Reading for Life: A Baker's Dozen

 

Recently my friend Richard Green posted a short reading list of ten books he recommends, which you can find on LinkedIn, but for those without an account, I reproduce here:

"Ten favorite books in economics, lest you are looking for gift ideas:

• Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace
• Manski, Identification Problems in the Social Sciences
• Deaton and Muellbauer, Economics and Consumer Behavior
• Goldberger, A Course in Econometrics
• Maddala, Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Economics
• Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs
• Krugman, Geography and Trade
• Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
• Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

 I heartily endorse each of Richard’s choices, and  colleagues have made additional recommendations in LinkedIn comments:

• De Soto, The Mystery of Capital (I much prefer his earlier book The Other Path, more on that another time)
• Hirschmann, Exit, Voice and Loyalty
• Bannerji and Duflo, Poor Economics
• Krugman, The New Geography of Jobs
• Dixit and Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically

I thought I’d suggest a few additions to the list, a dozen or so of my favorites. My list includes economics but wanders further afield. Without further ado:

Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Boustan. Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success. Hachette UK, 2022. A very readable summary of their impressive empirical research on the outcomes of two major waves of U.S. immigration: our recent increase, and the wave around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Prepare to be surprised!

Bertaud, Alain. Order without Design. MIT Press, 2018. An acclaimed planner-architect-urbanist Alain Bertaud distills lessons from more than half a century of practical and analytical work in dozens of cities ranging from New York and Paris, to Sana’a and Port-au-Prince.  Transport, land and housing, labor markets, urban form, and the proper role of urban planning are all covered concisely, yet in amazing depth

Deaton, Angus. The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. Princeton University Press, 2013. The long progress of economic and social development deserves its own list – and a long one at that – but if you ask me where to start, I will go with this excellent and highly readable introduction. I like his focus on scientific progress, and health systems, especially public health. Public health underpins development and more, and has long been under-resourced in the United States, and frankly is under threat both here and abroad: 

Glaeser, Edward L. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Penguin, 2011. If you wonder why cities exist, and why it is that how well we organize and run them is a major factor in a society’s success or failure, Ed’s book is a great place to start.  A few quibbles on the density of Chinese cities aside, a great introduction.

Gordon, Robert J. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. Princeton University Press, 2016. A great economic history. As an economist who’s spent the majority of my time researching housing markets, I particularly recommend Chapter 4: how the revolution in housing size and quality a century ago, interleaved with electrification and advances like refrigeration and the washing machine, was more important than the iPhone.  Yes, really.

Think the DOGE approach is a great idea? Read Michael Lewis, Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service. Riverhead Books, 2025.  Along broadly similar lines, I also recommend his The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy. (2018), and The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. (2021).

Everyone needs to read them some George Orwell. For the past decade, many of us have been bouncing back between Orwell’s 1984 as a guide to our next decade or so, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  Between a totalitarian future characterized by state violence and torture, surveillance, propaganda and control of language (“Newspeak”) and a world where individuals’ futures are determined genetically, and where conformity is (mostly) ensured by hypnopaedic learning, and pacifying citizens with entertainment, sex, and the drug soma. Sticks or carrots? And to what end? I think we need to ponder both Orwell and Huxley, but the recent news is definitely trending stick.

Neil Postman famously summarized the contrast: “Orwell feared those who would ban books. Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban a book, for no one would want to read one.” For the record, technology skeptic Postman worried more about Huxley’s possible future. 

Can’t get too much Orwell.  Animal Farm, of course, his essay on “Politics and the English Language,” and The Road to Wigan Pier (read the first half, describing the life of British coal miners in the era when my forbearers were mining coal in Pennsylvania; the second half confirms he wrote this in 1937 when he was still trying to figure out his own politics.) 

Putnam, Robert D. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. Simon and Schuster, 2016. We spend a lot of money on old people like myself (albeit not always as effectively as we should!), we need to focus on our children.  If you like to read journal articles (and who doesn’t!), James Heckman is another great resource.

Ritchie, Hannah. Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Random House, 2024. There are dozens of books I could recommend on environmental issues, but Ritchie’s recent effort is a very readable summary that, in my view, strikes a good balance between concern for very serious problems and realism about our next steps.

Rosling, Hans, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. St Martin's Press, 2018. For years I’ve been creating charts of country GDP and life expectancy and the like (to say nothing of urbanization, house prices….) But around 2007, when I found my first YouTube video by Hans Rosling, I think it was “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen,” I had the same feeling most rock guitarists had the first time they heard Jimi Hendrix. 

