~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (28)

Our primary concern in this chapter will be Iran, though toward the end we will shift the focus to Central Asia.  We can best begin with a first-order approximation of the pattern of Iranian history across the whole period.  It has four major features.  The first is the survival of something called Iran, as both […] The post Michael Cook on Iran appeared first...

The author is Alex Fernandes, and the subtitle is The Day Portugal’s Dictatorship Fell.  A very good and well-written book, here is one short excerpt: The First Republic is sixteen years of unrelenting chaos, one that sets the scene for the fascist state that follows it. Between 1910 and 1926 Portugal goes through eight presidents […] The post *The Carnation Revolution* appeared first on...

An excellent piece, here is one excerpt I enjoyed in particular: Cowen reads the John Maynard Keynes of The General Theory “as writing about an economy where uncertainty was much higher than usual, investment was highly unstable, fiscal policy was unable to fill in the gap, there was a risk or even reality of a downward spiral […] The post Robert Whaples reviews *GOAT* appeared first...

3 Body Problem (Netflix): Great! A captivating mix of big ideas, a compelling mystery, and spectacular set-pieces like the Cultural Revolution, strange worlds, the ship cutting and more. Of course, there are some weaknesses. 3 Body Problem falters in its portrayal of genius, rendering the British scientists as too normal, overlooking the obsessiveness, ambition, and […] The post What to Watch appeared first on...

The author is Karthik Muralidharan, and the subtitle is A State-Led Roapmap for Effective Governance.  If you imagine a 600 pp. “state capacity libertarian” take on Indian development this is what you get, admittedly with the libertarian side of the equation downplayed a bit.  Excerpt: A common misconception is that the inefficiencies of the Indian […] The post *Accelerating India’s Development* appeared first on...

By Annie Jacobsen, a very good book.  What would happen if a nuclear weapon actually were launched at the United States?  On the ground?  In the chain of command?  Organizationally and otherwise?  A good book, sadly still of relevance.  Full of drama throughout, and tactically astute.  Excerpt: Ted Postol is blunt.  “Russian early-warning satellites don’t […] The post *Nuclear War: A Scenario* appeared first...

That is the title of the new Judith Butler book, focusing mostly on trans issues.  To be clear, on most practical issues concerning trans, I side with the social conservatives.  For instance, I don’t think trans women have a right to compete in women’s weightlifting contests.  And I have not been happy with how many […] The post *Who’s Afraid of Gender?* appeared first...

Nnow though it was generally assumed in intellectual circles that the best was yet to be, Bvalltu and his friends were convinced that the crest of the wave had already occurred many centuries ago.  To most men, if course, the decade before the war had seemed better and more civilized than any earlier age.  In […] The post *Star Maker*, by Olaf Stapledon appeared...

The subtitle is Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, and the author is David van Reybrouck.  An excellent book, and I found two points of particular interest in it.  First, just how weak and incomplete was the Dutch colonization of Indonesia for centuries.  Second, just how complicated and rapidly changing was the postwar […] The post *Revolusi* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

Here is my blurb for the book: “Bryan Caplan is a pioneer in the use of graphic novels to expound economic concepts. His new book Build, Baby, Build is thus a landmark in economic education, how to present economic ideas, and the integration of economic analysis and graphic visuals. If you want to learn the economics, ethics, […] The post *Build, Baby, Build*, by Bryan Caplan...

In a way, everyone’s been wondering, trying to analogize ChatGPT with the printing press, but in reality it’s almost the opposite. The entire thing is happening in the inverse of that, where the printing press was a technology to disseminate information through a book basically and convince people to do things, and the kind of […] The post Daniel Gross on the printing press...

The author is Philip Ball, and the subtitle is A User’s Guide to the New Biology.  I thought this book was wonderful, one of the best popular science books I’ve read in a long time.  I’m sure its contents are familiar to many MR readers, but for me it was a very good introduction to […] The post *How Life Works* appeared first on...

Here is Fareed’s home page, here is Wikipedia: Fareed Rafiq Zakaria…is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly paid column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor at large of Time. He was managing editor of Foreign Affairs at age 28, briefly […] The post What should I ask Fareed Zakaria?...

But in the case of Madrid, the last 25 years have been a clear move towards higher degree of tax competitiveness, smart regulation, and an overall liberal policy in the economic sense. And then our society is fairly open and tolerant and recognized to be what we would broadly described as a free society, an […] The post How did Madrid become the capital...

In 1927, George and Ira Gershwin put on a musical satire about trade and war entitled Strike Up the Band.  The plot centres around a middle-aged US cheesemaker, Horace J. Fletcher of Connecticut, who wants to corner the domestic dairy market.  When Fletcher hears that the US government has just slapped a fifty per cent […] The post The Gershwins on free trade (that...

Here is the link, I am reviewing a bad book on the Clinton administration (A Fabulous Failure, by Lichtenstein and Stern).  Here is one excerpt: Clinton-era welfare reform is another area where many commentators go astray, and Lichtenstein and Stein are no exception. The Clinton pronouncement “I have a plan to end welfare as we […] The post My TLS essay on the Clinton...

We discussed how the insights of Hayek, Keynes, Smith, and other great economists help us make sense of AI, growth, risk, human nature, anarchy, central planning, and much more. Dwarkesh is one of the very best interviewers around, here are the links.  If Twitter is blocked to you, here is the transcript, here is Spotify, […] The post My new podcast with Dwarkesh Patel...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Here is one outdated bit from his home page: Benjamin Moser was born in Houston. He is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009. For his work bringing Clarice […] The post What should I ask Benjamin Moser?...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  Here is from Wikipedia: Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson […] The post What should I ask Marilynne Robinson?...

The country was not quite as rich in the early days as it is sometimes made out to be: Argentina’s performance on this measure is frequently exaggerated.  In 1929, for example, Argentina’s per capita income was less than half of the average of other temperate agrarian societies (such as Canada and Australia) and of European […] The post Argentina fact of the day appeared...

That is the new book by my colleague Bryan Caplan, collected largely from his previous blog writings.  Bryan emails to me: I just released a new book of essays on Amazon, entitled *You Will Not Stampede Me: Essays on Non-Conformism*.  Emerson and Thoreau were right: Excessive conformity is a major impediment to living a full […] The post *You Will Not Stampede Me: Essays...

Yes, I will be doing another Conversation with him.  Here is my previous Conversation with him, almost eight years ago.  As many of you will know, Jonathan has a new book coming out, namely The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.  But there is much more […] The post What should I ask Jonathan Haidt?...

That is the new book by Blake Butler, a memoir.  It is no spoiler to tell you that his wife Molly takes her own life at a young age.  I don’t know of any better argument for social conservatism than this book.  And perhaps suicide should be regarded as a sin, not something to get […] The post *Molly* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

1. Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers, The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create.  Could the be the best book on NFTs?  I think we should be genuinely uncertain as to whether NFTs have a future.  In the meantime, I consider NFTs a good Rorschach test […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...