More summer readings

Shout out to my favorite L.A. bookstore, Lost Books (the entrance of which is pictured below), where I found a veritable treasure trove of erudite tomes — listed below in alphabetical order (by author): Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neuman (Norton, 2022). Full disclosure: I have been wanting to read a book-length biography of the great Hungarian-American polymath John von Neuman for many years now. Thanks to Dr Bhattacharya, I now have my chance! T. C. Boyle, The Relive Box and Other Stories (Ecco 2017). Along with Junot Diaz, T. C. Boyle is my favorite North American novelist and short story writer. Ian Klaus, Forging Capitalism: Rogues, Swindlers, Frauds, and the Rise of Modern Finance (Yale, 2016). This book not only surveys many long-forgotten financial frauds; it also poses a provocative question: what would Adam Smith have to say about stock markets, “futures” contracts, and other 19th-century developments in financial capitalism?…