I usually hold up these brief new book notes until I get 40, but sometimes don't notice until I get considerably more. This time I find myself with more than 40 left over after publishing 40 yesterday. Hence the double dose. More politics yesterday, since that's generally the focus, but I'm inclined to note any nonfiction that strikes my broad interests. Still have 54 left, so maybe a third part will follow.

Dean Baker: False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (paperback, 2010, Polipoint Press): Cover photos of Bernanke, Greenspan, and Paulson, although I doubt that it ends there. Baker was one of the first to understand the bubble and what its collapse would mean. This looks to be a little more developed than his slim Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

Robert J Barbera: The Cost of Capitalism: Understanding Market Mayhem and Stabilizing our Economic Future (2009, McGraw-Hill): Seems like a fairly establishment guy to go around badmouthing capitalism like that. Hyman Minsky follower, learning lessons from one bubble/panic to the next. Evidently a good deal more readable than Minsky's own recently reprinted Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

Phyllis Bennis: Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (paperback, 2009, Olive Branch Press): I saw this as a pamphlet several years ago, but at 208 pp. most likely this has been updated. Bennis has a bunch of primers like this, including Ending the Iraq War, Understanding the US-Iran Crisis, and most recently Ending the US War in Afghanistan (with David Wildman). She's very good at getting to the point.

Peter Berger/Anton Zijderveld: In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (2009, Harper One): Sociologists, authors respectively of The Social Construction of Reality and The Abstract Society, seek moderate, measured grounds on which to base contingent beliefs. I'd like to think I do this already, but I'm not so sure about everyone else.

Piers Brendon: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 (2008, Knopf): Big book (816 pp), natch. Nice to see that he dates the decline from the American Revolution: nice to think that we started off by doing something right. Most Brits note that the empire achieved its greatest growth later, but the hideous effect the British had on their subject peoples makes it all look like decline in one sense of another.

James Carroll: Practicing Catholic (2009, Houghton Mifflin): Son of an Air Force General, ordained as a Catholic priest, long-time Boston Globe columnist, has written major books on the Pentagon (House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power) and Catholic anti-semitism (Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews) -- deeply ingrained stains that he was evidently able to overcome without losing his religion.

David C Cassidy: Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb (2009, Bellevue Literary Press): A follow up to Cassidy's 1992 Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg with more info, especially on Heisenberg's controversial role in Nazi Germany's atom bomb project.

Lizzie Collingham: Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (paperback, 2007, Oxford University Press): A history of Indian cuisine in India and the world, with various comings and goings, compromises and coups. Less exploitative, more complex than an economic history.

Graham Farmelo: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (2009, Basic Books): One of the pioneering figures of quantum mechanics. I doubt that it's right to call him a "mystic," but I wouldn't bet against strange.

John Farmer: The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 (2009, Penguin): A pretty detailed chronology of 9/11/2001, likely to be useful as reference if not much more. Author was involved in the official 9/11 report, so I'm not sure how much "untold" he has left to tell.

Howard Fineman: The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country (paperback, 2009, Random House): Who Is a Person? Who is an American? The Role of Faith; The Limits of Individualism; What Can We Know and Say? Who Judges the Law? Debt and Dollar; Local versus National Authority; Presidential Power; The Terms of Trade; War and Diplomacy; The Environment; A Fair, "More Perfect" Union. Mixed reviews on this, but sore losers abound.

Gary Giddins/Scott DeVeaux: Jazz (2009, WW Norton): This takes a bunch of famous jazz performances and tears them apart measure by measure, sometimes note by note. The technical level is way too much for me, but Giddins is one of the essential critics of our age, so I figured I had to pick up a copy. The records are also available in a 4-CD, evidently drawing on the Sony catalog, running about $60. I'd be real surprised if there's anything there I don't have somewhere, so it might be a good mixtape project -- when/if I get the nerve to delve deeper.

Louisa Gilder: The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn (2008, Knopf): Focuses on the further implications of quantum theory which started appearing with Bell's Theorem in 1964, the work of David Bohm, etc. Some fascinating science there, but I've never made much sense out of it, and too often it gets spun into a weird form of mysticism.

