Recently Mentioned Books

5. Mario Bertolotti, The History of the Laser .  Only about half of this book, at most, covers the laser.  Those parts seemed fine enough, but what I really enjoyed was the coverage of the development of electromagnetic theory leading up to the laser.  The book is also good for showing that the “transistor revolution” starting in 1948 was not really so distinct from the earlier industrial and electromagnetic revolution of the late 19th century.

4. Roger Faligot, Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi JinPing .  A sobering account of how much spying — indeed spying on a mass level — has been central to Chinese history since the advent of communism.  I found some parts of this book too detailed for me to read the entire thing, but arguably that ought to scare you all the more.  Note that the narrative essentially ends around 2008.

3. Ken Ochieng’ Opalo, Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies .  The book also is more exciting than the title and subtitle indicate.  It covers the determinants of cross-national African legislative successes, and argues that often the best and strongest legislatures emerge from a context of previously effective autocracy.

2. The Bretton Woods Agreements, Together with Scholarly Commentaries and Essential Historical Documents , edited by Naomi Lamoreaux and Ian Shapiro.  Virtually all edited collections are sleep-inducing, but this one is consistently interesting, at least if you are the kind of person who might possibly be drawn in by the title.  Doug Irwin, Barry Eichengreen, Kurt Schuler, and Michael Bordo are among the contributors.

1. Jonathan Paine’s Selling the Story: Transaction and Narrative Value in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Zola combines several interests of mine in an effective fashion.  This book is most useful for seeing economic themes in some of the classic authors, above and beyond their citations of monetary values and payments.

That is the new book by Thomas Philippon , and perhaps the title is a bit misleading, as the book covers both regulatory barriers and natural economic forces behind higher concentration levels.  I am a big fan of Philippon’s work, but I am not so convinced by his arguments in this book.  Most of all, he is trying to argue for systematically greater monopoly power in the American economy, but he is reluctant to provide much evidence for output restriction , the sine qua non of market power.

That is the new book by Gretchen McCulloch , here is one excerpt:

In any case, I would describe the book as “rollicking.”  You can order it here .

I will be having a Conversations with Tyler with her, no associated public event.  She has a new book coming out The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir .  So what should I ask her?

There is too much political science jargon in this book, and many of the paragraphs are too long or too circuitous, and furthermore much of the best content is difficult to summarize.  Nonetheless this book makes more sense to me than the treatments of populism I read in the mainstream press or in “intelligent” magazines, and I found it genuinely insightful throughout.  Recommended, at least if you are up for a particular kind of read.  You can pre-order the book here .

Yale has published a new translation of Book of Job , translated by Edward L. Greenstein, very likely worth a read.

There is Heather Boushey’s new How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It .

New out from Princeton University Press is Robert J. Shiller, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral & Drive Major Economic Events .

6. Roger L. Geiger, American Higher Education Since World War II .  Not as sprightly as I might have wished for, nor does it cover the controversial issues in the conceptual fashion I was hoping to find, but nonetheless an extremely useful resources for teaching you the basic facts of how the sector has evolved.

5. Katherine Eban, Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom .  A “worth reading” look at what the title promises, but all the best parts are about how the FDA tries to regulate generic drug production in India.

4. Chris Miller, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the Soviet Economy .  One of the best books on the beginnings of the reform era, with a special focus on whether the Soviets could have chosen a Chinese path (no, too many embedded interest groups, so does that mean Mao is underrated?).

3. Jim Auchmutey, Smokelore: A Short History of Barbecue in America is the most current of the best histories of barbecue and it is more bullish on the barbecue future than most treatments.

2. Tobias Straumann, 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler covers a critical episode in European history, and one which has not entirely faded into irrelevance.  The author is a financial historian rather than an economist, so think of this book as scratching your history itch, in any case recommended.

1. Christopher Tyerman, The World of the Crusades: An Illustrated History .  The best and most engrossing history of the crusades I have read.  By the way, the “children’s crusade” probably didn’t have that much to do with children.  The periodic topic-specific two-page interludes are especially good.

The author is Walter Scheidel and the subtitle is The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity .  Imagine a whole book on what he calls “the second Great Divergence,” namely that China developed a large, relatively unified hegemonic state early on, while Europe remained (mostly) politically fragmented.

You can pre-order the book here , I would be interested to read more about Bryson’s work, writing, and research habits.

COWEN: Is there any Heinlein-esque-like scenario — Moon is a Harsh Mistress , where there’s a rebellion? People break free from the constraints of planet Earth. They chart their own institutions. It becomes like the settlements in the New World were.

If you want to speculate on the development of tech, no one has a better brain to pick than Neal Stephenson. Across more than a dozen books, he’s created vast story worlds driven by futuristic technologies that have both prophesied and even provoked real-world progress in crypto, social networks, and the creation of the web itself. Though Stephenson insists he’s more often wrong than right, his technical sharpness has even led to a half-joking suggestion that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto, the sh...

Those bits are from this (uneven) volume .

2. “ The decline in liquor tax revenue caused by the anti-alcohol campaign [in the USSR] was of the same magnitude as the decline in oil export revenue. ”