jasonfurman's reviews
1367 reviews

Tells the story of Tesla's last years in New York, outstanding, imaginative.

Basically a long magazine article, perfectly fine but not much to it.

The Feast of the Goat is an enormously powerful, brutal and moving historical novel about the prologue and aftermath to Trujillo

Re-reading this for the first time since I was thirteen or so. It still seems excellent and unique, if maybe a tiny bit less special.

A well researched, well told story of the Cavendish lab and the work that culminated in the discovery of the neutron and the splitting of the atom in the early 1930s. Experimentation gets short shrift in histories of science as compared to theory, but Ernest Rutherford is as interesting as just about any theorist and using a simple apparatus to essentially visualize the atom itself as Rutherford did in his scattering experiment is about as impressive as any theoretical feat. This book takes those as its prelude and focuses on Walton, Cockcroft and to a lesser degree Chadwick and Rutherford's ongoing role.

In the process, the book tells the interesting story of the inception of larger scale experimentation that moved beyond tabletop experiments by gentleman scientists to large machinery using large amounts of energy and teams of researchers.

The book is more thoroughly researched journalistic history that delves more deeply into the engineering complexities of building the apparatus than into nuclear physics itself, the only reason for not giving it a full five stars.

Raghuram Rajan is the hands down co-winner of the best title for any economics book in recent years: Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists. It was also a very good book.

Relative to this stellar predecessor, Fault Lines was a disappointment. The thesis is that a number of fault lines contributed to the financial crisis and continue to leave us vulnerable. In Rajan's view these include: (i) inequality which led to encouraging over-borrowing as a palliative; (ii) a system without automatic stabilizers that leads the Fed to overreact with overly low, bubble-causing interest rates during downturns; (iii) faulty financial regulation and corporate governance that breeds and exacerbates bubbles; and (iv) global macroeconomic imbalances.

In some cases the diagnosis seems apt, in others I would much more strongly disagree, but most of them are reasonably predictable -- albeit it would be hard to predict that any one person would share this eclectic a set of views.

Rajan proposes solutions to most of these fault lines, some of which seem more commensurate to the challenge than others. The most interesting is the notion that the economy would be less bubble prone if it had a more robust social safety net, including health insurance (which we now have), automatically extended unemployment insurance, etc.

As to the disappointment, it stems partly from thinking some of Rajan's arguments are tendentious (e.g., putting disproportionate blame on the government's home ownership policies for the subprime meltdown) and some are pretty obvious. The book is also marred from too many three-page literature summaries of everything from the causes of inequality to universal health care where Rajan does not have as much to add as he does in areas closer to his specialization like finance.

A stunning novel, everyone should read it. This is Alina Bronsky's first novel. Her second, The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine, is also excellent. They have a lot in common: gritty stories of Russian emigrees in Germany told by unforgettable narrators. But they also show the range of Bronsky's imagination and voice not least the fact that this one is narrated by a 17 year old girl and Tartar Cuisine was narrated by a grandmother.

Broken Glass Park is a coming of age story with nothing whitewashed. Sascha lives in a Russian slum outside a German city. Her mother has just been murdered and she's left with her two half siblings and a relative who comes from Russia to take care of them. Sascha is brilliant, both cruel and kind, both strong and helpless. Following her mother's death she starts to spin further out of control. Has to be read.

I was disappointed by this book and was tempted to quit reading it at almost every point. In retrospect, I guess I'm slightly glad I read it, but only slightly.

The first chapter promises a brilliant novel that intersperses the personal history of the fictional narrator, with the "true" history of end of nineteenth century Colombia and Panama and the "secret" history of Joseph Conrad and how he came to write Nostromo.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work. Too much of the style seems like trite pastiche, the history is far too detailed with long sections that just list the generals and colonels who are fighting, and the "secret" history and Conrad portions never really come together in a satisfying matter and almost seem peripheral.

That said, some of the writing is very good, some of the characters are interesting, and the general tableau of Latin American political strife, American interference, and the early days of the canal are all interesting.

A pleasure to read from beginning to end, Ed Glaeser writes intelligently and provocatively about cities. If all you care about is the bottom line you need read no further than the title: "Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier." But if you want an enjoyable and intellectually interesting tour through the world's major cities, both past and present with some speculation about the future, you won't want to miss the rest of the book.

More exciting Moliere translated by Richard Wilbur and released this year (appears to have been translated in 2005 but not really in a publication for readers). His second verse drama, quite enjoyable, a more complicated plot than The Bungler -- but still a relatively simple farce.