"We do not live in a world of heroes and villains, and if we believe we do, we should really consider the possibility that we haven’t thought about th"We do not live in a world of heroes and villains, and if we believe we do, we should really consider the possibility that we haven’t thought about things properly. We cannot hope to make sense of our stories or ourselves (myths are a mirror of us, after all) if we refuse to look at half of the picture. Or – worse – don’t even notice half of it is missing. This book is an attempt to fill in some of the blank space."
This concluding paragraph from Pandora's Jar is a good summary of the goal of this nonfiction book, which is to tell the stories of the women in the Greek myths in a manner that is subtle and nuanced, giving them agency. And by "tell" I don't mean a retelling (of which there are many these days) but instead sort of like plot summaries and literary criticisms with compare and contrast of the different versions of the stories of ten women--one for each chapter--including traditional villains (Clytemnestra, Medea, Phaedra), victims (Eurydice, Penelope), something of both (Helen), monsters (Medusa) and more.
And overall it succeeds in being an interesting, entertaining and enlightening listen that lives up to that concluding paragraph (I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by the author--Natalie Haynes). Some familiarity with the majority of these stories is very helpful but it tells everything from scratch if need be so it is not essential.
The book was less convincing in convincing me of its thesis that these women were portrayed as complex people in Greek myths but that subsequently the patriarchy flattened them out into single-dimensional types ("show how differently they were viewed in the ancient world. How major female characters in Ovid would become non-existent Hollywood wives in twenty-first-century cinema. How artists would recreate Helen to reflect the ideals of beauty of their own time, and we would lose track of the clever, funny, sometimes frightening woman that she is in Homer and Euripides.")
To be clear, I am convinced that Euripides portrayed complex human women with agency (as Haynes points out, seven of the eight title characters in his plays about the Trojan War are female). And Ovid too. But many of the other Greeks did not (e.g., as Haynes herself points out, the deaths of Penelope's suitors get 400 lines while the deaths of a dozen slave women only merit ten lines). And many subsequent authors and portrayals are genuinely complex.
Overall highly recommended. I also love Haynes' podcast, "Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics" which has a lot in common with this book but the segments are a bit shorter, less formal, and funnier. Would recommend both....more
I had some sense of how amazing and important John von Neumann was but didn't know a lot of it and had a lot more to learn about the parts I did know I had some sense of how amazing and important John von Neumann was but didn't know a lot of it and had a lot more to learn about the parts I did know about. This book does a good job introducing that awe-inspiring combination, the relentlessness of his mind, his moving from area to area, the relentless logic of all of it, the extraordinary variety. For that reason I'm glad I read it.
But, I was also disappointed. The book purports to be a biography of John von Neumann (see the title, "The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann") but it felt like half or possibly even more of it was devoted to developments that happened before, during, and often after von Neumann. For example, the chapter on quantum mechanics does much more to retell familiar stories of Heisenberg and Schrödinger than it does to tell about van Neumann's contributions. The chapter on replicators has a little von Neumann but it seems like almost more on Conway, Wolfram and several others who followed him.
After the first chapter (which is biography) it is basically seven essays on the amazingly wide range and rapidly developing and changing topics von Neumann made massive contributions to (the theory of mathematics, the unification of different models of quantum mechanics, the design of nuclear weapons, the birth of programmable computers, game theory, RAND, and replicating models).
Many of the essays are good but they don't quite hit the mark in explaining von Neumann's ideas (which may be very hard to explain), sometimes have long sections that tell overly familiar stories or overly tangential ones, and does not weave together the life and discoveries.
That said, von Neumann is truly amazing and reading it all together is exciting and worthwhile. I could see an argument for recommending this book but I'll also be looking to others to supplement or extend on different aspects, probably starting with the novel The Maniac....more
Some of AI Snake Oil is very good, including its skepticism about AI hype, an excellent chapter on the limits of AI doomerism, and a focus on how AI iSome of AI Snake Oil is very good, including its skepticism about AI hype, an excellent chapter on the limits of AI doomerism, and a focus on how AI is used by humans rather than its autonomous capabilities. But much of the book—including its ultimate recommendations—is deeply misguided, reflecting a misunderstanding of capitalism, a mix of concerns not really AI-related, a one-sided review of the evidence, and a failure to compare AI to the alternatives—namely flawed humans and non-AI technologies. They are also more skeptical about progress in AI than I would be, though I don’t have strong convictions about who is right on this.
The book opens well by pointing out that AI is an overly broad term which confuses debates about it, analogizing it to a world where we only used the word “vehicles” and some people arguing for their efficiency meant bicycles while their debate opponents were focused on SUVs.
They distinguish between predictive AI, generative AI, and social media content moderation AI (in a chapter that feels out of place). They argue that much predictive AI is based on unreproducible papers with several errors, including testing on training data (“leakage”) and lacking structural models that break down when behavior changes. Moreover, companies deploy and sell systems that are often untested and sometimes aren’t even AI (occasionally with humans behind them) as part of widespread AI hype.
