Recently Mentioned Books

4. Thomas J. Bollyky, Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways is a good history of public health advances, but also how they have led to what are now plague-prone poor megacities.  Here is the author’s piece in Foreign Affairs .

3. Can Xue, Love in the New Millennium .  Is she the Chinese writer most likely to next win a Nobel Prize?  “In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly.”  Much of the story is set in a brothel, with a rotating cast of characters.  Parts remind me of The Dream of the Red Chamber, in any case this is definitely a new fictional work of note.  Here is an atypical excerpt: “He and Xiao Yuan had ...

2. James Mustich, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List .  Paging through this book, from beginning to end, or just browsing it, and buying the attractive-sounding titles is in fact a good (but expensive) way to find new reading.  I see no reason why such volumes should be regarded as absurd.  Right now I am on “Bradley,” and while I don’t agree with all of the selections, they are unfailingly intelligent and at least plausible.

1. Nate Chinen, Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century .  Chinen mounts a persuasive argument that the “golden age of jazz” is in fact today, and fills in the background knowledge you might need to grasp such a claim.  I’ve long suggested that if you enjoy live performance, the access/price/talent gradient is truly remarkable.  You can see virtually any world class performer, from an A+ quality seat, for a mere pittance. Except in London .  The bottom line is that I will keep this book, hardl...

That is from the new and highly useful and still under-discussed book The Wealth of a Nation: A History of Trade Politics in America , by C. Donald Johnson, Oxford University Press.  I am happy to second Doug Irwin’s blurb: “This splendid book covers the politics of American trade policy from the country’s beginnings through Trump.  Johnson provides a great overview of a fascinating subject.”

That is from Peter Doggett’s excellent You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup .

TC again : For further detail, I refer you to Glen’s book with Eric Posner .  For background, here are my earlier posts on their work .

By M. Mitchell Waldrop .  Not only is the content essential, but it is one of the most beautiful books, as a physical object, I have seen in years.  From Stripe Press .

You can buy the work here , and I’ve since ordered one of Sebastian’s novels .  Here is a NYT review .

Notable is Stephen L. Carter’s new biography of his grandmother, Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster .

Dean Keith Simonton, The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You! Can Become a Creative Genius , is a popularization of some of his earlier research on genius and creative achievement.

Helene Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century , presents liberals as moralists and debunks the notion of liberalism as so exclusively an Anglo-American phenomenon.

5. Roger Scruton, Music as an Art .  The chapter on Schubert is the highlight, and perhaps the best explanation of that composer’s beauty and importance.  The book is otherwise high variance, with the remarks on morals and aesthetic philosophy much weaker.  At times he pops open an insight when it is least expected, such as on heavy metal music: “In the realm of pop they were the modernists, undergoing in their own way that revolution against kitsch and cliche that had set Schoenberg and Adorno ...

4. Jeffrey D. Sachs, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism .  This book is somewhat less radical than I had been expecting, mostly concentrating on the potential gains from multilateralism, international cooperation, and international law.  Or is that the truly radical view?

3. Howard Sounes, Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney .  One of my favorite biographies, this book is also excellent on outlining the history of the Beatles (and subsequent McCartney groups) as problems in the theory and practice of management.  I now have ordered the author’s other books on music history .

2. Sriya Iyer, The Economics of Religion in India .  A useful survey, which delivers on what the title promises.

1. Santiago Levy, Under-Rewarded Efforts: The Elusive Quest for Prosperity in Mexico .  Probably the best current book on Mexico’s economy and why it has not grown more rapidly.  Most of all, Levy blames misallocation, and more specifically the attachment of too many workers to the low-productivity informal sector.  The author notes (p.34) that both the top 20 percent of the wage distribution, or even the top 1 percent, saw no wage growth from 1996 to 2015.

Here is Reihan’s new book Melting Pot or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders .  Here is Katie’s sketch of my blurb:

In the Great Thinkers in Economics series, buy it here .  Here is a related podcast .  This book is the result of Pete thinking about Hayek for now 35 (!) or so years.  There are good criticisms of me on pp.61-65.

My favorite part of the book is the section, starting on p.244, on bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics that have not yet been invented.  Overall this is likely to prove the best popular science book of the year, you can buy it here .  Here are various reviews of the book .

Many of the best parts are at or near the end, so do read or listen all the way through.  And you can buy Michele’s book here .

I thank you all for your pre-orders of my forthcoming book from Stripe Press, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals (did you notice how the title draws from Liberty Fund ?), due out October 16.  It is my most philosophic book, most heartfelt book, and least current affairsy book, at least in the last twenty years.

You can order the book here .

4. Maxwell King, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers .  Yes, that is Mister Rogers.  If you’ve seen the movie , this book is the perfect complement.  I hadn’t know that Mister Rogers was born into wealth, self-financed his early work, and consistently turned down opportunities to market “Mister Rogers toys” to kids for large sums of money.  His email address by the way was [email protected] , with the triple z’s indicating he slept soundly every night, and the 143 referring to th...

3. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era .  Winner of a Pulitzer, this remains one of the essential takes on mid-20th century Soviet history and is highly readable as well.