Recently Mentioned Books

For the pointer I thank Lotta Moberg .

This book is must reading for these days, and it will be making my 2019 “best of the year” list.  Order from abroad here , or in the U.S. it comes out in July .

This book is must reading for these days, and it will be making my 2019 “best of the year” list.  Order from abroad here , or in the U.S. it comes out in July .

That is all from the new and excellent book by Joanna Lillis .  You may also have read that Nazerbayev, who has held power in Kazakhstan since 1991, announced yesterday that he is stepping down , hoping to take on more of a Lee Kuan Yew role in the country.

6. Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation .  Excellent survey and overview, makes the late 19th century intelligible, among other achievements.  “For Greeks, unlike the concept of the nation, the state had always been an object of popular derision.”

5. Gordon Peake, Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles, and Secrets from Timor-Leste .  Mostly analytical, with real information blended with travelogue.  I can’t judge the content, but I was never tempted to put this one down and throw it away.

4. Tim Smedley, Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution .  Perhaps the best extant introduction to the air pollution issue, one of the world’s most important and underrated crises, and no I am not talking about carbon.

3. Rowan Ricardo Phillips, The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey .  Provides a good look at the interior world of tennis competition, with emphasis on very recent times.  A good look at how to think about the game, not only in the abstract, but as it plays out through the logic of particular events and tournaments.

2. Shalini Shankar, Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success .  Not as analytical as I was wanting, but more analytical than I had been expecting.

1. Aladdin , a new translation by Yasmine Seale.  A wonderful, lively small volume, a good reintroduction to the Arabian Nights, recommended.

There is much more at the link.  And here is Raghu’s new book The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave Community Behind .

That is a new and forthcoming book by Michael H. Kater , excerpt:

For those points I drew upon my interpretations of Jack Miles, God in the Qu’ran , among other sources.

Oxford University Press also sent me a copy of J. Brian O’Roark Why Superman Doesn’t Take Over the World: What Superheroes Can Tell us About Economics , which I have not yet read.

That is all from the new and excellent Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church .

5. Cass Sunstein’s On Freedom comes out today .

This is a very good book for anyone wishing to rethink what is going on in labor markets today.  In his view there is plenty more slack, as evidence by sluggish wage behavior.  You can pre-order here , due out in June.

The research and background context is amazing and the book is readable throughout.  You can pre-order here .

You can pre-order here on Amazon .  Here at Barnes & Noble .  Here at Books a Million .  Here at Itunes .  Here at IndieBound .  From PlayGoogle .  From Kobo .

David C. Rose, Why Culture Matters Most , is from the perspective of a Douglass North-type economist.

Joel S. Baden, The Book of Exodus: A Biography is forthcoming, a good general introduction.

Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History , I had high hopes but it bored me.

James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian is a good treatment of someone who was not the greatest Victorian.

Jenny Davidson, Reading Jane Austen .  I hardly know any books about Jane Austen, and indeed I don’t much enjoy reading her novels.  Still, this is the best book on Austen I have seen, take that for what it is worth.  It is very much to the point and furthermore the author writes: “I also hold a degree of suspicion toward those who love Austen, though, myself included.”

Knut Hamsun, On Overgrown Paths .  Hamsun’s memoir, last creation, and maybe most interesting work?  But few like to talk about it, for it is 1945 and the Norwegian government has just come to place him under house arrest and in turn bring him to an institution, for having wholeheartedly supported the Nazis. The story of course is told from his rather matter of fact point of view…