PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

ANOTHER NEW ONE. The Universal Hunger For Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations Is Not Inevitable by Michael Novak:

The desire for and pursuit of liberty is a key thread in both human and intellectual history, argues Novak who goes on to say that despite the relative lack of liberty in the Muslim world, the concept of liberty has deep roots in Islam .. The intellectual bulk of the book lies in his assessment of the philosophical, theological and economic values that drive liberal democratic capitalism. Novak, also the author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, shines when fleshing out these concepts, including "moral ecology" .. using it as a way to engage the much-debated "clash of civilizations." Novak is particularly keen in .. gauging the extent to which religion will play an increasingly large role in world affairs during the 21st century. He cogently compares Catholicism's relative incorporation of democracy to the differing applications of Islamic law today.

This also looks significant:

Fewer : How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben Wattenberg

And if your getting me a book for Christmas, this would be it:

An Empire of Wealth : The Epic History of American Economic Power by John Gordon.

ADDED LATER -- Here's another one on a similar theme: They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine by Harold Evans

I've liked books about entrepreneurial creativity and success since I was a kid. I ate them up by the handful mixed in with books about explorers, athletes and statesmen. I don't know why, there are many more books for adults on all these later topics, and very few on the people who really made the material life of the country. I find the story of Singer or Hershey or Borden a much better tale than the life of most sports stars and politicians.

One more I'd like to see under the Chrismas tree:

My Life as a Quant : Reflections on Physics and Finance by Emanuel Derman, the story of "one of the first high-energy particle physicists to migrate to Wall Street."

UPDATE: Add this one to the list:

The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett. Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack