$73 an Hour: Adding It Up By DAVID LEONHARDT

December 10, 2008
Economic Scene
$73 an Hour: Adding It Up By DAVID LEONHARDT

Seventy-three dollars an hour.

That figure — repeated on television and in newspapers as the average pay of a Big Three autoworker — has become a big symbol in the fight over what should happen to Detroit. To critics, it is a neat encapsulation of everything that's wrong with bloated car companies and their entitled workers.

To the Big Three's defenders, meanwhile, the number has become proof positive that autoworkers are being unfairly blamed for Detroit's decline. "We've heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour," Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last week. "It's a total lie. I think some people have perpetrated that deliberately, in a calculated way, to mislead the American people about what we're doing here."

So what is the reality behind the number? Detroit's defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren't making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year).

But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country. Last year's concessions by the United Automobile Workers, which mostly apply to new workers, will not change that anytime soon.

And yet the main problem facing Detroit, overwhelmingly, is not the pay gap. That's unfortunate because fixing the pay gap would be fairly straightforward.

The real problem is that many people don't want to buy the cars that Detroit makes. Fixing this problem won't be nearly so easy.

The success of any bailout is probably going to come down to Washington's willingness to acknowledge as much.

Let's start with the numbers. The $73-an-hour figure comes from the car companies themselves. As part of their public relations strategy during labor negotiations, the companies put out various charts and reports explaining what they paid their workers. Wall Street analysts have done similar calculations.

The calculations show, accurately enough, that for every hour a unionized worker puts in, one of the Big Three really does spend about $73 on compensation. So the number isn't made up. But it is the combination of three very different categories.

The first category is simply cash payments, which is what many people imagine when they hear the word "compensation." It includes wages, overtime and vacation pay, and comes to about $40 an hour. (The numbers vary a bit by company and year. That's why $73 is sometimes $70 or $77.)

The second category is fringe benefits, like health insurance and pensions. These benefits have real value, even if they don't show up on a weekly paycheck. At the Big Three, the benefits amount to $15 an hour or so.

Add the two together, and you get the true hourly compensation of Detroit's unionized work force: roughly $55 an hour. It's a little more than twice as much as the typical American worker makes, benefits included. The more relevant comparison, though, is probably to Honda's or Toyota's (nonunionized) workers. They make in the neighborhood of $45 an hour, and most of the gap stems from their less generous benefits.

The third category is the cost of benefits for retirees. These are essentially fixed costs that have no relation to how many vehicles the companies make. But they are a real cost, so the companies add them into the mix — dividing those costs by the total hours of the current work force, to get a figure of $15 or so — and end up at roughly $70 an hour.

The crucial point, though, is this $15 isn't mainly a reflection of how generous the retiree benefits are. It's a reflection of how many retirees there are. The Big Three built up a huge pool of retirees long before Honda and Toyota opened plants in this country. You'd never know this by looking at the graphic behind Wolf Blitzer on CNN last week, contrasting the "$73/hour" pay of Detroit's workers with the "up to $48/hour" pay of workers at the Japanese companies.

These retirees make up arguably Detroit's best case for a bailout. The Big Three and the U.A.W. had the bad luck of helping to create the middle class in a country where individual companies — as opposed to all of society — must shoulder much of the burden of paying for retirement.

So here's a little experiment. Imagine that a Congressional bailout effectively pays for $10 an hour of the retiree benefits. That's roughly the gap between the Big Three's retiree costs and those of the Japanese-owned plants in this country. Imagine, also, that the U.A.W. agrees to reduce pay and benefits for current workers to $45 an hour — the same as at Honda and Toyota.

Do you know how much that would reduce the cost of producing a Big Three vehicle? Only about $800.

That's because labor costs, for all the attention they have been receiving, make up only about 10 percent of the cost of making a vehicle. An extra $800 per vehicle would certainly help Detroit, but the Big Three already often sell their cars for about $2,500 less than equivalent cars from Japanese companies, analysts at the International Motor Vehicle Program say. Even so, many Americans no longer want to own the cars being made by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

My own family's story isn't especially unusual. For decades, my grandparents bought American and only American. In their apartment, they still have a framed photo of the 1933 Oldsmobile that my grandfather's family drove when he was a teenager. In the photo, his father stands proudly on the car's running board.

By the 1970s, though, my grandfather became so sick of the problems with his American cars that he vowed never to buy another one. He hasn't.

Detroit's defenders, from top executives on down, insist that they have finally learned their lesson. They say a comeback is just around the corner. But they said the same thing at the start of this decade — and the start of the last one and the one before that. All the while, their market share has kept on falling.

There is good reason to keep G.M. and Chrysler from collapsing in 2009. (Ford is in slightly better shape.) The economy is in the worst recession in a generation. You can think of the Detroit bailout as a relatively cost-effective form of stimulus. It's often cheaper to keep workers in their jobs than to create new jobs.

But Congress and the Obama administration shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that they can preserve the Big Three in anything like their current form. Very soon, they need to shrink to a size that reflects the American public's collective judgment about the quality of their products.

It's a sad story, in many ways. But it can't really be undone at this point. If we had wanted to preserve the Big Three, we would have bought more of their cars.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?sq=Leonhardt&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

http://snipurl.com/83j8s

Investors Buy U.S. Debt at Zero Yield By VIKAS BAJAJ and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

December 10, 2008
Investors Buy U.S. Debt at Zero Yield By VIKAS BAJAJ and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

When was the last time you invested in something that you knew wouldn't make money?

In the market equivalent of shoveling cash under the mattress, hordes of buyers were so eager on Tuesday to park money in the world's safest investment, United States government debt, that they agreed to accept a zero percent rate of return.

The news sent a sobering signal: in these troubled economic times, when people have lost vast amounts on stocks, bonds and real estate, making an investment that offers security but no gain is tantamount to coming out ahead. This extremely cautious approach reflects concerns that a global recession could deepen next year, and continue to jeopardize all types of investments.

While this will lower the cost of borrowing for the United States government, economists worry that a widespread hunkering-down could have broader implications that could slow an economic recovery. If investors remain reluctant to put money into stocks and corporate bonds, that could choke off funds that businesses need to keep financing their day-to-day operations.

Investors accepted the zero percent rate in the government's auction Tuesday of $30 billion worth of short-term securities that mature in four weeks. Demand was so great even for no return that the government could have sold four times as much.

In addition, for a brief moment, investors were willing to take a small loss for holding another ultra-safe security, the already-issued three-month Treasury bill.

In these times, it seems, the abnormal has now become acceptable. As America's debt and deficit spiral from a parade of billion dollar bailouts and stimulus packages, fund managers, foreign governments and big retail investors reckon they will get more peace of mind by stashing their cash, rather than putting it toward any of the higher-yielding risk that is entailed in stocks, corporate bonds and consumer debt.

The rapid decline in Treasury yields — which since summer have headed toward lows not seen since the end of the World War II — also renders the Federal Reserve less effective, as investors and banks stuff the money that the central bank is pumping into the financial system into Treasuries, rather than fanning it out across the broader economy.

"The last time this happened was the Great Depression, when people are willing to accept no return on their money, or possibly even a negative return," said Edward Yardeni, an independent analyst. "If people are so busy during the day just protecting the cash they have, it's not a good sign."

Stocks fell sharply as investors digested the implications. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 242.85 points, or 2.72 percent, to 8,691.33, and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index declined 2.31 percent, to 888.67. The Nasdaq composite index lost 1.55 percent, to 1,547.34.

If there is a silver lining to the Treasury market's gyrations, it is that the United States can borrow money more cheaply from investors, whether they be the governments of China or Japan, or big fund managers. That could help Washington finance various programs intended to revive the ailing economy.

Borrowing by the Treasury has already ballooned since Congress approved the $700 billion financial rescue plan, and policy makers expect the federal budget deficit to swell further next year as the Big Three automakers and other industries look for support.

"That sucking sound is all the world's capital going into the U.S. Treasury market," Mr. Yardeni said, "which means the Treasury and the Fed can tap into that liquidity pool to finance TARP and offer mortgages at 4.5 percent."

While that may offset some of the expense of the bailouts, economists say the fact that the United States must borrow so much to prop up large parts of the economy is a big cause for concern.

There are several explanations for the flight to safety in the bond market. The world of short-term money market funds, for instance, is still reeling from troubles at the Reserve Primary Fund, a money market fund frozen in September after it lost money on investments in Lehman Brothers. Since then, individual and large investors have put more than $200 billion into money funds that only invest in safe Treasury bills, according to iMoneyNet, a financial data publisher. At the same time, investors have withdrawn nearly $400 billion from prime funds.

That has forced portfolio managers to buy Treasury bills, driving down yields. "That group of investors has to invest in something," said Max Bublitz, chief strategist at SCM Advisors. "They don't have the luxury of saying, 'I will stick it in the mattress.' "

Yields for longer term Treasury securities have also slumped, with the 10-year now yielding 2.64 percent, down from 2.7 percent Monday and 3.75 percent a month earlier. That decline appears to reflect several other forces. Many investors are seeking safety because they believe that the economy is in its worst recession since the Depression. Rather than inflation, which was a worry for some a few months ago, many are now worried about deflation, or falling prices.

