Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Biography and the social sciences

At the New York Sun, Tyler Cowen reviews Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets. It's an interesting and thoughtful review--but that book cover just cracks me up...
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1 comment:

  1. Brent Buckner1/09/2008 9:51 AM

    I wrote a comment for the review over at MarginalRevolution but killed it before posting.

    Tyler at MR wrote:
    I would recommend that you read Gang Leader for a Day, but ultimately I could not shy away from writing a negative review.

    It struck me that Tyler dodged the issue of whether or not overall the world was better for the book having been written (considering the process involved), and whether or not his recommendation and attention would encourage future books he would also deem "somewhat evil". He seems somewhat off-kilter on both ethical and moral grounds (or utilitarian and classical liberal grounds if you prefer).

    Now I suppose I have to go comment at MR.

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