2014 Reading Review
In 2014, I completed 74 books, novels, and short-story collections. They were a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and cover a range of topics. I tend to read more than one book at the same time because doing so allows writers on different topics to interact in my head in ways that would not otherwise happen. Most of these are based on my own interest or are classics I haven't read yet. A few were for work related topics.
These are listed in order that I completed them, and include physical books, audible, and kindle. I typically use a vague five star rating for end-of-year book lists, but this year have added a short comment on some of the books.
1. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction (Harvey Mansfield)***
-- America has always been a complicated political project, with tensions between the cultural norms of farming communities and urban environments; public policy should adapt to the shifting ground underneath our democratic institutions.
2. Moral Tribes (Joshua Greene)****
-- The evidence that social behavior is driven by underlying, intuitive, modular cognition is overwhelming; Greene’s explication of this is interesting for its compatibility and competition with Haidt or Gazzaniga.
3. Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Bronner)***
-- Goddam philosophers.
4. Finance and the Good Society (Robert Shiller)*
-- A disappointingly uninteresting normative schreed.
5. Hayek (Emonn Butler)***
6. Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)****
7. Snow (Orhan Pamuk)*****
-- Vividly beautiful.
8. The World Until Yesterday (Jarred Diamond)***
9. The Unwinding (George Packer)**
10. Stasiland (Anna Funder)****
11. Hidden Order (Brad Thor)****
12. Ratification (Pauline Maier)*****
-- American history courses should not just skip over the ratification of the constitution; the debates over ratification are profoundly more enlightening for understanding America’s complex political frameworks today, than are the debates over the drafting of the Constitution.
13. What is the What (Dave Eggers)*****
14. Wittgensteins Mistress (David Markson)***
-- Possibly the most indescribable book I’ve ever read; I think I liked it.
15. Letting Go (Philip Roth)***
16. Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)****
17. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote)*****
18. Of Mice & Men (John Steinbeck)****
19. Mass Flourishing (Edmund Phelps)****
-- Convincingly articulated defense for the evolving perspectives on innovation and its role in economic growth.
20. Fragile by Design (Charles W. Calomiris & Stephen H. Haber)****
-- The longer I’ve moved away from this book, the more convincing their argument has become.
21. The Dance of the Dialectic (Bertell Ollman)****
-- A very well articulated defense of socialism, both for its philosophical grounding and crisp prose.
22. Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)****
23. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Lewis Carroll)****
-- How is this considered a children's book? Dark and trippy.
24. An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies (Tyler Cowen)*****
-- Only read this when eating.
25. Crime & Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)*****
-- Finally, some Russian literature I didn’t hate.
26. The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida)*****
-- Everyone should read this, not just those of us with family with alternative brain formations; a fascinating account to pair with cog psych perspectives on Autism.
27. Origins of Political Order (Francis Fukuyama)****
-- Crazy fascinating, crazy long; I’ll need to read this again.
28. Who’s in Charge? (Michael Gazzaniga)****
-- A pretty good pop summary of the developments in cognitive and neuropsychology over the past few decades; and even better philosophical rejection determinism.
29. Saga Vol. 2****
30. Intellectuals and Society (Thomas Sowell)*
-- Unfortunate drivel from an otherwise brilliant mind.
31. A Million Ways to Die in the West (Seth MacFarlane)***
32. The Rule of Nobody (Philip K. Howard)*****
-- In a world of positive/normative conflation when field experts try to adapt their industry perspective to social problems, this stand above the fray as a model for how to approach the political from the theoretical.
33. Naked Statistics (Charles Wheelan)**
34. Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (Alan Taylor)*****
-- I didn’t think I wanted to read 600 pages on the battle between Americans and Brits along the US-Canadian border known as the Great Lakes, but I’m glad I did.
35. Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (Michael Lewis)****
-- Inspiring storytelling.
36. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Malcolm Gladwell)*
-- The least interesting, most formulaic of Gladwell’s books.
37. Saga Vol. 3***
38. Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)***
39. The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)*****
-- Utterly hilarious.
40. The Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers)*****
-- A gripping war novel that avoids cliches.
41. The Best and the Brightest (David Halberstam)**
42. The Invisible Heart (Russ Roberts)**
-- A somewhat novel novel.
43. The Union War (Gary Gallagher)****
44. The Submission (Amy Waldman)*****
-- One of my favorite novels of the year; the kind of book I wish I’d have read the moment it came out.
45. 50 Battles That Changed the World (William Weir)***
46. The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien)*****
-- The most visceral writing about Vietnam I’ve ever encountered; possibly the best war writing I’ve ever read.
47. The Secret Sins of Economics (Deirdre McCloskey)****
-- Literary economics.
48. The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (Matt Taibbi)
-- Better than I expected, but still a bit twatish.
49. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)****
50. Emma (Jane Austen)**
51. M.A.S.H. (Richard Hooker)*****
-- Just as funny as the TV show, but not more so.
52. A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle)***
53. The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)****
54. Without Their Permission (Alexis Ohanian)***
55. The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe)*****
56. The Sign of Four (Arthur Conan Doyle)****
57. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Stephen Greenblat)****
-- A really interesting account of the 15th century and the influence of Roman philosophy on Christian thinking at the dawn of the Enlightenment.
58. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)***
59. The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer)****
60. The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoevsky)**
-- Not his greatest novel.
61. Twelve Angry Men (Reginald Rose)****
62. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English (John McWhorter)****
63. The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien)****
-- This is a fun book, and just as engrossing as the LotR books, but I’m still not sure how it inspired such fanboydom.
64. Persuasion (Jane Austen)**
-- Not her greatest novel.
65. The Hidden Politics of the Mind (Jason Weeden, Robert Kurzban)****
-- See Reason magazine’s February 2015 issue.
66. The Godfather (Mario Puzo)*****
-- Awesome.
67.The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success (Megan McArdle)***
68. Dataclysm (Christian Rudder)****
-- Super fascinating discussion of what we can and can not know from big data.
69. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)****
-- This really is a good novel.
70. Remake the World (Bertell Ollman)*
71. Knowledge & Power (George Gilder)***
-- A novel approach to adapting information theory to economics, but overly normative and somewhat clunky in trying to make conservative policy positions appear the logical end of an supposedly objective view of economic theory; perhaps is most interesting as a companion to Phelp’s views on innovation and Kirzner’s theory of the entrepreneur.
72. Alas, Babylon (Pat Frank)***
73. Zero to One (Peter Thiel)*****
Thinking well beyond any boxes; particularly interesting perspectives on competition and monopoly.
74. Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)****
