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What I've Been Reading
1. Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, by Andrei S. Markovits. Not the usual swill on this topic; sadly the main prediction of this book is that the passing of Bush will not make America much more popular in Europe. Read this short article on the same.
2. Dante, Paradiso, translated by Robert and Jean Hollander. There still is not a gripping English-language Paradiso on the market, as the Mandelbaum translation is flawed as well and don't ever trust Penguin translations with anything. This one doesn't elevate me as the text should. But it has the best notes of any edition, is laid out most nicely, and is the best for trying to follow the Italian and cross-reference the translation. If you buy only one English-language Paradiso maybe it is this one. An alternative is the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow edition, lyrical but archaic, on-line for free.
3. Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History, by Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll. The table of contents looks amazing, but my browsing indicated this book to be boring. Still, some of you should read it. It is full of factual substance, slotted into an economic framework.
4. Americanos: Latin America's Struggle for Independence, by John Chasteen. Every now and then a history book sweeps you up into its world; this one did it for me, most of all the treatment of Alexander von Humboldt but from beginning to end as well. The best and most readable book on its topic.
5. William Gibson, Neuromancer. Wow, this is now twenty-four years old. I'm teaching it next week in Law and Literature class. Upon rereading what strikes me most is how little science fiction it offers and how much it follows in the stylistic footsteps of Hammett and Chandler.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 9, 2008 at 06:32 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Neuromancer (and the rest of Gibson's early work) was always about style. To the extent that he was at all visionary, he recognized that the upcoming "wired" class would need an aesthetic, so he built them the bones of one. Since then, he's been polishing it, in books with less and less action and sf elements as time goes on.
Posted by: Dave at Feb 9, 2008 7:38:34 AM
Now wait a minute... Castles, Battles, and Bombs looks pretty good. I haven't received mine yet but any book that combines economics, historiography, and military history makes my to-read list.
Posted by: The other Eric at Feb 9, 2008 9:14:58 AM
Tyler:
Consider, as well, Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" and its implicit commentary on the internet's effect on the viral transmission of ideas/information/trends, and the associated economic effects. Although I find his other work to be uninspiring.
Posted by: bingo at Feb 9, 2008 9:19:45 AM
Tyler, I assume you're familiar with the following Neuromancer study guide? If not, your students may benefit from it.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/neuromancer.html
Posted by: Arsène Lupin at Feb 9, 2008 9:20:18 AM
Neuromancer not sci-fi enough? Really? Are you thinking about it in terms of today's reality, the reality of 10 years ago, or really from 25 years ago when it was conceived? For something that pre-dates the web browser (1993), and was genre-breaking near-future sci-fi, it was pretty astonishing. Perhaps it's not astonishing today, but I think that attests to how effective it was in describing, and even shaping, the near future.
Posted by: Aron Helser at Feb 9, 2008 10:44:44 AM
What about the Ciardi Paradiso? It may not be the most exact, but it is pretty gripping.
Posted by: matt wilbert at Feb 9, 2008 11:09:00 AM
Aron has a point.
Another example of this would be True Names (from 1981) by Vernor Vinge. Anyone reading it today for the first time would be unimpressed; it seems obvious and almost clichéd. But my God the mindblowing effect it had on me when I first read it all those years ago, before I had ever used online virtual worlds or the Internet or e-mail or Usenet or even phone-based BBSs. The best speculative fiction often makes this journey from "that's so preposterous" to "that's so obvious".
Likewise, I suspect that Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had an effect on the imaginative youth of that era that we can only dimly understand today.
Posted by: at Feb 9, 2008 11:12:06 AM
here's another recommendation for John Ciardi.
Posted by: chuq at Feb 9, 2008 11:37:55 AM
I would like for someone to explain the disconnect between the sentiments expressed in the article linked to the "Uncouth American" and the reality of European politics. The article looks forward to the post-Bush era, but France and Germany have both elected leaders who are much more friendly to the USA and to Bush.
Posted by: Rob at Feb 9, 2008 12:10:49 PM
For near future stuff, Vernor Vinge is the best. Since reading Rainbow's End a year ago, I have watched his "future" fall into place, from Google Books to cars that drive themselves (which means kids free to travel alone) to wearable computing. Now if only subvocal cell phones would arrive...