John Michael Greer: The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (paperback, 2008, New Society): Archdruid, organic gardener, peak oil blogger. Not clear, but I suspect he sees the descent as future rather than already done, and that he sees it happening slowly as people adapt to alternative lifestyles like, uh, organic gardening. Similar: Sharon Astyk: Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front; Pat Murphy: Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change; Lyle Estill: Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy; David Holmgren: Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change; better known is Bill McKibben: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Ralph Hassig/Kongdan Oh: Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom (2009, Rowman & Littlefield): Not much else available on this subject. We tend to reduce what little we learn into cartoon form -- South Park is a good example. Also new: Barbara Demick: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009, Random House).

Hendrik Hertzberg: ¡Obámanos!: The Rise of a New Political Era (2009, Penguin): New Yorker political columnist, looks like he's recycling old essays and wrapping them up to look like something new. Includes something on "Palinopsia," which was probably his alternate title if McCain won. "Brouhaha" was about Clinton. I guess he had it covered.

Alexandra Horowitz: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (2009, Scribner): One of those topics you wonder about now and then. Seems like a good idea for a book, but how do we know that the author knows what dogs know? And even if someone knew all that, could it be communicated over an epistemological that is no doubt pretty broad?

Arif Jamal: Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (2009, Melville House): First thing to understand is that Kashmir is the bee in Pakistan's bonnet, and almost everything that Pakistan's security sector does is done with Kashmir (and India) in mind -- and it's tough to wrap your mind around that because it often makes little sense. The Kashmir conflict is little known, little understood -- well, it doesn't help that it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense either.

William Kamkwamba/Bryan Mealer: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (2009, Morrow): Story of a 14-year-old boy in Malawi who built his own windmill, bringing electricity, power, and freedom to a small patch of the third world.

Robin DG Kelley: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009, Free Press): Likely to be the essential book on Monk, never a very straightforward subject.

Tracy Kidder: Strength in What Remains (2009, Random House): I've read two of Kidder's books: The Soul of a New Machine and House, both of which showed great skill at explaining technical challenges. His other work is more scattered, hard to characterize. This is the story of a student from Burundi who fled the mid-1990s war there (and more famously in neighboring Rwanda) for New York. Most likely a powerfully human story.

Jen Lin-Liu: Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (paperback, 2009, Mariner Books): Chinese-American journalist tramps around China, attending cooking schools and checking in on the food industry. Includes some recipes.

Barry C Lynn: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (2010, Wiley): Argues that the most dangerous trend in American business is the persistent move towards greater monopoly power. I think he's basically right here, and that this may be an important book. Author previously wrote End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which I have on my shelf but unfortunately haven't gotten to.

Barry W Lynn: Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom (paperback, 2007, Three Rivers Press): Author is a minister in the United Church of Christ, concerned both about the politics and theology of the right-wing rush to make this a Christian Nation whether we like it or not.

Margaret MacMillan: Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (2009, Modern Library): A short (208 pp.) book on how to lie with history, or how others have lied. A perennial favorite topic.

James E McWilliams: Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (2009, Little Brown): Some backlash against the local foods movement, basically arguing that industrial agriculture isn't that bad -- at least that it has some useful economies of scale, and that there's some upside to genetic engineering.

Stephen L Melton: The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (A Way Forward) (2009, MBI): On the faculty at Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College, which is why he sees his job as finding "a way forward." Otherwise, he's pretty effective at showing how nothing the Army is doing these days in Iraq and Afghanistan or pretty much anywhere else has a chance of working. Phrasing this as an argument with Clausewitz is rather obscure, perhaps to obfuscate the core point that the US Army has no worthwhile role in the modern world.

George Packer: Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Wonder how interesting they'd be if he actually understood them?

Ron Paul: End the Fed (2009, Grand Central): In the great debate between freshwater and saltwater economists, Paul sides with the Austrians, who'd gladly forego any kind of water in favor of heavy metals. I like Paul on some issues, and I'm not a fan of the Fed, but I find it really hard to take this seriously.

