Category: Books

Which Moment of Flux Do the Environmentalists Want to Preserve?

At the APEE meetings in early April, I heard a lecture by Shawn Regan in which he praised a book by Daniel Botkin. The point that Regan was making was that a key difficult issue in environmentalism is to decide, when you want to preserve and protect the environment, which moment of the environment’s constantly changing flux, do you want to preserve? With, or without, us, the natural state of the environment is constant change, not stasis.

A recent book by Botkin that makes this point, is:
Botkin, Daniel B. The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

“Progressive” Eugenicists Attacked Free Enterprise

At the APEE meetings in early April, I heard a lecture by Jayme Lemke in which she praised a promising-sounding book by Thomas Leonard. I looked the book up on Amazon and found that it describes how many of the “progressives” who advocated increasing government control of the economy, were also among the advocates of the now-discredited eugenics movement.
The book is now on my “to-read” list and I will report more when it hits the top of the list (say, in about 2020 ;).

The book praised by Jayme, is:
Leonard, Thomas C. Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Forrest McDonald Defended Founders and Entrepreneurs

Forrest McDonald wrote one of the first detailed accounts of the life of Samuel Insull, an entrepreneur who helped to develop electric utility systems in the United States, and who was persecuted by the FDR administration.

(p. 20) Forrest McDonald, a presidential and constitutional scholar who challenged liberal shibboleths about early American history and lionized the founding fathers as uniquely intellectual, died on Tuesday [January 19, 2016] in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
. . .
As a Pulitzer Prize finalist in history and a professor at the University of Alabama, Dr. McDonald declared himself an ideological conservative and an opponent of intrusive government. (“I’d move the winter capital to North Dakota and outlaw air-conditioning in the District of Columbia,” he once said.) But he refused to be pigeonholed either as a libertarian or, despite his Southern agrarian roots, as a Jeffersonian.
. . .
In “Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution” (1985), which was one of three finalists for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in history, he pronounced the founding fathers as singularly qualified to draft the framework of federalism. He reiterated that point when he delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Jefferson Lecture in Washington in 1987.
“To put it bluntly,” Dr. McDonald said then, “it would be impossible in America today to assemble a group of people with anything near the combined experience, learning and wisdom that the 55 authors of the Constitution took with them to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.”
. . .
Dr. McDonald wrote more than a dozen books, including biographies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span’s “Booknotes” in 1994, Dr. McDonald revealed that he typically wrote in longhand on a yellow legal pad and in the nude. (“We’ve got wonderful isolation,” he said, “and it’s warm most of the year in Alabama, and why wear clothes?”)

For the full obituary, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “Forrest McDonald, 89, Critic of Liberal Views of History.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., Jan. 24, 2016): 20.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date JAN. 22, 2016, and has the title “Forrest McDonald, Historian Who Punctured Liberal Notions, Dies at 89.”)

The McDonald book mentioned by me way above, is:
McDonald, Forrest. Insull. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Former Goldman Sachs Banker Predicts “Green Bubble”

(p. R5) Sustainable investing and clean energy are hot topics, but one Danish financier is warning that people might be getting carried away.
Per Wimmer, a former Goldman Sachs banker and the founder of Wimmer Financial LLP, a London-based corporate-advisory firm specializing in natural resources, foresees a “green bubble” that could have similar consequences to the dot-com and housing bubbles.
. . .
WSJ: What are the main issues behind the so-called bubble you see forming in green energy?
MR. WIMMER: Very simply put, for green energy to be truly sustainable, it must be commercially sustainable. The reality today is that when it comes to politicians allocating subsidies, it seems like they are being allocated almost religiously across the board. As long as there is a green element, then [politicians believe] it is fine and deserves funding from tax dollars. I argue that is a little unsophisticated.
We have got to look at supporting and subsidizing the technologies that stand a chance at becoming commercially independent from subsidies within a reasonable time period–about seven to 10 years.
. . .
WSJ: In your book “The Green Bubble,” you highlight infrastructure problems involved in large-scale green-energy projects in the U.S. Tell us about those.
MR. WIMMER: There are a number of challenges that green energy faces, and one [involves] infrastructure, meaning that if you were to target, say, 20% green energy including wind farms in the U.S., you would have to build an awful lot of transmission grid, which is quite expensive.
Somebody is going to have to pay for it–the taxpayer, perhaps?

For the full interview, see:
TANZEEL AKHTAR. “Renewable Energy Is a ‘Bubble,’ Says Financier.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Jan. 11, 2016): R5.
(Note: bold and italics, in original; ellipses, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 12 [sic], 2016,)

The book mentioned in the interview, is:
Wimmer, Per. The Green Bubble: Our Future Energy Needs and Why Alternative Energy Is Not the Answer. London, UK: Lid Publishing, 2015.

Welfare System Hurts Those It Is Intended to Help

I saw part of a C-SPAN 2 presentation, originally broadcast on 3/28/16, of a new book by Harvey and Conyers that appears to argue persuasively that the current American welfare system makes it harder for welfare recipients to transition to employment. It further argues that work is an important part of the good life, usually an important contributor to happiness. As a result, the current welfare system hurts the very people that it is intended to help.

