84 Books & arts The EconomistDecember 7th 2019
21presidential misconduct from Washing-
ton to Lyndon Johnson. Brought up-to-
date with chapters on presidents from
Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, this
useful study supplies the scales on which
more recent wrongdoing can be weighed.History
Say Nothing. By Patrick Radden Keefe.
Doubleday; 464 pages; $28.95. William
Collins; £20
Framed as an inquiry into the death of Jean
McConville, a mother of ten who was
abducted and murdered by the ira in 1972,
this is a masterful exploration of the mo-
tives of terrorists, the stories they tell
themselves and how they make the transi-
tion to peace—or, in some cases, fail to.
Remembering Emmett Till. By Dave Tell.
University of Chicago Press; 312 pages; $25
and £19
A fine history of racism, poverty and mem-
ory in the Mississippi Delta told through
the lynching of Emmett Till, a black 14-
year-old from Chicago whose murder in
1955—and his mother’s determination to
display his mutilated features in an open
coffin—made him an early martyr of the
civil-rights movement.
Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the
Making of a Massacre. By Kim Wagner. Yale
University Press; 360 pages; $32.50 and £20
At least 379 people were killed by British
soldiers in the Amritsar massacre on April
13th 1919, making that one of the darkest
days in the history of the empire. On the
event’s centenary, this book persuasively
argues that it was less of an aberration
than apologists for empire, including
Winston Churchill, have chosen to believe.
Maoism: A Global History. By Julia Lovell.
Knopf; 610 pages; $37.50. Bodley Head; £30
Mao Zedong was a despot who caused tens
of millions of deaths; yet his name does
not attract the same opprobrium as Hit-
ler’s or Stalin’s. Indeed, his legend and
ideas have inspired revolutionaries
around the world. As the author of this
book shows, his manipulated image re-
tains a powerful allure in China and be-
yond. “Like a dormant virus”, she writes,
“Maoism has demonstrated a tenacious,
global talent for latency.”
The Regency Years. By Robert Morrison.
W.W. Norton; 416 pages; $29.95. Published in
Britain as “The Regency Revolution”; Atlantic
Books; £20
“I awoke one morning and found myself
famous,” Lord Byron, a Regency poet, once
said. The period itself has suffered from
the opposite problem—eclipsed by the
more solemn and substantial Georgian
and Victorian ones that preceded and
followed it. Arguing that Britain trulystarted to become modern in the Regency
era, this delightful book explains why it
deserves to be better known.
How to be a Dictator.By Frank Dikötter.
Bloomsbury; 304 pages; $28 and £25
What do Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao,
Kim Il Sung, Nicolae Ceausescu, Papa Doc
Duvalier and Mengistu Haile Mariam have
in common? This insightful handbook for
gangsters is written by a distinguished
historian of 20th-century China.Biography and memoir
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s
Master Agent.By Owen Matthews. Blooms-
bury; 448 pages; $30 and £25
Richard Sorge’s bravery and recklessness
in the Soviet cause in Tokyo—where booz-
ing and seduction were among his main
espionage techniques—were matched by
the venality and cowardice of his masters
in Moscow. Despite their brutal incompe-
tence, his intelligence helped turn the
course of the second world war. A tragic,
heroic story, magnificently told with an
understated rage.
The Education of an Idealist. By Samantha
Power. Dey Street Books; 592 pages; $29.99.
William Collins; £20
An engaging insider’s account of foreign-
policymaking in what now seems like a
different era of diplomacy. It describes the
efforts of its author—Barack Obama’s
Irish-born ambassador to the United
Nations—to juggle idealism with the
realities of governing, while also jugglingmotherhood with the demands of repre-
senting America on the world stage.
Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey
Through the Twentieth Century. By Sarah
Abrevaya Stein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 336
pages; $28
This history of the Levy family of Salonika
follows its subjects through interwar
Greece to the present day. It is a painstak-
ing feat of reconstruction that draws on
correspondence in Ottoman Turkish,
Hebrew, French and especially Ladino, the
language of Sephardic Jewry. Much of the
clan was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943;
those who survive are now spread across
the globe. And yet, the author says, they
retain a family resemblance.
The Last Stone. By Mark Bowden. Atlantic
Monthly Press; 304 pages; $27. Grove Press;
£16.99
True-crime writers in America face a high
bar, set by illustrious predecessors such as
Truman Capote. The author of “Black
Hawk Down” rises to the challenge in this
reconstruction of how a horrific crime—
the disappearance of two sisters from a
mall in Maryland in 1975—was partially
solved 40 years later. Dogged and inge-
nious interrogation of a mendacious
suspect finally gets at the truth.Economics
Good Economics for Hard Times. By Abhijit
Banerjee and Esther Duflo. PublicAffairs; 432
pages; $30. Allen Lane; £25
The real meaning of this book by a Nobel-
prizewinning duo of economists lies in its
method—a patient attempt to take on
tough problems through empirical evi-
dence. Known for pioneering the use of
randomised controlled trials, the pair offer
insights into thorny global issues ranging
from inequality to corruption, all with
refreshing humility.
Open Borders. By Bryan Caplan. Illustrated
by Zach Weinersmith. First Second; 256 pages;
$19.99. St. Martin’s Press; £15.99
An enlightened polemic in cartoon format,
this book—by a team comprising an eco-
nomics professor and an illustrator—
persuasively rebuffs the arguments
against migration commonly made by
politicians. At the same time it shows how
an accessible and respectful case can be
made on a neuralgic subject.
Narrative Economics. By Robert Shiller.
Princeton University Press; 400 pages; $27.95
and £20
The author, another Nobel laureate, ex-
plores how the public’s subjective percep-
tions can shape economic trends. The
result is a sensible and welcome escape
from the dead hand of mathematical mod-
els of economics.