Michael Chwe is a smart and talented economist whose multidisciplinary predilections led him to the political science department at UCLA. I know and love Jane Austen, and was skeptical of the title of this book. Indeed, I think the title is somewhat tangential to the content of the book. There are no Nash equilibria, no common knowledge assumptions, no mixed strategy solutions---all the standard fare of game theory.

What Chwe has authoritatively explored is the complex back-and-forth psychological dynamics of making decisions based on psyching out what other people are thinking, and taking actions that can reverberate three or more times from one mind to another, in the search for achieving one's goals. I had not thought just how central this idea is to the Austen novels. Indeed, it may just be what makes Austen the fine novelist that she is.

Chwe is always interesting and insightful. You will not learn academic game theory from this book, but you can take what you learned back to your reading of the Austen novels, and see dimensions of human behavior you may have missed in previous readings.

Brian Lindsey, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter---and More Unequal (Princeton, 2013)

We live in an age where most passionate political activists have limited vision, the right being passionate about the horrors of government income redistribution and need to avoid budget deficits, and the left being passionately alarmed about increasing income inequality favoring the ultra-rich, and the need to counter the austerity policies that protect the big banks against losses brought about by their reckless lending practices. I must admit that I am not much concerned with either of these threats, but rather with the growing cultural rift between the intelligent, motivated, and talented upper middle class and the increasingly dysfunctional lower middle class, and especially its male integument, which seems to have lost its way in a society that increasingly values drive, creativity, and capacity for abstract thought over pure upper body strength and physical stamina.

It is interesting that the phenomena is increasing recognized as a serious problem by conservative writers, such as Charles Murray and the author of this fine book, Brian Lindsey, whereas the liberal pundits cannot cease for a moment from wringing their hands about the excesses of the ultra-rich. Lindsey is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, which is a very, very conservative institution, although one whose analyses of society are usually worth paying attention to. The title of this book, Human Capitalism, refers to the fact that increasingly the goodies go to those who have "human capital," which is the result of investing in the development of individual skills and ability to address and solve social and technical problems. This development has long been anticipated, most eloquently in Michael Young's 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy.

Of course, conservatives love meritocracy (except when it interferes with the inheritance of wealth), while liberals hate the idea (having no faith in the abilities of the `lower classes' and an exalted estimation of labor unions). However, as Lindsey shows, the current meritocratic dynamic is destroying the working class family and leading to a generation of hard-working white collar women with loafing and indolent lovers and husbands. The situation is well described statistically with a minimum of tables and graphs, based on the brilliant research of David Autor, Susan Mayer, and others. This book can be read with pleasure by those who do not care to go into great statistical detail, and the references lead those who do to the proper sources.

Certainly this situation, especially the differential effects of modern business organization and technology on men versus women, was not foreseen by Michael Young and the early students of the meritocracy revolution, bit Lindsey shows that it is quite real, and he presents thoughtful suggestions as to how to deal with this situation through social policy.

Decriminalizing recreational drugs for adults may be the most important improvement in life for Americans and the honest people in countries that supply the US drug habit. Most recreational drug users never become addicts, but the 10% or so who do ruin the lives of themselves, their families, and those that they prey upon for drug money. Our prisons are full of people who are otherwise ordinary citizens who have only the high price of a drug habit to blame for their plight.

The problem with decriminalization is that it will be effective only if it radically reduces the price of recreational drugs, which means, by a simple and almost inevitable economic logic, the amount of drug use will increase significantly (perhaps double, according to some reliable estimates, based on the long-run elasticity of demand). It is not clear that this will increase the number of drug addicts in the USA, though. Probably the most important test case is Portugal, which abolished penalties for possession of drugs in 2001. According to an authoritative report by the Cato Institute, between 2001 and 2006, recreational drug use among teens actually declined. "Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," write the report's author. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Nevertheless, it is important to accompany decriminalization with therapy for the unfortunates whose psychological and genetic makeup renders them susceptible to addiction, because excessive use of some recreational drugs is bad for one's health and social functioning (alcohol is of course probably the worst in this regard). That is why I picked up this book.