I found this mostly compelling but disagreed in places. They criticize flawed machine bail decisions without engaging with literature showing how it can improve or comparing to how terrible human judges are with their limited time and information. They discuss an AI hiring system that can be gamed based on attire or interview language—again something humans do too, probably worse. They’re overly fatalistic about prediction: while perfect prediction is impossible, we can do better than coin tosses and provide uncertainty estimates for users to weigh errors.
They’re more positive about generative AI except regarding what they view as large-scale intellectual property theft. While I haven’t settled my views here, I’ve long thought IP protections are overbroad and hinder innovation—my instincts lean that way on generative AI too, though I’m uncertain. People get enormous growing benefits from generative AI; if stricter IP protections just shifted rents that might be acceptable, but radically reducing innovation would be problematic.
Their chapter on AI existential threat is masterful and should be widely read. They effectively critique doomer arguments: they expect only incremental progress toward AGI, note that AI risks can be fought with better AI making unilateral disarmament counterproductive, argue “alignment” is premature given unknown future technologies, contend that paper clip-maximizing AI couldn’t exist without human-like understanding, and emphasize focusing on human misuse through measures like restricting bioweapon ingredients.
Their deeper flaws emerge from skepticism of capitalism that leads to indefensible positions. They criticize OpenAI’s Kenyan data annotators earning $1.46-3.74 hourly while engineers make nearly million-dollar salaries at an $80 billion company. This is pure demagoguery—the relevant comparison is to these workers’ alternatives, not to AI engineers. Even their criticism that “data annotation firms recruit prisoners, refugees, and people in collapsing economies” could be read positively: AI creating employment for the least employable is potentially beneficial.
The social media chapter focuses on Facebook’s Type I and Type II content moderation errors, but as they acknowledge, this mostly reflects human judgment rather than AI. They offer no real alternative to this complex task, noting Facebook couldn’t afford to handle 83 Ethiopian languages and moderate rare but crucial events. They praise Mastodon, which is far less usable than X and, by their admission, may not be scalable.
More broadly, they seem nostalgic for public provision, nonprofits, and smaller companies. They note “The early internet was funded by public funds and DARPA... before 1990s privatization,” overlooking that pre-privatization internet was barely accessible and limited in utility. Similarly, criticizing large AI companies ignores that they’ve produced the major breakthroughs.
They argue AI progress will be slow because profit-focused companies won’t invest in understanding how AI works. While true for some firms, well-funded companies with long-term horizons are likely to invest in understanding if it creates competitive advantage.
Some recommendations are sensible—like improving research reproducibility and enforcing deception laws. Others seem tangential, like supporting randomized college admissions above certain thresholds—an AI-irrelevant proposal they wouldn’t extend to bail decisions. Ultimately, what people attempt with AI, especially predictive AI, is challenging—but the alternatives are often worse.
[DISCLOSURE - I asked Claude "Can you do a very, very light edit of this" and posted that edit. I write these reviews very quickly, originally just did them for myself, and often have typos. Hopefully this eliminated the typos and improved the language a little--but also may have introduced some changes I didn't love because I didn't check Claude's edit carefully. My hope is the improvements outweighs th worsenings--but even better is if I had spent more time to take advantage of but not fully follow the AI edits.]...more
I had not read this book when it came out under the assumption that I knew most of it already. Recently I was asked to recommend five books on economiI had not read this book when it came out under the assumption that I knew most of it already. Recently I was asked to recommend five books on economic policy issues for the New York Times book review and I was missing a primer on mainstream macro issues. A colleague recommended I looked at this and thought it was perfect as a primer--and I personally learned some good ways to explain and link macro concepts as well.
Below is my short write up of this book for the NYT, check the review for the other four books. ---------------- The best way to understand things like the causes of recessions and inflation and the consequences of public debt is to take an introductory economics course and do all the problem sets. The second-best way? Read “The Little Book of Economics.” Don’t be fooled by its compact form and breezy writing: This book, by the Wall Street Journal chief economics commentator Greg Ip, manages to pack in just about everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the gross domestic product.
Ip is not trying to sell you policy recommendations; instead, he is just trying to teach you the mainstream economic perspective. Suddenly you will know why the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell looks a little nervous when he tells the press that the neutral rate of interest might have gone up.
The book does contain one obvious misstatement. It should be “The Little Book of Macroeconomics.” For more of the rich diversity of what economic studies has to offer at other scales you might want to also consider what’s below....more
In this excellent book Ragu Rajan and Rohit Lamba argue that India should and can grow faster than it has recently, envisioning a future in higher valIn this excellent book Ragu Rajan and Rohit Lamba argue that India should and can grow faster than it has recently, envisioning a future in higher value-added services for domestic consumption and export (including services bundled with manufacturing goods). Their prescription has many parts but the ones they emphasize most are political tolerance and openness (needed for creativity and ideas to fuel this type of economy), more political decentralization (so the state can be more responsive), and investments in people (especially education and health).
