by hilzoy
It struck me today that I have read a lot of good non-fiction this summer, and that some of it might be worth sharing. What I’m posting here are books that meet the following criteria:
* They have some relevance to policy.
* They are not, however, primarily “policy books” (e.g., books about what sort of environmental policy we should adopt.) Instead, they either tell stories or present relevant facts.
* They are fun to read. (Crucial.)
* The author’s politics are either undetectable or don’t get in the way of his or her accuracy. (I’ll indicate when the author’s politics are detectable. No mention of them means: I have no idea.)
I’m always looking for books like this: books that allow me to actually learn something while having fun at the same time. Feel free to add your own suggestions, or talk about cookware. (Me: cast iron, definitely. Just cook with it every day for two weeks or so, and the surface will take care of itself. I also use enameled saucepans.)
* American Dream by Jason DeParle. It’s the story of three families who were on welfare, and how they fared under welfare reform. DeParle, who writes for the New York Times, states his biasses at the outset (slightly left of center), but they don’t get in the way of his story, as far as I could tell. What he finds is more complicated than he expected. He’s a really good writer, and the stories are really interesting. And besides, according to me there’s altogether too little written about what actually happened in the aftermath of welfare reform.
* The Economist’s Tale by Peter Griffiths. This is the story of an economist with a consulting gig in Sierra Leone in the 1908s, when (as he tells it) the World Bank nearly caused a famine by accident. I think I got this after reading something about it on Crooked Timber, and a few weeks ago finally got around to reading it. I couldn’t put it down. It was absolutely fascinating, and horrifying, and closely observed, and really well written, and all sorts of good things. And as an extra bonus, it gives you a vivid sense of the incredible problems facing any attempt to foster economic development in miserably poor countries.
* Not A Good Day To Die by Sean Naylor. This is about Operation Anaconda, a battle towards the end of the war in Afghanistan. Naylor writes for the Army Times; if he has political views, I couldn’t tell. It’s really good, although it’s lucky that he provides both a glossary (including acronyms) and a list of people at the outset: the acronyms, in particular, made me wonder whether the military was trying to establish a whole new language. Also, you have to be up for 377 pages on the planning and execution of one military operation. If you are, though, it’s really, really good. Be warned, though: if you are (like me) the sort of person for whom reading about people making serious mistakes is wrenching, this will be one of those books that ties your stomach up in knots (No! don’t leave the artillery behind! Don’t land the helicopter there, of all places! And so on. My cats had to get used to me saying “no!!!” to the book. They thought it was very odd.) There are a lot of people who are absolute heroes and complete professionals, but there are also a few others, at critical moments. Just thinking about it now makes my skin want to crawl off my body.
Uninsured in America by Susan Starr Sered and Ruschika Fernanopulle. This isn’t as well-written as the others, though it’s not bad. However: if you want to try to figure out what to do about health insurance in this country, or if you don’t think anything should be done, it helps to have a good clear picture of who the uninsured are, and what difference the fact that they don’t have health insurance makes in their lives. This book has a series of profiles of the uninsured, interspersed with policy prescriptions. (Left.) Whether you agree with the policy stuff or not, the profiles are a really good way to get a fix on some of the basic problems.
The Outlaw Sea, by William Langewiesche. Who knew that the implications of the law of the sea were so interesting? Not me, until I read this. Langewiesche writes for the Atlantic — he’s the one who did the series on Ground Zero. He’s a wonderful writer, and this is riveting. Pirates. Scrapyards with horrendous working conditions in impoverished countries. Horrible shipwrecks. The legal no-man’s-land that accounts for it all.
And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out) by Paul Blustein. I recommend this only to people who like economics. It’s the story of the Argentine debt crisis, and if you do like economics, it’s fascinating and very well told. (I think I got this via a recommendation on Brad DeLong’s blog.)
So: what are your recommendations?
Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto. Fascinating as history, and intriguing as to how the American character was decisively shaped by the Dutch of New Netherlands. That, and the book has some writing that quite cinematic (look at the close of the Introduction).