Thomas H. Atteberry, a bond fund manager, said at current prices the market is predicting that the United States will suffer the kind of "lost decade" that Japan suffered in the 1990s.

"I have a hard time justifying that," said Mr. Atteberry, a partner at First Pacific Advisors. "The Fed seems much more upfront about boosting its balance sheet by creating money."

Another reason, analysts say, that Treasury yields may be falling is that foreign investors are using American government securities to protect themselves against the falling value of their own currencies. Many investors are also pulling money out of mutual funds and hedge funds, forcing portfolio managers to sell more risky assets and hold Treasuries, which are easier to sell.

And some fund managers are simply looking to dress up their portfolios before the year ends.

"There is no doubt that there is potentially some hoarding of cash in anticipation of potential redemptions," said David Kovacs, a strategist at Turner Investment Partners. "People want to own it to show that they played it safe by year-end."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/10markets.html?_r=1&sq=Bajaj&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=4&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1229260118-NzuUleVbEVTdjSVxRQvaUg

http://snipurl.com/83iu0

Invoking Improv: Best Classical CDs Of 2008 By Fred Child

Invoking Improv: Best Classical CDs Of 2008 By Fred Child

Savall: Night Watch

Detail from the cover of Jordi Savall's Invocation a la Nuit, which features Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy.

APM, December 9, 2008 - A composer writes the notes; musicians play the notes.

That's the current arrangement in the world of classical music, but it wasn't always so. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart were great composers, but they were also master improvisers. For centuries, it was a given that if you played music well, you improvised well.

Improvisation is now making a comeback in certain corners of the classical world. Some who play music from the 17th and 18th centuries have revived the tradition of improvising around what the composer wrote. And some young classical musicians who grew up with jazz, rock and world music feel as comfortable with improv as they do with interpretation.

Here are some of the choice 2008 classical CDs that include improvisation — or at least invoke its sound.

Click here for more entries in the Best CDs of 2008 series.

Invoking Improv: Best Classical CDs Of 2008
Cover for Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile
The Fence Post in the Front Yard
Artist: Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile
Album: Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile
Song: Fence Post in the Front Yard

The finest classical double-bass player in the world joins the young mandolin phenom for 12 duets that fall somewhere between art music, bluegrass and free-range country. Thile's playing redefines fast, clean and tasteful for mando-philes. Meyer's writing, as ever, jumps genres as quickly and effortlessly as a jackrabbit overtops fences on the lower 40. The writing has Stravinsky's rhythmic jabs with Copland's open harmonies. When they improvise, it seems that one playfully devious mind is controlling both the bass and mandolin. As thrilling as Meyer and Thile are on CD, do whatever it takes to see them in person. Each is insanely busy, but they've taken to playing annual concerts at the Aspen Music Festival. See you there in the summer of 2009.

* Listen[5 min 23 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Fence Post in the Front Yard"
o CD: The Fence Post in the Front Yard
o Artist: Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile
o Released: 0
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Invocation à la Nuit
The Night Watch
Artist: Jordi Savall
Album: Invocation à la Nuit: Musica Notturna
Song: The night watch

Jordi Savall, the Catalan master of haunting beauty, began his recording career playing 17th-century music on viola da gamba at an ancient church in Versailles in 1975. It was close to an airport, so they could record only at night. Savall's fatigue led him to discover what he later called "the mysteries which inhabit the infinity of night." Over the last three decades, Savall and his close circle of collaborators have explored those mysteries in late-night recording sessions of music from the 12th through the 17th centuries. Improvisation interweaves with interpretation throughout this sublime "best of" collection from 1993 to 2008.

* Listen[2 min 18 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "The night watch"
o CD: Invocation a la Nuit: Musica Notturna
o Artist: Jordi Savall
o Label: Alia Vox
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for In a State of Jazz
Play Piano Play, Exercise 1
Artist: Marc-André Hamelin
Album: In a State of Jazz

CD after CD, I am blown away by Hamelin's recordings. His Haydn Sonatas last year were a brilliant balance of elegance and wit, and he brings the same approach to this collection of 20th-century music inspired by jazz. His technique, as always, is laser-sharp. And even though there is no actual improvisation here, Hamelin's whip-smart whimsy animates works by Friedrich Gulda, George Antheil, Nikolai Kapustin and even a few classic French pop songs by Charles Trenet.

* Listen[1 min 45 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Play Piano Play, Exercise 1"
o CD: In a State of Jazz
o Artist: Marc-André Hamelin
o Label: Hyperion
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for X Over Trombone
Pugh: Trombone Concerto: III
Artist: James (Jim) Pugh
Album: X Over Trombone
Song: Concerto for trombone & orchestra

Most frequently asked question in the 22-year history of Performance Today: Did Mozart write the PT theme? Nope, it was written for the show by trombonist and composer James Pugh. Pugh is the eclectic's eclectic: He played with the Woody Herman Big Band, he's recorded classical music with Yo-Yo Ma and electric jazz with Chick Corea, he tours with Steely Dan, he's a first-call player for film-soundtrack sessions and he teaches at the University of Illinois. This CD features three jazzy concertos for trombone and orchestra including Pugh's own trombone romp from 1992.

* Listen[5 min 9 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Concerto for trombone & orchestra"
o CD: X Over Trombone
o Artist: James (Jim) Pugh
o Label: Albany
o Released: 2007
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Passport
Brooklesca
Artist: Brooklyn Rider
Album: Passport

A young string quartet from Brooklyn, all classically trained to within an inch of their lives, Brooklyn Rider also tours with Yo-Yo Ma 's Silk Road project, gathering influences and inspiration from around the world. This wildly eclectic CD reflects its members' omnivorous tastes: haunting Armenian laments, Osvaldo Golijov 's arrangement of a lovely ballad by the Mexican art-rock band Cafe Tacuba, and the driving Gypsy-inflected improvisations of Colin Jacobsen's tour de force "Brooklesca." Brooklyn Rider is recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.

This album is also available for purchase from Brooklyn Rider's web site.

* Listen[13 min 25 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Brooklesca"
o CD: Passport
o Artist: Brooklyn Rider
o Label: In a Circle
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Handel Organ Concertos Op. 4
Organ Concerto Op.4 No. 5: Presto
Artist: Richard Egarr
Album: Handel: Organ Concertos, Op. 4 [Hybrid SACD]
Song: Organ Concerto in F major, Op.4/5, HWV 293

Baroque keyboard magician Richard Egarr tackles music that Handel wrote to show himself off. These are organ concertos Handel played in the middle of his oratorios, at London concerts in the 1730s. In the liner notes, Egarr writes that it was vital for him to "add an appropriate level of ornamentation, spontaneity and improvisation," and that he "tried to create cadential 'noodling' afresh each time..." Egarr is emulating what Handel would have done himself: "noodling" around the general outline of the music. Check out what Egarr calls a "party piece," the fifth concerto, with Egarr improvising at light speed and guitarist Bill Carter improvising around the bass line.

* Listen[2 min 30 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Organ Concerto in F major, Op.4/5, HWV 293"
o CD: Handel: Organ Concertos, Op. 4 [Hybrid SACD]
o Artist: Richard Egarr
o Label: Harmonia Mundi
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4; Horace Silver: Creepin' In
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4: I
Artist: Nigel Kennedy
Album: Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4; Horace Silver: Creepin' In

The English violinist who revels in sneering at what he calls "the old farts" in the classical establishment shows he hasn't forsaken straight classical with a glorious performance of Beethoven's soaring Violin Concerto. He seems to take the same elegant approach to Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 until... Huh? Whoa! An ethereal improvised cadenza for electric violin with reverb seven minutes in. Same again in the second movement, floating free in a way Mozart could never have imagined. And just in case you didn't get that Kennedy is an iconoclast, he finishes his Beethoven/Mozart CD with a gently swaying bop standard by Horace Silver.

* Listen
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Violin Concerto No. 4: I"
o CD: Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4; Horace Silver: Creepin' In
o Artist: Nigel Kennedy
o Label: Opendisc
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Romaria
Got Schepfer Aller Dingen
Artist: John Potter
Album: Romaria

Vocalist John Potter is best known as a member of the venerable Hilliard Ensemble, but here he's teamed up with lutenist Stephen Stubbs, saxophonist John Surman, and Slovakian violinist and violist Milos Valent. The album includes everything from 12th-century chant to contemporary composition, suffused throughout with cross-cultural improvisation from classically trained players. If you love the early music improv of Jordi Savall and company, "Romaria" takes it a step further into the airy realm of ECM jazz.

* Listen[4 min 35 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Got Schepfer Aller Dingen"
o CD: Romaria
o Artist: John Potter
o Label: ECM
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for An American Journey
Piano Trio No. 1 ("Poets and Prophets"): IV
Artist: Eroica Trio
Album: An American Journey
Song: Piano Trio No. 1 ("Poets and Prophets")

As with Hamelin's "State of Jazz," there's no actual improvisation from the Eroica Trio, but they swing sweetly through American classics by Gershwin and Bernstein. They also bring a gutsy flair to Mark O'Connor's Copland-esque "Poets and Prophets," a classical paean to the Man in Black, Johnny Cash. O'Connor's writing and the Eroica Trio's playing evokes the piercing directness and populism of Cash's best work.