Posted by: mle.detroit at Feb 9, 2008 4:00:42 PM
For the argument that Markovits's "Uncouth Nation" is, in fact, the usual swill on its topic, see:
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/23/freedom-cheese/
Posted by: otto at Feb 9, 2008 6:36:11 PM
leaving aside the potential silliness of a law and literature class, why read neuromancer? to discuss the limits of the corporate fiction? (and you're teaching law and lit why? why not econ and lit?)
Posted by: dj superflat at Feb 9, 2008 9:22:48 PM
RE: Item one above, readers may be interested in a very good essay on the topic of why Europeans have "hated" America long before 9/11 and Bush administration published awhile back in the Hudson Review, see:
http://www.hudsonreview.com/BawerSp04.html
Posted by: Aaron at Feb 9, 2008 11:06:12 PM
European anti-Americanism is a natural psychological response to the relegation of Europeans to second fiddle on the global stage. It afflicts elites because it is their ego's that have had to return the most space to the nationalist exchange.
The ascendance of china and India will be BAD for European ego balances, as unlike pax Americana, for which a shared culture, peoples and much more below the waterline exists beyond the EGO's blindside, pax china....whoa Nelly!!!! on the other hand will be a brutal reality check to European puffery.
Remember uncle Sam has a soft spot for his cantankerous but good natured European buddy/side-kick. The average citizen of the Dragon and the Big Wheel wont have sentiment and fuzzy history driving the views of what are important voices for proper world governance.
conclusion....for Europeans, anti-Americanism becomes anti-sinoism, with a re-evaluation of the American century for what it was..the AMERICAN/european century...much gnashing of teeth.
for Americans, the anti-sino rash flares into full blown hemorrhoids al-la European anti-Americanism, but with a lower and slower burn. Unlike Europeans the American voice will still be first among equals for a long stretch, but without a WWW to put the point across like WWII did to Europe, our relative decline in power wont be pretty to look at....much eventual gnashing of dentures.
for the rest of the world, a gleeful opportunity to see the big euro-yanqui twins get a big fat raspberry after hogging all the power for the last three centuries. Is Spain Guatemala's America, ditto Nigeria and Britain, France and....well this comment will never end if i open that can of worms.
BUT, without the American centuries underlying premise of making the world a safer place for the euro-American politico-economic system, which in concept at least is inclusive, pax china on the other hand which so far is taking shape as all china all the time, even after softening and mellowing to mostly china most of the time, will give everyone else real heartburn and there will be a lot of sentimentalization of the "good old days" with hugs and kisses for visiting American tourists...SORRY I COULD NOT RESIST!
Posted by: nyongesa at Feb 10, 2008 12:06:02 AM
passing of Bush will not make America much more popular in Europe
The very powerful are rarely regarded with especial sympathy. It is interesting to compare the view of America today with that of Britain a century ago.
If China becomes the worlds great power, you can look forward to a lot of American Sinophobia.
Posted by: ad at Feb 10, 2008 2:17:08 PM
"European anti-Americanism is a natural psychological response to the relegation of Europeans to second fiddle on the global stage."
This post is a natural psychological response to being afraid to admit that people hate your country because it is the most aggressive nation on earth.
Posted by: Gene Callahan at Feb 10, 2008 3:58:15 PM
Mr. Callahan,
your statement does not dissprove my contention that europeans hate americans because they challange the european superiority complex. As an african who has lived in europe and now in the u.s. i have first hand experience of both the european and american superiority complexes, which are equally noxiuos and reviled in many corners of the world.
As to national aggression, no nations, or group of nations, in human history have killed stabbed murdered and tortured other humans on the scale accomplished by Europeans.
A specail prize must be reserved for America's progenator and mentor, for the english have the singular accomplishement, closely followed by the french, of having wontonly murdered people of every religon, creed, nation, tribe, or ethnic group on the planet.
Posted by: nyongesa at Feb 10, 2008 11:15:31 PM
Neuromancer > Interestingly, this novel that I read only a few years ago was one of the few to explain what is a computer virus and how does it work without using technical vocabulary. This is one of the major achievement in literature that we still need to see in a movie, for example.
I am a bit jaleous of your students, as I would be curious to see what you extract from this novel as regard to Law and Economics. May I suggest "Do androids dream of electric sheeps?" (Philip Dick) to extend it to philosophy, law, artificial intelligence, positive/negative externalities and economics?
By the way, your latest book is excellent.
Posted by: Cyril Demaria at Feb 12, 2008 6:43:16 PM
Posted by: 深圳翻译公司 at Feb 23, 2008 9:15:07 AM
