2022 Books of the Year

These are the favorite books I have read this year . They may or may not have been published this year. Relative to other years, I read a fair number of good, but not great books and thus my list is fairly short. Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State by Yasheng Huang. This…

Book Review: Uncontrolled Spread

If you want to learn more about what went wrong for America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a great book to read is Scott Gottlieb’s Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic. Gottlieb is a physician, a former FDA commissioner, and a member of the National Academy of…

Never enough

I recently finish a very interesting book on drugs and addiction titled Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction. The book was written by Judith Grisel, who is a not only a professor and neuroscientist, but also a former drug addict. The book describes the process of addiction, and how different types of illicit…

What makes humans smarter than apes?

The answer is not raw brain processing power, but rather it is our ability to learn from others. At least that is the argument from Joseph Henrich’s book The Secret of our Success. Slate Star Codex has an excellent book review. Consider the following graph comparing human, chimpanzee and orangutan intelligence. Another interesting quotation from…

Book Review: Overcharged

In the book Overcharged, authors Charles Silver and David Hyman identify a number of problems with the current health care system.  Third party payment under a fee-for-service system means that providers have an incentive to provide more rather than less care.  Further, because the people receiving the services (patients) are not the ones who are footing…

Prohibition

A recently finished reading Prohibition: A Concise History by W.J. Rorabaugh.  The history is interesting throughout and concise indeed at only 133 pages.  Some interesting excerpts include: Whenever a substance is banned two things happen.  First, the price goes up, and second, the product returns in more concentrated form, or a replacement appears.  The high risk…