* Listen[7 min 5 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Piano Trio No. 1 ("Poets and Prophets")"
o CD: An American Journey
o Artist: Eroica Trio
o Label: EMI Classics
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Revolutionary
Variations on a Theme from Bizet's "Carmen"
Artist: Cameron Carpenter
Album: Revolutionary [Includes Bonus DVD]
Song: Variations on a Theme from Bizet's "Carmen", for piano

Organ is the one corner of the classical world that never lost improvisation. But this young American combines astonishing technical prowess with a taste for the theatrical (check out his rhinestones and flying feet on the accompanying DVD) in a way that is polarizing the organ community. Traditionalists hate him, but he has a growing following, and is bringing many non-classical listeners to his organ recitals. His major-label debut includes a couple of jaw-dropping organ standards, a fiery piano etude by Chopin, a lilting improvisation around Duke Ellington's "Solitude," and Carpenter's spectacular five-part fugue improvisation on "Pop Goes the Weasel."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97762915

null

Best Books of 2008 Complete Holiday Book Recommendations 2008

Best Books of 2008 Complete Holiday Book Recommendations 2008
NPR.org, November 19, 2008 · Below you can find the complete list of recommended reading for the 2008 Holidays. To print this list, choose the "Print Page" icon in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the titles to read an excerpt from the book.


Recommended by John McAlley
("The Big Pictures: Best Gift Books 2008")

ABC3D, by Marion Bataille, hardcover, 36 pages, 7.5 x 5.9 inches, Roaring Brook Press, list price: $19.95

Annie Leibovitz At Work, by Annie Leibovitz, hardcover, 240 pages, 9.5 x 7.5 inches, Random House, list price: $40.00

Art of the Modern Movie Poster, by Judith Salavetz, Spencer Drate and Sam Sarowitz with text by Dave Kehr, hardcover, 16 pages, 13.25 x 11.3 inches, Chronicle Books, list price: $75.00

Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert, by Scott Adams, hardcover in slipcase, 576 pages, 13.5 x 10.5 x 2 inches, Andrews McMeel Publishing, list price: $85.00

The Nancy Book, by Joe Brainard, hardcover, 144 pages, 9.75 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches, Siglio Press, list price: $39.50

The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages: 1851—2008, introduction by Bill Keller, hardcover, 456 pages and three DVD-ROMs, 15 x 12 inches, Black Dog & Leventhal, list price: $60.00

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs By Writers Famous & Obscure, edited by Smith Magazine, hardcover, 256 pages, 7.25 x 5 x 1.1 inches, Harper, list price: $16.95

The Oxford Project, photographs by Peter Feldstein, text by Stephen G. Bloom, hardcover, 264 pages, 12.8 x 10 x 1.2 inches, Welcome Books, list price: $50.00

Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point, by Alex S. MacLean, introduction by Bill McKibbon, hardcover, 336 pages, 13.2 x 9.2 inches, Abrams, list price: $45.00

Performance: Richard Avedon, hardcover, 304 pages, 13 x 10.5 inches, Abrams, list price: $75.00

The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture, by the editors of Phaidon Press, hardcover, 800 pages, 19.2 x 16.1 x 2.5 inches (without case), Phaidon Press, list price: $195.00

A Road Trip Journal, photographs and text by Stephen Shore, limited edition hardcover, 256 pages, 17.2 x 12.1 x 2.1 inches, Phaidon Press, list price: $250

Seen Behind the Scene: Forty Years of Photographing on Set, by Mary Ellen Mark, hardcover, 264 pages, 11.6 x 8.7 inches, Phaidon Press, list price: $59.95

State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, hardcover, 574 pages, 9.25 x 6.25 inches, Ecco, list price: $29.95

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, by David Foster Wallace, paperback, 368 pages, 9 x 6 x 1 inches, Back Bay Books, list price: $14.99

Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, by Stefan Sagmeister, paperback, 246 pages, 9.5 x 7 inches, Abrams, list price: $40.00

Wham-O Super-Book: Celebrating 60 Years Inside the Fun Factory, by Tim Walsh, paperback, 192 pages, 8.5 x 8.5 inches, Chronicle Books, list price: $19.95



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by Maureen Corrigan
("Top Five Crime And Mystery Novels Of 2008")

The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell, paperback, 186 pages, List Price: $14.95

Death Vows, by Richard Stevenson, paperback, 212 pages, List Price: $14.99

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland, hardcover, 463 pages, List Price: $24.95

Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman, paperback, 272 pages, List Price: $14.95

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman, paperback, 368 pages, List Price: $14.95



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by Alan Cheuse
("Give A Book (And Yourself) This Holiday Season")

Dear Darkness, by Kevin Young, hardcover, 216 pages, List Price: $26.95

Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, by John Adams, hardcover, 352 pages, $26.00

John Lennon: The Life, by Philip Norman, hardcover, 822 pages, $34.95

Just After Sunset, by Stephen Kind, hardcover, 384 pages, $28.00

Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories and Other Writings, by Katherine Anne Porter, hardcover, 1100 pages, $40.00

Still Alive!: A Temporary Condition , by Herbert Gold, hardcover, 250 pages, $25.00

Stories, by Doris Lessing, hardcover, 680 pages, $26.00

Supreme Courtship, by Christopher Buckley, hardcover, 304 pages, $24.99

Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America, by Michael Williams, Richard Cahan, & Nicholas Osborn, hardcover, 240 pages, $45.00



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by T. Susan Chang
("The 10 Best Cookbooks of 2008")

660 Curries: The Gateway to Indian Cooking, by Raghavan Iyer, paperback, 816 pages, List Price: $22.95

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, hardcover, 208 pages, List Price: $29.95

How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition), Mark Bittman, hardcover, 1,056 pages, List Price: $35.00

A Master Class: Sensational Recipes from the Chefs of the New England Culinary Institute, by Ellen Michaud, hardcover, 292 pages, List Price: $35.00

The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show, by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift, hardcover, 352 pages, List Price: $35.00

The Spice Merchant's Daughter: Recipes and Simple Spice Blends for the American Kitchen, by Christina Arokiasamy, hardcover, 240 pages, List Price: $29.95

Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Vietnamese Recipes from the Heart, by Pauline Nguyen, hardcover, 344 pages, List Price: $40.00

The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, Recipes from the Beloved Bakery for Everyone's Favorite Treats by Melissa Murphy, hardcover, 256 pages, List Price: $27.00

Ten: All the Foods We Love and 10 Perfect Recipes for Each, by Sheila Lukins, paperback, 416 pages, List Price: $19.95

Two Dudes, One Pan: Maximum Flavor from a Minimalist Kitchen, by Jon Shook & Vinny Dotolo, paperback, 240 pages, List Price: $24.95



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by Jessa Crispin
("Best Foreign Fiction, 2008")

Senselessness, by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver, paperback, 142 pages, List Price: $15.95

Kieron Smith, boy, by James Kelman, hardcover, 432 pages, List Price: $26.00

2666, by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, hardcover, 912 pages, List Price: $30.00

Metropole, by Ferenc Karinthy, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes, paperback, 279 pages, List Price: $14.95

The Lost Daughter, by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, paperback, 204 pages, List Price: $14.95



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by Simon Maxwell Apter
("Best Political And Current Affairs Books Of 2008")

The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins, hardcover, 384 pages

An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century, by James Orbinski, M.D., hardcover, 448 page

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein, hardcover, 896 pages

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer, hardcover, 400 pages

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, by Steve Coll, hardcover, 688 pages



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by John Freeman
("Migration And Memory: Top Five 2008 Books")

Netherland,, by Joseph O'Neill, hardcover, 272 pages, $23.95

Basrayatha: The Story of a City, by Muhammad Khudayyir, paperback, 176 pages, $15.95

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, hardcover, 352 pages, $25.00

Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, by Raja Shehadeh, paperback, 224 pages, $15.00

Blood Dazzler, by Patricia Smith, paperback, 90 pages, $16.00



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Recommended by Laurel Maury
("Best Graphic Novels Of 2008")

Skyscrapers of the Midwest, by Joshua W. Cotter, Adhouse Books, 282 pages, $19.95

Local, by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, Oni Press, 374 pages, $29.99

Good-Bye, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Drawn and Quarterly, 204 pages, $19.95

Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope, by Emmanuel Guibert, First Second, paperback, 304 pages, $24.00

Heavy Liquid, by Paul Pope, Vertigo, 256 pages, $39.99


Recommended by Maureen Corrigan
("Best Books For A Transformative New Year")

The Tribes of America: Journalistic Discoveries of Our People and Their Cultures, by Paul Cowan, The New Press, 311 pages, list price: $16.95

Hunger of Memory, by Richard Rodriguez, Dial Press, 1982, Paperback 2005, 212 pages, list price: $15.00

American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century, by Gary Gerstle, Princeton University Press, paperback, 2002, 454 pages

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell, Riverhead Books, 254 pages, list price: $25.95

They Hate Us — and India Is Us By PATRICK FRENCH

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 8, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
They Hate Us — and India Is Us By PATRICK FRENCH

London

AS an open, diverse and at times chaotic democracy, India has long been a target for terrorism. From the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in 1948 to the recent attacks in Mumbai, it has faced attempts to change its national character by force. None has yet succeeded. Despite its manifest social failings, India remains the developing world’s most successful experiment in free, plural, large-scale political collaboration.

