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What I've been reading
1. The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons. Could this be the best 736 pp. book on the diversity of human talent ever written? It starts slow but eventually picks up steam. It's also devastatingly funny. That said, if you don't know a lot about the NBA, it is incomprehensible. (I could not, for instance, understand the section of Dolph Schayes because that was not the NBA I know.) In the historical pantheon, he picks David Thompson, Bernard King, and Allen Iverson as underrated. The 1986 Boston Celtics are the best team ever, he argues. And so on. I found this more riveting than almost anything else I read and yes I think it is very much a work of social science, albeit in hermetic form.
2. Paul Auster, Invisible. Auster is back in top form. The French, of course, think of him as a deeper writer than do most of his American critics and readers. Is he more like Hitchcock (also appreciated early on by the French) or more like Starsky and Hutch? Read this book and decide. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.
3. Delirious New Orleans: Manifesto for an Extraordinary American City, by Steven Verderber. An excellent photo-essay on all the marvelous signs and small architectural wonders trashed by Hurricane Katrina. This book goes micro, not macro, and it catalogs a now-disappearing America from the age which I find most precious in our history.
4. Derrida, an Egyptian, by Peter Sloterdijk. I'm spending some of next summer in Berlin so I've been trying to catch up on what they're reading over there. (Any recommendations?) On every page it feels as if Sloterdijk is intelligent, yet I came away empty-handed and feeling like a frustrated Robin Hanson ("why doesn't he just come right out and say what he means?). No way should you buy the hardcover for $45.00, in return for 73 pp. of actual text. Ultimately he's writing about the boxes, not writing about the world. Yet at least three Germans loved it.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 31, 2009 at 08:12 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
I am also partial to that '86 team, but I think that discounts the unique defensive abilities of Russell. Never has been another player with his kind of impact on the defensive end. No to Iverson as underrated. How did he rate Oscar Robertson? There is the guy who has been forgotten and underrated.
Posted by: Ralph at Oct 31, 2009 9:09:25 AM
no way you read as much as you claim
Posted by: anon at Oct 31, 2009 10:07:13 AM
You want to read what they read in Berlin? Don't read Sloterdijk, read this.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Oct 31, 2009 10:26:09 AM
by itself this post is just as good a parody as http://cheeptalk.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/what-ive-been-reading/
Posted by: jeff ely at Oct 31, 2009 10:27:59 AM
For a start I would suggest to read about the holy grail of Germany: "Social Market Economy". With "Ludwig Erhard: A Biography" by Mierzejewski you will be the most wanted to talk to on every dinner party. Then "Rebuilding Germany: ..." by van Hook. For a critical assessment "The German Economy: ..." by Horst Siebert.
Nowadays people are looking again to the Freiburg School (Eucken, Roepke, ...) and to our gold old friend Karl Marx. With the downturn demand for "Kapital" surged ;-) Marx is definitely important because you'll encounter with probability 1 lengthy arguments of the sort "Marx was correct. Capitalism is ongoing crisis. The falling rate of profit." Lot's of fun.
More modern popular thinkers:
Niklas Luhman (The man who understands everything in Social Sciences.)
Gunnar Heinsohn (Economist who knows for sure that all others are idiots.)
Heiner Muehlmann (Lehmann's fall was a conspiracy by the US against us.)
Slavoj Zizek (Sloterdijk League)
Axel Honneth (Sloterdijk League)
Unfortunately every German philosopher has the aspiration to beat Hegel by cooking up something even more complicated, at least by writing completely obscure. Welcome to Germany ;-)
Posted by: Stephan at Oct 31, 2009 10:55:58 AM
I think from now on we will always wonder if Tyler is being serious or parodying himself.
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 31, 2009 10:58:21 AM
You're coming to Berlin? Great, hope to see
you at the Humboldt-University. We're in need
of some more heterodox economists here.
To read for Berlin: http://berlin.unlike.net/
Hope to see you in berlin.
Posted by: Jonathan at Oct 31, 2009 11:03:17 AM
I went to a lot of trouble to get Sloterdijk's "Rules for the Human Zoo" in French (can't read German, no English translation as yet), which seemed to have created a great stir, but though I agree with the "intelligent on every page" diagnosis, and found it slipperily appealing in a strange sort of way, I also had the impression that it did not in the end add up to much for me. Two people you would find well worth your while in Berlin: Tino Sehgal and Helen DeWitt; keep an eye out for both! Another Berlin blog: http://tarartrat.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Jenny Davidson at Oct 31, 2009 12:13:48 PM
You should like it. It's the only other place than this blog where I've seen Jordan's jump shot called flat--- though he's talking about a specific playoff run when his legs were shot.
Posted by: burger flipper at Oct 31, 2009 12:13:56 PM
The 86 Celtics were a great team, but that was a team that lost to the Lakers in 85 and 87 (though, admittedly, the 87 team was weakened by chronic injuries to McHale). If you are going to pick a "Greatest Team", I think it should be a team that won at least 2 championships in a row.
