My University Reading List

Miscellaneous General
1

Any comments?

For economics:

Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist (Already read)
David Smith, The Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics (Never heard of, but i suspect it’s like the above)
Stephen Landsberg, The Armchair Economist (Heard of, but not read, again suspect it’s of the type seen above)
Paul Grugman [sic], The Accidental Theorist (Well what did I expect, eh?)
Christopher Huhne, Real World Economics (Isn’t he a lib dem MP?)
Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (!)
A. K. Dixit and B. L. Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorists’ Guide to Success in Business and Life (Anyone know anything about this?)

And as a textbook:
H. R. Varian, Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach

For politics (don’t know anything about these):

Michael Gallagher, Michael Laber and Peter Mair, Representative Government in Modern Europe
A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries
Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, A New Handbook of Political Science
Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy

And there are quite a few others on Germany, USA and UK.

For philosophy the books are fairly standard to be honest.

2

That’s my book for my Intermediate Microeconomics I module next year, I’ve heard good things about it. Do you not do macro this year?

Be thankful you didn’t get stuck with John Sloman’s Principles of Economics I’m finishing it off now, it’s a terrible textbook.

All of the other books look like introductions to economics from what I can see, what books for philosophy?

3

"An Introduction to Political Philosophy "

I have read an (other) introduction book to political philosophy and while it was ok (not if you know nothing about philosophy), on thing really stood out: It didn’t take a position on anything except against moral nihilism and that it was statist. Statist to the core. Most cited philosophers: Plato and Hegel. Last sentence: “There is no justice without the state, because justice is a political achievement”.

So be prepared.

4

Just Utilitarianism (first year philosophy is focused on J.S.Mill and Utilitarianism anyway, but one of my [potential] tutors is a J.S.Mill specialist so this is exaggerated) and a few books on logic, some introductory ethics, philosophy by Nagel.

Well they didn’t point to any macro textbooks - so I don’t know. But I’d heard the course was one module micro-ec, one module macro-ec (as well as the other subjects).

5

Begs the question - what is justice?

6

Do you not do any stastics/ maths/ econometrics this year?

7

I actually used this one myself. Very oldschool (no fancy illustrations, plenty of simple diagrams obviously) but excellent, simple real-world examples bring the material to life.

8

Again, I’d heard that I would be doing some stuff along those lines - and they warned us about maths, saying that if we hadn’t studied maths we should learn some pure maths (etc.) However they said nothing about books for econometrics, maths, statistics.

9

Varian’s book is good for learning mainstream econ, but it’s not easy, so be warned. I’m not impressed by the other books on the list, especially those by Krugman - a lot of it is pop econ. I cannot believe they eschew this stuff at the expense of works such as Prices and Production or Human Action. Wolff’s book is pretty standard as far as political philosophy goes. I haven’t read it but I hear it’s good enough. Regarding the philosophy books (with the exception of Mill), they sound bland. I can recommend some for your own personal reading.

As it’s a PPE course, I wouldn’t worry excessively about the maths.

10

That would be nice.

My philosophy is weak compared to my politics and economics (not that I’m saying they are particularly strong!)

11

Don’t be so modest, we all know Ludwig von Mises is your pen name.

(Jon, if you wouldn’t mind posting the recommendations here it’d be appreciated)

12

I’ve already recommended them to you. Anyway, the ones I’d go for on philosophy are (by author):

Henry Veatch: Rational Man, Two Logics, For an ontology of morals, Human rights: fact or fancy?, Aristotle: a contemporary appreciation

Douglas Rasmussen (& Douglas den Uyl): Norms of Liberty, Liberty and Nature; also look up Rasmussen’s article on Quine on his academic website at St John’s

David Kelley: The Logical Structure of Objectivism,The Evidence of the Senses, The Art of Reasoning (this one is a logic textbook),

Brand Blanshard: Reason and Analysis

Laurence BonJour: In Defense of Pure Reason, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, What is it like to be a human instead of a bat?

Edward Feser: Philosophy of Mind

David Oderberg: Anything by him. Check out his website and be selective in reading. He has some good articles on the philosophy of mind.

Daniel Dennet: Elbow Room, Brainstorms

Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?

Robert Nozick: Socratic Puzzles and Anarchy, State & Utopia

Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness, An introduction to objectivist epistemology, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Chris Sciabarra: Anything, but especially The Russian Radical

Also look up a book called An Introduction to Metaethics by (I think) Alex Baldwin. I’m not sure if all the book names are accurate. Make an effort to read some of the following too:

The Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle, A groundwork for the metaphysics of morals by Kant (his Critiques are too difficult for novices or even advanced readers, but the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason is easy to read), The Republic by Plato, An Essay concerning human understanding by Hume (I think that’s the title.) I’d avoid Descartes. Locke is optional. Also be sure to read Quine on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy in Two Dogmas of Empiricism (I am not impressed by Quine but he is very influential) and if you’re up for a headache, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (for the same reason as Quine.) Anything by Roderick Long is good, and I’d definitely recommend him.

These taken together should suffice to give you a groundwork sufficient for political theory and the topics Austrianism touches upon.

13

Thanks

And although I haven’t actually read anything you’ve suggested, I have been reading around randomly for a long while, and touched on some stuff similar to what you posted. I’ll add those books to my amazon wishlist and try and rinse my dad for them post-exams, or even better, post-exam-results.

Are you doing A levels now-ish Giles?

14

Thanks for the recommendations Jon, you’ve said most of them before but there’s one or two new ones, which is good.

Nope, first year of university. So my exam results don’t even count (great incentive system there).