The Mumbai attacks were transformative, because in them, unlike previous outrages in India, the rich were caught: not only Western visitors in the nation’s magnificent financial capital but also Indian bankers, business owners and socialites. This had symbolic power, as the terrorists knew it would.

However, I recently saw a televised forum in which members of the public vented their fury against India’s politicians for their failure to act, and it soon became apparent the victims were poor as well as rich. One survivor, Shameem Khan — instantly identifiable by his name and his embroidered cap as a Muslim — told how six members of his extended family had been shot dead. Still in shock, he said: “A calamity has fallen on my house. What shall I do?” His neighbors had helped pay for the funeral. Like most of India’s 150 million Muslims, Mr. Khan is staunchly patriotic. The city’s Muslim Council refused to let the terrorists be buried in its graveyards.

When these well-planned attacks unfolded, it was clear to anyone with experience of India that they were not homegrown, and almost certainly originated from Pakistan. Yet the reaction of the world’s news media was to rely on the outmoded idea of Pakistan-India hyphenation — as if a thriving and prosperous democracy of over a billion people must be compared only to an imploded state that is having to be bailed out by the I.M.F. Was Pakistan to blame, asked many pundits, or was India at fault because of its treatment of minority groups?

The terrorists themselves offered little explanation, and made no clear demands. Yet even as the siege continued, commentators were making chilling deductions on their behalf: their actions were because of American foreign policy, or Afghanistan, or the harassment of Indian Muslims. Personal moral responsibility was removed from the players in the atrocity. When officials said that the killers came from the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, it was taken as proof that India’s misdeeds in the Kashmir Valley were the cause.

These misdeeds are real, as are India’s other social and political failings (I recently met a Kashmiri man whose father and sister had died at the hands of the Indian security forces). But there is no sane reason to think Lashkar-e-Taiba would shut down if the situation in Kashmir improved. Its literature is much concerned with establishing a caliphate in Central Asia, and murdering those who insult the Prophet. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed, who lives on a large estate outside Lahore bought with Saudi Money, goes about his business with minimal interference from the Pakistani government.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is part of the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (the Qaeda franchise). Mr. Saeed’s hatreds are catholic — his bugbears include Hindus, Shiites and women who wear bikinis. He regards democracy as “a Jewish and Christian import from Europe,” and considers suicide attacks to be in accordance with Islam. He has a wider strategy: “At this time our contest is Kashmir. Let’s see when the time comes. Our struggle with the Jews is always there.” As he told his followers in Karachi at a rally in 2000: “There can’t be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them — cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.” In short, he has an explicit political desire to create a state of war between the religious communities in India and beyond, and bring on the endgame.

Like other exponents of Islamist extremism, he has a view of the world that does not tolerate doubt or ambiguity: his opponents are guilty, and must be killed. I have met other radicals like Mr. Saeed, men who live in a dimension of absolute certainty and have contempt for the moral relativism of those who seek to excuse them. To achieve their ends, it is necessary to indoctrinate boys in the hatred of Hindus, Americans and Jews, and dispatch them on suicide missions. It is unlikely that any of the militants who were sent from Karachi to Mumbai — young men from poor rural backgrounds whose families were paid for their sacrifice — had ever met a Jew before they tortured and killed Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who was several months pregnant, at the Mumbai Jewish center.

America’s so-called war on terror has been, in many respects, a catastrophe. In Pakistan, it has been chronically mishandled, leading to the radicalization of areas in the north that were previously peaceful. Yet links between the military, the intelligence services and the jihadis have remained intact: Lashkar-e-Taiba is merely one of a number of extremist organizations that continues to function.

The prime solution to the present crisis is to force the closing of terrorist training outfits in Pakistan, and apply the law to those who organize and finance operations like the Mumbai massacres. Hafiz Saeed and other suspects should be sent to India to stand trial. The remark by Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari (a man whose history of shady business dealing makes him demonstrably unfit for high, or even low, office), that he did not think the terrorists came from Pakistan would be funny if it were not tragic.

The United States gives around $1 billion a year in military aid to Islamabad; that is leverage. It does the people of Pakistan no favors for Washington to allow their leaders to continue with the strategy of perpetual diversion, asking India to be patient while denying the true nature of the immediate terrorist threat. I received this e-mail message recently from a friend in Karachi: “Nowhere can get more depressing than Pakistan these days — barring some African failed states and Afghanistan.”

Patrick French is the author, most recently, of “The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.”

Trouble in the Other Middle East By ROBERT D. KAPLAN

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 8, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Trouble in the Other Middle East By ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Washington

THE divisions we split the world into during the cold war have at long last crumbled thanks to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. No longer will we view South Asia as a region distinct from the Middle East. Now there is only one long continuum stretching from the Mediterranean to the jungles of Burma, with every crisis from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the west to the Hindu-Muslim dispute in the east interlocked with the one next door.

Yet this elongated Greater Near East does not signify something new but something old.

For significant parts of medieval and early modern history, Delhi was under the same sovereignty as Kabul, yet under a different one from Bangalore. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, the Mughal dynasty, created by Muslims from Central Asia, governed a sprawling empire encompassing northern and central India, almost all of Pakistan and much of Afghanistan — even as Hindu Maratha warriors in India’s south held out against Mughal armies. India’s whole history — what has created its rich syncretic civilization of Turko-Persian gems like the Taj Mahal and the elaborate Hindu temples of Orissa — is a story of waves of Muslim invaders in turn killing, interacting with and ultimately being influenced by indigenous Hindus. There is even a name for the kind of enchanting architecture that punctuates India and blends Islamic and Hindu styles: Indo-Saracenic, a reference to the Saracens, the term by which Arabs were known to Europeans of the Middle Ages.

Hindu-Muslim relations have historically been tense. Remember that the 1947 partition of the subcontinent uprooted at least 15 million people and led to the violent deaths of around half a million. Given this record, the relatively peaceful relations between the majority Hindus and India’s 150 million Muslims has been testimony to India’s successful experiment in democracy. Democracy has so far kept the lid on an ethnic and religious divide that, while its roots run centuries back, has in recent years essentially become a reinvented modern hostility.

The culprit has been globalization. The secular Indian nationalism of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Congress Party, built around a rejection of Western colonialism, is more and more a thing of the past. As the dynamic Indian economy merges with that of the wider world, Hindus and Muslims have begun separate searches for roots to anchor them inside a bland global civilization. Mass communications have produced a uniform and severe Hinduism from a host of local variants, even as the country’s economically disenfranchised Muslims are increasingly part of an Islamic world community.

The Muslim reaction to this Hindu nationalism has been less anger and violence than simple psychological withdrawal: into beards, skull caps and burkas in some cases; self-segregating into Muslim ghettos in others. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai had a number of aims, one of which was to set a fuse to this tense intercommunal standoff. The jihadists not only want to destroy Pakistan, they want to destroy India as well. India in their eyes is everything they hate: Hindu, vibrantly free and democratic, implicitly and increasingly pro-American, and militarily cozy with Israel. For Washington, this is no simple matter of defending Pakistan against chaos by moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. It is a whole region we are dealing with. Thus for the jihadists, the concept of a 9/11-scale attack on India was brilliant.

Just as the chaos in Iraq through early 2007 threatened the post-Ottoman state system from Lebanon to Iran, creeping anarchy in Pakistan undermines not only Afghanistan but also the whole Indian subcontinent. The existence of terrorist outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba that have links with the Pakistani security apparatus but are outside the control of Pakistan’s own civilian authorities is the very definition of chaos.

A collapsing Pakistan, and with it the loss of any real border separating India from Afghanistan, is India’s worst nightmare. It brings us back toward the borders of the Mughal world, but not in a peaceful way. Indeed, the route that intelligence agencies feel was taken by the fishing boat hijacked by the terrorists — from Porbandar in India’s Gujarat State, then north to Karachi in Pakistan, and then south to Mumbai — follows centuries-old Indian Ocean trade routes.

The jihadist attack on India’s financial center not only damages Indian-Pakistani relations, but makes Pakistan’s new civilian government — which has genuinely tried to improve ties with India — look utterly pathetic. Thus, the attack weakens both countries. Any understanding over Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority territory claimed by Pakistan, is now further than ever from materializing, with mass violence there a distinct possibility.

This, in turn, reduces the chance of an Indian-Pakistani rapprochement on Afghanistan, whose government Pakistan seeks to undermine and India sends millions of dollars in aid to help prop up. The Pakistani security services want a radical Islamized Afghanistan as a strategic rear base against India, while India wants a moderate, secular Afghanistan as a weapon against Pakistan.

Pakistan is not only chaotic but dangerously lonely. Islam has not proved effective in bringing together its regionally based ethnic groups, and thus a resort to a fierce ideology as a unifying device among fundamentalist Muslims has been the country’s signal tragedy. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military suspects that Washington will desert their nation the moment the leadership of Al Qaeda is, by any chance, killed or captured.

