Volokh Consipracy
Ilya Somin – Books I Would Recommend to those Who Disagree With Me
Megan McArdle and Tony Woodlief give their answers to an interesting question: What three books would you recommend to a thoughtful person who disagrees with you politically, in the hopes that reading them will change their mind?
My recommendations would depend a lot on whether the person in question disagrees with me from the right or from the left, and also on the extent of their previous knowledge of social science. Let’s assume, however, that the person is well to the left of me, and that they are an intelligent layperson rather than a scholar or public policy professional. In that case, I would probably pick Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions – an excellent summary of the reasons why private sector institutions generally process information and make decisions better than government; William Mitchell and Randy Simmons’ Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy — a good, accessible exposition of the economic shortcomings of government relative to markets; and Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World, which explains how simple, libertarian legal systems are likely to work better than complex ones with more statism and regulation. The biggest area of disagreement between libertarians and liberals is over the role of government in controlling the economy. These three books focus on that issue. I have also picked books that try to persuade by analysis and evidence rather than emotional appeals — even though I have to admit that the latter are often more effective.
There is much less in the way of libertarian literature specifically directed at persuading conservatives. However, F.A. Hayek’s classic essay “Why I am Not a Conservative” is surely relevant for reasons I elaborated here.
Little Green Footballs
The Black Book of Communism
megan mcardle
15 Oct 2009 03:31 pm
Tony Woodlief asks what three books you would recommend if you wanted to change the mind of someone who disagreed with you? Off the top of my head, I nominate Parliament of Whores, The Elusive Quest for Growth, and Government’s End. Readers, liberal, libertarian, and conservative, are invited to submit their thoughts.
Tony Woodlief
I recommend Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, Bastiat’s The Law, and Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.
Electronics
LECTRONICS BLEG UPDATE: My earlier posting of a reader request for books educating children in elementary electronics generated a lot of email. Here’s my distillation.
Reader George Coulouris recommends Forrest Mims’ Getting Started In Electronics. He also recommends the hydraulic analogy, which I was taught. Lots of readers recommended Mims.
Reader Andy Linnenkohl recommends Paul Horowitz’s The Art of Electronics, commenting: “It just doesn’t get any better than this. As a working engineer in the semiconductor industry I can testify to the fact that not a single engineer I work with does not have a very worn out copy of this book sitting somewhere on his desk. For the working professional it is their college education in one place. At the same time Horowitz and Hill have written a very readable, approachable treatment that is reasonable (I avoid the word “light” for fear of being drummed out of IEEE) on the math and more focuses on concepts at a elementary, logical and rational level. A parent and child could supplement any electronics learning with brief pulls from TAOE and would find the content to meet the learning needs without being too difficult to comprehend.”
Several readers recommend Usborne Electricity, and there’s also the Usborne Introduction to Electronics.
Snap Circuits also, as reader Wayne Padgett notes, come in a Student Training version that includes much more explanatory documentation. There’s even one for the advanced 750 model.
So there you are! I still wish someone would bring back Elementary Electronics, though.
Posted at 8:41 am by Glenn Reynolds
Sources
Volokh Conspiracy, Books I Would Recommend to those Who Disagree With Me, Ilya Somin • October 25, 2009 3:06 am