On the "what not to do" side is industrial policy which they are on the (quietly and politely) scathing side, offering the example of a $2b subsidy to offset 70% of the cost of a Micron that will support 5,000 jobs--at a cost of $400,000 per job. Moreover they point out it is still a foreign plant, India does not have big national security vulnerabilities around chips (and even it did getting part of the supply chain wouldn't help much), and this type of near-commodity manufacturing is at the lowest end of the value chain.
I would feel more confident about Rajan and Lamba's vision for the future of India if they could point to other examples. But there aren't any--thus the title Breaking the Mold. In addition, I'm worried that service sector productivity growth has generally been lower than manufacturing productivity growth around the world--another obstacle to the vision. Also India already has done a lot in services exports (from call centers to back-office legal work) but it has yet to be transformational in aggregate).
All that said, they do have a compelling set of reasons to be skeptical about industrialization as a future for India because there is too much low-wage competition globally, the type of manufacturing they would do is low value added (at the bottom of Richard Baldwin's "smile curve"), the existence of technological and other change that has led to premature deindustrialization (country's manufacturing employment share peaks at lower incomes), and the West is unlikely to tolerate another China-like shock. These arguments are compelling, thus the importance of offering another vision. And to be clear, I'm not saying I'm confident their vision is wrong, just nervous.
Fortunately, you don't need to be convinced by their vision to be convinced by their prescription for the future. They are NOT saying the service sector should be targeted and subsidized because they can confidently predict winners and losers--which basically is what much of the industrialization policy vision is based on. Instead they are talking about the types of preconditions for greater innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, participation in the workforce, etc., that would help advance just about any path--including industrialization if they end up having been too pessimistic about that.
And one more note: the book has a nice discussion of why China grew and India did not. Rajan and Lamba list a lot of causes but emphasize the following (some of which I've read elsewhere but worked nicely as a compare/contrast to their interpretation of India): (1) China had more primary education/literacy which was originally to train people to follow Communism but then when they liberalized enabled them to start small businesses and have higher productivity (this reminds me of some of the arguments that both Jews and Protestants have done well economically at various times because the reading they developed for another reason became useful economically when circumstances changes), (2) competition between localities in China made it more business friendly and growth oriented than India's highly nationalist system and (3) China could use wage suppression, financial suppression, devalued exchange rate and general lack of democracy to push through large scale infrastructure and industrialization in a way a democracy could not do....more
A short excellent book that conveys Michael Dirda's delight in reading, provides a good reading of the Sherlock Holmes canon, an interesting introductA short excellent book that conveys Michael Dirda's delight in reading, provides a good reading of the Sherlock Holmes canon, an interesting introduction to the other works of Conan Doyle (I've only read The Lost World), and a fascinating inside account of the Baker Street Irregulars, the American association of Sherlockians. It's infectious.
Merged review:
A short excellent book that conveys Michael Dirda's delight in reading, provides a good reading of the Sherlock Holmes canon, an interesting introduction to the other works of Conan Doyle (I've only read The Lost World), and a fascinating inside account of the Baker Street Irregulars, the American association of Sherlockians. It's infectious....more
This was a wonderful piece of history, a detailed reconstruction of 24 hours of a relatively minor incident in the grand scheme of the War of 1812 butThis was a wonderful piece of history, a detailed reconstruction of 24 hours of a relatively minor incident in the grand scheme of the War of 1812 but one that is still interesting in its and important in its own right, illuminating about the way the broader conflict was conducted, and a great way to learn about how history is down—and the role it plays in memories in the present. Interest in this book may be a little niche, if you’re not familiar with the central Connecticut coast it may not be for you (I read it while sitting in a house where I could see where some of the events had taken place) but I would still make the case for some more interested in nautical warfare, the British Royal Navy an American history more broadly.
The book provides a little context about the War of 1812 and the the naval aspect in the mid-Atlantic. But it then drills down on a British revenge raid if what is now the town of Essex (a beautiful town with numerous buildings preserved on Main Street that were there in 1812) to burn about two dozen ships, many of them privateers that were harassing the British navy off New London. The British then stole a ship and returned back through the mouth of the Connecticut River to the Long Island Sound.
The incident was largely forgotten until a few decades ago when an accidental conversation led to learning more about it and the publication of a pamphlet. This book was the product of much more extensive research including the British naval archives, contemporary newspapers, and some battlefield archeology. The author painstakingly goes through the evidence on a few unanswered questions, most dramatically who was and was not a traitor and were the people of the area right to be accused of dereliction of duty.
The book ends with the battle for history, the struggle to get the battle officially recognized by the State of Connecticut and ultimately the Federal government, as well as to learn everything that went into the book.
