I’ve seen Barry Diller four times in public. First at a restaurant in Sag Harbor, two more times at Manhattan restaurant Michael’s, and last at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I knew who he was, he not me, but at Hoover I walked up and shook his hand to tell him what a big admirer I […]
Book Review: Barry Diller’s Excellent “Who Knew” Read More »
The Merval, Argentina’s benchmark equity index, soared 22 percent the day after the recent vote. Markets had been pricing in big electoral gains for the Peronist parties, only for Javier Milei’s market liberal Liberty Advances party to reveal unexpected strength. The market surge in Argentina is a reminder that equities don’t just rally, nor
Book Review: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “1929” Read More »
It’s not infrequently said that Adam Smith “invented” capitalism with his publication The Wealth of Nations, but the real truth (one stressed by Matthew Hennessey in Visible Hand) is that Smith reported on capitalism as it was happening. That’s because profit-motivated human action is as natural as breathing, as opposed to something humans needed instruction in. What arguably
Book Review: Martin Cruz Smith’s “Gorky Park” Read More »
Americans consumed just as much Arab oil during the 1973 OPEC “embargo” as they did before it. By some accounts, they consumed more. Which is a reminder that if you’re producing, you’re trading with the world. And vice versa. So-called “Arab oil” that the Arab members of OPEC weren’t selling directly into the U.S.
Book Review: Simon Kuper’s “Chums” Read More »
The Calendar section in the Los Angeles Times used to be thick Monday through Saturday, and then near book-length on Sundays. So many ads promoting released and soon-to-be-released films, and so many articles about the movie industry that has long animated business activity in Los Angeles. The Calendar section, and surely Variety to a smaller but much more
Book Review: Ed Zwick’s “Hits, Flops and Other Illusions” Read More »
Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane long advised staffers to read the New York Times, including me. Many would give him quizzical looks owing to the newspaper’s left lean, but that was part of his point. Not only would reading it daily place libertarian Cato readers in the other team’s “huddle,” Crane recognized that the writers
Book Review: Max Frankel’s Endlessly Excellent “The Times of My Life” Read More »
I was living at 537 W. Deming in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago in the summer of 1995. The address and city rate mention because that summer Chicago suffered one of those brutal and nationally notable heat waves. The kind that could claim a high death count. Where it became interesting, while also
Book Review: Salvatore Basile’s “Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything” Read More »
I’ve never been a fan of Paris. To read about Paris is to read about its beauty, charm and sophistication, but when I first visited in 1998, it struck me as rundown, dirty, and way too touristy. Basically a city full of people with cameras (I’m aging myself there) around their necks and ice
Book Review: Simon Kuper’s “Impossible City: Paris In the 21st Century” Read More »
Charlie Munger famously said, “It’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” Were he still with us, Munger might admit that when it comes to money, it takes a lot of intelligence or at least a lot of emotional
Book Review: Mark Shupe’s “The Moneyball Method” Read More »
“You know, people think that because I’m Mike Nichols, I don’t need praise. I need a lot. Nobody gets that.” The previous quote comes from Mark Harris’s excellent 2020 biography (review here) of – you guessed it – Mike Nichols. To read about the polymath was to marvel at how much he was venerated by
Book Review: Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs” Read More »
