Rather than doing my standard thing of buying a whole bunch of very interesting sounding books (that will lay around unread), I'm trying to provide a reference to myself of why these things should be read (and I will then purchase the books as necessary).  If anyone else has any thought on these books and authors, I'd love the input.

============= ( Read more... )

Awesome article found via del.icio.us:, an Ask Metafilter question: What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?  The requisite comment thread at reddit also has some more good suggestions (if your profession were a whiskey taster, the book would be Whiskey: The Definitive World Guide ( Read more... )

From the interesting book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (discussing William Proxmire, a senator who campaigned heavily for the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide):

He ... moved to Wisconsin, home of the iconoclastic populist Robert LaFollette and a state that columnist Mary McGrory likened ( Read more... )

I got my watch fixed finally.  The metal strap was badly broken (needed a new strap, somewhat expensive fix).  But I have a watch again.

Reading new books also.  A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.  Great collection of reviews at complete-review.com.  Plus, it won a Pulitzer for non-fiction.  Seems great. Largely discusses ( Read more... )

Not that I get all of my book ideas from Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution (dot-com), but they all seem to be consistently great (I have a special post on Tyler's Discover Your Inner Economist coming real soon).  In which case, this book looked very interesting.  The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor.  ( Read more... )

• Listening to a bunch of music recently, bringing out my rock roots.  The Stranger, The Peacocks and The Hellacopters have seen high rotation.  Finally bought a Peacocks album (via iTunes, since I can't find their music any other way).  Also for those in England, The Peacocks will be doing a British tour in two weeks.  Catch 'em at the Astoria on ( Read more... )

Somehow, I love reading books, yet never find the time to finish the task.  Just added another book to the pile.  The reviews were so compelling that my purchase was (almost) immediate (bollocks, Amazon Prime doesn't help with the "this book is not in stock" problem).  Paul Collier is the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

(Back from Europe, 3 weeks well spent).  Read a big fucking pile of books (as well as succumbing to the perils of reading several things simultaneously).  Maybe I'll review some of them, but probably not (which is why this is going up):

Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki  The First of the New Yorker Duo.  Surowiecki's book was better than ( Read more... )

presented in a bullet point list for rotnmusic

• For opstorm (and others), James Galbraith writes about trade policy with China.



• Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a new book out titled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  As said before, I love Taleb's work.  Taleb covers more of the same ground here, providing easy examples of how humanity doesn't ( Read more... )