In fact, this book debunks lots of myths and has sage advice based on scientific evidence, but it does not offer a reliable way out of addiction. Its suggestions are mostly completely obvious, such as "addiction is a disease." The best part of the books is his relating the experiences of addicts and their families. Heartbreaking but fascinating. The author is an accomplished writer, so virtually every sentence and episode is expertly crafted. Read this book to avoid some mistakes if there is a loved one who is an addict, but don't expect easy answers.

I have no idea why the eminent biologist Robert Trivers wrote this book. There is lots of interesting material for the uninitiated, but very little on self-deception, and certainly nothing like a proof of his assertion that self-deception serves the evolutionary purpose of being better at deceiving others.

William Hamilton was one of your ordinary brilliant scientists, grappling with fundamental questions in sociobiology all his life. His claim to fame is a single article that he published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964, "The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior I." This article gave rise to the terms "inclusive fitness," "kin selection," and "Hamilton's rule," three terms that are explained in every sociobiology article and book. He of course did other things of interest, but in everything else, he was just another brilliant scientist, of whom you might not be inclined to read a long biography. Segerstrale claims correctly that many consider Hamilton the Darwin of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, Hamilton is like Darwin in having shown the world a simple idea that explains an immense amount of biological dynamics. Unlike Darwin, however, Hamilton did not write a Great Book, his simple idea is in fact extremely subtle and not available to the critique of such dimwits as Creationists and Intelligent Design blowhards. This book will not appeal to the casual reader, as might a Life of Charles Darwin.

Ullica Segerstrale is a talented and insightful historian of biological thought. Her 2001 book "Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate," covering early clashes between sociobiologists, especially Edward O. Wilson, and their critics, especially Stephen Jay Gould, Marshall Sahlins, and Richard Lewontin, is a well written and exciting documentary of this fascinating period. There is no question concerning her sympathies in this book: she gives a rather manachean account where the sociobiologists are Good and their critics are Pathetic.

This book is well worth reading, but it is not up to the standards of "Defenders of the Faith." Part of the problem may be with me: I really don't care about Hamilton's childhood, or where he sends his kids to school, or how he behaves at dinner parties. Moreover, his recurrent disputes with journal editors and his dismay at his treatment by article reviewers, stressed repeatedly in this book, is supremely uninteresting. Every academic has such experiences, and they are so common that they are not even worth mentioning.

Hamilton is not the sort of Lovable Creature that we associate with the likes of an Einstein or a Freud. He's just your typical brilliant scientist. Moreover, Segerstrale spends only a small portion of the book dealing with Hamilton's substantive contribution, inclusive fitness, and a much larger portion deal with how his other ideas fared---which was about average for a big thinker like Hamilton. She should have elaborated on the development of his ideas in the larger field of population biology and sociobiology. More important, Segerstrale does not appear to understand inclusive fitness theory that well, never deals with the substantive intellectual debates surrounding this theory (most of which are misunderstandings, not by Hamilton), and just acts as a rah-rah booster for William Hamilton. One might describe this book as a Readers Guide to the Narrow Roads of Gene Land (Hamilton's book about his own work).

Hamilton's 1964 article is a masterpiece. Indeed, in my study of inclusive fitness theory, have never seen anything in print with the analytical power and depth of Hamilton's original article (I explain this in my paper "Inclusive Fitness and the Sociobiology of the Genome, which is on my web site). Before I read Hamilton's 1964 article, I could not even make sense of standard expositions of his theory, because they misstate and overinterpret it. His article, on the other hand, is extremely opaque, despite that fact that he uses only simple algebra. I arrived at an understanding of his model only by starting with the basic equations, and working backward to determine the underlying model. This model is a paradigm of rigor and clarity.

