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October 20, 2007
Towards Better Book Reviews
By Ezra
The New York Times' review of Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal really is weirdly bad. It's not that I can't imagine disagreeing with the book's theses, but that the review really doesn't do any of that. Instead, it isolates certain lines or argumentative threads and basically gestures in their direction -- "Oh, doesn't that sound weird?" "It's like Michael Moore is here in the room with me!" "This date was off by a whole year!" It's argument through eyebrow raising. (It's also, at key points, wrong.)
Now, I like me a good bad book review. I've even written a couple. But book reviews are dangerous things. It's simple never the case that the editor of a book review section is charged with reading all the books commissioned for review and then checking each critic's claims for accuracy. So all power accrues to the reviewer, and the reviewer's incentive is often to write something interesting, or that accords with the editor's biases, or that advances the publication's ideological agenda. Unless you're working for Booklist, you're unlikely to be judged on how accurately your review summarizes the key points of the book in question.
Now, obviously editors can't read every book their publication commissions a review of, so you can't fix the problem that way. But it would probably be a good idea -- particularly now that we have these cool things called "web sites" that offer virtually unlimited storage space -- to add in a check on reviewer authority: If you pan a book, you agree to participate in an online debate, or at least respond to a rejoinder, from the book's author, if they're so inclined. In most cases, that would be good for everyone involved: Norman Podhoretz's claims will not do better if aired against Peter Beinart. But in some instances, the need to respond to the book's evidence will force the reviewer to consider it in the initial review, so that her claims are defensible if the book's author asks for a follow-up.
Indeed, this has been done before. In the 1990s, Bob Kuttner took to The American Prospect to pan some of, yes, Paul Krugman's recent work. Krugman didn't buy Kuttner's claims, and challenged him to a debate. Kuttner accepted, and the result, which is still up at TAP Online, was terrific. If that practice was routinized throughout the media, you'd not only get some good debates (value-added for all you content-thirsty publications out there!), but the commissioned reviews would be better, too. Win-win.
October 20, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
If you didn't follow the community reading of Gregory Clark's "A Farewell To Alms" on Marginal Revolution, you should really check it out. Cowen split the book into sections and made insightful comments on the section once a week. Gregory Clark would frequent the comments and reply often to criticisms.
This dialogue was deeply enriching for us blog readers, Tyler, and I think for Gregory Clark as well, who was able to refine his thesis in the face of sharp criticism. This is the new-age book review and I hope to see a lot more of it.
Posted by: Stan | Oct 20, 2007 7:15:18 PM
The New York Times' review of Paul Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal really is weirdly bad. It's not that I can't imagine disagreeing with the book's theses, but that the review really doesn't do any of that. Instead, it isolates certain lines or argumentative threads and basically gestures in their direction -- "Oh, doesn't that sound weird?"
No, what Kennedy says, basically, is that Krugman has got his history wrong and that his account of the complex historical forces that created today's political and economic environment is at the very least grossly oversimplified, if not just flat wrong.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 20, 2007 7:55:52 PM
But it doesn't, actually. At certain points, it gestures towards something that Kennedy thinks is iportant (i.e, the Iranian hostage crisis, or land use issues), but never says why, nor tries to disentangle that event's effect from the data Krugman marshals in favor of his theses. Indeed, it totally fails to mention any of the data Krugman points to.
Posted by: Ezra | Oct 20, 2007 8:02:00 PM
Y'all might want to head over to Brad Delong's website for an actual economists take on the review in which he points out, among other things, that the reviewer thinks that Adam smith is really milton friedman, or would have been if he had the chance. And the "history wrong" part is laughable. Krugman is right about kansas, and off by a year on the voting rights bill.
I've written plenty of bad book reviews in my day, but none of such bad faith. If I think a book is bad I can really detail it. As ezra says the book review "gestures" at stuff by, essentially, failing to deny krugman's assertions and facts but saying that they are "not really appropriate" to an economist as idiosyncratically defined by the reviewer. Or saying by implication that they are "rants" like rush limbaugh's radio show. But those of us who read krugman on a regular basis know that to be false, so what are we to make of the rest of the review once we see that the primary accusation is so baseless?
well, it convinced jasonR, so I suppose the review did its job. Which was to protect any right wing reader from every having to confront the mess their politics and policies have made of this country.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Oct 20, 2007 8:17:17 PM
It's a short book review, Ezra, not a detailed rebuttal of Krugman's claims. Kennedy mentions "environmental and natural-resource issues" because he thinks they played a role in "making red-state country out of the interior" that Krugman ignores. Kennedy mentions the Iranian hostage crisis, the fiasco in Somalia, and the feeble responses to the first attack on the World Trade Center and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole because he thinks they played a role in public disenchantment with the Democrats on national security issues. Obviously, Kennedy doesn't have the space to go into these matters in detail.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 20, 2007 8:24:11 PM
And the "history wrong" part is laughable. Krugman is right about kansas, and off by a year on the voting rights bill.
