Recently Mentioned Books

That is from the forthcoming interesting book by Andrew B. Hall .  He also argues that while voters can elect moderates, they cannot force more extreme candidates to govern as moderates.  Furthermore, devaluing office leads to more extreme candidates being interested in running for office.

I will be doing a Conversation with him , no associated public event, and note he has a new book coming out The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave Community Behind .  So what should I ask him?

Here is the Wikipedia page for Marie Tharp .  Here is a biography of Marie Tharp , which I just ordered.  Timefulness is by Marcia Bjornerud and you can order it here .

Here is the Wikipedia page for Marie Tharp .  Here is a biography of Marie Tharp , which I just ordered.  Timefulness is by Marcia Bjornerud and you can order it here .

There is much more at the link.  I am very happy to recommend their forthcoming book Persecution and Tolerance: The Long Road to Religious Freedom .

4. Tony Spawforth, The Story of Greece and Rome .  Highly readable and useful, not comprehensive on say the economics side but a fresh look and what we know and do not know and how the various pieces fit together.

3. Peter Doggett, Are You Ready for the Country? Elvis, Dylan, Parsons and the roots of country rock .  Five hundred pages of text, and consistently interesting throughout, at least if you care about the topic.  Otherwise not.  I have pre-ordered the author’s forthcoming biography of CSNY .

3. Peter Doggett, Are You Ready for the Country? Elvis, Dylan, Parsons and the roots of country rock .  Five hundred pages of text, and consistently interesting throughout, at least if you care about the topic.  Otherwise not.  I have pre-ordered the author’s forthcoming biography of CSNY .

2. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States — and the Nation .  A serious and scholarly book, rather than the kind of hysterical falsehoods we’ve come to expect on such topics.

1. Josh Rosenblatt, Why We Fight: One Man’s Search for Meaning Inside the Ring .  An actual conceptual phenomenology of fighting, there should be more books like this about more different topics.  Think of the model “X is actually like this.”  Recommended.

That is all from Eric Kaufmann’s excellent Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities .

The subtitle is Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities , and might this be the must-read book of the year?  It is “to the right” of my views on immigration policy, but still I found it informative, fascinating, and relevant on just about every page.  Here is the author’s opening framing:

That is from the new and useful The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain , by Brett Christophers.  Land, land, land!  The author, by the way, is mostly critical of this privatization.

That is the new book by University of Maryland philosopher Dan Moller , and it is one of the most sensible expositions and defenses of libertarianism you will find.  Here is from the Amazon summary:

Those are all from Kevin’s new and very important book Shut Out: How a Housing Shortage Caused the Great Recession and Crippled Our Economy .  The simple “housing bubble” story is not in fact as true as it might seem, as Kevin shows, and furthermore just look at how many parts of America now have home prices at or above their “bubbly peaks.”  I hope this work gets the attention it deserves.

The Cato Institute has put out Michael D. Tanner, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor , and Randal O’Toole Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love are Not the Transportation We Need .

The Cato Institute has put out Michael D. Tanner, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor , and Randal O’Toole Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love are Not the Transportation We Need .

Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist, A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow , is a good and correct “green” take on the case for nuclear energy.

4. Cass Sunstein, How Change Happens .  How does social change happen, organized around Cass’s favorite topics, such as nudge and polarization and cascades.  This book doesn’t cover everything, but it is one of the essential introductions to a topic that is very difficult to handle.  And I am happy there is no subtitle.

3. Guy Arnold, Africa A Modern History: 1945-2015 , second edition.  It is hard to image that a 1077 pp. doorstop kind of a book on “Africa” might be very good, but in fact this one is.  It is the best book on contemporary Africa and its (recent) historical roots that I know.  I am reading this book all the way through.

2. John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: the Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 .  “…the rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can only be understood if it is placed in the context of the hermetic tradition.  The distinctive doctrines of the church — preexistent spirits, material spirit, human divinization, celestial marriage — are opaque unless we explore their relationship to the evolving fusion of hermetic perfectionism and radical sectarianism occupying the extreme edge of...

1. Jackie Chan, with Zhu Mo, Never Grow Up . “My ankle joint pops out of its socket all the time, even when I’m just walking around, and I’ll have to pop it back in.  My leg sometimes gets dislocated when I’m showering.  For that one, I need my assistant to help me click it back in…I can’t lift heavy objects.”  He needed brain surgery after filming Armour of God, and he sustained permanent hearing loss in his left ear.  Recommended, if you like the movies.  And: “That was how I pursued girls, I ...

You can pre-order the book here .

Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny does not quite intersect with cultural economics and Joe Henrich, but someday somebody will write a book like this and start making the connections.

Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, Love, Money & Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids .  Note this book is sober rather than actually telling you how to raise your kids.  And it has sentences like: “In earlier times, men and women had sharply distinct roles.”