After doing a round of India-China comparisons that focused on commonly cited macro indicators like manufacturing, investment and literacy (see last month’s post “India and the invidiou…| The Tangled Woof
I recently wrote a piece at my job, and somewhat unusually for us, it’s come out from behind the paywall so that everyone can read it. Here’s the opening: There are two statements about China’s economy that receive broad agreement today. One is that China faces a long-term structural slowdown in its growth rate, due […]| The Tangled Woof
Around my trip to India I did some not-very-systematic reading, and had pretty good luck. All of these books were worth reading and helpful in different ways: Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology (e…| The Tangled Woof
In June I went to India for the first time. It was a quick trip, just a week, but I still got a pretty intense introduction to current debates on the Indian economy at the India Policy Forum in Delhi. As a China specialist with only a newspaper-reading level of familiarity with India, I was […]| The Tangled Woof
Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire is an unfinished nonfiction book devoted to the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in the woods of Montana, in which 13 of the firefighters who had parachuted in to fight it died. Maclean spent decades returning over and over again to the event, revisiting the site, interviewing survivors, and debating […]| The Tangled Woof
My favorite listening experiences this year, both concerts and recordings, listed roughly in order of release date to highlight the newer material. A lot of the recent stuff is in my Bandcamp collection, feel free to browse. Previous lists: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014| The Tangled Woof
The blog has been on hiatus for a bit due to a press of other responsibilities, but of course I haven’t stopped reading. These were the most memorable books I read this year, listed in the order I read them. Fiction Nonfiction Previous lists: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012| The Tangled Woof
A lot of stuff went onto my playlist late in 2023 that I didn’t have time to digest until recently; many of these could have made my best of the year list.| The Tangled Woof
2023 was the year I gave my blog a name, although not much else changed. Illness and the demands of my real job meant that the pace of blogging was still fairly sporadic. Going through an end-year …| The Tangled Woof
One of the reasons I keep a blog is as a kind of commonplace book, to keep a record of things that I liked reading and found thought-provoking. I recently stumbled across, then read through The Lan…| The Tangled Woof
If you were to make a list of the most significant pivot points in world history over the past half century or so, there’s no question that high on that list would be China’s move from …| The Tangled Woof
The usual goal of industrial policy is to, by supporting or protecting a particular industry, allow it to more quickly achieve the economies of scale necessary to be competitive. China has plenty o…| The Tangled Woof