“Be warned, though: if you are (like me) the sort of person for whom reading about people making serious mistakes is wrenching, this will be one of those books that ties your stomach up in knots (No! don’t leave the artillery behind! Don’t land the helicopter there, of all places!”
That’s the whole damn thing of military history. It all rests on those individual events. Hindsight always makes one cry out. Don’t do that! No! Land here! Bring this! Move there! Etc.
It’s always tragic, even the victories. Young men always die in numbers. For causes bad and good.
What do you mean, “trying”? They’re good to go.
Hilzoy – if you really want to read about wrenching serious mistakes, you should read Ghost Wars by Stephen Coll on U.S. Afghani policy up to 9/11. Sad.
“What do you mean, “trying”? They’re good to go.”
That’s so FUBAR.
Don’t mean nothing. Not a thang.
Completely OT, but Google Earth is awesome. I showed the girls their birthplaces yesterday. Sort of; PRC isn’t mapped to any decent level of precision.
Ugh: I did, several months ago, but didn’t have a clear enough recollection of the writing (as opposed to the content) to be able to write about it quickly. It is, indeed, good.
I haven’t read much non-fiction of late.
I tried to read “The Ptolemies,” a novelized biography of the Ptolemy line from Alexander’s time to Cleopatra. I love the subject matter, but the book’s gimmick (Thoth, Egyptian god of Fate, is telling the story; and he has a snarky attitude), which attracted me enough to buy the book, proved off-putting after just a couple of chapters.
“My Life as a CIA Spy” by Lindsay Moran is a slight, sprightly, very quick read. The early part is the best, when she talks about her recruitment and training. One of the things I found fascinating was how quickly and easily she got into the habit of smooth, plausible lying – about everything, to everyone, including Oldest Dearest Friends and lovers – and her rather blithe, if bemused, acceptance of that aspect of her character.
An oldy but goodie I read last week–a reread for me, and likely for many of you:
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, which I believe was Eric Newby’s big break-out book.
Also very interesting to reread it now that Kandahar and Kabul mean different things to me.
Hmm, lemme check the stack for the better non-fiction I’ve been digesting recently…
Jared Diamond: Collapse
Richard Grant: American Nomads
James Howard Kuntsler: The Geography of Nowhere
George Lakoff: Don’t Think of an Elephant
Thomas Frank: What’s the Matter with Kansas
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner: Freakonomics
Charles Wolforth: The Whale and the Supercomputer
Steven Blush: American Hardcore: a Tribal History
John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Aho Sethi Ullman: Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools
R. Rojas: Neural Networks
Hoel, Port & Stone: Introduction to Stochastic Processes
Hendrik Hertzberg: Politics
All good stuff. It’s been a busy summer.
I’ll give a second to Paul Blustein’s book. Other good ones I’ve read recently include Richard Parker’s bio of John Kenneth Galbraith, Edward Jay Epstein’s “The Big Picture,” and Steve Bogira’s “Courtroom 302.”
The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick by Jonathan Littman– An interesting look at the events surrounding the most famous hacker bust in American history. If you have read Catching Kevin, you need to read this one too.
The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage– A social history of the telegraph with special attention paid to parallels between it and the emergence of the Web.
No Place to Hide by Robert O’Harrow Jr.– Surveilance technlology and policy before and after 9/11. Not too far into this one yet, but so far it is fascinating. It tells the story from several varied viewpoints, from civil libertarians to senators to people with the attorney general’s office and the DoJ.
What is The Fugitive Game going to tell me that Catching Kevin didn’t? I’ll second the recommendation for The Victorian Internet, although it was more fun to read it during the crash, it made the comparisons more real.
The Fugitive Game avoids the hyperbole that Markoff and Shimomura engage in whenever they described Mitnick’s alleged crimes. He examines several different accounts of Mitnick’s arrest to explore what roles Shimomura and Markoff took and asks crucial questions about the ethics of those roles.