Making matters worse, every time the United States launches an air attack into Pakistan from Afghanistan, it further destabilizes the Pakistani state. That is why the Mumbai attacks bring true joy to the most dangerous elements of the Pakistani security establishment: the tragedy has caused the world to focus on India’s weaknesses — its lax security, its vulnerability to age-old maritime infiltration and, most of all, the constant threat of caste and tribal violence — that have been obscured by its economic success. See, many Pakistanis are saying, your beloved India is not so stable either.

This is nonsense, of course. India, with all its troubles, is far more stable than Pakistan. In the meantime, every day that goes by without riots in India is a defeat for the Mumbai terrorists. Indeed, India’s own Muslims have demonstrated against the attacks.

But India, not just Pakistan, desperately needs help. Just as solving or at least neutralizing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a requirement for reducing radicalism and Iranian influence throughout the Levant, the same is true of the Indian-Pakistani dispute at the other end of the Greater Middle East. Our notion of the “peace process” is antiquated and needs expanding. We need a second special negotiator for the Middle East, a skilled diplomat shuttling regularly among New Delhi, Islamabad and Kabul. (There has been some speculation, in fact, that Barack Obama is considering Richard Holbrooke, the former United Nations ambassador, for just such a job.)

The Middle East is back to where it was centuries ago, not because of ancient hatreds but because of globalization. Instead of bold lines on a map we have a child’s messy finger painting, as the circumvention of borders and the ease of communications allow the brisk movement of ideas and people and terrorists from one place to another. Our best strategy is, as difficult and trite as it sounds, to be at all places at once, Not with troops, necessarily, but with every bit of energy and constant attention that our entire national security apparatus — and those of our allies — can bring to bear.

Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Notable Children’s Books of 2008

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 7, 2008
Notable Children’s Books of 2008

WABI SABI
By Mark Reibstein. Illustrated by Ed Young.
Little, Brown & Company Books for Young Readers. $16.99. (Ages 3 to 6)

In this book of ingeniously layered text — both narrative and haiku — and gorgeous collage art, a cat named Wabi Sabi sets out to discover the meaning of her name. Chosen by The Times as a Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2008.

THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 2.
By M. T. Anderson.
Candlewick Press. $22.99. (Ages 14 and up)

This sequel completes the story of race and revolution told in “The Pox Party.” As Octavian Nothing, escaped from slavery, joins up with British forces in Boston, his story encompasses both the comic and the tragic with sweeping ambition.

SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH
By Walter Dean Myers
Scholastic Press. $17.99. (Ages 12 and up)

An idealistic young soldier lands in Iraq’s deadly hall of mirrors, in a kind of sequel to Myers’s 1988 Vietnam novel, “Fallen Angels.” In this powerful new book, laced with violence but also warmth and humor, the narrator faces humanitarian missions that turn into deadly ambushes (a detonator is concealed in a tub of flour) and bears witness to the killing of friend and enemy alike.

THE HUNGER GAMES
By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press. $17.99. (Ages 12 and up)

A brilliantly plotted tale that begins after North American society has been decimated by climate change and war. In this world, children fight to the death in ritual games — a form of both repression and entertainment in the country of Panem. When her younger sister is picked to compete, Katniss Everdeen, a skilled hunter, makes the fateful choice to take her place.

LITTLE BROTHER
By Cory Doctorow
Tor/Tom Doherty Associates. $17.95. (Ages 13 and up)

A near-future terrorist attack hits San Francisco, and Marcus Yallow, 17, playing hooky from high school, is detained in the crackdown that follows. The experience leads him into an ingenious program of resistance and civil rights activism in a novel that is at once an entertaining thriller, a thoughtful polemic and a practical handbook of digital-age self-defense.

ABC3D
By Marion Bataille
Neal Porter/Roaring Brook Press. $19.95. (Ages 5 and up)

A simple but sophisticated idea animates this small, chunky pop-up book, which does wonders with the letters A through Z. In Bataille’s paper engineering, B doubles as 3, C flips over to become a D, U is a perfect pa­rabola, and so on, all in bold black, white and red. This stylish and interactive work of art can be read again and again.

TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES
By Mem Fox. Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
Harcourt Children's Books. $16. (Ages 3 to 5)

A witty and winsome look at babies around the world that has a toe-tapping refrain: the words sound easy and familiar, as though they have been handed down to children forever. And the story ends with a pitch-perfect moment: one little baby who is “mine, all mine.”

THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS
By E. Lockhart
Hyperion. $16.99. (Ages 12 and up)

A nominee for a National Book Award in young people’s literature, E. Lockhart’s latest concerns “a nice girl” who remakes herself as a “near-criminal mastermind,” with pranks that upend her school’s oppressive power structure (created by and for boys). It’s a homage to girl power, with a protagonist who is fearless.

Holiday Books 100 Notable Books of 2008

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 7, 2008
Holiday Books 100 Notable Books of 2008

The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since Dec. 2, 2007, when we published our previous Notables list.

Fiction & Poetry

AMERICAN WIFE. By Curtis Sittenfeld. (Random House, $26.) The life of this novel’s heroine — a first lady who comes to realize, at the height of the Iraq war, that she has compromised her youthful ideals — is conspicuously modeled on that of Laura Bush.

ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES. By Rivka Galchen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) The psychiatrist-narrator of this brainy, whimsical first novel believes that his beautiful, much-younger Argentine wife has been replaced by an exact double.

BASS CATHEDRAL. By Nathaniel Mackey. (New Directions, paper, $16.95.) Mackey’s fictive world is an insular one of musicians composing, playing and talking jazz in the private language of their art.

BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN. By Charles Bock. (Random House, $25.) This bravura first novel, set against a corruptly compelling Las Vegas landscape, revolves around the disappearance of a surly 12-year-old boy.

BEIJING COMA. By Ma Jian. Translated by Flora Drew. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.50.) Ma’s novel, an important political statement, looks at China through the life of a dissident paralyzed at Tiananmen Square.

A BETTER ANGEL: Stories. By Chris Adrian. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) For Adrian — who is both a pediatrician and a divinity student — illness and a heightened spiritual state are closely related conditions.

BLACK FLIES. By Shannon Burke. (Soft Skull, paper, $14.95.) A rookie paramedic in New York City is overwhelmed by the horrors of his job in this arresting, confrontational novel, informed by Burke’s five years of experience on city ambulances.

THE BLUE STAR. By Tony Earley. (Little, Brown, $23.99.) The caring, thoughtful hero of Earley’s engrossing first novel, “Jim the Boy,” is now 17 and confronting not only the eternal turmoil of love, but also venality and the frightening calls of duty and war.

THE BOAT. By Nam Le. (Knopf, $22.95.) In the opening story of Le’s first collection, a blocked writer succumbs to the easy temptations of “ethnic lit.”

BREATH. By Tim Winton. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) Surfing offers this darkly exhilarating novel’s protagonist an escape from a drab Australian town.

DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: Thirteen Stories. By Steven Millhauser. (Knopf, $24.) In his latest collection, Millhauser advances his chosen themes — the slippery self, the power of hysterical young people — with even more confidence and power than before.

DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES. By Jonathan Miles. (Houghton Mifflin, $22.) Miles’s fine first novel takes the form of a letter from a stranded traveler, his life a compilation of regrets, who uses the time to digress on an impressive array of cultural issues, large and small.

DIARY OF A BAD YEAR. By J. M. Coet­zee. (Viking, $24.95.) Coetzee follows the late career of one Señor C, who, like Coetzee himself, is a South African writer transplanted to Australia and the author of a novel titled “Waiting for the Barbarians.”

DICTATION: A Quartet. By Cynthia Ozick. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) In the title story of this expertly turned collection, Henry James and Joseph Conrad embody Ozick’s polarity of art and ardor.

ELEGY: Poems. By Mary Jo Bang. (Graywolf, $20.) Grief is converted into art in this bleak, forthright collection, centered on the death of the poet’s son.

THE ENGLISH MAJOR. By Jim Harrison. (Grove, $24.) A 60-year-old cherry farmer and former English teacher — an inversion of the classic Harrison hero — sets out on a trip west after being dumped by his wife.

FANON. By John Edgar Wideman. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) Wideman’s novel — raw and astringent, yet with a high literary polish — explores the life of the psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon.

THE FINDER. By Colin Harrison. (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) A New York thriller, played out against the nasty world of global capitalism.

FINE JUST THE WAY IT IS: Wyoming Stories 3 . By Annie Proulx. (Scribner, $25.) These rich, bleak stories offer an American West in which the natural elements are murderous and folks aren’t much better.

THE GOOD THIEF . By Hannah Tinti. (Dial, $25.) In Tinti’s first novel, set in mid-19th-century New England, a con man teaches an orphan the art of the lie.

HALF OF THE WORLD IN LIGHT: New and Selected Poems. By Juan Felipe Herrera. (University of Arizona, paper, $24.95.) Herrera, known for portrayals of Chicano life, is unpredictable and wildly inventive.

HIS ILLEGAL SELF. By Peter Carey. (Knopf, $25.) In this enthralling novel, a boy goes underground with a defiant hippie indulging her maternal urge.

