Breaking the Vicious Circle

Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation by Stephen Breyer


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm snowed in and I have galloping bronchitis, so naturally I read Justice Breyer on risk regulation. Like you do.

A tiny, non-technical, non-legal book about improving the spotty and inconsistent U.S. record on risk regulation, particularly toxins and carcinogens. Breyer is lucid and readable as he sketches out the common problems at a basic level – dueling regulatory regimes, the last mile problem, etc. – and how to fix them – a new system more scientific and centralized than what OIRA does now. Relevant and accurate even after fifteen years, and worth reading, because this is stuff a lot of people don't know about. But if you're like me and you've read all the more technical, more legalistic stuff – Graham, Sunstein, Calabresi, etc. – this adds nothing new and actually passes very lightly over issues like why spending money to save lives often costs lives in other arenas.

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Farthing by Jo Walton

Farthing by Jo Walton


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
1949, alternate England where Churchill was forced out and Hitler holds the continent. This starts out as a classic English country home mystery, with alternate sections from the daughter of the house (married to a Jewish man! Scandale!) and a Scotland Yard detective. Then in the last third the alternate history politics ratchets tighter and tighter, until I had my hands crunched up in my sweater as I read.

A good book, but you have to give it time. I love this sort of genre-bending thing, though it would have worked better here if the cozy country house mystery was, um, yeah, that's the only word – if the mystery was better. Because it really slumped in some sections, and the slackness wasn't made up for by the charm and quirkiness you expect from this sort of thing. It was a comfortable three stars for that reason, until the last quarter, when all the quietly grim little hints burst through the surface and bam, I was reading a plausible, awful alternate history about lies and social fictions and political power. And it scared me.

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