What Book Are You Currently Reading?

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I plan on reading more books from this series. They're extremely informative even if wonky and boring.

Also:

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The Double by Dostoevsky

One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kessey

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chill w/ the bourgeois sh**t.  you're a good kid.  read some real sh**t.

What would you suggest? Also, what's wrong with Krugman? He's the most the prominent anti-third way pundit out there at the moment and he also happens to be a brilliant economist.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

To be honest, though, there's really no excuse for reading Fuckuyama.

I forgot my kindle before a long flight so I picked it up on a whim to see what was so horrible about him. Surprisingly it wasn't that bad. At least a few of his assertions are somewhat interesting even if they're mostly based on pseudo-history and weak arguments.

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The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

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The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

Wait, what?  You have summer reading in college?

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad. I can't believe I used to be proud of myself for receiving an acceptance letter from this den of academic sadism...

@Tweed it's for a class (which is basically Reed's signature as an institution) that all freshman are required to take so I can't get out of it. I'd much rather be reading Crime and Punishment or the latest Yanis Varoufakis book.

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I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad.

Are undergrad dissertations that rare in the U.S?

I think Princeton and Bates are the only other two schools that require an undergrad dissertation for graduation but I could be missing a few.

Based off what I've heard, the undergraduate education at most public universities and a large percentage of liberal arts schools is a joke for the average student. The caveat is that I've heard this from people who would be characterized as elitists.

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Give me reccomendations, I have a week long break and want to indulge my brain with leisurely reads. History (specifically latin american) , philosophy, econ or literature is welcomed

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well you can take a look at the post above you for some Chavez stuff.

I want to read up on Mexico though. Have you read any good books on my motherland?

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The Course of Mexican History

A very light read that hasn't taught me much, this is the time for you wise college graduates to pass your knowledge onto me via reccomendations.

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Infinite Jest

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The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

Little did I know what I was about to experience. What a naive little twat I was.

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Infinite Jest

*terrorist fist-bump*

I'm about 200 pages deep and only have two weeks to finish it before the next semester begins. Challenge accepted.

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I finished South Africa's Brave New World over break, started on Nudge (pop behavioral economics) and You Just Don't Understand (pop linguistics/psychology). I'm on page 750 of Infinite Jest.

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Hobsbawm's Industry and Empire

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The Republic
Poor Economics
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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Nations and Nationalist Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality by Hobsbawm

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What dost thou make of it?

Well the part after I posted this was pretty wtf... as in, "wait, this is the end? So what ended up happening?"

The first chapter of the book is the ending. Of course, this is difficult to remember after slogging through the whole thing.




Also, Robinson Crusoe for summer reading for a class dedicated to "modern man/the modern world". I am a liberal arts stereotype.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If the views in this book form the basis for the PPE program at Oxford, I need to transfer ASAP. The approaches revealed in this work are so similar to how I approach the social sciences and I feel as if I found the reason why I feel vaguely dissatisfied with my econ/poli sci courses: they lack a foundation in philosophy, ethics and the humanities. Strange to think when I entered undergrad that I only craved classes focused on empirics and now I tend to shy away from it.



The discussion of the cross-influences of the sentimentalist philosophers and non-conformist protestant theologians was really great but Friedman's view of growth is a little too centrist/neo-liberal/Davos/World Bank for my tastes. That being said, he is correct in stating that economic growth engenders tolerance and strong democratic institutions but I don't think he cares about whether this growth is equally diffused which is a view I can't tolerate.

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PPE is basically an apprenticeship degree for aspiring political hacks.

In the states, Economics is basically an apprenticeship degree for aspiring hedge fund managers so I'd much prefer the former. Even at my crunchy, "learning for learning's sake" college a good half of Econ majors are in the program because they're good at math and want a six-figure salary.

Maybe British political hacks are more tolerable because PPE has good required courses? I might study abroad at Oxford next year so I'll be sure to check them out.

edit: the one thing that makes me want to consistently change my major is the fact that mathematical prowess is exalted above perceptive social scientific insights in econ departments. it's hard for me to even consider it a social science at times.

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about to invest weeks of my life into these books:





please pray for me as my brain flexes hard and gets swoll.

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If it's any consolation Thompson, at least, is a good read. Weird book: in some respects not just ahead of its time, but ahead of what is written now; but he also repeats some arguments and theories that were pretty much discredited by the 1960s, even going out of his way to defend one of them. But then that's Thompson for you.

One of my professors mentioned that social history/marxist approaches has gone the way of the dodo in favor of more cultural/anthropological approaches since the 80s, is this true? If so, my tiny interest in having History as a fallback major is out of the question.