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What is your dream book?
I want you to tell me. It's a book that doesn't currently exist. It is a work of non-fiction. The author must be living. It must be a work the author could plausibly write. It doesn't have to be a close cousin of a book the author has already written.
So you could request "Jared Diamond on sexual selection" but not "Joseph Stiglitz on the early history of Ghenghis Khan."
Do please tell us your pick. Comments are open...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 29, 2008 at 08:01 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Steven Pinker writing a sequel to Dave Grossman's On Killing.
Posted by: Noumenon at Aug 29, 2008 8:15:04 AM
Richard Feynman on many topics would be it for me, but Feynman is dead. Any modern equivalents? The Feynman Lectures on Physics are my benchmark for a good book of this sort.
Posted by: stefan at Aug 29, 2008 8:15:26 AM
Tom Schelling on any issue in the world.
Posted by: Dan Cole at Aug 29, 2008 8:19:45 AM
Garry Kasparov: "My hundred best games".
Posted by: random guy at Aug 29, 2008 8:22:34 AM
Rushdie writing any novel as good or better than "Midnight's Children" or Cormac McCarthy, same, except with "Blood Meridian."
Posted by: Luke G. at Aug 29, 2008 8:27:01 AM
Tom Wolfe on the economics profession.
Posted by: wintercow20 at Aug 29, 2008 8:28:28 AM
Virginia Postrel on the role of trust in an economy and a society. I seem to recall her writing years ago that she was working on it (there are several pages about trust in "The Future and Its Enemies"). But she never produced a book and her major interest now seems to be in aesthetics, most recently glamour.
Some time in the nineties, I heard it said, "Capitalism doesn't work in Russia because seventy years of socialism has made people too selfish." I think the author actually meant people had very little trust in people they weren't close to or related to.
Posted by: Roger Sweeny at Aug 29, 2008 8:36:15 AM
Daniel Dennett writing a comprehensive exploration of Nietzsche's writings from a modern perspective.
Posted by: Aaron at Aug 29, 2008 8:38:02 AM
The Coen brothers on film & literature.
Posted by: Ed Lopez at Aug 29, 2008 8:40:21 AM
Obama : "How I changed The United States of America"
Posted by: Smith at Aug 29, 2008 8:43:33 AM
I would like an Economics Textbook in comic book format, fully illustrated with dialogs and the works. Of course this would mean that there would be a need to 'storyboard' the entire textbook; but still it wont qualify as fiction in the true sense! :)
Posted by: Anand Rao at Aug 29, 2008 8:49:39 AM
Tyler Cowen: "How I came to call myself a libertarian, why that's not a helpful term, and what I actually think"
I'm serious. I'd pre-order.
Posted by: Finnsense at Aug 29, 2008 8:49:44 AM
karl rove updating "the prince" by machiavelli.
Posted by: voodooeconomist at Aug 29, 2008 8:56:37 AM
@Roger Sweeny -- have you read Trust by Francis Fukuyama? It's all about how trust effects business climates.
My dream book would be Trust but about Arab/Persian cultures--still by Fukuyama. Or maybe I'll write it.
Posted by: Erin at Aug 29, 2008 8:57:39 AM
Ryan Holiday writing about how to read books properly, and what he's learnt from the outrageous amount of books he's read already. Sort of a book version of this:
http://athleteresourcecenter.com/2008/08/3-academic-links/#comment-19
with a bit of this:
http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/entries/ryan_clark_holiday_book_list_1.phtml
Posted by: Andrew Lynch at Aug 29, 2008 8:58:41 AM
Roger Sweeny: If not Virginia Postrel, might I recommend Charles H. Green (who blogs here)? He focuses primarily on the role trust within business settings, which would seem to overlap large portions of your areas of interest.
As for a book choice - any politician on how to enrich themselves or their family members through their own corruption public service.
Posted by: Ironman at Aug 29, 2008 8:58:45 AM
Ed Glaeser: "On Urban Economics"
Posted by: Tim at Aug 29, 2008 8:59:26 AM
"Peoples History of the United States" by Howard Zinn the graphic non-novel. but it would be in wiki form so that anyone could contribute pages.
Posted by: The OverDrone at Aug 29, 2008 9:03:54 AM
Tyler Cowen writing a Bryan Caplan biography.
Posted by: rue DES quatre vents at Aug 29, 2008 9:04:24 AM
Harold Bloom on waiting orderly in line & communism.
HC
Posted by: Happy Camper at Aug 29, 2008 9:24:20 AM
Paul Krugman.
"Markets and health care: how I realised that asking the 535 poltroons in Congress to run 13% of the economy was not a good idea"
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Aug 29, 2008 9:24:57 AM
Bill James - "How I Led the Nationals to a World Series Title"
Posted by: Dano at Aug 29, 2008 9:26:32 AM
Randall Munroe: The Illustrated History of the World
Posted by: efp at Aug 29, 2008 9:29:15 AM
LOL@the overrated ryan holiday being mentioned as a purveyor of knowledge and good books. If you mean angsty, self-important knowledge then you might be onto something. If I wanted to read a mixture of a young man's anger and arrogance I'd stumble through live journal. Holiday's reading is nothing beyond whatever is popular at Borders. The guy is the reading list equivalent of Tony Robbins or Oprah: breadth, but no depth.
Also, there is already a classic book on how to read properly. It's called "How to read a book" by Adler and Van Doren.
Posted by: ha at Aug 29, 2008 9:31:37 AM
Larry Summers on pickup artistry.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Aug 29, 2008 9:39:01 AM
