Newmark's Door

I haven't read it, but several reviews I've seen really like Daltrey's new book.

Kyle Smith reviews Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. The book strongly endorses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to treat mild-to-moderate depression.

Related: "The Idioms of Non-Argument: What happens when reviewers spend more time focusing on the motives of authors than the merits of their claims?"

I haven't read it yet, but it's definitely on the list.

Review by Amity Shlaes of a new book . (If it doesn't come up right away, click refresh on your browser.) I learned some things about Mr. Willkie.

But the power of Willkie’s arguments forced the Republican Party away from isolationism, and the Willkie movement shamed Roosevelt into softening his anti-business stance.

Maybe because non "brainy" content is now so dirt cheap?

I'm a little late to hear about this, but it's quite welcome news. (Link via Economics Job Market Rumors.)

Universal Economics is a new work that builds on the foundation of its two predecessors, University Economics (1964, 1967, 1972) and Exchange and Production (1969, 1977, 1983). Collaborating again, Professors Alchian and Allen have written a fresh, final presentation of the analytical tools employed in the economic way of thinking.

This is a devastating review of Nancy MacLean's much-discussed "expose" of James Buchanan, the Kochs, and their corruption of modern American politics. As I write it is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Literature. The JEL is one of the top journals in economics and it is a journal of the American Economic Association, the leading professional organization for American economists. One would hope that such a review in such an authoritative source would stop, or at least inhibit, Lefties from gleefully citing it. 

Based on experience I very much doubt it will. But we'll see.

Here's an excerpt from the review:

This essay aims to carefully evaluate MacLean’s account. We will develop three main claims. One, as we argue in section 2, MacLean fails to demonstrate convincingly how Buchanan was the central character and mastermind of the grand scheme to revamp  democracy and government intervention. Second, MacLean’s account is marred by many misunderstandings about public choice theory. Thus, in section 3, we argue that her historical analysis and theoretical criticisms about public choice generally miss the mark, in particular because MacLean fails to understand the specifics of constitutional political economy, as well as its relationship to the economic analysis of politics. Third, in the midst of abundant archival material, her historical (and biographical) narrative is at best sketchy, and shows significant flawed arguments, misplaced citations, and dubious conjectures. Sections 4, 5, and 6 address different points of MacLean’s narrative in detail, from her analysis of the origins of Buchanan’s thought to her depiction of his involvement with the administration of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Indeed, MacLean tends to over-interpret certain aspects in Buchanan’s life or thought and to overlook others that are nonetheless important. This is the case with ethics, which Buchanan always included when analyzing of how markets work, as we show in section 7.

Other than that, how was the book, Mrs. Lincoln?

(This review is just one of many critical reviews. For example, Mike Munger's review is instructive and also fun to read.)

Another gorgeous example of the principle that if an organization makes a rule--business, government, whatever--you can be virtually certain that people will come along and try to game the rule. And if there's a lot of money involved, the gaming will be taken to the nth degree.

Good weekend reading: they'll be studying Theranos in B-schools for decades.

Positive comments on Sabine Hossenfelder's new book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, in which she argues the answer is "Yes!"