Rosling’s videos are great, but shortly after he passed away Factfulness, a collaboration with his son and daughter-in-law, was published.  BTW, aforementioned Hannah Ritchie is one of many who cite Rosling as an inspiration in their own work.

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Ten Speed Graphic, 2021. Timothy Snyder is one of the leading English-speaking historians of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Holocaust (though he reads and speaks an impressive number of the regional languages). I first encountered Snyder’s work when I was preparing teaching notes on Ukraine after the second Russian invasion in 2022.  He posted his lectures on The Making of Modern Ukraine on YouTube, and I found them deep and invaluable. 

I was then drawn to his polemic On Tyranny, which he first published in 2017. The 2021 edition I listed above adds drawings by Nora Krug, if you have a taste for graphics. If you prefer 20 bite-sized but thought-provoking commentaries, see the YouTube version. 

Finally, let’s go the source code of our Republic. I read the U.S. Constitution every few years; I had occasion to read it again during a flight to a conference a few months ago. It’s not a long read, it’s a little painful in parts (the 3/5 compromise is still in there, though obviated by the 13th and 14th Amendments; and the rules for elections are still a dog’s breakfast) but it’s still a finely wrought document for the most part, and one I’d like to discuss further with some current officials. 

You can take your Constitution “neat,” but there are editions available with helpful commentaries. I use Richard Beeman’s The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Amendments, and Selections from the Federalist Papers. Penguin Books, 2010. For a deeper dive, the Library of America has published a two-volume set on The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification (1993).

Teaching Notes on Macroeconomic Indicators

 

August 1962, President Kennedy addresses the nation on the economy 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adFjyQzCin8

Regular visitors to my blog -- both of you? -- know that I often post presentations and other teaching materials, and encourage their free use by colleagues for your own teaching and other non-profit activities.

My visitors, my former students, and others who've been subjected to my presentations at conferences and other events know that I have a reputation for my slide decks -- whatever you think of their quality, there's surely a lot of slides!

I've been creating slides of one kind or another for almost 50 years. When I moved from plastic transparencies and some early software to PowerPoint, I began to collect slides by topic in large files I think of as libraries.

Over the next year or two I plan to post some of these libraries. To be clear, I don't use them directly for a class or other presentation. Too many slides!!! I go through, pick out the ones I want, and often freshen them up a bit.

Today, I'm presenting a 1500 slide library on macroecnomic indicators. Since it's a large file (about 275MB) I recommend downloading the file to a hard drive, then opening in PowerPoint. Notice that many of the slides have notes below the slides themselves with some discussion, relevant links, etc.

After some introductory material on (e.g.) units of observation, periodicity, stocks and flows, seasonal adjustment and so on, we cover:

• Basic demographics
• Prices and inflation
• Gross Domestic Product
• Employment and labor market indicators
• Incomes, Poverty and Wealth
• Interest Rates and other financial indicators

Other indicators -- notably housing and real estate data -- are coming, in other libraries.

If you look at today's offering you'll see that many of the slides could use some freshening.  Some haven't been updated for a decade, most need at least a year or two of freshening. But I think most of the structure and much of the discussion still work.

Why this library to begin with? For the better part of three decades I taught real estate and other business students. While I once taught a principles macro course to undergraduates (to the dismay of some of my DSGE-besotted macroeconomist friends!) this teaching material came out of the realization that most business students were not going to do much formal modeling in their careers, but would benefit immensely from understanding basic market mechanisms, gains from trade, and so on -- and that they would be confronted with data, macro and otherwise.

Several of my libraries address basic concepts, and other data sources. This deck owes a lot to my late friend and colleague Don Nichols, UW macroeconomist, who was a master at presenting basic macro data and telling clear stories about how the economy was evolving. I don't claim Don's expertise, but I learned a lot from his frequent sojourns to the business school and to other non-specialist audiences.

One reason I decided to post this library today is a little darker. Like many, I'm concerned about the future of our National Income and Product Accounts, our price and employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, our financial data from the Federal Reserve, the mother lode that comes from the Census Bureau; and dozens of other agencies.  

In addition to the data we use from the "Big Four" sources, we often rely on data on climate from NOAA, on health from the CDC, on crime from the FBI, and many other sources. For a deeper dive into the Federal Statistical System, go to StatsPolicy.gov for a good start.