Yes, aimai. Kennedy is only a professor of history at Stanford. What does he know?
The only thing that's laughable is your comment.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 20, 2007 8:26:37 PM
Yes, aimai. Kennedy is only a professor of history at Stanford. What does he know?
Not so much as he doesn't know, that much is certain. In any event, Animai never suggested that Kennedy was ignorant or unaccomplished, so your comment is nothing more than a strawman.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Oct 20, 2007 9:08:27 PM
Of course she did. She claimed that Kennedy's contention that Krugman has got his history wrong is "laughable."
It's been funny to watch the approval of Krugman by some on the left rise to the level of hero-worship over the past few years. He's a relentless partisan Bush attack machine, and I suppose that's really all that matters. A more erudite version of Michael Moore, as Kennedy suggests.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 20, 2007 9:15:47 PM
Of course she did. She claimed that Kennedy's contention that Krugman has got his history wrong is "laughable."
No, she didn't. Saying an assertion is laughable doesn't address the intelligence or knowlege of the one who made the assertion. Even intelligent and knowlegible persons make erroneous, even ridiculous, statements, whether knowingly or unintentionally.
The absurd comparison of Krugman to Michael Moore is laughable as well but I don't think you made it out of ignorance. Just malicious bias.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Oct 20, 2007 9:29:12 PM
So Jason, which state do you offer as the birthplace of prohibition? Not the one that banned alcohol first or which had the most famous temperance activist, I assume.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Oct 20, 2007 9:32:21 PM
I like Ezra...probably not a requited feeling, but i think Mark Thoma and his commenters have a little more on the ball.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
Here's a commenter that takes David Kennedy to the mat...hard. People, glass house, stone throwing.
patroclus says...
David Kennedy's "Freedom from Fear" was full of subtantial historic and economic errors; never corrected by either him or any New York Times review. As any securities lawyer will inform you, the U.S.'s basic statutes governing the cpiatl markets include the Securities Act of 1933, the Exchange Act of 1934, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, the Maloney Act of 1938, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Holding Company Act of 1940, the Investment Company Act of 1941, the Investment Advisors Act of 1941 and the Administrative Procedure Act of 1941. Yet, in his book, Mr. Kennedy informs us that no significant New Deal legislation was enacted in FDR's second term.
Look at the years of those statutes! The vast majority of law governing the securities industry was indeed enacted in FDR's second term - the Maloney Act brought NASDAQ under the disclosure rubric; the Holding Company Act extended PUHCA to all holding companies, the Investment Advisor Act brought broker-dealers under the disclosure auspices, the Investment Company Act brought non-bank securities houses in and the APA codified the regulatory system whereby the SEC issues regulations and interpretive rulings.
Mr. Kennedy made a glaring series of errors, including historical errors, legal errors and economic errors - reading Freedom From Fear with actual knowledge of the dates, times and political arguments about our securities laws is an utter joke! And yet, he won award after award after award and never got caught!
That a writer such as Mr. Kennedy was employed to write a book review about subjects with which he is not familiar is an insult to Mr. Krugman and all readers of the NYTimes. Mr. Kennedy is not much of an historian and certainly not much of an economist. This review is as shoddy as the Beinart review. Surely, the NYTimes can do better.
Posted by: patroclus | October 20, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Posted by: S Brennan | Oct 20, 2007 10:42:06 PM
Kennedy goes yard with this spectacular summary:
"And as for national security — well, as Krugman sees things, it was not Democratic bungling in the Iranian hostage crisis or humiliation in Somalia or feeble responses to the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center or the assault on the U.S.S. Cole, but the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety."
Bingo. Krugman is a lousy economist and a horrible historian. Plus don't forget he was a lousy consultant for Enron!
Posted by: daveinboca | Oct 21, 2007 2:04:18 AM
wow- wait- are you saying that right wingers like to make shit up? really?
Posted by: akaison | Oct 21, 2007 2:49:59 AM
Neil Werewolf,
So Jason, which state do you offer as the birthplace of prohibition? Not the one that banned alcohol first or which had the most famous temperance activist, I assume.