The book discussed above, is:
Harvey, Phil, and Lisa Conyers. The Human Cost of Welfare: How the System Hurts the People It’s Supposed to Help. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2016.

College Students Have Been Raised to Be Fragile

In the passage quoted below, John Leo interviews John Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU.

(p. A9) Haidt: . . . Children since the 1980s have been raised very differently–protected as fragile. The key psychological idea, which should be mentioned in everything written about this, is Nassim Taleb’s concept of anti-fragility.

Leo: What’s the theory?
Haidt: That children are anti-fragile. Bone is anti-fragile. If you treat it gently, it will get brittle and break. Bone actually needs to get banged around to toughen up. And so do children. I’m not saying they need to be spanked or beaten, but they need to have a lot of unsupervised time, to get in over their heads and get themselves out. And that greatly decreased in the 1980s. Anxiety, fragility and psychological weakness have skyrocketed in the last 15-20 years. So, I think millennials come to college with much thinner skins. And therefore, until that changes, I think we’re going to keep seeing these demands to never hear anything offensive.

Source of the Haidt interview passage quote:
“Notable & Quotable: ‘Anti-Fragility in Children.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Feb. 23, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the quotes from the interview with Haidt has the date Feb. 22, 2016, and has the title “Notable & Quotable: Our Weak, Fragile Millennials.”)

For John Leo’s full interview with Jonathan Haidt, see:
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-jonathan-haidt/

The Taleb book referred to, is:
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. New York: Random House, 2012.

New Libertarian Consensus?

(p. A17) In “Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order,” Mr. Piereson argues that America has undergone three earthquakes in its history: the Jeffersonian revolution, which ushered in a long period of dominance of a new anti-Federalist party; the Civil War, which vanquished slavery and set off the ascendancy of northern Republicanism; and the New Deal, which dramatically expanded the size and intrusiveness of the federal government in Americans’ lives. “In each period, an old order collapsed and a new one emerged . . . the resolution of the crisis opened up new possibilities for growth and reform,” he writes. Looking out at our paralyzed and polarized polity, he argues that we are on the brink of yet another collapse–but this one might not have a happy ending.
Mr. Piereson, a hero of philanthropy who faithfully spent the Olin Foundation out of business after supporting the work of think tanks, small magazines and groundbreaking scholars like Allan Bloom and Charles Murray, views the Obama presidency as the beginning of the collapse of an 80-year consensus, forged in the post-World War II years. That consensus “assigned the national government responsibility for maintaining full employment and for policing the world in the interests of democracy, trade, and national security.” Such a consensus, which “is required in order for a polity to meet its major challenges,” Mr. Piereson argues, “. . . no longer exists in the United States. That being so, the problems will mount to a point where either they will be addressed through a ‘fourth revolution’ or the polity will begin to disintegrate for lack of fundamental agreement.”
. . .
A system failure is only a matter of time. At some point, what Democrat Erskine Bowles has aptly labeled “the most predictable crisis in American history” will be upon us, as the federal government defaults by one means or another on its unpayable promises. A revolt of the betrayed elderly, or of the plundered young, could be the catalyst for Mr. Piereson’s revolution. Perhaps even sooner, one state rendered destitute by reckless government spending and public pensions will attempt to dump its hopeless debt problem on the rest of the union. Which of these scenarios is most likely? Which most dangerous? Could the fourth revolution manifest itself in a separatist movement by states where majorities feel culturally estranged and disinclined to pick up the tab for the extravagance of less responsible states? Could the growing number of citizens professing economic conservatism coupled with libertarian social views be the front edge of a new consensus?

For the full review, see:
MITCH DANIELS. “BOOKSHELF; America’s Next Revolution; The U.S. has experienced three earthquakes: the Jeffersonian revolution, the Civil War and the New Deal. Are we on the brink of another?” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 15, 2015): A17.
(Note: ellipses within paragraphs, in original; ellipsis between paragraphs, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 14, 2015,)

The book discussed in the review, is:
Piereson, James. Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order. New York: Encounter Books, 2015.

Slower World of Narrative Leads to Analogies, Comparisons and Understanding

(p. A25) As the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield writes in her book “Mind Change,” expert online gamers have a great capacity for short-term memory, to process multiple objects simultaneously, to switch flexibly between tasks and to quickly process rapidly presented information.
. . .
Research at the University of Oslo and elsewhere suggests that people read a printed page differently than they read off a screen. They are more linear, more intentional, less likely to multitask or browse for keywords.
The slowness of solitary reading or thinking means you are not as concerned with each individual piece of data. You’re more concerned with how different pieces of data fit together. How does this relate to that? You’re concerned with the narrative shape, the synthesizing theory or the overall context. You have time to see how one thing layers onto another, producing mixed emotions, ironies and paradoxes. You have time to lose yourself in another’s complex environment.
As Greenfield puts it, “by observing what happens, by following the linear path of a story, we can convert information into knowledge in a way that emphasizing fast response and constant stimulation cannot. As I see it, the key issue is narrative.”
When people in this slower world gather to try to understand connections and context, they gravitate toward a different set of questions. These questions are less about sensation than about meaning. They argue about how events unfold and how context influences behavior. They are more likely to make moral evaluations. They want to know where it is all headed and what are the ultimate ends.
Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use experience, knowledge and the products of lifelong education that have been stored in long-term memory. It is the ability to make analogies and comparisons about things you have studied before. Crystallized intelligence accumulates over the years and leads ultimately to understanding and wisdom.