It also has lots of helpful maps (although just of the main area in the Connecticut theater, it would have benefited from one of the Long Island Sound as a whole), pictures and an Appendix with a sampling of the primary source documents it was based on—including one hilarious “advertisement” which doxxed and attempted to rebut the anonomyous authors of another account....more
How the World Became Rich is a terrific and balanced synthesis of the explosion of really exciting research that has helped us better understand the mHow the World Became Rich is a terrific and balanced synthesis of the explosion of really exciting research that has helped us better understand the massive economic transition into sustained per capita GDP growth that started about 200 years ago in Great Britain and has since spread to much of the world. For better or worse, this is not a monocausal explanation but instead the first part is a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the main perspectives (geography, institutions, culture, demography and colonialism) and the second part integrates all of these into a research-informed narrative account of the origins and shifting location of growth.
The traditional economic approach to growth was to view it through the lens of the Solow Model, but this at best gets at the proximate causes of growth (physical and human capital) and has nothing to say about the most fundamental determinant of growth even in this simple model (the rate of technological change is exogenous). When I was in grad school in the 1990s there was growing excitement about endogenous growth theory that attempted to explain the rate of technological change—something Paul Romer got a Nobel Prize for. But that too did not really explain in any fundamental way the rate of technological change or the myriad questions like why India and Great Britain had similar incomes 500 years ago, very different incomes 100 years ago, and are converging again today (although the process will likely take a long, long time given how far apart they are).
This left a lot of economic history to people not working in the discipline of economics, like Fernand Braudel or other big historians. They had a lot of important insights and exciting detail but no method to really test all of it.
In the last twenty or so years economists have been using empiricism (not theory) but directed at a broader and more fundamental set of issues than just the proximate sources of growth. Clever natural experiments like using historical variation in what parts of central and Eastern Europe were under Hapsburg control or what colonies were susceptible to malaria have helped elucidate mechanisms that play out on the time scale of centuries.
Each one of these papers, however, generally can only get at one aspect. You also don't want to think of growth as fully pre-determined because national positions reverse and change—and much depends on chance (e.g., reforms in China in the 1980s that unleashed growth might not have happened).
That is why How the World Became Rich has so much to offer because it synthesizes the different perspectives, discusses their interrelationships (e.g., the way culture shapes institutions), and integrates them into more of a causal-research informed narrative synthesis.
I won't try to describe all of it but would briefly list some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different perspectives (many of which I cover in the growth lecture in my introductory course):
Geography: African economic development likely, in part, a function of the many land-locked countries, malaria and sleeping sickness. BUT, have seen many countries without great geography become prosperous and vice versa, plus reversals suggest geography not indelible.
Institutions: Like the modern research, places a lot of weight on these, especially inclusive and limits on sovereigns imposed by nobles and parliaments. But still, many confounding issues (e.g., some institutional models might predict more growth in India than China).
Culture: Moves more slowly, can become maladapted. Interesting discussion of the Protestant Ethic (less contributed to growth for Weber-type reasons and more because it encouraged literacy and by not providing a source of legitimacy for rule led to parliaments etc.) and Islam (was well adapted for growth in the first millennium CE but then some of what had been strengths became weaknesses, much the same way that Italian city states were good at certain types of commerce but did not transition).
Demography: Interesting discussion of the "European Marriage Pattern" of delaying marriages leading to fewer births and more investment.
Colonization: Does a terrific job of a difficult topic, places more weight on the ways colonization hurt the countries that were victimized than helped the ones that colonized—for example, Spain and Portugal may have been hurt because their overseas empires strengthened autocratic governments that were bad for growth.
P.S. Shortly after writing and posting this review I attended a seminar on a paper that provides statistical evidence to support the thesis that the codification of technical terms was critical to the spread of industrialization—specifically Japan’s enormous 19th century effort to develop dictionaries and Japanese words for technical terms from British industrial manuals. Just another sign of how exciting and fruitful this area of research has been—and how it is continuing to evolve....more
Effectively a short collection of interrelated essays on different aspects of Balzac, including where he located his books in Paris and what was goingEffectively a short collection of interrelated essays on different aspects of Balzac, including where he located his books in Paris and what was going on at the time with newspapers and the publishing industry. Part biography, part appreciation, it has a generous helping of block quotes and pictures. One interesting perspective was the ways in which Balzac did not fully capture his time. Like Dickens some of it was a little bit older (e.g., he barely mentions the railroad or railroad terminals in the Human Comedy, even thought it was extensive when he wrote). Also some of the major political events of the day went unreflected. But in other ways he was hyper focused, including on money. And, of course, Paris....more
I saw this on a friend's Goodreads feed and started to revise down my opinion of her. I thought our book tastes were very much in sync but this raisedI saw this on a friend's Goodreads feed and started to revise down my opinion of her. I thought our book tastes were very much in sync but this raised questions. Then she texted me that I should read it and I responded that it seemed like "cheesy Americana". Notwithstanding my reservations I downloaded the audio book, listened to a little, listened to a little more, and was hooked. By the end I was also moved. Now I need to decide whether I should unrevised my opinion of my friend or revised down my opinion of myself.