Scott Rosenberg: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters (2009, Crown): A history of the blog, or weblog for long, sort of a metablog. Author previously wrote Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software, which seemed likely to be close enough (maybe too close) to its subject matter (but then I've run a lot of code through my dreams).

Jeff Rubin: Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization (2009, Random House): Economist and energy consultant, made his reputation predicting skyrocketing oil prices, and doubles down his bet here. Another new book in this vein is Christopher Steiner: $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better. A hard change is coming.

Richard Sale: Clinton's Secret Wars: The Evolution of a Commander in Chief (2009, Thomas Dunne): When you do the math Clinton engaged in overt and covert wars about as often as the Bushes before and after, although not as flamboyantly as the latter. Sale concludes that by the end of his term Clinton was a "tough-as-nails" commander in chief "in the same vein as Ronald Reagan" (who did more saber-rattling but less actual warmaking). Instead of rolling back the cold war, Clinton kept the military and the CIA back in play, setting up the precedence and expectations that G.W. Bush capitalized on. This is ugly stuff, but probably not a critical writer.

Michael J Sandel: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Philosopher, hacks his way through the long history of thinking on ethics and justice. Looks like a reasonable presentation, worthy of some thought.

Dan Senor/Saul Singer: Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009, Twelve): Senor, you may recall, was the US Army PR flak in charge of bullshitting the media about the US occupation of Iraq. Now a "senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations," he's got a new client and a new line of . . .

Bill Streever: Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places (2009, Little Brown): First-person experiences in extreme cold places, a physical state that is surprisingly alien to our experience. How well this works depends on how well he ties it all together, but one hint is that global warming shows its most profound effects in the cold.

Tristram Stuart: Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (2009, WW Norton): Looks all over the world food industry to see how much waste there is, and why. Much as the cheapest way to salvage energy is conservation, a good part of dealing with future hunger may be in wringing the inefficiencies out of our current vastly wasteful system.

Terry Teachout: Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (2009, Houghton Mifflin): Major new biography of Armstrong, always a subject of interest and fascination.

Ann Vileisis: Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (2007, Island Press): The loss has much to do with food processors acting as increasingly opaque mediators between farm and table, a business shift advanced by urbanization. The interesting thing here will be explaining why it matters.

Richard Wrangham: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009, Basic Books): One of many books trying to sort out the differentiator that distinguished human evolution -- another is Derek Bickerton: Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. Probably more interesting for its analysis of how cooking changed eating. Closely related: Francis D Burton: Fire: The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution.

Leonard Zeskind: Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Focuses on Willis Carto, William Pierce, and David Duke, who don't strike me as all that mainstream (although other names I see, like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson, are more so). Author knows this stuff and has written a fat (672 pp) book on the subject.

Previously mentioned books (book pages noted where available), new in paperback:

HW Brands: Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008; paperback, 2009, Anchor): Actually, missed this one earlier, but bought it and read it, so I figure I should note it. Big book (912 pp), but I also recently read Ann Hagedorn's big book on 1919 (Savage Peace) and Adam Cohen's book on FDR's first 100 days (Nothing to Fear), and can attest that Brands covered the overlap with remarkably accurate succinctness. Filled in a lot of background I lacked, both on FDR's early interests in politics and on his dedication to plunging the US into WWII. I gather that Jean Edward Smith's FDR covers the same ground and detail equally well.

Tony Horwitz: A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (2008; paperback, 2009, Picador): Seems like one of those writers who tells a good history yarn by tracing his travels the various spots -- cf. a previous title, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. [book page]

Rashid Khalidi: Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance of the Middle East (2009; paperback, 2010, Beacon Press): Shows how the US imposed its neuroses onto the Middle East -- a paranoia over communism that put us in bed with Islamic jihadists, a messianic embrace of Israeli and apocalypse that put us on the outs, an obsession with oil and money, and with our own military omnipotence, no matter how often it failed. [book page]

George E Lewis: A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (2008; paperback, 2009, University of Chicago Press): Most likely a major book on the development of avant-garde jazz in the 1970s, told by a major figure in his own right.

Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008; paperback, 2009, Penguin Press): Big bestseller, consolidating his arguments from The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.