Iverson underrated? On what planet? If you are going to pick an underrated player, it should be someone that was a low draft pick and seemed to present on lots of different championship teams on which he was only considered the 4th or lower best player on it.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Oct 31, 2009 12:36:25 PM
For Berlin: Brian Ladd's The Ghosts of Berlin. Maybe not the most earth-shattering book for someone who knows 20th century history well, but it greatly enriched my walks around the city.
Posted by: AB at Oct 31, 2009 12:42:04 PM
LOL on the Bushido, biography, the guy is from my district in Berlin and we have about the worst hip hop in the world here hahahaha. In terms of literature I guess everyone is catching up on German Nobel Laureate they did not really know before and reading Atemschaukel. Also a lot of people are reading Kathrin Schmidt because she just won the prize at the Buchmesse.
If your aim is to get into the German Literary world a nice starter might be the 99 book "Mein Leben" by Marcel Reich-Ranicki. He is Germanys most famous literary critic, and this book is a wonderful autobiography of a German polish-jew in love with German literature and growing up during World War II. If you want to get into more youthful Berlin things there is Wladimir Kaminers "Russendisko". It might be a bit outdated now but was quite popular when I still lived in Berlin. It is a very very funny fast read. Kaminer is a Russian Immigrant in Berlin and tells stories that give a great feel for the city and its inhabitants. He just wrote "Ich bin kein Berliner: Ein Reiseführer für faule Touristen", a Berlin guide for lazy tourists, might just be the right thing for you (have not read it though)
I might be in Berlin for the summer, keep us updated if there is any chance to hear/meet you.
Posted by: Sander at Oct 31, 2009 5:33:15 PM
The Simmons love makes me lose a lost of respect for you. He is the kind of qualitative emotion driven statements without any statistical/sabermetric backup. I haven't read the book so maybe he wasn't that bad in this one but even in cases of statistics he uses them to reinforce his own beliefs.
Posted by: hilkit at Oct 31, 2009 7:23:48 PM
hilkit: simmons is a sports columnist, not a scientist. his job is to entertain sports fans, not discover what is true. criticizing him because he isnt achieving a goal he isnt trying to achieve seems more than a little wrongheaded
Posted by: vot at Oct 31, 2009 7:49:43 PM
Reggie Miller is underrated.
Posted by: josh at Oct 31, 2009 8:11:58 PM
Who cares?
Posted by: Rick at Oct 31, 2009 9:52:03 PM
@vot
I'm familiar with Simmons. He frequently and frankly almost continuously writes opinions as arguments he tries to prove true (which is true of columnists in many different fields). You don't have to look any further than his views on Isaiah Thomas, his half baked 'Ewing Theory' or his trade value rankings of nba players to see that he doesn't simply just put out worthless dribble about reality tv and live blogs, but that he also attempts to make observations/arguments supported by facts/statistics.
He's certainly largely an entertainment columnist, but he also tries to pen somewhat serious sports analysis. Just because he has a throwaway line about heidi montag that you find funny doesn't mean that his NBA hall of fame 'parthenon' should be the given the same weight as the type of discussions about the say the baseball hall of fame at baseball think factory or by bill james.
Posted by: hilkit at Nov 1, 2009 4:46:26 PM
>>>"The 86 Celtics were a great team, but that was a team that lost to the Lakers in 85 and 87 (though, admittedly, the 87 team was weakened by chronic injuries to McHale). If you are going to pick a "Greatest Team", I think it should be a team that won at least 2 championships in a row."
The 85 team had no Walton, the 87 team had Walton hobbled (only played 10 games). The 86 team was just stacked. Its inclusion is that it had all the players either in their primes, or playing as if rejuvinated (Walton). Its balance and talent in its 8 man rotation on both sides of the court are what puts it in the conversation for "Greatest".
As for Simmons - Eh, he's alright, not sure I could do 700 pages of his writing.
Posted by: Dave at Nov 2, 2009 8:56:51 AM
I'd love to hear why you call Simmons a "scientist". I get social critic, social thinker, but why is he a social "scientist"?
Posted by: Bill Mill at Nov 2, 2009 11:10:33 AM
No one called Simmons a scientist.
I think from now on we will always wonder if Tyler is being serious or parodying himself.
Yep. Mr. "I never watch television" is a Bill Simmons reader?
Posted by: Careless at Nov 2, 2009 11:39:37 AM
Auster is not a "deep" author. He is a wonderful wordsmith, and I enjoy him greatly as such, much in the same way that I greatly enjoy Pynchon, but am not looking for new insights into the lives of Mason & Dixon.
This also gives me an excuse to say that I see him at our local grocery store, which leads to a funny sort of recurring non-interaction interaction - he's noticed that I notice him, and I have to guess that he knows I've recognized him. At the same time, I don't have any useful reason to approach him; I'm not going to do the "like your books, sign my shirt?" game. So we both have ended in a pattern of silent acknowledgment, and carry on with produce shopping.
At least, I think that's what's happening. Maybe he thinks I'm disturbed.
Posted by: fishbane at Nov 3, 2009 10:06:27 AM