Before going further, let me say that IF you want to read this I strongly recommend the audiobook. It is read by Doris Kearns Goodwin who has a nice voice for the emotions and feelings she conveys. Extended passages in Dick Goodwin's voice, like his diary and some of his letters, are read by Bryan Cranston. And finally, the quotes from speeches by John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy are all taken from archival recordings--which is particularly important in a book about the man that penned many of these enduring words.
The book largely focuses on Dick Goodwin, how he came of age politically, joined the army, the Kennedy staff, campaign and administration, then the Johnson administration and finally the McCarthy and Robert Kennedy campaigns in 1968. His role was speechwriter but he was also involved in policy including Latin American issues under Kennedy (when they were central) then civil rights and the Great Society--a term he coined--under Johnson. He had an amazing ability to be wherever the action was--and unfortunately where the tragedy was as well.
Doris Kearns Goodwin writes the book largely based on going through 100+ boxes Dick had saved of diaries, letters, memos, speech drafts, memorabilia, and more--including a broken police baton from the 1968 Democratic convention. She also does other research and interviews to fill out the picture. Her story is also presented in parallel but with considerably less detail, including joining the Johnson Labor Department and then, in 1968, the White House where she gets close to Lyndon Baines Johnson. Although she was in many geographic locations with Dick they did not actually meet until the early 1970s--after the events presented in detail in the book.
Dick Goodwin is a complicated character. The book presents a lot of the criticisms of his opportunism, self promotion, and more. While each individual item is refuted by arguments it makes the collective weight of them started to feel like there must have been something to it. How many times can it not be your fault that something you've done leaks to the press and results in a hagiographic story? It is to Kearns Goodwin's credit that she presents these complexities even if she disagrees.
I did not learn a whole lot new about the very familiar ground of event like how Johnson moved rapidly after Kennedy's death to push a legislative agenda inspired by him. But it filled in some new details and the human perspective and meticulous reconstruction of a world that is both bygone but also very familiar was fascinating.
I enjoyed Doris Kearns Goodwin's company on this journey but not enough that I would even consider reading her book Leadership: In Turbulent Times--unless perhaps my friend strongly recommends it....more
The Great Divergence is a monumental historical argument for why European economies diverged from Asian Economies in the 18th and 19th centuries, achiThe Great Divergence is a monumental historical argument for why European economies diverged from Asian Economies in the 18th and 19th centuries, achieving the first large-scale sustained growth in GDP per capita the world had ever known. It was first published in 2000 and has generated substantial debate since then, I am not expert enough to have a view on the overall debate but this book certainly shifted my thinking—and the accretion of argument and detail is much, much more than the thumbnail summary I had been familiar with before reading the book or that you will be if you read the rest of this review.
The summary of Kenneth Pomeranz’s argument: Around 1800 living standards were similar in the Yangzi delta area of China and England/the Netherlands (the book shifts the reference points back and forth from these particulars to Europe more broadly vs. Asia more broadly, sometimes even including Japan and India). If anything China was closer to market capitalism with more freely alienable land, rental contracts, market sales of produce, and fewer state monopolies and guilds to interfere with the, say, rural textile production. Other supposed advantages of the European system were non-existent or small including double-entry bookkeeping (not widely used in Europe plus China sophisticated accounting), the capitalist spirit of Weber, focus on luxury goods/consumption, joint stock companies (weren’t important until railroads), better patent system (didn’t matter much because technology did not play much role until later in the takeoff), etc.
But for two developments: (1) the European conquest of the Americas and importation of large-scale slavery and (2) the fortunate location of English coal deposits, both Europe and Asia were reaching ecological limits where land technology was not getting better, timber prices were rising, less land for raising cattle/sheep, reduced manure and fertilizers, etc. This ecological constraint would have capped both of their growth.
The Americas, however, relieved the ecological constraint by allowing large-scale imports of sugar, cotton, timber and much more—enough to replace more than all of the available English land. The Americas also exported silver and some gold which went to Asia to purchase manufactured goods, especially from India. At the same time, English coal also relieved the ecological constraint, created a massive energy supply that overcame the Chinese advantage in energy efficiency, and was critical for industries like iron, glass, beer etc. China had coal too but it was unfortunately located in the North which had been depleted by Mongol invasions, plagues, floods, etc.
The alternative to the Pomeranz argument is the idea the the European industrial revolution was less inflection point than something that was growing slowly over many centuries and so another cause or set of causes was already present and it was not these two key features that differentiated them from Asia. Pomeranz brings an enormous amount of detail to bear in arguing against every aspect of this thesis but at times one worries that he is simply collecting data to support his case. He also makes simpler arguments like if the differences were centuries in the making why not much divergence as late as 1800.