What are the sources of the aforementioned concern? The U.S. statistical system, arguably the most extensive and sophisticated in the world, like any such system, has room for improvement. And there is a long history of elements of the system facing budget cuts and/or political pressure.  To date, these have, in the main, been successfully blunted. And we've had improvements, from the creation of the American Housing Survey in the 70s to the 2010 move from the Census Long Form to the American Community Survey, and the implementation of the Pulse Surveys during the COVID pandemic. But the general trend in recent decades has been for an erosion in the resources devoted to, and outputs of, government statistics, as documented in a 2025 letter from a wide range of individual and institutional data experts and users available here, and especially in a 2024 report from the American Statistical Association, "The Nation's Data at Risk: Meeting America's Information Needs for the 21st Century," available here. NYT summary here.

That does not mean that there are not important areas for improvement and reform. Presently, many areas of data collection and analysis are under threat from cuts being implemented by the (ironically labeled) Department of Government Efficiency. More on DOGE in a future post, but for now note that DOGE's modus operandi  of "move fast and break things" is not designed to improve or reform statistical systems, but to disrupt. It is safe to say that the DOGE team is in many respects the Bizarro World version of the "Data at Risk" approach. You can find representative discussions of the DOGE approach to data here, here, here, here, and here.

[For those who did not grow up on U.S. comic books, Bizarro World is a fictional planet where everything is the opposite of Earth.]

As an academic, and primarily an empiricist to boot, it's fair to ask if I'm simply defending my own little world. Yes, but not "simply." "Data at Risk" is one convenient review of the importance of good public data for actually improving government efficiency, and also for business market research, risk analysis, invention and innovation, and economic development. Another review from a joint project of the Hamilton Project and the American Enterprise Institute, "In Order That They Might Rest Their Arguments on Facts: The Vital Role of Government-Collected Data" is available here.

Good data contributes to a functional polity. It's been well established that one of the characteristics of democracies is the provision of timely and accurate data.  Here is one example. Economist Luis Martinez checked reported GDP growth rates to those estimated from changes in the intensity of light emitted across different countries, a proxy for energy use. These satellite surveys of light intensity have been shown to be a good independent check on economic production. 

Martinez then uses data from Freedom House to identify countries as democracies or autocracies. The key finding from this figure, and from other analysis in his study, is that democracies usually produce GDP statistics that match up with satellite data, while autocracies often -- usually -- inflate their growth rates. Good data is a hallmark of free societies, while unfree governemnts put their thumbs on the scale.

Martinez's cross-country study is collaborated by many country analyses that document how autocrats seek to cook the books; presenting statistics that contradict the official, mis-measured data can even be criminalized. For just a few examples of counry studies, see the short list of readings below.

Finally, we'll note that good data has a great ROI. As the aforementioned Hamilton Project/AEI study notes, the principal statistical agencies spend less than 0.2 percent of the Federal budget:

From Eberstadt et al. (2017)

We need accurate, reliable data on a wide range of important topics. It is invaluable but it does not cost very much.

Selected References

Auerbach, Jonathan, Claire McKay Bowen, Constance F Citro, Steve Pierson, Nancy Potok, and Zachary Seeskin. "The Nation's Data at Risk: Meeting America's Information Needs for the 21st Century." Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the American Statistical Association, and George Mason University, June 2024.

Briviba, Andre, Bruno Frey, Louis Moser, and Sandro Bieri. "Governments Manipulate Official Statistics: Institutions Matter." European Journal of Political Economy 82 (2024): 102523.

Chen, Wei, Xilu Chen, Chang-Tai Hsieh, and Zheng Song. "A Forensic Examination of China’s National Accounts." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2019: 77-141.

Coremberg, Ariel. "Measuring Argentina’s GDP Growth." World Economics 15, no. 1 (2014): 1-32.

Eberstadt, Nicholas, Ryan Nunn, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Michael R Strain. "“In Order That They Might Rest Their Arguments on Facts”: The Vital Role of Government-Collected Data." American Enterprise Institute and the Hamilton Project, 2017.

Georgiou, Andreas V. "The Manipulation of Official Statistics as Corruption and Ways of Understanding It." Statistical Journal of the IAOS 37, no. 1 (2021): 85-105.

Jerven, Morten. Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It. Cornell University Press, 2013.

Martinez, Luis R. "How Much Should We Trust the Dictator’s GDP Growth Estimates?". Journal of Political Economy 130, no. 10 (2022): 2731-69.

The Economist.  Turkey Grapples With Triple-Digit Inflation. July 14, 2022.

Thoughts on Wildfires, After Los Angeles

 

Los Angeles, January 2025 (iStock)

In January 2025, Los Angeles and its environs was hit by a series of destructive wildfires.

