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Book Recommendations|Reading Time: < 1

The best non-fiction books of 2013

Economist Tyler Cowen, who was named one of the top 100 influential thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, offers some interesting picks:

  • Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschmann.
  • A History of Future Cities.
  • Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.
  • Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music  (and also Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century.)
  • Confessions of a Sociopath.
  • China’s War With Japan 1937-1945, the US edition has the sillier title Forgotten Ally.
  • War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics.
  • Affordable Excellence: The Singapore Health System.
  • New Museums in China. (Good text but mostly a picture book, stunning architecture, no art, full of lessons.)
  • Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State.
  • The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and our Gamble Over Earth’s Future.
  • Margaret Thatcher: An Authorized Biography, from Grantham to the Falklands.
  • From books “close at hand,” I very much liked John List and Uri Gneezy, Virginia Postrel on glamour, Lant Pritchett, The Rebirth of Education, and Tim Harford on macroeconomics.
  • How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region.
  • The Internal Enemy, Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832.
  • Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, volume I.
  • Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House.

Nothing that caught your eye? Try his 2012 list.

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