HOME. By Marilynne Robinson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Revisiting the events of her novel “Gilead” from another perspective, Robinson has written an anguished pastoral, at once bitter and joyful.

INDIGNATION. By Philip Roth. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.) Marcus Messner is a sophomore at a small, conservative Ohio college at the time of the Korean War. The novel he narrates, like Roth’s last two, is ruthlessly economical and relentlessly deathbound.

THE LAZARUS PROJECT. By Aleksandar Hemon. (Riverhead, $24.95.) This novel’s despairing immigrant protagonist becomes intrigued with the real-life killing of a presumed anarchist in Chicago in 1908.

LEGEND OF A SUICIDE. By David Vann. (University of Massachusetts, $24.95.) In his first story collection, Vann leads the reader to vital places while exorcizing demons born from the suicide of his father.

LIFE CLASS. By Pat Barker. (Doubleday, $23.95.) Barker’s new novel, about a group of British artists overtaken by World War I, concentrates more on the turmoil of love than on the trauma of war.

LUSH LIFE. By Richard Price. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Chandler — and Bellow, too — peeps out from Price’s novel, in which an aspiring writer cum restaurant manager, mugged in the gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, himself becomes a suspect.

A MERCY. By Toni Morrison. (Knopf, $23.95.) Summoning voices from the 17th century, Morrison performs her deepest excavation yet into America’s history and exhumes the country’s twin original sins: the importation of African slaves and the near extermination of Native Americans.

MODERN LIFE: Poems . By Matthea Harvey. (Graywolf, paper, $14.) Harvey is willing to take risks, and her reward is that richest, rarest thing, genuine poetry.

A MOST WANTED MAN . By John le Carré. (Scribner, $28.) This powerful novel, centered on a half-Russian, half-Chechen, half-crazy fugitive in Germany, swims with operatives whose desperation to avert another 9/11 provokes a slow-­burning fire in every line.

MY REVOLUTIONS. By Hari Kunzru. (Dutton, $25.95.) Kunzru’s third novel is an extraordinary autumnal depiction of a failed ’60s radical.

NETHERLAND. By Joseph O’Neill. (Pantheon, $23.95.) In the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction yet about post-9/11 New York and London, the game of cricket provides solace to a man whose family disintegrates after the attacks.

OPAL SUNSET: Selected Poems, 1958-2008. By Clive James. (Norton, $25.95.) James, a staunch formalist, is firmly situated in the sociable, plain-spoken tradition that runs from Auden through Larkin.

THE OTHER. By David Guterson. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this novel from the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” a schoolteacher nourishes a friendship with a privileged recluse.

OUR STORY BEGINS: New and Selected Stories. By Tobias Wolff. (Knopf, $26.95.) Some of Wolff’s best work is concentrated here, revealing his gift for evoking the breadth of American experience.

THE ROAD HOME. By Rose Tremain. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) A widowed Russian emigrant, fearfully navigating the strange city of London, learns that his home village is about to be inundated.

THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF. By Victor Pelevin. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. (Viking, $25.95.) A supernatural call girl narrates Pelevin’s satirical allegory of post-Soviet, post-9/11 Russia.

THE SCHOOL ON HEART’S CONTENT ROAD. By Carolyn Chute. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) In Chute’s first novel in nearly 10 years, disparate characters cluster around an off-the-grid communal settlement.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: A New Verse Translation. By Simon Armitage. (Norton, $25.95.) One of the eerie, exuberant joys of Middle English poetry, in an alliterative rendering that captures the original’s drive, dialect and landscape.

SLEEPING IT OFF IN RAPID CITY: Poems, New and Selected. By August Kleinzahler. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Kleinzahler seeks the true heart of places, whether repellent, beautiful or both at once.

TELEX FROM CUBA. By Rachel Kushner. (Scribner, $25.) In this multilayered first novel, inter­national drifters try to bury pasts that include murder, adultery and neurotic meltdown, even as the Castro brothers gather revolutionaries in the hills.

2666. By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cloth and paper, $30.) The five autonomous sections of this posthumously published novel interlock to form an astonishing whole, a supreme capstone to Bolaño’s vaulting ambition.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. By Jhumpa Lahiri. (Knopf, $25.) In eight sensitive stories, Lahiri evokes the anxiety, excitement and transformations felt by Bengali immigrants and their American children.

THE UNFORTUNATES. By B. S. Johnson. (New Directions, $24.95.) This novel, first published in 1969, dovetails theme (the accidents of memory) with eccentric form (unbound chapters to be read in any order).

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? By Kate Atkinson. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) Jackson Brodie, the hero of Atkinson’s previous literary thrillers, takes the case of a mother and baby who suddenly disappear.

THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK. By John Updike. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this ingenious sequel to “The Witches of Eastwick,” the three title characters, old ladies now, renew their sisterhood, return to their old hometown and contrive to atone for past crimes.

YESTERDAY’S WEATHER. By Anne Enright. (Grove, $24.) Working-class Irish characters grapple with love, marriage, confusion and yearning in Enright’s varied, if somewhat disenchanted, stories.


Nonfiction

AMERICAN LION: Andrew Jackson in the White House . By Jon Meacham. (Random House, $30.) Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, discerns a democratic dignity in the seventh president’s populism.

ANGLER: The Cheney Vice Presidency. By Barton Gellman. (Penguin Press, $27.95.) An engrossing portrait of Dick Cheney as a master political manipulator.

BACARDI AND THE LONG FIGHT FOR CUBA: The Biography of a Cause. By Tom Gjelten. (Viking, $27.95.) An NPR correspondent paints a vivid portrait of the anti-Castro clan behind the liquor empire.

THE BIG SORT: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. By Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A journalist and a statistician see political dangers in the country’s increasing tendency to separate into solipsistic blocs.

BLOOD MATTERS: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene. By Masha Gessen. (Harcourt, $25.) Hard choices followed Gessen’s discovery that she carries a dangerous genetic mutation.

CAPITOL MEN: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen. By Philip Dray. (Houghton Mifflin, $30.) A collective biography of the pioneers of black political involvement.

THE CHALLENGE: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power. By Jonathan Mahler. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) An objective, thorough study of a landmark case for Guantánamo detainees.

CHAMPLAIN’S DREAM. By David Hackett Fischer. (Simon & Schuster, $40.) Fischer argues that France’s North Ameri­can colonial success was attributable largely to one remarkable man, Samuel de Champlain.

CHASING THE FLAME: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. By Samantha Power. (Penguin Press, $32.95.) Vieira de Mello, who was killed in Iraq in 2003, embodied both the idealism and the limitations of the United Nations, which he served long and loyally.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE. An American Life: A Biography. By Elisabeth Bumiller. (Random House, $27.95.) A New York Times reporter casts a keen eye on Rice’s tenure as a policy maker, her close ties to George Bush, and her personal and professional past.

THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. By Jane Mayer. (Doubleday, $27.50.) A New Yorker writer recounts the emergence of the widespread use of torture as a central tool in the fight against terrorism.

DELTA BLUES: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music. By Ted Gioia. (Norton, $27.95.) Gioia’s survey balances the story of the music with that of its reception.

DESCARTES’ BONES: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. By Russell Shorto. (Doubleday, $26.) Shorto’s smart, elegant study turns the early separation of Descartes’s skull from the rest of his remains into an irresistible metaphor.

DREAMS AND SHADOWS: The Future of the Middle East. By Robin Wright. (Penguin Press, $26.95.) This fluent and intelligent book describes the struggles of people from Morocco to Iran to reform or replace long-entrenched national regimes.

THE DRUNKARD’S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. By Leonard Mlodinow. (Pantheon, $24.95.) This breezy crash course intersperses probabilistic mind-benders with profiles of theorists.

AN EXACT REPLICA OF A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION: A Memoir. By Elizabeth McCracken. (Little, Brown, $19.99.) An unstinting account of the novelist’s emotions after the stillbirth of her first child.

FACTORY GIRLS: From Village to City in a Changing China. By Leslie T. Chang. (Spiegel & Grau, $26.) Chang’s engrossing account delves deeply into the lives of young migrant workers in southern China.

THE FOREVER WAR. By Dexter Filkins. (Knopf, $25.) Filkins, a New York Times reporter who was embedded with American troops during the attack on Falluja, has written an account of the Iraq war in the tradition of Michael Herr’s “Dispatches.”

FREEDOM’S BATTLE: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. By Gary J. Bass. (Knopf, $35.) Bass’s book is both a history and an argument for military interventions as a tool of international justice today.

A GREAT IDEA AT THE TIME: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books. By Alex Beam. (Public­Affairs, $24.95.) The minds behind a curious project that continues to exert a hold in some quarters.

HALLELUJAH JUNCTION: Composing an American Life. By John Adams. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Adams’s wry, smart memoir stands with books by Hector Berlioz and Louis Armstrong among the most readably incisive autobiographies of major musical figures.

THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO: An American Family. By Annette Gordon-Reed. (Norton, $35.) Gordon-Reed continues her study of the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.

HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. By Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95.) The Times columnist turns his attention to possible business-friendly solutions to global warming.

THE HOUSE AT SUGAR BEACH: In Search of a Lost African Childhood. By Helene Cooper. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) Cooper, a New York Times reporter who fled a warring Liberia as a child, returned to confront the ghosts of her past — and to look for a lost sister.