I'm not sure any state can be said to be the "birthplace of prohibition." According to this source, the first state to ban alcohol was Georgia, in 1735. Not Kansas. (You appear to have misread "the first state to ban alcohol in its constitution" as "the [state] that banned alcohol first."). By 1855, 13 states had banned alcohol. This was 26 years before the constitutional ban in Kansas.
But all this is all irrelevant quibbling, as if the merits of Krugman's historical analysis of the causes of today's political and economic situation rests on whether he is right about "the birthplace of Prohibition." It's a pretty safe bet that Kennedy, an eminent professor of history at a leading university, knows history better than Krugman, who has no recognized expertise in history whatsoever. And Kennedy says Krugman's history is, at best, grossly oversimplified.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 21, 2007 5:38:10 AM
Edward Glaeser also reviewed Krugman's book. Glaeser is a professor of economics at Harvard. He is actually quite complimentary of certain aspects of Krugman's work, but makes the same basic criticism of Krugman's historical analysis as Kennedy made in the Times. Krugman has distorted history by ignoring facts and evidence that conflict with the narrative he wants to tell:
[Krugman] advances his viewpoint not by misstating facts but by omitting those parts of the past that make history messier. He expresses outrage that Democrat Samuel Tilden "essentially had the electoral vote stolen" in 1876, but does not mention that Tilden's Southern victories were achieved through the violent suppression of black votes by Democratic henchmen and the Ku Klux Klan. He derides Barry Goldwater for his long-standing support of Joseph McCarthy, but does not seem disturbed that John F. Kennedy also chose not to censure "Tailgunner Joe." We read a great deal about Nixon's Southern strategy and implicit Republican appeals to racism after 1964, but little about the explicit Democratic strategy of race hatred that was the norm among many of leading Democratic legislators such as Theodore Bilbo.
Posted by: JasonR | Oct 21, 2007 5:54:27 AM
Just to remind you
the first state to ban alcohol was Georgia, in 1735
Georgia was not a state in 1735.
Posted by: raj | Oct 21, 2007 9:02:45 AM
Here is the link to Glaeser's review that JasonR mentioned above:
http://www.nysun.com/article/64281
Glaeser comes right out at the beginning announcing that Krugman's political views are diametrically opposed to his own, but credits Krugman for challenging his beliefs.
In contrast the NYTimes always seems to be trying to uphold an imaginary air of objectivity by finding someone who can quibble with the details instead of providing a "Review".
Posted by: AZ | Oct 21, 2007 9:59:17 AM
California banned alcohol sales in 1286.
Posted by: Joe Klein's Murdered Conscience | Oct 21, 2007 11:59:25 AM
"[Krugman] advances his viewpoint not by misstating facts but by omitting those parts of the past that make history messier. He expresses outrage that Democrat Samuel Tilden "essentially had the electoral vote stolen" in 1876, but does not mention that Tilden's Southern victories were achieved through the violent suppression of black votes by Democratic henchmen and the Ku Klux Klan.
See, this just goes to show how little I understand about literature. I read a passage in TCOAL that goes:
"The only times the Democrats were more or less financially competitive between the Civil War and Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912 were in 1876, an election in which the Democrat Samuel Tilden actually won the popular vote (and essentially had the electoral vote stolen, in a deal in which Rutherford B. Hayes got the White House in return for his promise to withdraw federal troops from the South) and in Grover Cleveland's two victories . . . Not coincidentally, Tilden and Cleveland were Bourbon Democrats [think the DLC]. When the Democratic Party nominated someone who wasn't a Bourbon, it was consistently outspent about three to one."
and I naively imagined that Krugman was laying out details, in a rather dispassionate tone, in support of the claim that conservative dominance in the long gilded age was supported by several factors (including great financial advantages and conservative Democrats (the only kind who got anywhere near the White House, due to greater financial support from the elite helping to even out the disparity)
Silly me! I'm rather quite lucky that Glaeser has come to the rescue, explaining that what I really should be getting from that passage is Krugman's shrill, ranting outrage that a Democrat had the White House stolen out from under him - obviously the poor man still hasn't gotten over the 2000 elections - and a partisan desire to whitewash history.
