The New York Review of Books takes a look at two books in "Innovation: The Government was Crucial After All": Mariana's Mazzucato's The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (Anthem) and William Janeway's Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Markets, Speculation and the State (Cambridge). Of Mazzucato's book, Jeff Madrick writes"We hear time and again from those who should know better that government is a hindrance to the innovation that produces economic growth. Above all, the government should not try to pick “winners” by investing in what may be the next great companies. Many orthodox economists insist that the government should just get out of the way. ...The Federal Lawyer has new online book reviews, all available here. Reviewed books include Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin's The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals (Vanderbilt University Press), and Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien's Murder at the Supreme Court: Lethal Crimes and Landmark Cases (Prometheus Books).
Fortunately, a new book, The Entrepreneurial State, by the Sussex University economist Mariana Mazzucato, forcefully documents just how wrong these assertions are. It is one of the most incisive economic books in years."
The New York Times interviews former Justice John Paul Stevens about his book interests here.
The Guardian reviews Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness (Virgao Press) by Lisa Appignanesi, who "is a novelist as well as a historian of ideas, and her relish for a good story sometimes gets the better of her analytical purpose. But her subject is serious, and its implications are far-reaching."
HNN also has several reviews this week. Randall Balmer's Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (Basic) is reviewed, as well as Phillip Deery's Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York (Fordham University Press) (here).
The Los Angeles Review of Books has a review of Ramin Jahanbegloo's The Gandhian Moment (Harvard University Press).