HOW FICTION WORKS. By James Wood. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) Concentrating on the art of the novel, the New Yorker critic presents a compact, erudite vade mecum with acute observations on individual passages and authors.

MORAL CLARITY: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists. By Susan Neiman. (Harcourt, $27.) Neiman champions Enlightenment values with no hint of over­simplification, dogmatism or misplaced piety.

THE NIGHT OF THE GUN: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own. By David Carr. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) Carr, a New York Times culture reporter, sifts through his drug- and alcohol-­addicted past.

NIXONLAND: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. By Rick Perlstein. (Scribner, $37.50.) Perlstein’s compulsively readable study holds that Nixon’s divisive and enduring legacy is the “notion that there are two kinds of Americans.”

NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF. By Julian Barnes. (Knopf, $24.95.) With no faith in an afterlife, why should an agnostic fear death? On this simple question, Barnes hangs an elegant memoir and meditation, full of a novelist’s affection for the characters who wander in and out.

NUREYEV: The Life. By Julie Kavanagh. (Pantheon, $37.50.) The son of Soviet Tatars could never get enough of anything — space, applause, money, sex — but he attracted an audience of millions to the art form he mastered.

PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. By Mark Harris. (Penguin Press, $27.95.) The best-picture nominees of 1967 were a collage of America’s psyche, and more.

THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD. By Fareed Zakaria. (Norton, $25.95.) This relentlessly intelligent examination of power focuses less on American decline than on the rise of China, trailed by India.

PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. By Dan Ariely. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.95.) Moving comfortably from the lab to broad social questions to his own life, an M.I.T. economist pokes holes in conventional market theory.

THE RACE CARD: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. By Richard Thompson Ford. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Ford vivisects every sacred cow in “post-racist” America.

RETRIBUTION: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. By Max Hastings. (Knopf, $35.) In this masterly account, Hastings describes Japanese madness eliciting American ruthlessness in the Pacific Theater.

A SECULAR AGE. By Charles Taylor. (Belknap/Harvard University, $39.95.) A philosophy professor thinks our era has been too quick to dismiss religious faith.

SHAKESPEARE’S WIFE. By Germaine Greer. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.95.) With a polemicist’s vision and a scholar’s patience, Greer sets out to rescue Ann Hathaway from layers of biographical fantasy.

THE SUPERORGANISM: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. By Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson. (Norton, $55.) The central conceit of this astonishing study is that an insect colony is a single animal raised to a higher level.

TELL ME HOW THIS ENDS: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. By Linda Robinson. (Public­Affairs, $27.95.) A probing, conscientious account of strategy and tactics in post-surge Iraq.

THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. By David Hajdu. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) A worthy history of the midcentury crusade against the comics industry.

THEY KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT: The Rise of the Neocons. By Jacob Heil­brunn. (Doubleday, $26.) A journalist traces the neoconservative movement from its origins at the City College of New York in the 1940s.

THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: Death and the American Civil War. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (Knopf, $27.95.) The lasting impact of the war’s immense loss of life is the subject of this extraordinary account by Harvard’s president.

THE THREE OF US: A Family Story. By Julia Blackburn. (Pantheon, $26.) Searingly and unflinchingly, Blackburn describes an appalling upbringing at the hands of her catastrophically unfit parents.

THRUMPTON HALL: A Memoir of Life in My Father’s House. By Miranda Seymour. (Harper/HarperCollins, $24.95.) Seymour’s odd and oddly affecting book instantly catapults her father into the front rank of impossible and eccentric English parents.

TRAFFIC: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). By Tom Vanderbilt. (Knopf, $24.95.) A surprising, enlightening look at the psychology of the human beings behind the steering wheels.

THE TRILLION DOLLAR MELTDOWN: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash. By Charles R. Morris. (PublicAffairs, $22.95.) How we got into the mess we’re in, explained briefly and brilliantly.

A VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE: Rediscovering the New World. By Tony Horwitz. (Holt, $27.50.) An accessible popular history of early America, with plenty of self-tutoring and colorful reporting.

WAKING GIANT: America in the Age of Jackson. By David S. Reynolds. (Harper/HarperCollins, $29.95.) Reynolds excels at depicting the cultural, social and intellectual currents that buffeted the nation.

WHILE THEY SLEPT: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family. By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $25.) Harrison’s account brings moral clarity to the dark fate of the family of Jody Gilley, who was 16 when she survived a rampage by her brother in 1984.

WHITE HEAT: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. By Brenda Wineapple. (Knopf, $27.95.) The hitherto elusive Higginson was the poet’s chosen reader, admirer and advocate.

THE WILD PLACES. By Robert Macfarlane. (Penguin, paper, $15.) Macfarlane’s unorthodox British landscapes are furrowed with human histories and haunted by literary prophets.

THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul. By Patrick French. (Knopf, $30.) French has created a monument fully worthy of its subject, elucidating the enduring but painfully asymmetrical love triangle at the core of Naipaul’s life and work.

H

Budgets Behaving Badly By DAVID LEONHARDT

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 3, 2008
Economic Scene
Budgets Behaving Badly By DAVID LEONHARDT

WASHINGTON

Last week, on the same day the Treasury Department announced a brand new $800 billion program to stem the financial crisis, Barack Obama held a news conference to say that he was serious about getting the budget deficit under control.

To which a properly skeptical citizen might respond: Good luck with that.

The deficit in the current fiscal year could end up approaching $1 trillion, which is roughly equal to the combined budgets of the military and Medicare. Given the depth of the crisis, running a big deficit makes perfect sense. But the government also needs to have long-term plans to reduce it. And the sort of deficit we’re now facing will require some pretty creative plans.

Fortunately, there is a group of economists who are almost ideally suited to help Mr. Obama with this task — to come up with budget cuts that can reduce government spending without harming the quality of government services. They’re called behavioral economists.

Behavioral economics sprang up about three decades ago as a radical critique of the standard assumption that human beings behaved in economically rational ways. The behaviorialists, as they’re known, pointed out that this assumption was ridiculous.

Would-be weight losers pay $100 a month to belong to a gym they rarely visit. Borrowers get fooled into taking out a loan with an appealing teaser rate. Patients fail to follow even a basic regimen of prescribed drugs — a failure that can leave them with serious medical complications and Medicare with big hospital bills.

Thanks to insights like these, behavioral economics has entered the mainstream. In this year’s campaign, Mr. Obama signaled an interest in the field by surrounding himself with advisers who were quite sympathetic to it. Of course, this was before the financial crisis became so serious that it overwhelmed everything else. Today, it’s reasonable to ask whether the Obama administration will still have time for behavioral economics.

That’s why some economists are now talking about whether Mr. Obama should add a new kind of adviser to his team, one specifically charged with translating the lessons of the behavioral revolution into real-world policies. This person would work with Medicare officials to improve drug compliance. He or she would think about how mortgage regulations should be rewritten, how health insurance choices should be presented and how carbon emissions might be cut.

“The issues we struggle with today are inherently behavioral as never before,” Sendhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist at Harvard, told me. “It’s impossible to think of the current mortgage crisis without thinking seriously about underlying consumer psychology. And it’s impossible to think of future regulatory fixes without thinking seriously about that issue.”

Behavioral economics may sound like an ivory tower subject, but it’s really the opposite. It’s the study of everyday life as it actually happens, not as some textbook says it should. It offers economic policy makers a new set of tools — a more subtle, psychological set — beyond tax rates, interest rates and other traditional tools.

And it can already claim one big policy success. In 2006, Congress passed a pension bill with a clause that came straight out of research on savings by Richard Thaler, a behavioral pioneer, and others. (Mr. Thaler and Cass Sunstein recently wrote “Nudge,” a book advocating behavioral policies, and both were informal advisers to the Obama campaign.)

The savings research had found that many more people saved money in a 401(k) retirement plan if they didn’t have to take active steps to join the plan. In one study, only 45 percent of a company’s new employees participated in the 401(k) when doing so required them to take some kind of action, like filling out a form. Eighty-six percent participated when doing so was the default option.

The new pension law gave companies a small incentive to make employees opt out of a 401(k), rather than opt in. The law doesn’t restrict employees’ choices in any way. It simply encourages a more sensible default. Peter Orszag, Mr. Obama’s nominee for budget director, has called the law “a tangible example of how economic research can be rapidly translated into concrete policy changes that should improve people’s lives.”

Mr. Orszag’s interest in behavioral work, together with the reach of the budget office, makes it the obvious place for a behavioral maven to be based. An outside committee of experts — a smaller-scale version of the financial crisis board that will be headed by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman — may also make sense. Mr. Obama’s aides have learned that they have a better chance of persuading him of an argument when they tell him that they’ve spoken with the top experts in a given field.

The group would have plenty of work. Take the current policies toward prescription drugs. Right now, Medicare separates hospital insurance and drug insurance into different programs. The insurers running the drug plans, Dana Goldman of the RAND Corporation points out, make more money when they have to cover fewer prescriptions.

The government, on the other hand, often loses money when people don’t take medications for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension. Later on, these people show up at the hospital, and Medicare foots the bill.

