I almost hesitate to include this in Over My Shoulder because it is not about economics per se, and maybe, mostly, because it is so utterly intimidating. The co-author of my last two books, Jonathan Tepper, is a former Rhodes scholar, a polyglot, and all that. He keeps starting technology businesses and economic research businesses and funds and watching them grow. And words seem to cascade out of his brain, off his fingertips, and into print. He is wicked brilliant and seems to know something about everything. Part of the reason is that he reads faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall ideas with a single bound. If you want to get really jealous, then note that he is good-looking, relatively well-off, and single in London. The only thing that balances that out is that he works night and day, obsessively, and doesn't have much time for a social life. Except every now and then I will catch him on the phone when he's  in a pub with the guys, but that doesn't really count in London – the local pub is just another office over there for finance guys.

This is a list of 44 books that Jonathan read in 2014, with brief reviews. He explains that it was an off year because he read 93 the year before, but he has promised to do better next year. If you already have a longer list of books to read than you're going to get to in the next five years, do not open this attachment; it will just depress you as you find another five books that you really, really feel you should read.

And if you really want to get behind, click on the link to his reviews of 93 books that he read in 2013.

I made that mistake and realized right off that I absolutely positively had to read the very first book on the list, The Information, which is about Claude Shannon, who provided the theoretical mathematical basis for the modern computer-driven world; and it is my current deep suspicion that Shannon's Information Theory may be the basic construct for an entirely different approach to economics than the Newtonian math that we seem to be mired in. The economic world is not a dynamic equilibrium, and trying to describe economics with the old math that was designed for describing the physical world is leading us to all sorts of policy errors.

Anyway, here is Jonathan's review of The Information, just to give you a taste of what is in store for you. Seriously, most of you should just step away from the computer at this point and move on.

The information by James Gleich – This is the best book I read in 2013. It was not the best because it was easy to read. In fact, I often wondered where the book was going or why so much detail on various mathematical and scientific ideas was necessary. The book was important because I knew very little about Information Theory and Claude Shannon. After reading the book, I have no doubt Claude Shannon is the godfather of the digital age and one of the most important minds of the 20th century. His thinking helped create the computer age, modern communications and the ability to encode and decode messages. He was a genius and by his mid-thirties had created the intellectual foundation for everything we use today. It is shocking that Einstein and Feynman are well known, but Shannon is little known. His masters thesis at MIT was the most influential masters thesis of all time. He pioneered the application of Boolean logic to electronic circuitry. His work in the 1940s established a theory for communication and information. If you’re reading this blog post, you’re relying on mathematical and computer insights that he created. In World War II, he wrote a paper that became the bible of cryptanalysis and code breaking. Claude Shannon influenced every aspect of transmitting information and coding and decoding it. He is a fascinating character. His first wife divorced him because he sat around thinking and playing the clarinet. He obviously was deep in thought, but he mellowed later in life and was remembered for spending his last years building mechanical mice that could navigate mazes and computer programs that could juggle balls. At Bell Labs, he rode his unicycle through the hallways. If you don’t know about Claude Shannon and his ideas, you should.