Recently Mentioned Books

That is the new and forthcoming book by New York Times writer Binyamin Appelbaum.  I did not agree with all of the perspectives in the book, but enjoyed reading it, and found no errors of fact in it (rare for a book on free market economics!).  I was happy to give it this blurb:

That is from Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet .

4. David Cahan, Helmholtz: A Life in Science .  At 768 pp., I only read about half of this one.  Nonetheless I read the better half, and it is one of the more useful treatments of 19th century German science.  I hadn’t realized the strong connections with Siemens and Roentgen, for instance, and one clear lesson is that German science of that time had some pretty healthy institutions outside of the formal university system.

3. Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Björkman, The Nordic Secret: A European story of beauty and freedom .  There should be many more books about why the Nordics are special, and this is one of them.  The central notion here is “secular Bildung” as a means of elevating society and cooperative relations.  Uneven in its structure of exposition, but definitely interesting in parts and the importance of the question makes this better than most of the other books you might be likely to read.  Just don’t...

2. Ben Lewis, The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting .  I felt I knew this story already, but nonetheless found interesting information and conceptual analysis on virtually every page.  And while the author is agnostic and balanced, the text upped my opinion of the “likely Leonardo weighted expected value” component from about 0.1 to maybe 0.25?  Yet so much fuss about a painting that resurfaced in 1907 — model that…  And don’t forget: “None of the great art h...

1. Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell, Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World .  A good, short “give it to your high school kid” book on why socialism is not an entirely ideal way to arrange society.

…his 2011 book on southern hip-hop, Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop was a Library Journal best seller.

His previous book Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the Birth of West Coast Rap has received raves from Rolling Stone and People , a starred review in Kirkus , a five-star Amazon rating, and made numerous year-end best lists . More info can be found here .

That is from Thomas F. Madden, Venice: A New History .

I am pleased to have made the longlist (FT link) with my Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero *.

That is from Peter Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City .

The author is Andrew McAfee and the subtitle is The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources — And What Happens Next .

Now, those are just sample questions, obviously you could come up with your own and add to or alter that list.  But here is the thing: simply pursue the list of questions.  It may well induce you to buy books, such as this work on Venetian architecture and the East .  Or it may lead you down Googled rabbit holes.  Or it may lead you to…

Spoke/wrote/co-authored a bestselling book — Zero to One — which also was a huge hit in China.  And the samizdat lecture notes, from Peter’s Stanford talks, were a big hit in advance of the book.

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.