Gosh, if it wasn't for Professor Glaeser's wise guidance, I would have been taken in by the next few pages, which noted first that election fraud was widely practiced by both parties, and then sketched out how more progressive attempts were fatally weakened by racial and cultural divisions, even up through the campaigns of 1924 - where the Democratic convention "rejected . . . a motion to include a denunciation of the Klan in its platform" - and 1928, where Tennessee Democrats ranted about aliens, northern blacks, Catholics and Jews, and the Irish Catholic candidate Al Smith was met with KKK antagonism and burning crosses. Now that would have been really dumb of me! Three cheers for Profesor Glaeser!!
Look, I can understand how people with a strong professional, academic, etc. interest in American history would feel that the book has oversimplified things quite brutally, and even in a partisan manner. It certainly shouldn't be taken as a comprehensive guide to late 19th/20th C. history, and interested readers lacking much a background in that might indeed be well-served by brushing up on it for context and consideration. But while including more of the messiness and savage moral ambiguity of history would have made this a fairer book, I'm not at all sure it would have made it a better book. For the most part, Krugman hasn't written a book about why liberals are everything good and conservatives nasty and evil (tho' perhaps a bit slips through), nor a wide-ranging historical work (at all), but a book about (so he argues) how liberal reform&attitudes created and maintained a relatively prosperous, less unequal society, and how radical rightwingers exploited cultural and esp. racial fears, anxieties, and resentments to implement an actually unpopular agenda that has plunged us back into a new gilded age of ever-growing inequality. Glaeser's criticism isn't unfair - indeed, I'm glad that he's brought it up - but I'm just not sure it's relevant.
And don't get me started on Kennedy's completely disingenuous (or uncomprehending?) characterization of Krugman's argument about stab-in-the-back-legends, revenge fantasies, and the replacement of fading memory by cultural myth as "the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety" Indeed, most of the events Kennedy regurgitates, with the exception of Iran, happened after the point, Krugman says, that the perception of Democrats being weak on security really jelled.
Now, Krugman doesn't even mention Iran here (he does so earlier in the book, and claims it helped movement conservatives paint liberalism as a failure), and that's rather a problem. Indeed, I have some reservations about a number of his claims, which often seem to be based on single bodies of groundbreaking economics work (which I don't have the knowledge to meaningfully evaluate), and I was hoping that there would be some relevant, informed criticism and back-and-forth that would help illuminate the matter. Instead, there's this asinine harping on Kansas and such like. The only help at all has been on blogs, and that's been pretty sparse too.
Posted by: Dan S. | Oct 21, 2007 12:04:01 PM
I havent read the book, probably wont. The following is an example of why...
sep 10, 2007: from krugman's article 'Where's my trickle?'
"Friday’s dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course"
oct 10, 2007: on his blog krugman responds to the bls revision of that jobs report which now shows a significant rise rather than a slight downturn
"Economic statistics – you can’t live without them, but you always have to bear in mind that they’re not reality. I often describe them as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction."
if you have a fondness for this kind of shamelessness just look at his post for oct 5th. Believe it or not he actually chides the wsj for the selective way they treat bls data. Now, that is chutzpah.
Posted by: pimp hand strikes! | Oct 21, 2007 1:00:02 PM
yeah i can see what you mean we should never question either the wallstreet journal or the statistics.
Posted by: akaison | Oct 21, 2007 1:08:12 PM
OMG!! "He actually chides the wsj"!!! Well, I certainly hope that apostate behavior was punished by a bolt of lightening, or at least a hail of frogs.
In the New Reich we can't have any criticism of the Wall Street Journal.
Posted by: serial catowner | Oct 21, 2007 2:28:32 PM
Never forget who edits the NYT Sunday Book Review, Ezra.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | Oct 21, 2007 2:50:28 PM
Ezra -- This is sort of like the pot calling the kettle black. You link to your In These Times review, which, truth be told, is a paragon of obfuscation and idiocy. Juxtapose these two sentences from the review:
"Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame."
"One such poll was conducted last fall, when Bendixen and Associates asked 601 young Californians what they’d be doing in 10 years. About 1 percent—so, a handful—said they’d be snipers. Certainly, that’s an odd reply. But Penn never mentions that the Bendixen poll had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percent—four being a larger number than one."
If you knew anything about statistics, you would know how dumb you sound in the second excerpt. In fact, if you had turned this review into an entry-level statistics class, the professor would be forced to fail *you*. Ironic, isn't it?
Posted by: George | Oct 21, 2007 3:44:31 PM
"If you knew anything about statistics, you would know how dumb you sound in the second excerpt."
Hey, explain it to us.
Posted by: Dan S. | Oct 21, 2007 4:00:58 PM
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