He also, it should be noted, had actually talked to Mitnick extensively prior to the events in Catching Kevin.
Pardon the grammar. ::wince::
Sounds interesting, I might have to put it on the list.
Ponzi’s Scheme, by Mitchell Zuckoff. A fascinating account of the rise and collapse of the eponymous Ponzi scheme and its inventor, and a lot else, including a parallel biography of the newspaper editor who stumbled into becoming Ponzi’s foil, other scams of the era, power plays between levels of law enforcement, and the whole milieu.
Rothstein, by David Pietrusza – a biography of the mobster who, among other things, masterminded the fix of the 1919 World Series. The exposition of how mobsters have done business provided a handy frame for thinking about modern corrupt politics and business.
Conspiracy of Fools, by Kurt Eichenwald – the Enron mess is too big and too recent for an altogether definitive study, but this is very, very good investigative journalism. It puts Ken Layne in a surprising-to-me light – much more bumbling, much less calculating than I’d have expected – and backs it up. He also explains the general principles of the financial scams involved in a way that I could actually more or less follow.
I finally got around to reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, which, to the extent it deals with policy, concerns how we as Americans deal with the darker side of religious freedom, and how we deal with criminal defendants who claim to be motivated directly by the word of a deity. He doesn’t ever come to many real conclusions in the book, because he didn’t really intend to, but tells several gripping stories along the way, of the history of the LDS church (and more importantly, its many fundamentalist offshoots), of a number of terrible crimes by religiously motivated people, and of how the courts deal with this stuff. Great reading, and very fast.
The Economist’s Tale by Peter Griffiths
Chris: Dad, what’s the blow-hole for?
Peter: I’ll tell you what it’s not for, son. And when I do, you’ll understand why I can never go back to Sea World.
oops. i misread that as Peter Griffin.
—
i’m currently reading Lance Armstrong’s book. my wife insisted. and, it’s actually pretty interesting, and super-easy to read, which is a nice change.
I’m not sure what Ken Layne has to do with Enron. Probably you meant Ken Lay, though.
I’m re-attempting to wade through Herodotus’ The Histories. Not related to current policy directly, but he does spend a lot of time discussing human foolishness and the rationales for war. It’s slow going, because I’m always wondering where in the hell these nations were, that existed two and a half millenia ago. I need a more regionally specific history book, I guess.
It’s actually easy reading, but it makes you reach for a more current perspective, because Herodotus wasn’t what you’d today describe as a historian; more of a storyteller.
felixrayman – re: the Blush book, have you read Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life”? It consists of profiles of Black Flag, The Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat (Fugazi), Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, and Dinosaur Jr., with a lot of cameos and detours along the way. Only a few feet deep, but a lot of great anecdotes and recollections from the players.
The only nonfiction I got through during this very busy summer was “A History of Economic Thought,” a series of lectures by LSE stalwart Lionel Robbins. Basically an account of economics (with a focus on the developing theories of money) from its birth through Adam Smith. Robbins is avuncular and consistently interesting, and the book provided a nice companion to Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. I think I bought it after one of the Crooked Timber folks recommended it.
Richard Florida’s Flight of the Creative Class details the impending brain-drain if things in America don’t change …and right quick.
I need a more regionally specific history book, I guess.
Try the The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece. The maps, combined with the book’s broad overview of the Mediterranean region ca. 1000-100 BC will provide a pretty good general orientation to geopolitical scene of any of the classical authors.
My current non-fiction reading is Eric Weisbard’s This is Pop and Tim Lawrence’s eagerly awaited (by me, at least) history of 70’s dance music, Love Saves the Day.
random family : love, drugs, trouble, and coming of age in the bronx by adrian nicole leblanc
touching, great read… really insightful for those of us who grew up on the “right side of the tracks.”
re: the Blush book, have you read Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life”?
Yep, I have. It’s a good one, too.
Military acronyms do two things:
1. Give the users an exquisitely precise shorthand, such that the things you want to happen generally happen where and when they should.
2. Instantly lets members identify each other, or more importantly, identify non-member of the group.
I leave it to your discretion to determine which of these is the more important reason.
