receive this one, and on p.51 I am still excited.

2. Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions .  This book is a series of lectures, based on Sachs’s earlier work on economic geography and development, yet somehow with a vaguely Yuval Harari sort of glow.  Some parts are a good introduction to the earlier work of Sachs, other parts are pitched a bit too low or too generally.  It is strange to see chapter subheadings such as “Thalassocracy and Tellurocracy.”  As an economist , I still maintain that Sach...

1. Jordan Mechner, The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 .  A memoir and game development journal from a game developer.  The content is foreign to me, but this is one of the most beautiful and artistic books I ever have seen and I suspect some of you will find the narrative gripping.  A product of Stripe Press — “Ideas for Progress.”

Obviously recommended, and you will be hearing more about this both from me and from others.  You can pre-order here .

That is the new Jason Brennan book , just out yesterday, here is a summary:

I have browsed Judith Herrin’s Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe , and it seems to be the definitive book on the early history of that city (one of my favorite one-day visits in the whole world).

5. Adam Thierer, Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments .  A very good libertarian, “permissionless innovation” look at tech.

4. Alaine Polcz, One Woman in the War: Hungary 1944-1945 .  I am surprised this book is not better known.  I found it deeper and more gripping than many of the more broadly recommended wartime memoirs, such as Viktor Frankl.  And more honest about the toll of war on women.

3. Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life .  “Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz’s own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought.”

2. Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World — and Globalization Began .  Worth reading, my favorite part was the discussion of how Cahokia in Mississippi was connected to the Mayans.  And Chichen Itza is probably the world’s best preserved city from the year 1000.

1. Ethan Sherwood Strauss, The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty .  On top of everything else this is an excellent book on management, and the random events along the way to making a team (the Warriors once wanted to trade both Curry and Thompson for Chris Paul).  Kevin Durant ends up as the fall guy, recommended to those who care.

I am also a big fan of her forthcoming book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit , which is one of my favorite books of the year .

5. Anne Enright, Actress: A Novel . A subtle Irish story of a woman telling the tale of her now-departed famous, charismatic mother and her career in the theater.  Unpeels like an onion as you read it, and reveals successively deeper layers of the story, it would make my “favorite fiction of the year” list pretty much any year.  But please note it has not have the “upfront attention-grabbing style” that many of us have been trained to enjoy.

4. Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites .  Remarkably fair-minded and substantive, here is my blurb: “”Who are the Never Trumpers, what do they want, and what are their stories? Robert P. Saldin and Steven Teles have produced the go-to work on a movement that will likely prove of enduring influence in American politics.”  Here is a relevant Atlantic article by Saldin and Teles .  Recommended.

3. John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health .  A little boring, and not conceptual enough, but is anything on this topic entirely boring at the current moment in time?  Nonetheless this is a very useful overview and survey of public health issues in American history, and so I do not hesitate to recommend it.

2. Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell, Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp and Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995 . Imagine a book with both Vannevar Bush and Maurice Hilleman as leading and indeed intersecting characters.  How is this for a sentence?: “Hilleman had spent his boyhood on a farm on which the German-American tradition was to “work like hell and live by the tenets of Martin Luther.””

1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 , quite a good book.

I am a fan of her two latest novels Station Eleven (about a post-pandemic world) and The Glass Hotel , and many other smart people like them too.  Here is the audio and transcript .  Here is the CWTeam summary:

I am a fan of her two latest novels Station Eleven (about a post-pandemic world) and The Glass Hotel , and many other smart people like them too.  Here is the audio and transcript .  Here is the CWTeam summary: