« How has the Swedish welfare state survived? | Main | Race and Culture »
What I've been reading
1. The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love, by Richard Restak. A good summary of a bunch of results I already knew, but a suitable introduction for most readers. It doesn't cover neuroeconomics.
2. Light in August, by William Faulkner. I am rereading this, wondering whether I should use it for my Law and Literature class in the spring. My memory was that this is the "easy" classic Faulkner but the text is tricker than I had remembered. Not quite as good as As I Lay Dying or Absalom, Absalom.
3. Matthew Kahn, Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment. From Brookings, a good and balanced treatment of the intersection between environmental and urban economics. Here is Matt's blog.
4. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. I'm still at p = .05, if only because I fear such a heavy reliance on the anthropic principle. This book didn't sway me one way or the other. And while I am not religious myself, I am suspicious of anti-religious tracts which do not recognize great profundity in the Bible. Furthermore, as Dawkins recognizes, civilization requires strong loyalties to abstract principles; I'm still waiting to see a list of the relevant contenders to choose the best. Here is Dawkins speaking.
5. Michael Lewis, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. I loved Liar's Poker and Moneyball but this one did not grab me at all. I stopped. Perhaps the reader needs to love football. Here is a radio interview with the author. Here is his NYT article.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 1, 2006 at 11:11 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Re: #5 The Blind Side
I really do enjoy football and I just finished The Blind Side. I wish I had stopped.
The book was short on insights and seems to be written primarily to ride the tail of Moneyball and tell the story of the author's school friend, Sean Tuohy.
I watched the prospect featured in the book, Michael Oher, in part of his game last night and came away thoroughly unimpressed. He appeared to give up a lot of ground and tended to loaf. As a disclaimer, I am not a football scout.
Posted by: erich at Oct 1, 2006 11:52:18 AM
Law and literature:
Goetz von Berlichingen .By Goethe
Billy Budd. Melville.
Michael Kohlhaas.Heinrich von Kleist.(there wer no judges in Berlin)
Antigone.Sophocles.
Bleack House. Dickens
The Foreigner.Camus.
The obvius choice:The Trial. Kafka.
Les Miserables.Victor Hugo.
Lord Jim. Conrad.(critical studies,race and punishment)
The Dead House .Dostoiesvky.
Posted by: S at Oct 1, 2006 2:40:39 PM
The Divorce Judge.Cervantes.
6 Books on History.( Artajerjes and the corrupt judge)
Herodotus.
Posted by: S at Oct 1, 2006 2:47:05 PM
After Dawkins dies, memories of his book may lead to a resurrection of an old grafitto (modified of course):
"God is dead" -- Dawkins
"Dawkins is dead" -- God
Adam Smith wrote a great deal about the evolution of religion, making some of the same kinds of points that Dawkins makes, only hundreds of years earlier (and in the context of at least as comprehensive a perspective of humankind). For example, Smith explicitly acknowledged that religious institutions were imperfect and could reduce opulence as well as increase opulence. Unlike Dawkins of course, Smith was anything but an athiest.
Posted by: jim at Oct 1, 2006 3:19:15 PM
I found Michael Lewis's 'Moneyball' absolutely superb - one of the best books about _science_ I have read, as well as one of the best sports books.
But Coach which followed it was just terrible, and a rip off (luckily, I didn't buy it). Terrible not in its writing, but in what it was saying.
And the Blind Side sounds very dubious.
I think this illustrates the problem of being a professional author - you just have to keep producing. Still, Lewis will be remembered for Moneyball, and baseball fans remember for a long, long time...
Posted by: Bruce G Charlton at Oct 1, 2006 5:23:17 PM
Anyone ever read Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them ?
Do you know if it covers neuroeconomics? If not, what's a good neuroeconomics book for a layman?
Posted by: Tim at Oct 1, 2006 6:35:33 PM
blindside is a total waste of time.
high on aggrandizement and cliche, low on substance and insights.
Posted by: ptkelly at Oct 1, 2006 9:11:36 PM
btw - i was a D1 college football player and blindside still was a bore.
Posted by: ptkelly at Oct 1, 2006 9:13:03 PM
Re: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes
Please forgive me if my neuroeconomics definition is defficient, but the book focuses on behavioral economics.
There is significant content taken from Gilovich's previous book, How We Know What Isn't So, but it is now framed within behavioral economics. This and the addition of a co-author make Why Smart People... a much easier read.
I recommend reading the book, and also giving as a gift to that family member who isn't that great with their personal finances. The book's breadth is much better than its depth, as you could probably tell from the table of contents.
Posted by: erich at Oct 2, 2006 12:17:27 AM
Depending on your approach to law and literature, Fielding's Joseph Andrews is worth considering; it's replete with very funny, very cynical commentary about the law.
Posted by: gundryggia at Oct 2, 2006 5:25:15 AM
I, too, am interested in reading about behavioral finance and neuroeconomics,
particularly with regard to questions such as over- and under-reaction in
the stock market. I've done some hunting on google, but mostly come
up with newspaper articles describing the research without actually summarizing it in
any useful depth. Can someone point me to a book or the articles in question?
FYI, I was many years ago an undergrad econ major, but at this point am
pretty close to a layman for practical purposes.
Posted by: Matt at Oct 2, 2006 7:51:39 AM
I interviewed Michael Lewis for Reuters and found the book fascinating. Is it of "Moneyball" caliber? No, but it's a great read from cover to cover. You get some football history and strategy, race relations, nurture versus nature, and lots of other stuff.
As for writing a book in which his childhood friend plays a significant role, it was a matter of simple serendipity. Lewis told me that he had been researching things about football and was shocked to discover that the left tackle was now the second-highest paid player on the field. While he was pulling this together for a magazine article, he visited Sean Tuohy to get material for his book "Coach". They hadn't seen each other in something like 25 years. When Lewis walked in his home, there was this huge black kid in the living room.
Later, Tuohy told Lewis there was a big buzz around the kid because everyone was saying he had the potential to be a left tackle in the NFL, and Lewis eventually decided to make a book out of it.
Here is my piece:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061002/lf_nm/arts_lewis_dc_1
Posted by: Scott at Oct 3, 2006 2:54:50 AM
are you guys crazy? I couldn't put "The Blind Side" down! I read it in one day in two sittings.
Posted by: c. at Oct 4, 2006 1:03:12 PM
You might be interested in "Natural Religion" by Frederick Turner. One could consider his ideas to be a nice corrective to Dawson's -- as well as any number of fundamentalists' ideas on religion. In fact, there is a great deal by Frederick Turner you might find interesting, since he is an interdisciplinary scholar who writes on things ranging from the use of neuroscience in understanding poetry (Natural Classicism) to Economics and Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century Economics). There are a few of us humanities scholars out there who understand and use economics in our theories. I'm a bit new to the scene, being a recent Ph.D. myself, so I can only direct you (on my blog) to my dissertation and to a recently published essay on using game theory to understand literature.
Posted by: Dr. Troy Camplin, Ph.D. at Oct 7, 2006 12:49:44 PM
2moons dil
2moons gold
buy 2moons dil
2moon dil
cheap 2moons dil
Posted by: aion kina at Mar 20, 2009 10:37:43 PM