It was hardly the first destructive and fatal wildfire in California, or in the United States.

In February, Richard Green, Faculty Director of USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate, Kevork Zoryan, Chair of the Lusk Center Advisory Board, and Christopher Boone, Dean of USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy, convened a Lusk Center Advisory Board meeting to discuss ongoing efforts by the Center and by other USC academics, board members and other members of the greater LA real estate community, and local officials and community members to facilitate recovery and reconstruction, and to draw lessons to mitigate future wildfire losses.

I was invited to make a few remarks, on "Reconstruction and Development: A Few Observations from Abroad." Given the importance of the topic, of course I agreed, and prepared some slides to frame my remarks.

I discussed provisional lessons from a review of some experiences of reconstruction, focusing on lessons from other countries. Many of these experiences relate to reconstruction after conflict, rather than wildfires. My hope was to offer some general lessons, whatever the type of disaster, time and place.

Eight other academics and professionals made pesentations and/or participated in a panel discussion; many of the roughly hundred in-person participants offered their experience and expertise.

We were focused by the fact that a number of our colleagues had themselves lost homes; virtually everyone in the room had a relative or neighbor or friend who had suffered a loss.

I learned a lot from our meeting, and on my return to Newton (home of the Massachusetts outpost of the University of Wisconsin's Graaskamp Center, of which I am to my knowledge the sole faculty member and student) I dug a little deeper into the subject of wildfires, in the United States and elsewhere. My slide deck expanded somewhat.

For those who are interested you can download the current version here.  I say current version because this is a fast-moving topic and there is a lot of research coming out (much of it from USC, including a collaboration with colleagues at UCLA) which I have yet to absorb. As always, I encourage anyone who wants to use any of these materials in your own (not-for-profit) teaching or other presentations. Comments and, especially, corrections are always welcome.

International Perspectives from Seoul and West Palm Beach

 

International Perspectives on the Direction of Housing Finance: A Meeting in Seoul

In November 2024 I was honored to be invited to join colleagues from South Korea and around the world to participate in the 10th Annual International Forum on Housing & Urban Finance, organized by the Korea Housing & Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG) and held in Seoul.

I later had the opportunity to visit HUG's Pusan headquarters, as well as the headquarters of Korea's other apex housing finance institution, the Korea Housing Finance Corporation.

The detailed program from the conference can be accessed here, including slides from the various presentations that preceded discussions. The program includes updates on South Korea's economy and housing markets, as well as other global perspectives from my friend Marja Hoek-Smit and others.

I was asked to participate in a session focused on polarization, a subject of intense interest in Korea and in the United States; in fact in many countries. My material starts on page 20 of the detailed program; you can also access the PowerPoint version, which includes many links and other details in the attached notes.

Ironically, several days after the Forum, and after my additional visits in Seoul and Pusan, it was while I was returning to the United States that we received word of South Korea's martial law. The duration of martial law itself was brief, but the run-up to that episode was complex, and as of this writing the full implications have yet to be understood.

Global Perspectives on Urban Development and Real Estate: A Meeting in West Palm Beach

In January 2025 we held one of two annual meetings of the Hoyt Institute. The January meeting mainly comprises presentations by newly selected Academic Fellows. This year we added a session entitled "Global Perspectives," which was intended to be a more wide-open discussion among all participants.

The majority of Hoyt Fellows reside in the U.S., and most are from there. Others have lived and worked in other countries. Whatever our origins, some of us focus on the U.S. in our research, teaching and policy work; others have contributed to these global perspectives. With input from several colleagues, I pulled together a collection of my teaching slides on some basics -- maps, demographic data, GDP, housing, and of course sources of data and references.

Our discussion was wide ranging, and a number of participants made comments and suggestions on additional topics. After the meeting we added some material relevant to some of these points and questions. You can download the final (?) slides inspired by our session here.

While a bit disjointed -- think the Jeopardy category "Potpourri" -- readers will surely find some material they know well, but also some new tidbits, perhaps some inspiration for a research project or a teaching module. As always, colleagues should feel free to use any of these slides in their own teaching or other nonprofit activities.

