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A short little graphic novel in Spanish for, I think, adolescents. But it works pretty well for new students of Spanish.

It’s always a pleasure to read a Pinker book and this one is certainly no exception. The story so far: although we still do plenty of horrible things to each other, we don’t do them nearly as often as we used to, and most of the horrible things we do today aren’t nearly as horrible as the horrible things we used to do.

Marvelous. Historical fiction set in Scotland shortly after the death of the English King Henry VIII. But be prepared to keep your dictionary beside you and simply skip over the languages you don’t know. Dunnett reminds me a bit of Stephen R. Donaldson, at least in their shared penchant for putting main characters through hell and back.

Thanks for the recommendation, Sam!

The Dust Bowl era, as recounted by its survivors. Unbelievable. I had no idea how bad it was, both for the people and the environment.

Not the Hogarth I was looking for! Anyway, some seriously intense sci-fi/fantasy.

A fairly interesting basketball book co-authored (in alternating chapters) by Phil Jackson and Charlie Rosen. Jackson’s prose is kind of wooden but they both have some interesting stories from basketball history. The centerpiece is Jackson’s account of the Laker’s first championship under his coaching.

The quick rise and fall of an enormous hedge fund, staffed by smart guys and Nobel economists. It had to be rescued to prevent a possible global financial meltdown and its fall demonstrated the fallacy of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. And it all turned out to be just a sampler of what was to come in 2008. Hooray!

San Diego surf culture noir. Yes.

A marvelous and profound history of debt, money, and markets and their relationship to the rest of human society. Highly recommended.

Rodrik presents economic globalization as a trilemma: amongst democracy, high-levels of globalization, and nation states, you can pick any two. And since we’re unlikely to see the end of the last, and we don’t want to give up the first, globalization in its more extreme forms will have to go.