Book splat

Timothy Taylor, The Instant Economist: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works is too elementary for most MR readers but it is well executed and would make a good gift for anyone needing an introduction to economic reasoning.

Larry Kotlikoff and Scott Burns have their new The Clash of Generations: Saving Ourselves, Our Kids, and Our Economy, due out in March.  I believe they are still fiscal pessimists.

There is Ruchir Sharma, Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles, due out in April.

I reviewed Ruth Grant's new Strings Attached: When do Incentives Corrupt? here, for Science, university readers can get through the gate.

Alessandra Casella, Storable Votes: Protecting the Minority Voice, calls for a system where you can abstain from voting on one measure and receive an extra vote on something else.

Christopher Balding, Sovereign Wealth Funds: The New Intersection of Wealth and Politics is a useful overview.

Jo Guldi, Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State is a good and also conceptual history of 19th century road building.

I loved Arthur Schnitzler's Casanova's Homecoming, free on Kindle, which I never had read before.  Alice James: A Biography, by Jean Strouse, is a very good look at her life (she is the sister) and the life of the James family.

There is The Southern Tiger: Chile's Fight for a Democratic and Prosperous Future, by Ricardo Lagos, Elizabeth Dickinson, and Blake Hounshell, next up on my Kindle.

I recommend Michael Grabell, Money Well-Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, The Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History.  It is a very good journalistic account of how the money was spent, and less scandal-mongering than the title might indicate.  I found it to be quite an objective account.  There should be more books like this, looking at the nuts and bolts of economic legislation.