We were very pleased to hear this week that two Princeton University Press economicstitles are on the longlist for consideration of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year–the only university press on the list.  Congratulations to George Akerlof and Robert Shiller for ANIMAL SPIRITS: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, and to Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff for their soon-to-be published THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Shortlist  announcements will be made in September.

Perhaps it’s the economy. Perhaps it’s the continuing avalanche of bad news. There could be many reasons that the strange and sometimes disturbing fairy tales of dada artist Kurt Schwitters seem to be hitting the spot with some reviewers and book buyers these days.

Quinn Latimer reviews the book on Bookforum.com, noting:

“Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales, which translates twenty-eight of Schwitters’s tales into English for the first time, provides the satiric mix of the familiar and the fantastic with which fairy tales regularly operate. As with Schwitters’s celebrated collages and assemblages, however, the tales’ expected elements are shattered and reassembled into riotous, deeply weird wholes. Beautiful maidens, destitute peasants, kindly farmers, and anthropomorphized animals are subject to a brutality both heretical and bruisingly familiar. That the horrors of World War I and the Holocaust bookended the writing of these tales comes as no surprise. Narratives are reliably brought to savage conclusions: A peaceful man who must decapitate a body in order to free an enchanted virgin is tripped up by his own gentility and is himself sent to the gallows; a “good man” who lets a hungry insect sting him is then sucked dry by a swarm of mosquitoes. The end.”

Hmm. This is the kind of stuff that is really resonating with readers in San Francisco. LUCKY HANS AND OTHER MERZ FAIRY TALES, translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, made the City Lights hardcover bestseller list in June. Here is a post on the Stolen Apples site with the bestseller list.

The Harvard Gazette reports that Gary King and Marc Kirschner have been named University Professors.

So, what’s a University Professor? According to the article, this title is reserved for “individuals of distinction … working on the frontiers of knowledge, and in such a way as to cross the conventional boundaries of the specialties.”

Currently, there are only 22 University Professors at Harvard so Princeton University Press is proud to congratulate Gary King on this wonderful honor. King is a three-time Princeton University Press author and most recently co-authored Demographic Forecasting with Federico Girosi. He is also, as we learned from the article, a former professional magician proficient in “doing magic, escapes, and juggling.”

Read the complete article at The Harvard Gazette.

Charles R. Larson writes of the book:

As a layman, not an economist, I found Portfolios of the Poor fascinating.  It certainly exposed some of my own stereotypes of the world’s poor, but I do have two reservations.  First, two of the countries under study (India and Bangladesh) share a number of historical and geographical similarities. I wonder if another Asian country, say Cambodia, might have revealed something else.  And, as far as African goes, South Africa is in many ways atypical of most countries south of the Sahara.  If Zambia or even Nigeria had been used instead of South Africa, would the conclusions about money management have been the same?  Thus, in part I wonder if other countries had been chosen would the “encouraging” conclusions have been the same.

Second, what about those at the very bottom who certainly live from hand-to-month?  The day I finished reading Portfolios of the Poor, I read a lengthy article in The Washington Post (“Pakistan’s Kiln Workers Bricked in by Debt,” by Pamela Constable, 3 July 2009), which certainly presents a more horrific picture of people at the bottom.  From what I’ve observed in my travels, too many people are stuck at the very bottom.

Still, it’s difficult not to be impressed by Collins, Morduch, Rutherford, and Ruthven and their important work.

Read the rest of his review at Counterpunch.

Daniel Drezner writes:

“Back in the spring, I hinted that I would be willing to produce a top ten list of must-read books on the international political economy/global political economy (IPE or GPE for those in  the know), provided there was sufficient demand.

Judging by the e-mail response, the demand is robust and quite persistent.  So I’ve decided… to postpone that list for another month or two.

Because you’re not ready yet.

Let’s face it, if you have read this far in the post, it means you’re either:

* A curious professor ready to minimize this page if anyone walks in;
* A grad student seeking the keys to success in the profession;
* An intense undergraduate student who really wants to study IPE.

(Blog Editor’s Note – he curiously leaves off eager publicist/editor curious to see if any of OUR books make the cut)

Before you are ready to ready the ten books in IPE that you have to read, you should first read these ten books on global economic history.”

So, which Princeton University Press titles made the cut? More after the jump…

PUP author James Cuno debates Christopher Hitchens on whether the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece or remain in The British Museum. I read Hitchens’s moving and convincing piece in Vanity Fair about his visit to the new Greek museum, but I am also swayed by Cuno’s arguments about the importance of encyclopedic museums and protecting artifacts from less than ideal circumstances in their source countries (see the Iraq museums being looted, or deliberate attempts by new regimes or religions to destroy artifacts of earlier times).

My pick this week from Mariana Cook’s new book MATHEMATICIANS: An Outer View of the Inner World is a photographic portrait of Fields Medal winner Simon Donaldson.  His area of expertise is differential and algebraic geometry and teaches at the the Imperial College London.  Simon’s subtle smile makes it seem like he knows something that I don’t-and can prove it with those perplexing equations in the background!  Enjoy!

BALANCE OF NATURE author John Kricher was interviewed on Kathleen Dunn last Tuesday, July 28.  He took questions from listeners and explained the myth behind ecological self-mitigation.  Scroll down to the 10:00 am spot here to listen!