Reisman Reviews Piketty's Book


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I haven't read the book. (Have you? Has anybody? One early notice predicted that Piketty would have the highest bought-to-read ratio of any author since Stephen Hawking.) I haven't followed the reviews in any detail, and I've only skimmed Reisman's. That said, I can't help noticing how quickly Piketty's media stardom came and went. After all that smoochy-faced initial coverage one would have figured that he and his book would stay in vogue for at least a year, but they faded within months.

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I haven't read the book. (Have you? Has anybody? One early notice predicted that Piketty would have the highest bought-to-read ratio of any author since Stephen Hawking.)

The book is sitting on my shelf, giving me a baleful look right now (it's a library copy, I was the thirteenth in the reserve line, it seems newer than new). I am afraid of it. I can't even claim to have finished the Illustrated Brief History of Time.

I haven't followed the reviews in any detail, and I've only skimmed Reisman's. That said, I can't help noticing how quickly Piketty's media stardom came and went. After all that smoochy-faced initial coverage one would have figured that he and his book would stay in vogue for at least a year, but they faded within months.

Reisman is good writer. I'm going to take the time to re-read his review carefully. I think it will stand in for Objectivist reaction for some time, since he has actually plodded through the beast to the end.

Any splashy, touted, notable, notorious, or 'very important' book can slip back from the edge of Astonishingly New, and still maintain sales and attention. A search of Google News shows plenty of interest this month in Piketty, plenty of discussion, plenty of reviews. It is still on the top sales charts for business/economics books, and still in the top twenty non-fiction bestseller lists.

And it is still looking at me.

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It is still on the top sales charts for business/economics books, and still in the top twenty non-fiction bestseller lists.

Bill, did you notice whether it was purchased by universities/colleges/etc. for assignment to classes.

A...

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It is still on the top sales charts for business/economics books, and still in the top twenty non-fiction bestseller lists.

Bill, did you notice whether it was purchased by universities/colleges/etc. for assignment to classes.

Nope, and I don't know how to get at those particular metrics. Books will always bought by institutions for their libraries, ballyhooed or not, I figure, so that may be a constant factor, subject to a few swings. I will say putting Piketty's book on a course reading list seems cruel and unusual indeed. Of course this book has the allure of food for economists (who are still masticating its contents and yammering about it), but these surely are special kinds of humans, like mathematicians.

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Bill, did you notice whether it was purchased by universities/colleges/etc. for assignment to classes.

Nope, and I don't know how to get at those particular metrics. Books will always bought by institutions for their libraries, ballyhooed or not, I figure, so that may be a constant factor, subject to a few swings. I will say putting Piketty's book on a course reading list seems cruel and unusual indeed. Of course this book has the allure of food for economists (who are still masticating its contents and yammering about it), but these surely are special kinds of humans, like mathematicians.

Thanks Bill.

Gave it a shot, you are quite good at digging out data and details.

A...

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Bottom up is freedom in action. Top down is statism. Piketty is top down. So was Alan Greenspan. Piketty as a Marxist, Greenspan as a Keynesian. Look behind the curtain. They aren't bad men, just bad wizards. One to be--yeah, right, but he's trying--the other, been there, done that.

--Brant

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  • 3 weeks later...

Merlin,

Good review.

I dinged it.

I have that damn book. Everytime I look at it on the shelf of stuff I want to read next, similar to William's experience, it falls to the bottom of the priority list all by itself. :)

Here are some posts from a few months back on OL about this. There is even a video with Piketty himself talking.

Michael

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  • 7 months later...

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