Recently Mentioned Books

During World War II, the NDRC accomplished a lot of research very quickly. In his memoir , Vannevar Bush recounts: “Within a week NDRC could review the project. The next day the director could authorize, the business office could send out a letter of intent, and the actual work could start.” Fast Grants are an effort to unlock progress at a cadence similar to that which served us well then.

Recommended, you can pre-order here .

As for older books, I very much liked Paul A. Offitt, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases , a biography of Maurice Hilleman .  How soon we forget that in the early 1960s — when I was born — the measles virus was killing about eight million children a year. Even in 2018 it was 140,000 deaths a year.  Also excellent is Kendall Hoyt, Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense , a paradigmatic example of Progress Studies.

As for older books, I very much liked Paul A. Offitt, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases , a biography of Maurice Hilleman .  How soon we forget that in the early 1960s — when I was born — the measles virus was killing about eight million children a year. Even in 2018 it was 140,000 deaths a year.  Also excellent is Kendall Hoyt, Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense , a paradigmatic example of Progress Studies.

Jennifer A. Delton, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism .  Manufacturing is one of the topics du jour, and this book gives good background on one particular angle of that story.

John Guy, Gresham’s Law: The Life and World of Queen Elizabeth I’s Banker .

Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Alev Scott and Andronike Makres, Power & the People: Five Lessons from the Birthplace of Democracy .  Due out in September, a useful look at how politics worked in ancient Athens.

Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa: a novel , about a high school teacher abusing one of his students, effective if you are wishing to read a story with this plot line.

Kevin Peter Hand, Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space .  A remarkably under-written and under-booked topic, I am delighted to see this book in particular.

Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters .  How to be a better listener — get the audiobook!

Jia Lynn Yang, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration, 1924-1965 .

That is a recent book by Ahmet T. Kuru , published in August.  All books should have a (non-Amazon) abstract, and here it is for this book:

Definitely recommended, a very fun CWT with lots of content.  And again, here is Ross’s (recommended) book The Decadent Society: How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success .

In short, I’m partial to the view that mark-to-market accounting was both a central impetus for why the crisis was so severe and why action could be taken so decisively without burdening tax payers for generations to come (see Ball’s very good book here and Fragile by Design , both of which you’re likely familiar with). This crisis provides no such “simple” solutions that can be concentrated against a singular sector of the economy by taking decisive action.

In short, I’m partial to the view that mark-to-market accounting was both a central impetus for why the crisis was so severe and why action could be taken so decisively without burdening tax payers for generations to come (see Ball’s very good book here and Fragile by Design , both of which you’re likely familiar with). This crisis provides no such “simple” solutions that can be concentrated against a singular sector of the economy by taking decisive action.

I am doing a Conversation with her, no associated public event (duh) and we are likely to do it remote.  I am a big fan of her novels Station Eleven (about a pandemic, by the way, I promise you that is a coincidence), and the new forthcoming The Glass Hotel .

The author is Camila Russo and the subtitle is How an Army of Crypto-hackers is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum.  Yes, this is the story of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum.  Very useful, and I am glad there is now a good book on this topic.  Due out July 14, you can pre-order here .

Recommended, especially the new Blu-Ray edition of Bergman’s complete works.

6. Paul R. Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, The Siberian City of Science .  Imagine the Soviets trying to build a “city of science,” and meeting problem after problem.  Yet “Marchuk acknowledged that in a number of fields researchers had contributed to…the speeding up of scientific technological progress.  The physicists built synchroton radiation sources with broad applications; the biologists tacked plant and animal husbandry with vigor; the mathematicians, computer specialist...

5. Sean Masaki Flynn, The Cure That Works: How to have the World’s Best Healthcare — at a Quarter of the Price .  A look at how to translate ideas from Singapore’s health care system into the United States.  It overreaches, but still a useful overview and analysis.

4. Katie Roiphe, The Power Notebooks .  Power, sex, dating, and romance, but surprisingly substantive.  Much of it is written in paragraph-long segments, and willing to be politically incorrect.  “Rebecca West: “Since men don’t love us nearly as much as we love them that leaves them a lot more spare vitality to be wonderful with.”

3. Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story .  Probably the best history of the company were are going to get, at least for the earlier years of the company.  Even the jabs at the company seem perfunctory, for the most part this is quite objective as a treatment.

2. Peter Johnson, Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959 .  British Columbia had a quarantine station that late, and this is its story.  Leprosy, smallpox, and meningitis are a few of the drivers of the narrative.  It continues to startle me how much pandemics and quarantines are a kind of lost history, though they are extremely prominent in 19th century fiction.

1. Nicholas Hewitt, Wicked City: The Many Cultures of Marseille .  Every city should have a good book about it, and now Marseille does.  I would say you have to already know the city, however, to appreciate this one.