As I said, this summary does not do justice to the book. It is filled with enormous amount of detail. Which system was closer to markets, for example, is addressed in man, many ways like looking at wage disparities between rural laborers in agriculture and textiles or looking at interest rate differentials.
The modern approach to economic history is to focus on statistical analysis of well identified deep historical questions, something that was summarized and advanced well in The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. This book is a reminder that deep historical comparative scholarship criss-crossing across many, many areas can both help better understand the rise of the West and the complex interactions of the global economy at a critical period of divergence.
P.S. Would welcome people’s thoughts on this book or recommendations on alternative histories of the great divergence....more
I've spent a lot of time working for think tanks, working with think tanks, and consuming the output of think tanks both while in government and outsiI've spent a lot of time working for think tanks, working with think tanks, and consuming the output of think tanks both while in government and outside it. And I still learned an enormous amount from this book. The overall story is familiar to people who have paid a lot of attention: as government grew the demand for expertise grew, for a while this was satisfied by ostensibly "neutral" and "non partisan" sources like universities, RAND, Brookings, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Congressional Research Service (CRS), etc. But then the conservative movement decided these were all actually liberal sources so it set up the Heritage Foundation as a counterweight, the first think tank that was explicitly partisan as well as emphasized communications and relations on Capital Hill. This was the creation of an alternative conservative "knowledge regime." Then progressives set up the Center for American Progress as a counterweight to Heritage, in part mirrored on its rapid response, easily digestible information and relations with Congress and the media. The book also intensively studies two other think tanks it considers "partisan," the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). It considers a range of others as well.
What makes the book novel is how much original data and analytics it brings to bear on a range of questions as well as a little bit more political and international context. For example, the American system is contrasted to many other countries which have explicit party think tanks that serve the party. Here the think tanks that work on a range of issues have both spare capacity to devote to the topic of the day (rather than narrower think tanks) as well as can help parties prioritize and set the agenda. One of the books more audacious claims is that partisan think tanks have played a meaningful role in polarization by supplying each side with different facts and interpretations. That the difference between the parties is less normative than the way they read the positive analysis and data.
There was some intriguing data that coded the distribution of policy papers by think tanks showing that they are skewed towards partisan topics when measured against the CRS. For example, think tanks do little on public lands, agriculture, transportation and science relative to CRS but they do a lot on health, civil rights and macroeconomics. The book also shows empirical evidence that issues partisan think tanks devote more attention to (as measured by white papers, citations by members of Congress, and testimony) are more polarized--although it is unclear what is cause and what is effect.
Other intriguing data documented the decline of witnesses at Congressional hearings from universities and "non-partisan" sources and the increase in witnesses from partisan think tanks.
The book differentiates between the think tanks. Left ones are more inclined to cite university research and accept/interpret/repackage CBO numbers. Right ones are less inclined to cite university research and do more of their own modeling. In his case studies Fagan finds that both Heritage and CAP produce biased estimates of policy but CBPP does not. He is particularly scathing on the role that money has played in shifting conservatives on the topic of climate change.
One of the weaknesses of the book was that it implicitly assumed that think tanks were the exogenous, independent variable causing lots of stuff as opposed to taking more seriously the ways in which they were reflecting and internalizing changes in the political system. How much were they driving politicians or supplying what they wanted? The book does provide some time series evidence on this issue but for a variety of reasons I was not completely convinced. Perhaps a bigger one is that it probably does too much to accept the neutrality of universities, Brookings, and the "non partisan" knowledge regime. While Heritage dramatically overstated their case against all of this they were not completely wrong. Which also means that CAP citing academic research more than Heritage does is partly a reflection of CAP being more scientific but also partly because scientists are more liberal.
I also would love to read Fagan's thoughts and analysis on what has happened more recently. In effect the book is about the period the data covers, from the 1970s through about five years ago. But since then the Roosevelt Institute has, for example, played a big role in staffing the Biden administration on economic policy. Other groups, like Groundwork Collaborative, are challenging the approach of more traditional progressive think tanks. These are barely, if at all, mentioned in the book which does give a little more attention to the alternative right-of-center think tanks like Niskanen. But hopefully this is not Fagan's last word on this topic....more
An enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the AmAn enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the Amazon algorithm, enjoyed it, and so read all of it.
Kafka is so impossible to place geographically, linguistically, ethnically. Is he Czech? Austro-Hungarian? German writer? Jewish? He was all of these and none of these. To learn more about him Karolina Watroba travels around to all of these places and more--including Oxford where many of his papers are and Korea. We learn a little more about Kafka's person, writing and impact in each of these places. She has a deeper discussion of a few of his works (Metamorphosis, The Judgment, The Trial) and also some discussion of a lot of works influenced by Kafka.
