Tyler Cowen

“Why is a book the most important organising medium for talking about or reading about the internet Weinberger is a guy who gets this – that the internet is a way of ordering or not ordering reality, that you stack things in a pile, that it appears to be very chaotic, that this is a fundamental change in information processing and it’s not in every way booklike or driven by narrative. I think Weinberger is an important and underrated thinker – this is a book that is easy to comprehend and is also fun. I don’t think it’s made the big splash of Clay Shirky or Sherry Turkle or some other people, but if you want my list of five then it’s got to be on it.”

“This threevolume set is quite the remarkable achievement, and it would have made my best books of 2019 list (addons here) had I known about it earlier. It starts with “An audit of violence after 1966,” and then goes back to the seventeenth century to begin to dig out what happened. It has more detail than almost anyone needs to know, yet at the same time it remains unfailingly conceptual and relies on theoretical social science as well, rather than merely reciting names and dates. Unlike in so many history books, O’Leary is always trying to explain what happened, or what did not.”

“Probably the best history of the company we're are going to get, at least for the earlier years of the company. Even the jabs at the company seem perfunctory, for the most part this is quite objective as a treatment.”

“John Took’s Dante is the book to read on Dante after you’ve read all the other books (an interesting designation, by the way, I wonder how many areas have such books In most cases, if you’ve read all the other books you shouldn’t bother with the next one!).”

“Perhaps the most important general social science book in a good while,”

“A YIMBY book, with good historical material on San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other locales involved in the struggle to build more.”

“I have only browsed this book, yet it appears to have much more information about the Vikings than other books I know, yet without getting squirrelly. That said, I find it difficult to connect books on the Vikings with the broader conceptual narratives I know, and thus I do not retain their content very well. So I am never sure if I should read another book on the Vikings.”

“The new James C. Scott book, Against the Grain, is wonderful,”

“That is the new book by Dietrich Vollrath, strongly recommended, it is a primer on the current state of knowledge about economic growth. Tightly argued, and a remarkable amount is covered in 216 pp. of regular text. More books should be like this, it actually tries to teach the reader something! And succeeds. Definitely recommended.”

“I think there is a lot to be said in any area for having at least one book which isn’t very readable. And there Hayek is my pick. But it’s brilliant, it won a Nobel Prize, and it’s one of the most important books of the century. Is it clear and fun No.”