A more sensible policy would get rid of these perverse incentives and also take into account the reasons that patients fail to take their pills. Mr. Goldman suggests charging an annual fee for a drug, rather than the current system of charging people separately for each prescription refill, which gives them a reason not to get the refill.

To take another example, many laid-off workers remain unemployed for months at a time, out of a mistaken belief that they will be able to find a new job that pays as much as their old one. In the process, they often do permanent damage to their finances. Jeffrey Kling of the Brookings Institution says that the unemployment insurance system could help people get over this psychological barrier by temporarily subsidizing a new, lower-paying job.

A behaviorally savvy Social Security Administration, meanwhile, could help people make better choices about when to start receiving checks. (Many now do so at age 62, the earliest possible date, which is generally a mistake.) The Environmental Protection Agency could redesign fuel economy stickers so that they emphasized the long-term gasoline costs of driving the vehicle. Banking regulators could devise a standard, default mortgage that didn’t involve a teaser rate or other gimmicks.

During the campaign, some liberals criticized the Obama team’s interest in behavioral economics, saying that the field wasn’t ambitious enough to solve today’s biggest economic problems. And it certainly can’t solve the current crisis — or the deficit — by itself. But no one is arguing that the Obama administration bury itself in behavioral research instead of working on the crisis.

The promise of behavioral economics is that it can help create a better government, one that wastes less money and does more to improve people’s lives. That’s hardly a modest goal.

“Everybody is preoccupied, as they should be, with preventing the next Great Depression,” as Mr. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago, says. “But it will be important for the administration to have people tasked with thinking long term — like, once it’s not O.K. to spend $100 billion on a whim, how do you get our budget under control?”

E-mail: Leonhardt@nytimes.com

Best Classical CDs: Music Crossing Boundaries By Brian McCreath

Best Classical CDs: Music Crossing Boundaries By Brian McCreath


WGBH, December 1, 2008 - Just as the 2008 presidential election exposed and ultimately crossed gender, racial and generational barriers, many of the year's notable recordings explored and wrestled with different kinds of boundaries — some musical, some cultural, and some almost unimaginable if not for the power of music.

Click here for more entries in the Best CDs of 2008 series.

Best Classical CDs: Music Crossing Boundaries
Cover for Bach: Six Concertos
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5
Artist: Trevor Pinnock
Album: Bach: Six Concertos
Song: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050

The present-day ubiquity of these six pieces by J.S. Bach in no way diminishes their revolutionary impact in redefining the hierarchy of instruments. The emergence, literally, of the harpsichord -- from its workmanlike basso continuo role into the spotlight of virtuosity in the Concerto No. 5 -- is demonstrated with supreme warmth and clarity in Trevor Pinnock's collaboration with a handpicked ensemble, one of many such moments in this new recording.

* Listen[9 min 58 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050"
o CD: Bach: Six Concertos
o Artist: Trevor Pinnock
o Label: Avie
o Released: 2007
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Gunther Schuller: Journey into jazz
Concertino for Jazz Quartet & Orchestra
Artist: Gil Rose
Album: Gunther Schuller: Journey into jazz
Song: Concertino for Jazz Quartet & Orchestra: III

Gunther Schuller breached a different kind of musical barrier in the late 1950s, bringing together the aesthetics of jazz and classical traditions. Third Stream music was the result, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has teamed up with a jazz quartet that includes Schuller's sons (Edwin and George) for an electrifying new recording of three landmark pieces.

* Listen[5 min 39 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Concertino for Jazz Quartet & Orchestra: III"
o CD: Gunther Schuller: Journey into jazz
o Artist: Gil Rose
o Label: BMOP Sound
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for An American Journey
O'Connor: Piano Trio No. 1 - I
Artist: Eroica Trio
Album: An American Journey
Song: Piano Trio No. 1 ("Poets and Prophets")

The Eroica Trio's newest recording, its first with violinist Susie Park, crosses yet another musical boundary with the premiere recording of Mark O'Connor's homage to singer/songwriter/cultural icon Johnny Cash: the Piano Trio No. 1, "Poets and Prophets," featuring O'Connor's trademark deft weaving together of classical textures and the earthy drive of roots music.

* Listen[6 min 33 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Piano Trio No. 1 ("Poets and Prophets")"
o CD: An American Journey
o Artist: Eroica Trio
o Label: EMI Classics
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for In a State of Jazz
Sonate en etat de jazz: IV - Provocation de samba
Artist: Marc-André Hamelin
Album: In a State of Jazz

Alexis Weissenberg, one of the great concert pianists of the last century, had his own way of exploring the cross-fertilization of jazz and classical forms, perhaps shown most clearly in his Sonate en état de jazz (Sonata in a State of Jazz). Marc-André Hamelin, whose playing always exhibits dynamism, grace, humor and, not least, technique to burn, borrowed that title for a recording that rips stylishly through jazz-influenced music by Weissenberg, Gulda, Kapustin and Antheil.

* Listen[6 min 12 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Sonate en etat de jazz: IV - Provocation de samba"
o CD: In a State of Jazz
o Artist: Marc-André Hamelin
o Label: Hyperion
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Francisco Javier - La Ruta de Oriente [Hybrid SACD]
Francisco Javier: O Gloriosa
Artist: Jordi Savall
Album: Francisco Javier - La Ruta de Oriente [Hybrid SACD]
Song: Francicso Javier: O Gloriosa Domina

Catalonian gambist and scholar Jordi Savall has made a habit of venturing into the nether regions of early music. Inspired by the 16th-century missionary Francisco Javier, Savall combines two of his ensembles -- the instrumental Hespèrion XXI and the vocal La Capella Reial de Catalunya -- with guest soloists on Asian instruments to imagine the sounds that would have occurred along the route from Spain, through Africa and India, and on to Japan and China, supported by exhaustive and beautifully presented text.

* Listen[13 min 2 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Francicso Javier: O Gloriosa Domina"
o CD: Francisco Javier - La Ruta de Oriente
o Artist: Jordi Savall
o Label: Alia Vox
o Released: 2007
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic
The Cusp of Magic: IV
Artist: Kronos Quartet
Album: Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic
Song: Royal Wedding

Terry Riley begins with something like a contemporary take on similar East-West combinations, writing that "the pipa and the Western string quartet highlight the boundary regions of cultural reference," and that his "plan was to make these regions seamless so that the listener is carried between worlds without an awareness of how he/she ends up there."

* Listen
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Royal Wedding"
o CD: Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic
o Artist: Kronos Quartet
o Label: Nonesuch
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for John Adams: A Flowering Tree
A Flowering Tree
Artist: John Adams
Album: John Adams: A Flowering Tree
Song: A Flowering Tree, opera

John Adams also finds inspiration by looking east, but the result is quite different. For A Flowering Tree, based on an Indian folk story, the composer tells a story of love and transformation. Rather than attempting a musical hybridization, Adams relies entirely on his own imaginative musical language. That the result is so convincing demonstrates how powerful that language is.

* Listen[9 min 23 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "A Flowering Tree, opera"
o CD: John Adams: A Flowering Tree
o Artist: John Adams
o Label: Nonesuch
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o iTunes »

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Heavenly Harmonies
Vigilate, motet for 5 voices
Artist: Stile Antico
Album: Heavenly Harmonies [Hybrid SACD]
Song: Byrd: Vigilate, motet for 5 voices

Very real political and religious divisions and boundaries were central to the music written by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd at the time of the English Reformation. Stile Antico shows how the seemingly simple programming idea of alternating Psalm-tunes by Tallis and motets by Byrd can vibrantly illuminate the cultural arena that birthed two vastly different approaches to the expression of devotion. (In this example, Byrd's "Vigilate" is preceded by Tallis's Third Tune.)

* Listen[5 min 11 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Byrd: Vigilate, motet for 5 voices"
o CD: Heavenly Harmonies [Hybrid SACD]
o Artist: Stile Antico
o Label: Harmonia Mundi
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 4: III, excerpt
Artist: Various
Album: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 [Includes DVD]
Song: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43

Nineteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine the boundaries, both explicitly stated and psychologically imposed, created by the Soviet state. This performance of Shostakovich 's wrenching Fourth Symphony not only brings out the best in a great orchestra, but also supports a fascinating video presentation (included on a bonus DVD) that hauntingly communicates the insidious nature of Soviet power and its effect on art.

* Listen[5 min 0 sec]
* |
* Add to Playlist
* |
* Purchase Music
Purchase Featured Music
close window

o "Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43"
o CD: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
o Artist: Various
o Label: CSO Resound
o Released: 2008
Loading...
o

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?




Cover for Terezín: Music from Theresienstadt
Beryozkele, from Three Yiddish Songs, Op. 53
Artist: Anne Sofie von Otter
Album: Terezín: Music from Theresienstadt
Song: Brezulinka, Yiddish songs (3) for voice & piano

Equally unfathomable are the boundaries placed on the prisoners confined to Theresienstadt, and Anne Sofie von Otter's personal connection to the story -- her father was a Swedish diplomat who attempted unsuccessfully to alert the world to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps -- adds compelling weight to her traversal of music written by those prisoners. Heartbreaking music, yes, but also consolingly transcendent.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97470798

null