Most of all Watroba's relatively light and enthusiastic and curious tone shows through from beginning to end, making the book particularly enjoyable....more
I like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed mI like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed me a copy that he had just purchased for me at full price in a bookstore. But I'm really glad I did.
In lieu of a review I'm pasting the email I sent to Cass after reading it (with a few names of friends and former classmates redacted to XX's, sorry you won't know the other great actors in Harvard's Class of 1992):
---- From: Jason Furman To: Cass Sunstein Subject: A few comments on your book Date: June 13, 2024 9:41am
1. It is outstanding. A lovely combination of social science, speculative thinking, literary appreciation, and being inside your strange mind.
2. In the paperback you should fix the only error in the book: deleting the words “still is” after talking about the importance of Scientific American. At least on gender issues it is deeply unscientific and an embarrassment.
3. You are reasonably objective about the Yesterday thought experiment, even managing to be objective about the role of chance in such world historical geniuses as The Beatles and Bob Dylan. But I found you lost all objectivity and reason in discussing Star Wars which came across as something that surpassed and transcended all contingency to be pure, unadulterated timeless fame.
4. You don’t appear to read enough foreign language fiction, just about the only foreign reference was to Tolstoy and you didn’t provide any evidence that you read past the first sentence of Anna Karenina. In my book about how to become famous there will be an entire chapter on Cervantes and the only element of luck will be that the bullet that hit him in the Battle of Lepanto missed his head/heart by a foot. Other than that his fame was inevitable and based on the fact that Don Quixote is even better than Star Wars. I would also have Pushkin, Gogol and Kafka. And more Dickens, but I was glad to see the enthusiasm for Great Expectations even if it is not as good as Bleak House.
5. I often do the “run history 100 times” thought experiment with various things. Like Obama’s effort to pass an immigration bill (it passed in 25 of the times), XX being successful (80 of the times, part of the evidence is the “independent draws” of his success in different context that were not just the Matthew Principle), or fame.
6. I’ve had this idea, possibly infeasible, that we might be able to get at some of the issues about “objectivity” vs. information cascade/polarization/chance with LLMs. The idea would be to train a model only on data through, say, 1860. And then give it all the books published in 1861 without telling it the authors and ask it to rank them. Would Great Expectations be first? If you’re worried that it already formed its views about what greatness was based on earlier Dickens novels and their reception then cut the training off in 1836.
7. I wish you had more on scientific genius and fame. You mostly deal with “subjective” greatness but there is something objective about how much more Newton got new and right than anyone else in his time. The big issue raised by scientific fame (and possibly is related to artistic fame, although a bit less obvious), is the issue of “inevitability’ and “simultaneous discovery”. If there was no Newton we would have had calculus (in fact was simultaneously discovered), would we have had everything else and in short order? Darwin is enormously famous but mostly because he accelerated publication and wrote a bit better, we would have basically had the same theory even without him. Most of quantum mechanics seems like simultaneous discovery where if this person didn’t do it then would that person. Is Einstein different? Special relativity comes straight out of Michelson-Morley, the Lorenz Transformations, etc., hard to believe it wouldn’t have been found soon after 1905. But general relativity? Is it possible that absent Einstein we still would not have it? I’ve had the same fantasy about the LLM experiment, but might need better AI, but train it on data through 1910 and see if it figures out general relativity.
8. Next time we’re together I have to tell you about my family’s friendship with the Dylan family when I was young. It is related to fame.
9. The example I use with people on fame, chance, hard work and ability is my freshman year roommate (and still friend) Matt Damon. Matt was one of the 4 best actors in my class (along with XX, XX and XX), I’m reasonably confident in the objectiveness of that assessment, ability to do different voices, characters, etc. He was one of the 2 most focused on being a movie star in my class (our first conversation was about how he would be a movie star), tied with XX. So relative to Harvard he was a 1 in 800 talent. Harvard recruits based on exceptional talent so I’m willing to stipulate, guessing here, he was a 1 in 4,000 talent for people born in 1970. But that means there were 1,000 people who were just as good at acting born in that year and luck was the reason he did better than the other 1,000 of them (including Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Rachel Weisz).
10. I’ve always meant to read Joyce Carol Oates. But I’m a bit of a completist which would be rather dangerous in her case (or yours for that matter).
11. I enjoyed the Houdini chapter but wasn’t sure I understood the point of it.
What’s your address, I want to reciprocate by sending you a great novel about how to become famous—and reversals of fame. [NOTE - Cass will be getting a copy of [book:The Fraud|66086834] which, in part, illustrates some of the reversals in fame that he discusses in the book--with William Harrison Ainsworth getting massively eclipsed by Charles Dickens over time, a reversal from their contemporaneous positions.]...more
An enjoyable read which has a little about how generative AI works, a little about some of the bigger questions like existential risk and superalignmeAn enjoyable read which has a little about how generative AI works, a little about some of the bigger questions like existential risk and superalignment, and a lot about the practical mentality you should adopt in working with AI. The title gives the broad approach, it is about how humans can work with generative AI to strengthen and extend what they do. It centers around four rules: (1) use AI to help with everything; (2) be the human in the loop; (3) think of AI as a person (even if it is not); and (4) understand today's AI will be surpassed.
