Recently Mentioned Books

That is my new opinion piece for The Washington Post , derived from my Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero .  Here is one excerpt:

5. There is an extended response to Garett Jones on IQ which I do not feel I can summarize well.  Toward the end, it is noted that babies adopted from poorer countries into richer countries typically do very well later in life.

Caplan and Weinersmith, in their splendid forthcoming graphic novel , present some rebuttals to the “cultural critique” of open borders.  For instance (and here I am presenting their views):

It will be out in October, you can pre-order it here .

Those numbers are reproduced in “Productivity in Emerging-Market Economies: Slowdown or Stagnation?”, by José de Gregorio, in the new and interesting volume Facing Up To Low Productivity Growth , edited by Adam S. Posen and Jeromin Zettelmeyer.

Also in my pile is Julius Caesar, The War for Gaul , a new translation by James J. O’Donnell.  I can’t speak to this translation, but the book is a winner.

Emily Oster, Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, From Birth to Preschool is in my pile, it may someday be revised to cover older children.

Joshua Specht, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America .  A good economic history of the “cattle-beef complex”: “Abilene, Kansas was the first major cattle town.”

Ethan Pollock, Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse , delivers what it promises.  The coup against Gorbachev was plotted in a banya, I learned.

4. Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation , translated and edited by Ken Liu.  I found the “hit rate” in this collection to be slightly over fifty percent, which is rare for a science fiction anthology, plus even the lesser stories give one some insight into China, so definitely recommended, at least if you think you might like it.  But don’t read this before The Three-Body Problem .

3. Samme Chittum, Last Days of the Concorde: The Crash of Flight 4590 and the End of Supersonic Passenger Travel .  An excellent book on why the Concorde was in fact abandoned.  I hadn’t realized it was never so safe in the first place:  “They soon learned that Concordes operated by British Airways and Air France had been involved in a range of tire failures over the years.  No fewer than 57 such incidents had taken place since Concordes began flying in 1976, 47 were either burst or inflated tir...

2. John L. Rudolph, How We Teach Science: What’s Changed, and Why It Matters .  I found this book boring , but it is the kind of book people should be writing and I suspect some readers and researchers will find it very useful.  A fact-rich, reference-laden history of American science education, still by the end I still was looking for more organizational principles.

1. Patrick Bergemann, Judge Thy Neighbor: Denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany .  A very specific, useful, and interesting account of actual denunciation practices during the above-mentioned episodes.  During the Inquisition, there was general immunity given to most denouncers, you can imagine the resulting incentives.  This book is becoming more relevant than it ought to be.

That is from Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market .

That is the subtitle, the title of this very interesting book is News from Germany and the author is Heidi J.S. Tworek.  Here are a few things I learned:

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis .  Here is an article on the book .

That is from David Kirby’s review of the other CSNY biography to have come out this month, also a good book.

That is the new Allison Schraeger book , the subtitle is And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk , and here is one excerpt:

Daniel S. Milo, Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society , on a quick browse seemed to have interesting points.

5. John Barton, A History of the Bible: The Book and its Faiths .  Anglican, British, highly reasonable, full of useful information, I read it all the way through.  Barton teaches you the Bible is not always easy to understand and why that is.  Already out for ordering on UK Amazon.

4. Fuchsia Dunlop, The Food of Sichuan .  A much-expanded version of her earlier Land of Plenty .  No, I haven’t touched this one yet, but if the word self-recommending ever applied, it is here.  If you don’t already know it, here is my earlier CWT with Fuchsia Dunlop .

3. Harold Bloom, Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism .  Bloom is now 89 I believe, but unlike in some of his recent shorter books this one seems as thoughtful as much of his best later work.  Yes, it is a bunch of largely separate, short, multi-page essays on topics of Bloom’s choosing, but at this point that is optimal.  It won’t convince the skeptic, but if you are on the fence I say yes, though try The Western Canon first.

3. Harold Bloom, Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism .  Bloom is now 89 I believe, but unlike in some of his recent shorter books this one seems as thoughtful as much of his best later work.  Yes, it is a bunch of largely separate, short, multi-page essays on topics of Bloom’s choosing, but at this point that is optimal.  It won’t convince the skeptic, but if you are on the fence I say yes, though try The Western Canon first.

2. David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life .  David’s best book this century, it has many subtle points.  It is a “wisdom book,” noting that not everyone likes wisdom books.

1. Peter Doggett, CSNY: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young .  A good management study of a creative foursome doomed to split and splinter pretty much from the beginning.  Oddly, their best work still sounds good to me, even though I never hear much new in it with repeated listenings.  That is a rare combination.