I also read The Economist’s Tale after it was recommended on Crooked Timber, and it really was a fascinating look at the huge mess international aid becomes between funding and execution. It’s especially chilling knowing that disaster in Sierra Leone was staved off only for a few years, until the civil war began.
Recently, I read An Army at Dawn, by Rick Atkinson. Very readable, and a good example of the kind of book that will have you cringing at the errors of judgment and incompetence that wind up costing soldiers’ lives. It’s a useful reminder that even the most successful generals had to go through a learning process that got a lot of people killed.
Somebody upthread mentioned Enron. A couple of months ago, I read The Smartest Guys in the Room. I think they made a documentary movie out of it, though I haven’t seen it. It’s a really informative book though. It hits kind of close to home, since I live in Houston and I (mostly) appreciate the free-wheeling, anything-goes, “We don’t need no stinking zoning laws” atmosphere. The Enron story is definitely the darker side of this way of life.
I read Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life a couple of years ago. It turned me on to some really good bands. When I was a kid back in the 80s, I was listening to Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. Oh how I regret my misspent youth. 🙂
I’ll second the mention of The Smartest Guys in the Room; I think it’s still the best of the various Enron books out there. McLean and Elkind do an excellent job of not only reporting the details, but giving them context and seeing the big picture. Eichenwald’s book is massively detailed, but I found it a bit incoherent at times–he loses sight of the forest to focus on the trees.
I strongly recommend two books:
Collapse, by Jared Diamond. The must-read book of 2005, it has been criticized as “environmental determinism.” To which I would say, that would be a useful antidote to the 99%+ of histories that don’t discuss environment and climate at all. But in fact, it’s not determinist — Diamond thinks people can make smart or dumb choices of how to deal with climate change and environmental shortfalls, and he has some extremely well-thought-out ideas on what works and what doesn’t. He’s also a terrrifically readable writer, without sacrificing detail and accuracy.
Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Practically Everything. More of a history of science than of everything, but of the sciences that have to do with the history of the world and the cosmos, so it does sort of live up to its title. Anyway, it’s riveting, funny, and enlightening. You will wonder why nobody ever made a movie about 19th-century geology.
The first chapter of Growing up Red, by Eric Schilke, is on the web somewhere, and I liked it enough to be on the lookout for the book, but all I can honestly recommend is the first chapter. 🙂
A quick question about cookware–and non-stick Le Creuset in particular. (I’d ask this on the Gorgeous George thread, but posting seems to have become rather personal there, and I’d hate to interrupt.) So.
I have a beautiful Le Creuset skillet that subtenants did not know how to take care of: there are two big gashes in the nonstick surface. They replaced it with a smaller Le Creuset skillet and a big non-Le Creuset skillet, so they’re off the hook. But should I just throw away the damaged one? Surely there must be a way to salvage such a beautiful pan! Can I pay someone to sand off the (annoying, toxic) non-stick surface? Help!
The Great Influenza, by John Barry.
I have reviewed my favourite books on science and politics before. I have also reviewed Collapse and I warmly recommend it. For further RUI (see the “politics” link for explanation) I have recently read excellent books by Stephanie Coontz, Lynn Ponton and Mark O’Connell.
Ooops, here is the Stephanie Coontz link.
Beginning to come to grips with our empire:
Michael Klare, Blood and Oil;
Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism;
Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds;
Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire;
Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command;
Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs;
Stefan Halper & Jonathan Clarke, America Alone;
Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire;
Michael Scheuer (formerly “Anonymous”), Imperial Hubris;
Mark LeVine, Why They Don’t Hate Us;
Got Chain of Command yesterday, haven’t had time to look at it yet. I might have to check out The Great Influenza as well…
FRM: TGI will definitely change your view of Woodrow Wilson, and not for the better. I had known something about the extent of government control of the economy during WWI — having had some engagements in the early to mid-90s where the 1920 rail act was key — but when you really get into it, as TGI must, it’s frightening.