Recently Mentioned Books

2. Amina M. Derbi, The Storyteller and the Terrorist in Our Newsfeeds .  In this novella a Muslim girl in Northern Virginia posts stories of murders on-line and those murders start coming true.  I finished this one too.  Unusual in its approach.

1. Elaine Dundy, Life Itself . She as a teen taught Mondrian how to jitterbug, married Kenneth Tynan and moved into London high society, became an important writer in her own right, and got tired of him wanting to whip her.  I was never inclined to stop reading.

3. Blockchain for Babies, new book .

Joel Waldfogel, Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture .  My blurb is: “Digital Renaissance makes a real contribution to the economics of the Internet and the economics of art and culture.”

Vernon Smith, The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics .  Published by the Acton Institute, this is Vernon on his conversion to Christianity, Kahlil Gibran, and why science and religion are compatible.  Short, of interest to those looking to understand the man.

Marixa Lasso, Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal , stresses just how interesting a place was pre-canal Panama, contrary to what I had thought.

James Simpson, Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism , feels throughout as if it is an important book.  And anyone interested in religion and development should read this one.  Yet I had trouble following the actual arguments.  It is probably good.

Andrew Arsan, Lebanon: A Country in Fragments .  At first this book feels like a kind of running splat, but with a bit of patience it becomes a remarkably compelling portrait of a society on the brink, most of all a desperate love letter to Beirut.  If you can get through the squirrelly early political material, this is one of the best “country books” and also “city books” of the last few years.

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends who Shaped an Age .  The same 18th century British club had as members Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Burke, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Joshua Reynolds, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and David Garrick (often considered the greatest actor of the time).  I never tire of reading about them.

3. The new Robert Caro book out in April .

That is from the forthcoming book — quite interesting — by Christopher J. Phillips. Not surprisingly, this book also discusses “scouting the scout.”

You can buy the book here , vol.II is good too .

I learned a great deal from this stimulating and highly unorthodox biography .  Here are a few points from the book:

That is from his November 1866 letter to Hippolyte Taine, reproduced in the Francis Steegmuller collection .  Here is my recent post on why most travel books are not good enough.  Here is a 2006 MR post on which are the best travel books .

That is all from the new and interesting Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy , by the excellent Arvind Subramanian.

Have you ever wanted to read about how ethnic groups in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti fit into this same broad picture?  Just exactly how Somalian and Ethiopian history intersect, from the 1970s onwards?  This here is your book.  I’m running to Amazon right now to buy more from this wonderful author.  You can buy it here .

Self-recommending is Desmond Dekker: Action!/Intensified

Autechre, NTS Sessions , an 8-CD set.

Aphex Twin, Collapse EP (too many other CDs piled on top of the record player!)

Mitski, Be the Cowboy

Low, Double Negative

Lush, Snail Mail (at least three excellent songs)

Paul’s new album Egypt Station does not have much ear candy, but it does reveal his longstanding status as a very horny dude; listen to his much earlier Temporary Secretary for something unacceptably obscene (and creative).  Then go back and re-listen to his early Beatle lyrics through this lens.  The best argument for LSD I’ve heard is simply that it got Paul to stop singing about girls for a few years, so it must be pretty powerful.

The Beatles’s White Album tapes were a revelation, but it is enough to hear them once or twice.  I learned that the album was remarkably well-produced, no less than Sgt. Pepper, to get that under-produced sound.  “I Will” came directly from “Blue Moon” (!), and “Blackbird” came from Bach’s Bourree (less surprising).  Classic Beatle songs such as “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude” and many others were basically written by 1968, making 1966-68 a truly remarkable period in their songwriting output.  “While...

van Morrison, Astral Weeks , fifty year anniversary for that one, and I hadn’t realized how closely the lyrics were tied to details of Belfast.  Next up will be the quieter cuts on Electric Ladyland .