Karl Marx once said, after hearing some of the claims made on his behalf by so-called supporters, "Je ne suis pas Marxiste" (I am not a Marxist). William Hamilton could say the same thing when encountering the bizarre claims of some of his supporters: "I am not a Hamiltonian." By God, he'd better not be!

This is a first rate book in every way. It is short, to the point, the points are all correct, and it is very affordable. It is also quite unbiased (lefties think it is right-wing and righties think it is left-wing---always a very good sign). It central message is that the budget crisis is caused by the voting public, who want all sorts of perks, but don't want to pay for them. Thus we borrow to pay for them, and this is unsustainable in the medium to long run.

There are legitimate reasons for the government to borrow, just as there are good reasons for firms and households to borrow. For the government, investments in social infrastructure, education, and other projects that have high up-front costs and whose payoffs lie in the future should be financed by debt. There is no burden involved because these productive projects generate the income to repay the debt. But borrowing for current account purposes, such as paying for social services and recurrent military operations is a no-no. The voting public hasn't figured this out. As Leonhardt puts it, "The problem is us-- the voters. We have not managed to figure out what kind of government, and what kind of economy, we want...The seemingly irrational politicians in Washington are, to some extent, responding rationally to their own confused constituents."The answer to the chronic deficit situation is some combination of raising taxes, lower expenditures, especially the entitlements Medicare and Social Security, and eliminating waste from government expenditure. No one really wants to tackle waste and corruption, although recent health care policies instituted by the current Administration are making serious headway into dealing with health care costs. Republicans have followed the losing strategy of holding the line on tax increases (we owe a debt of gratitude to them for this), while Democrats have embraced heady vision of solving the problem by "taxing the rich." Taxing the rich in the name of "fairness" may be acceptable, but as a means of solving the deficit problem, it is a pipe dream.

Why, you ask, is this a pipe dream? Here Leonhardt does not really answer this question. Here it is.

The US government does not tax to get money. The government can simply print money. It taxes to reduce the purchases of taxpayers so it can increase its own purchases or transfer the purchasing power to others. The rich predominantly save, and taxing them does not much reduce their consumption spending. Moreover, when it does, the items involved are mostly high-priced non-producibles, such as gems and valuable property. If taxing the rich does transfer purchasing power to the government, it is through the reduction of business investment. This is because the savings of the rich go into banks, and the money is for the most part lent out to investors. Thus "tax the rich" really means "lower investment so we can consume more now." This is a really, really, stupid strategy. Leonhardt should have made this clear.

"Ask Americans if they are willing to accept higher taxes on themselves," says Leonhardt, "and most say no. Ask if they favor cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and most again say no.'The United States faces a fundamental disconnect between the services that people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans,' Doug Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, said in 2010, "and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.' " This is the central message of this little volume.

"From a purely economic perspective," says Leonhardt, "the deficit remains a manageable problem. Relatively modest changes to Social Security would eliminate its shortfall. Military spending could be cut significantly and still be much greater than in the past and much greater than in any other country. Some domestic government programs truly are wasteful and could stand to be cut. Even Medicare and Medicaid, the heart of the problem, are not intractable." This is a wise suggestion indeed.

The title of my review says it all. The insects are in perfect condition and nicely mounted. The package smelled of formaldehyde upon unpacking, but that comes with the territory.

If you want a rigourous and fairly thorough introduction to the ideas of Tarski, Goedel, Skolem, et al., and you never really understood the Loewenheim-Skolem theorem or Tarski theory of truth, this is the book for you.
Do you understand why a logical system that proves its own consistency must be inconsistent? If not, and you think this is an interesting question, this is the book for you.

Behavioral contributions to public policy have become a growth industry. Eldar Shafir is a great experimentalist, but this collection is rather uneven, with lots of dry, government report-style writing. The references will point you in the right direction, though.

The series is an extended cameo for Kenneth Branagh, and he lives up to our expectations. This series is worth looking at---it retains its Swedish aire.