My winter-break reading list

books ▪

Ah... winter break. The time to break from econ-related readings (well, sort of...). So, here is the list of things I plan to read in the next month:

1. Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Bryan Caplan called it "the best book ever written on political psychology". At any rate, I am always intrigued by predictions by experts (and how often they got it wrong) and, given that this book is based on data collected for more than a decade, it promises to be a powerful analysis.

2. Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers. Trivers is famous for various efforts to link evolutionary explanations to somewhat counterintuitive behaviors, such as parent-offspring conflict and self-deception. The book collects his major papers and Trivers began each paper with a story of how he came up with the idea. The few chapters that I read was fun.

3. The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. A nice reminder that theorists screw up and without some kind of checks, it can get really bad. Was voted The Economist's book of the year in 2005. (That's how I get the reference in the first place).

4. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. A history of four American pragmatist thinkers. Personally, I think Indonesian (public) intellectuals need to begin adopting this particularly American brand of philosophy.

5. One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth. Okay, fine... Yes, this is an economics book. Looks so interesting with strong reviews, I just can't resist.