good reads

[Michael Eisenstadt]

Wayne recently wrote me soliciting an opinion
about Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire he, Wayne, having found himself 
uncontrollably captivated by it

never read it, did read fair amount of
such 18th century writers as Addison,
Steele and Johnson in the course of my
"education" but not Gibbon. thanks Wayne
i have put him down to be looked into 
in a note to self and stuck it in an 
unused cerebral synapse

as for 18th century prose writers a few
years ago i discovered Adam Smith's 
The Wealth of Nations. fantastic!!!!!!!
it's like watching a continent being 
discovered. 

strangely the classics of economics are
not very many, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus,
Say in French, John Stuart Mill, Marshall 
and Keynes (the last mostly unreadable 
because too hard [for me and many others])

contemporary economics books are either
mathematical modelling which only professionals 
in the field can read or books by pop 
futurists of the sort that Roger recommends 
from time to time. almost the only good writer 
for the laywoman in economics is Paul Krugman. 
you'll enjoy reading his demolition of best 
selling fakers like Paul Kennedy, Robert Reich, 
Wm. Grieder et alii 

FINALLY, i have been reading a new collection 
of travel essays by V.S.Naipaul. he is best
on black Africa and the Carribean (he himself
is from Trinidad). his latest novel Half a
Life is an inferior reworking of his greatest
novel, a novel that will be in print a hundred
years from now, A Bend in the River (set in
black Africa). in his travel essays he writes 
on the highest level available to himself and 
what a delight it is to listen to him on that 
level. he has arresting insights by way of 
explaining, for example the Black Power 
movement in the Carribean