For the full commentary, see:
David Brooks. “Building Attention Span.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 10, 2015): A25.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The book discussed in the commentary, is:
Greenfield, Susan. Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains. New York: Random House, 2015.

The Value of Longer Life

(p. C6) With the seeker’s restlessness that seems not to have left him until his last breath, . . . [Dr. Paul Kalanthi accrued] two B.A.s and an M.A. in literature at Stanford, then a Master of Philosophy at Cambridge, before graduating cum laude from the Yale School of Medicine. He returned to Stanford for a residency in neurological surgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. His training was almost complete when the bad diagnosis hit.
. . .
And then everything changes. In a single moment of recognition, everything Dr. Kalanithi has imagined for himself and his wife evaporates, and a new future has to be imagined.
. . . A job at Stanford for which he was the prime candidate? Not happening. Another good job that would require the Kalanithis to move to Wisconsin? Too far from his oncologist. Long-term plans of any kind? Well, what does long-term mean now? Does he have a day, a month, a year, six years, what? He’s heard the advice about living one day at a time, but what’s he supposed to do with that day when he doesn’t know how many others remain?

For the full review, see:
JANET MASLIN. “Books of The Times; Singularly Striving Until Life Steps In.”The New York Times (Tues., July 7, 2015): C1 & C6.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed words, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 6, 2015, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: In ‘When Breath Becomes Air,’ Dr. Paul Kalanithi Confronts an Early Death.”)

The book under review, is:
Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air. New York: Random House, 2016.

Greek Corruption, Fraud, Evasion and Public Worker Job Security

(p. A11) Mr. Angelos, a former Journal correspondent, travels through Greece as a journalist first, and a native son second, to conduct a mostly unpleasant archaeology. By way of background, however, he first tackles the pervasive issues of disability and pension fraud, rampant tax evasion, and public worker job protections. These are the very problems that Greece’s European lenders sought to remedy through a series of supposedly helpful but also punitive and ineptly administered reforms. Mr. Angelos dismantles the facile narrative accepted by many in the eurozone, in which hardworking Germans must clean up a mess made by their lazy and “Oriental” southern neighbors. But he is equally tenacious when it comes to exposing the misconduct of Greek politicians, not to mention the country’s corrupt system of career tenure and its, well, truly Byzantine bureaucracy.
Mr. Angelos’s book allows us to see how these problems play out, sometimes farcically, in the lives of actual people. There’s a cranky grandmother on the island of Zakynthos who receives generous blindness benefits even though she can see perfectly well. There’s the arrogant former prime minister who accepted millions of euros in bribes to buy useless submarines on behalf of the Greek government.
. . .
. . . the book’s single most flattering portrait is of Yiannis Boutaris, the tattooed, wine-making, freethinking mayor of Thessaloniki, who courts Turkish tourism, refuses to kowtow to the church and publicly acknowledges the crucial role of Jews in the city’s history.

For the full review, see:

CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN. “BOOKSHELF; How Greece Got to ‘No’; On the island of Zakynthos, a grandmother receives generous blindness benefits–even though she can see perfectly well.”The Wall Street Journal (Tues., July 7, 2015): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 6, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Angelos, James. The Full Catastrophe: Travels among the New Greek Ruins. New York: Crown Publishers, 2015.

“Ordinary People Should Have a Go”

(p. A11) The classical archaeologist and now big-picture historian Ian Morris, whose last book argued that war is good for you, now explains why coal is too. In “Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels,” Mr. Morris puts “energy capture” at the center of human values since the Ice Age, through three eras: the Foragers to begin with; the Farmers after about 8,000 B.C.; and, in the past few centuries, the Fossil Fuelers.
. . .
A culture favorable to liberty and dignity for commoners came out of the Reformation and 16th-century Holland, spread to Britain and Britain’s colonies in the 18th century, and resulted after 1800 in an explosion of ingenuity.
This Great Enrichment, which Mr. Morris acknowledges but does not explain, increased income per head not by the 100% or 200% of earlier efflorescences but by anything from 2,000% to 10,000%. Routine materialism of Mr. Morris’s sort can’t explain the most important secular event in human history. He wants to pin it all on energy capture. The correct story is one of ideas of human equality changing, starting with a conviction novel in the 17th century in northwestern Europe that ordinary people should have a go. This led to massive innovation, among which was energy capture. We do not have a fossil-fuel civilization. We have a free and ingenious one.

For the full review, see:
DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY. “BOOKSHELF; Oil on Troubled Waters; In this telling, progress is explained by the rising use of fossil fuels. Yet the Industrial Revolution was powered by water, not coal..”The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 6, 2015): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 5, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Morris, Ian. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve, The University Center for Human Values Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.