1. Paul Dragos Aligica and Peter J. Boettke, Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School. if you've been scoring at home, my motivation for reading this was obvious. It's a very succinct discussion of the features that make the Bloomington School distinctive. It's a very useful survey of the contributions of Political Economy to Social Science. They offer a beautiful quote from Vincent Ostrom on pp. 61-62 that should give enthusiasts for intervention pause:

The greatest evils inflicted upon humanity have been the work of those who are so confident of their efforts to do good that they do not hesitate to use the instruments of evil available to them on behalf of their righteous cause.

2. Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Institutional Diversity. Again, the motivation is obvious. Books packed with game-changing insights make my head asplode. This is one of those books.

3. Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style. This was one I have been meaning to read for years. I've read a lot of the surrounding material and am familiar with the argument, but I'd never actually sat down and read the book. For polemical force, it's every bit as good as The Future and Its Enemies. As social criticism, it's better. Given how much I loved Future, it goes without saying that I think this is a must-read.

4. Walter Williams, South Africa's War Against Capitalism. I bought a used copy through the Amazon Marketplace. When it arrived in the mail, I opened it to discover that it's signed by Walter Williams. Epic Win. Williams offers a brief survey of South African history and shows how apartheid was a decades-long institutional revolution against the institutions of free-market capitalism.

5. Julie Rose's new translation of Les Miserables. Tyler Cowen described this as the definitive translation. The sheer depth, breadth, and magnitude of the story is astounding. This is the first time I've read it since reading Atlas Shrugged, and it's clear that Hugo's influence is all over Rand. Indeed, one thing I learned from Jennifer Burns's Rand bio is that Rand wrote a detailed outline of Les Miz while working on Atlas. The Rose translation is beautiful.