Category Archives: Books

Aristotle – The Nicomachean Ethics

Posted on December 11, 2018 | Comments Off on Aristotle – The Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle – The Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s major work on ethics. It was named for either Aristotle’s son or father, who were both named Nicomachus. Basically lecture notes from his classes, this later work supersedes the earlier Eudemian Ethics. The major theme here is the golden mean. Courage lies between cowardice and rashness; liberality lies between being a cheapskate and a spendthrift; moderation in all things.

Aristotle’s views on slavery, women, and a few other topics show this work’s age. But the overall impression is one of human decency, if with a somewhat stiff and formal demeanor. Closely connected with The Politics, which was written later, The Nicomachean Ethics focuses mostly on the individual and those close to him. The Politics applies similar thinking outward to larger social and political life. Unlike many modern political combatants, Aristotle thought ethics and politics to be related.

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Posted in Books, Philosophy, Political Animals

Peter Ackroyd – Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

Posted on December 10, 2018 | Comments Off on Peter Ackroyd – Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

Peter Ackroyd – Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

A very good popular-level history, and the first volume of a multi-part series. If the other volumes are of this caliber, I will enjoy reading them. Foundation contains some traditional kings-and-battles narrative, but Ackroyd is at his best when he turns to Fernand Braudel-style everyday history—how ordinary people worked, what they wore and ate, how they talked and gossiped got along with each other (or not), what games and toys children played with, how adults settled disputes, what were popular fashions and gossips, and so on. Fortunately, this is most of the first half of the book. It is also a good chunk of the second half, which picks up more of the political narrative as sources improve and the monarchy becomes more centralized.

Ackroyd also shares snippets from primary sources ranging from near-graffitos to expense reports to legal decisions. These, used in wise moderation, make long-dead ordinary people come alive again, with names and all, in the reader’s mind. Interesting for its own sake, this kind of history also makes the reader grateful for modern prosperities and freedoms we take for granted; previous generations could only dream of things we moderns take for granted, such as indoor plumbing or reasonably expecting all of our children to survive to adulthood.

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Posted in Books

2018: The Year in Books

Posted on December 10, 2018 | Comments Off on 2018: The Year in Books

A tradition on this blog is a year-end roundup of short reviews of books I read during the year. It serves two purposes. One, it’s a reference for future research. It can be difficult to remember, years later, which book offers a certain argument or insight that is relevant to a current project. Two, readers hopefully get some good book recommendations.

I kept notes but didn’t publish last year’s list. Combined with this year’s pile, it’s a bit much for one post. So I’m trying something different. I’ll schedule a new review to run each day or so until everything is up.

Individual posts will also add more format flexibility; some books are more thought-provoking than others, so reviews range from a single sentence to several hundred words. Other books complement each other that I wrote joint reviews for them.

All reviews will be tagged in the “Books” category, so they can be viewed together.

I might continue this model for 2019 and future years, posting new reviews as I go. Or I might go back to one year-end list. I haven’t decided yet. Reader feedback is welcome.

Here are the lists for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

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Posted in Books, Housekeeping

Rhetoric and Emotion

Posted on November 11, 2018 | Comments Off on Rhetoric and Emotion

The beginning of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric has a lesson for staying informed despite today’s dominant political strategy:

Appeals to the emotions warp the judgment.

One of Aristotle’s main points is that rhetoric by itself is morally and ideologically neutral. A skilled rhetorician can use this weakness in human cognition for either good or evil. To do sound policy analysis, one must be aware when the emotional appeal strategy is being used, especially towards illiberal ends.

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Posted in Argumentation, Books, Great Thinkers, Philosophy

Official Disdain for Commerce

Posted on November 6, 2018 | Comments Off on Official Disdain for Commerce

Most cultures have held trade and commerce in low regard. This is true in nearly all times and places, and whether people are rich or poor, religious or secular, and cuts across political beliefs. Governments don’t much like the merchant class either, even though this disdain is biting the hand that feeds. James C. Scott provides an example from ancient China on p. 131 of his thought-provoking 2017 book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States:

One reason for the official distrust and stigmatization of the merchant class in China was the simple fact that its wealth, unlike that of the rice planter, was illegible, concealable, and fugitive. One might tax a market, or collect tolls on a road or river junction where goods and transactions were more transparent, but taxing merchants was a tax collector’s nightmare.

