Top Five Nonfiction Books I Read in 2010

Everyone’s reading and writing about China these days, and the best book I’ve read on the subject is Peter Hessler’s Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.

Ed Glaeser is an economist's economist -- as smart as they come, driven by empiricism, with something interesting to say about nearly anything. He has just published a new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Glaeser argues that cities often get a bad rap even though they are "actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole.

I alluded to this a few times yesterday, so I think I should offer my recommended readings on the Panic of 2007 and the ensuing recession. These are real recommendations, actual advice about what you should do, so things like length and readability count. Rogoff & Reinhardt have done a really praiseworthy empirical research program, but you should just look up their conclusion with Google you don’t actually need to read the book.

Daniel Okrent's Last Call, a history of the rise and fall of alcohol prohibition, is a masterpiece.  Of course the writing is great but Okrent is also very good at building the history on a framework of analysis and social science. Here is Okrent on Prohibition and the income tax: 

David Warsh submits: To the policy makers dealing with the next really big financial emergency – the crisis he imagines might arrive perhaps a hundred years from now – Gary Gorton offers some advice in the last chapter of Slapped By the Invisible Hand: The Pan

The author is Peter Hessler and the subtitle is A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.  It is the account of the author's driving journeys throuh the Middle Kingdom.  Here is one bit: