« China fact of the day | Main | Can libertarianism limit corporate statism? »
Book medley
Burton Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Legacy has Damaged America; this book has a good compendium of free market critiques of Roosevelt, although I would not look here for a balanced review of the evidence. Senselessness, by Horacio Castellanos Moya; this is now my favorite novel from either Honduras or El Salvador, depending how you classify the nationality of the author. Alex Beam, A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books. A fun inside history of the Chicago Great Books series. Lily Tuck, Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante; I liked this book very much, without even being a previous devotee of Morante. Gilles Kepel, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East. Both Kepel and Belknap Press are wonderful, but there's not much here. Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics, with a new section on the 2008 crisis. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, a new edition. I wanted to read this again but in fact it is unreadable, I am sorry to report. After about forty pages I believe that 2666 is as good as the reviews, here is the latest survey of them.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 14, 2008 at 02:41 PM in Books | Permalink
Comments
"I wanted to read this again but in fact it is unreadable, I am sorry to report."
Tyler, please expand on this. Why is it unreadable? Too outdated?
Posted by: Jayson Virissimo at Nov 14, 2008 2:53:55 PM
Schumpeter reminds me of The Worldly Philosophers, which reminds me of a recurring question:
What is the best single book a layperson should read to learn about economics -- not the touchy feely "economic concepts you should know," not Heilbroner's parade of great economists, but rather, more or less what a college freshman majoring in economics would learn ... but (preferably) not a textbook.
Any thoughts? I aspire to being a smarter reader of Marginal Revolution as well as of the economic news.
Posted by: Anderson at Nov 14, 2008 3:11:59 PM
Anyone have recommendations on what book is an even-handed weighing of the evidence for and against the New Deal?
Posted by: mk at Nov 14, 2008 3:30:12 PM
"I wanted to read this again but in fact it is unreadable, I am sorry to report."
Tyler: I am sorry to report that you are wrong.
Posted by: Mark at Nov 14, 2008 4:27:52 PM
Tyler, I laughed hard at the comment on Capitalism Socialism and Democracy. You are so right: it is unreadable. The reason? To quote Solow, The man was all problems, and one very important idea. I am sure the GMU Austrians disagree.
Posted by: gappy at Nov 14, 2008 6:01:39 PM
"I wanted to read this again but in fact it is unreadable, I am sorry to report."
Tyler: I am sorry to report that you are wrong. [Mark]
Tyler: You are really wrong! Or did you get your books mixed up? Watch the Kool-aid!
Posted by: Frank at Nov 14, 2008 6:02:40 PM
I would not look here for a balanced review of the evidence.
Questions:
Why not? Do you have some reason to question the reliability of verity of Folsom's work?
What are your criteria for a "balanced" review of the evidence?
Where would you look for a "balanced review" of the evidence?
Its taken 70+ years years but we're finally peeling the insufferable veneer of expertise and
nobility off of FDR and finding him to be nothing but a noxious politician blindly pulling
levers and reassuring an economically ignorant public that prosperity was just around the
corner.
Posted by: Superheater at Nov 14, 2008 6:11:39 PM
Anderson:
For a non-mathematical but fairly precise and clear treatment (from a UCLA-ish perspective), Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics isn't bad (based on my random sample of its pages). He's an unusually clear writer and works fairly hard to keep his ideology in check. He has a follow-up book, Public Economics, with which I'm less familiar.
For the true freshman-level bit with graphs and equations and colored text-boxes, I haven't checked out that market in quite a while. Apparently Mankiw has a lot of fans, however (including foreigners who write in to say they taught themselves successfully with his book), and he seems like a clear explainer on his blog, so you could try that.
Posted by: srp at Nov 14, 2008 8:42:32 PM
Unreadable ??!! No: one of the greatest books ever written in social science.
Posted by: offshore at Nov 15, 2008 12:39:47 AM
The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes, is a book about the Great Depression and the FDR legacy which has received a lot of high praise.
I read this and wanted to read it over again right away.
You will meet earlier generations of corrupt politicians who kept getting elected and appointed.It successfully destroys the widespread notion that FDR made things better in any way. It should be required reading.
You can find Amity Shlaes here:
http://www.amityshlaes.com/
I also can recommend Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg, a wonderful read and complement to The Forgotten Man.
Posted by: Richard Whitney at Nov 15, 2008 2:50:23 PM
Tyler, you wrote:
"although I would not look here [in Folsom's book] for a balanced
review of the evidence."
I wonder if you would be so kind as to provide a bit more detail on
the why you think that the evidence is significanlty imbalanced.
In what sense is the "review of evidence" imbalanced? A bit more
detail would help people decide whether you think Flosom is worth
reading or not. Your post makes it sound like only ideaologues need
bother buying Folsom's book. Is this impression you wish to convey?
Posted by: indiana jim at Nov 15, 2008 3:30:09 PM
Welcome to our company which sells all kinds of Sword of the New World Vis.
Posted by: Sword of the New World Vis at Jan 1, 2009 11:42:02 PM
Mabinogi Gold
Mabinogi online gold
Mabinogi money
cheap Mabinogi gold
buy Mabinogi gold
Posted by: aion kina at Mar 18, 2009 2:54:39 AM
when i look so many books I'm headache
Posted by: kyle at May 15, 2009 1:01:05 AM
how many books are useful
Posted by: nick at May 15, 2009 1:01:54 AM
what are you thinking about these books?
Posted by: anna at May 15, 2009 1:05:03 AM
