How geeks go on vacation

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 2:44 PM Share

Your humble blogger will be blogging a bit less frequently over the next few days, as he heads off with his family to an undosclosed location thay may or may not involve beaches, lawn chairs, and drinks with fruit and umbrellas in them. Please don't start a trade war while I'm gone.

[Say, what do geek IPE bloggers bring to read on their vacations?--ed.] Why, I'm glad you asked! Here's my light and not-so-light reading for the trip, in no particular order:

1) Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

2) Z.A. Recht, Plague of the Dead: The Morningstar Saga.

3) Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University.

4) Mark Lamster, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens.

5) Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life.

6) Christopher Golden, ed., The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology.

Readers are warmly encouraged to let me know the order in which I should read these books -- as well as the ones I'm missing on my must-read list.

EXPLORE:BOOK CLUB, BOOKS, GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, VACATIONS, ZOMBIES

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HB34

4:11 PM ET

March 18, 2010

happy spring break!

I was nodding along until you mentioned Bob Jervis! Don't get me wrong, I admire the man and his work, and am very eager to read System Effects myself. But no one should take a book like that to a family vacation - it's just not right. It's way too stuffy for that purpose and you may find yourself in an IR-induced slumber in your beach chair in no time. Given your interests, you may perhaps enjoy reading Joyce Appleby's wonderfully narrated history of capitalism, "The Relentless Revolution" (I promise, I'm not her agent!).

Have a safe and wonderful vacation!

ZATHRAS

3:17 AM ET

March 19, 2010

Another View

I half-want to know what Mrs. Dr. thinks of this list. I'd take one of those five books -- the first one -- and leave the rest, or at least keep them in the luggage unless I had to stay overnight in some airport.

BUBBLE BURSTER

6:29 PM ET

March 19, 2010

The Reality

Zathras, no need to worry about Mrs. D. Unless Mr. D is the virtuous exception there is a pattern here you need to understand.

Academics are notorious guilt monsters. The idea of going somewhere fun and not getting work or reading done is an anathema to us. I have never taken a trip where I do not bring serious stodgy work to read instead of some bodice-ripping escapism.

BUT...the dirty secret is that these serious tomes rarely get read. They weigh down our luggage, sit on our hotel room desks mocking us, get ignored and thus induce more guilt.

NB34 possibly ignores that the entire purpose of bring such material to create that IR-induced slumber. There is no sleep so sound as that which occurs from procrastinating on work.

Enjoy Dan!

P.S. "Systems Effects" is thought provoking, but unless you are the Chosen One I have never seen the insights of Complexity Theory actually translated into useful, robust IR applications. I hope I am proven wrong on this, but as one who tried to dabble with it in grad school, I wasted a lot of time trying to translate it into a useful project.