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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Taxation, Trade, Uncategorized

Slogans and Nationalism

Posted on October 18, 2018 | Comments Off on Slogans and Nationalism

A passage from p. 562 of Ian Kershaw’s Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris contains an interesting political slogan:

He was replaced by Wolf Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, up to then police chief in Potsdam, of Saxon aristocratic descent, former head of the Berlin SA, with a reputation deeply sullied by scandal about his financial affairs and private life, but–compensating for everything–a radical antisemite who, the Propaganda Minister reckoned, would help him ‘make Berlin clean again’.

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Posted in Books, History, Political Animals, Uncategorized

Bats and Price Theory

Posted on September 17, 2018 | Comments Off on Bats and Price Theory

A Gordon Tullock-esque insight about the law of demand and why bats hunt at night, on p. 30 of Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker (thanks to Don Boudreaux for the recommendation):

Bats have a problem: how to find their way around in the dark. … But the daytime economy is already heavily exploited by other creatures such as birds. Given that there is a living to be made at night, natural selection has favored bats that make a go of the night-hunting trade.

In other words, animals are careful shoppers. Bats, or their ancestors, moved from higher-priced daytime hunting to lower-priced night-time hunting. Prices, in this case, being not money, but effort, food availability, and amount of competition. Had night and day’s hunting “prices” been the same, bats’ nocturnalism, and related traits such as sonar, would likely not have evolved.

Economics is everywhere, day and night.

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Posted in Books, Economics, Science, Uncategorized

Spontaneous Order in Roman History

Posted on September 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Spontaneous Order in Roman History

Edward Gibbon, describing a revival of sorts under Cola di Rienzo in 14th century Rome, on p. 2401, near the end of Decline and Fall, channels a bit of Adam Smith and F.A. Hayek:

“As soon as the life and property of the subject are secure, the labours and rewards of industry spontaneously revive: …”

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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Uncategorized

Legalized Plunder in 14th Century Venice

Posted on September 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Legalized Plunder in 14th Century Venice

Venice, as much as any other city, was founded on international trade and commerce. Even today, the outward-oriented and freewheeling worldview that commerce inspires is that lagoon city’s defining characteristic. From p. 287 of Roger Crowley’s City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas:

For Venice, piracy was the most detested crime, an affront to business and the rule of law. The Republic preferred its maritime violence organized at state level.

Crowley goes on to describe state-approved instances of piracy by and against Venetians, and other nations’ grievances about the same. If all this sounds familiar in the context of today’s trade debate, you’re not alone. History is alive, and this is a good reason to study it closely.

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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Trade, Uncategorized

Economics Is Everywhere – Richard Feynman Edition

Posted on August 26, 2018 | Comments Off on Economics Is Everywhere – Richard Feynman Edition
Economics is everywhere. Physicist Richard Feynman, while working at Los Alamos laboratory, re-discovered Adam Smith’s division of labor after some computer troubles and apparently didn’t even know it (he never mentions Adam Smith or the division of labor in this story):
In this particular case, we worked out all the numerical steps that the machines were supposed to do–multiply this, and then do this, and subtract that. Then we worked out the program, but we didn’t have any machine to test it on. So we set up this room with girls in it. Each one has a Marchant [old-timey calculator]: one was the multiplier, another was the adder. This one cubed–all she did was cube a number on anindex card and send it to the next girl.
 We went through our cycle this way until we got all the bugs out. It turned out that the speed at which we were able to do it was a hell of a lot faster than the other way, where every single person did all the steps. We got speed with this system that was the predicted speed for the IBM machine.
-Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 126.

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Posted in Books, Economics, Great Thinkers, Science, Uncategorized