[1473] Of a farewell to alms, and 2007

This is the last book for the year 2007 for me.

This book created quite a buzz in the economic realm. I have actually cheated my way through and read its reviews. Still, that fails to satisfy my curiosity. Thus, the purchase.

The odd thing is, an almost the same point that is central to this book is touched by Beinhocker briefly in The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics. And I think, this book should be read together with Douglass North’s Understanding the Process of Economic Change. I have yet to read North myself but I have read enough reviews to suspect that the two authors may be offering competing intriguing explanations to economic development. Or, in fact, complementary since no one theory typically explains everything away at ease in economics. I will invest effort to make North’s work as my first book for 2008.

Anyway, apparently, the book is quite hard to come by in Malaysia; I had to wait for a month or so for this book. Once, I asked for the book at Kinokuniya, and they gave me A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway instead. That was a “WTF?” moment there then but no matter. All is well now for I am a proud owner of the hardcover edition!

And oh, boy. There are too many books unread and most of them fall under the economics section. Maybe, just maybe, I should stop buying books for awhile.