Would also add that it is delightfully written including several passages by AIs--which are called out as such and used for pedagogic purposes....more
It's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel aboIt's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel about the set of events involved in the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, which eliminated the civilizations of the Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians (although they re-emerged centuries later), and others.
I started reading the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline but it was too scholarly for me (sorry!), with way too many names of people, cities, civilizations, and also academic controversies for me to follow it very well or feel engaged. So I put it aside. Then my daughter, not knowing any of this, pointed out this graphic novel version of it in the bookstore and I was excited to buy it. It too is quite complicated with lots of people, cities, civilizations but the pictures are really good and engaging and the story is slimmed down and shorter than the original scholarly book. So I ended up liking it a lot.
(I confess that although this graphic novel version looks like it was written for me I'm not sure who else would read it, most "serious" adults would not want to be caught reading a comic book and most younger people would be put off by the complexity of even this version. But hopefully there are others like me out there and that is why we have this book and hopefully will have many more like it.)
Back to substance, the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations was extraordinary. Flourishing societies with urban areas, writing, rulers, advanced agriculture disappeared around the same time in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the centuries that followed writing disappeared in Greece, for example, and people were left with legends of a previous advanced society in the form of epics like The Iliad.
Eric Cline argues that to understand this we need to appreciate how interconnected the societies of the time were by trade, migration and intermarriage. The one mega event that looms large is a huge drought lasting 200 years that has only recently been conclusively (?) established by scientific studies of things like ancient sediment. But this interacted in Cline's interpretation with migrations of people (the "Sea People" loom large in this), possibly some earthquakes, illegitimacy or rulers and other factors.
Eric Cline has now written another book After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations that I'm planning to read--hoping that this background and the greater familiarity of the Iron Age make it more enjoyable and easy to follow. But if I have to set that one aside too I'm very much hoping that Cline once again teams up with Glynnis Fawkes on another excellent graphic adaptation of a scholarly work.
An excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that aAn excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that appeared to my unskilled eyes as deeply and originally researched, largely from primary sources. It is a cradle-to-grave biography (with a brief epilogue about how Herzl is remembered and misremembered to this day), and a substantial fraction of it takes place before Herzl comes to Zionism, but that part is interesting too as a portrait of late 19th century Jewish life in Europe among upper class intellectuals. The story really gets going as Herzl starts going through different ways of thinking about a national homeland for the Jews and rediscovers his own Judaism. The substance, process and charisma and also confusion they are bound up with are all on full display. Penslar is balanced and trying to tell the Herzl story from his time not re-reading in ways to fit it into our current debates. Overall, highly recommended--and would love to read more in the Jewish short lives series....more
This comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in WesThis comparative study at the intersection of history, sociology and politics seeks to understand why unions workers, specifically Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, have shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over the last seventy years, with most of the shift concentrated in the last two decades. Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol tell a rich and nuanced story while bringing lots of new data to the fore, including systematic cataloging of changes in union newsletters/newspapers over time, tallies of bumper stickers in a Steelworkers parking lot, extensive interviews, as well as synthesizing other scholarship.
Their argument in part rests on the familiar story of deindustrialization and the effects it had on employment and communities. The novel twist, which they develop and emphasize, is that this ended up shifting unions from being at the center of a rich social network that fostered social events and ties to unions being simply about collective bargaining. For example, when everyone lived in one town the local could organize bbqs, sporting events and the like--but with sparser employment people started commuting much longer distances to their jobs and were less likely to have social ties to co-workers or through the union. This vacuum ended up being filled by other associations, like the National Rifle Association, that often connected people to the Republican Party, particularly the ascendant populist strain under Trump.
Some of their argument is bolstered by an interesting contrast between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). People in the building trades move from job to job so the union plays an important role in allocating the jobs but also is more active in fostering ties because of what would otherwise be a very lonely way to operate.
A lot of social scientists are content with just documenting and explain but Newman and Skocpol seek to provide advice to labor leaders (who still support Democrats) about how to bring their rank and file along, most notably through trying to resuscitate some of the richer social ties. They also have a plea to Democrats not to give up on this group and instead more actively court and engage it.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable and enlightening read that brought a lot of new data into the world. Ultimately, however, it documents a series of associations and sequences of events so cannot settle questions of causation. The atomization of workers is a consequence of deindustrialization but is it itself a cause of shifting party affiliations? Or is the deindustrialization also the cause of that? And the advice to union leaders is worth a try but there are, as they document, very good reasons unions no longer serve the social functions they used to and so it may be fruitless to try to bring that back....more
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