Studying Climate Change: A Brief Introduction

 

Charles David Keeling measures CO2, creates a time series beginning in the 1950s
https://sustainability.illinois.edu/charles-david-keeling-1928-2005/

We might date the "modern" study of climate change to the 1950s, when Charles Keeling and colleagues began a careful series measuring atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory.  He found startling regularities in the growth of CO2, now often referred to as the "Keeling Curve." After Keeling's death the work was carried out by his son, and others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve#/media/File:Mauna_Loa_CO2_monthly_mean_concentration.svg

Keeling's paper is certainly one of the most influential climate papers within my lifetime, but as early as 1827 Joseph Fourier described the "greenhouse" mechanism that warms the earth, and in 1896 August Arrhenius predicted the greenhouse effect of doubling atmospheric CO2. These and other precursors such as Eunice Foote (1856), John Tyndall (1861) and later G.S. Callendar (1938) posited and provided some evidence of links between CO2 and climate; but after the work of Keeling and colleagues, the study took off.

This chart is one of dozens we could post to illustrate that there is an apparent empirical relationship between CO2 and global temperatures:

https://skepticalscience.com/The-CO2-Temperature-correlation-over-the-20th-Century.html

Of course everyone knows that correlation, per se, is not sufficient to demonstrate any causal link.

https://xkcd.com/552/

Side note: if you haven't been checking out the brilliant cartoon work of Randall Munroe, you should go to his website immediately after reading all my blog posts and downloading all my PowerPoint decks etc.

While correlation does not prove causality, neither does it disprove it.

As already noted, there have been solid scientific models that predict global warming if/as atmospheric carbon dioxide increases. These correlations support the theory, and the theory predicts such relationships.

So far, we are only scratching the surface of a subject on everyone's mind, including those involved in the real estate industry, students preparing for real estate careers, work in planning or education, those involved in any aspect of urban development -- in other words the target audience of this blog.

For some years I've been discussing climate change in courses and elsewhere, and if you are one of the three regular readers of this blog you know what's coming next: a PowerPoint deck that you can download.

A year and a half ago, I posted a blog entry and slide deck on "Urbanization and Climate Change: A First Look."  Now I've got something better.  Recently I gave some lectures on climate change to Professor Lu Han's course on urban economics at the Grasskamp Center for Real Estate at the  Wisconsin School of Business.

These lectures gave me an excuse to freshen up my teaching materials from 2020. In the interim I was fortunate to learn more about this subject from USC's Matt Kahn, and a number of presenters at conferences organized by Siqi Zheng, at MIT; and Harvard's Henry Pollakowski, for the Hoyt Institute. Doing justice to the material I've learned from the participants at these events, and comments from other colleagues would take more than a slide deck, and of course they are not responsible for my opinions, errors and omissions.

You can downoad the slides from my November 2023 lectures here.  There are about 300, organized as follows:

• Climate change in perspective
• Climate change basics
• Energy basics
• Some economics of climate change
• Option 1, climate mitigation: lessons from urban economics, roles of cities
• Option 2, climate adaptation: lessons from urban economics, roles of cities
• Option 3, if we cut corners on options 1 and 2 
• Policy prescriptions and research agenda
• Resources

I strongly recommend that you download the PowerPoint file and open it in PowerPoint, instead of just opening it in your browser.  Otherwise, the formatting of many slides is usually messed up. And you'll not see the notes, that have links, sources, and discussion.

Three hundred slides might sound like a lot, but it's a big subject and these slides only provide an introduction.  As always, colleagues, please feel free to select any of the slides that are useful in your own teaching and presentations.  Comments and corrections are welcome.

Israel, Palestine, and the "Middle East:" Some Background

 

As every reader will know, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists attacked Israel from Gaza, slaughtering hundreds of civilians, and taking some 200 hostages before retreating to Gaza.

Israel has responded -- is responding, as of this writing -- with a bombardment and apparently increasing assault on Hamas strongholds in Gaza. These strongholds are scattered within a very densely packed Gaza Strip, many in tunnels beneath Gaza City.  Gaza City proper contains about 650,000 people in 18 mi.2 (47 km2).  This insures that collateral damage to civilian life and property will be substantial.

"Those that forget the past are condemned to hear that quote from George Santayana again." The purpose of this post, and more specifically the slide deck that you can obtain here, is to provide some background on the history that underlies this terrible conflict.

The intended audiences for this material are students and others who desire to learn more about the history, politics and economics of the region, especially in light of recent events, including Hamas’ recent attack on Israel, and its aftermath. However, it is not primarily about those events, which are unfolding rapidly. See “Resources” at the end of the deck for suggestions on some sources to stay abreast.

This material, while preliminary and incomplete, should nevertheless provide context and history that will aid students in understanding current events and thinking critically about the underlying issues of the region. Other faculty should feel free to use any of these slides you find useful in your own teaching.

I have studied the region off-and-on since 1972, but as an interested lay person. I do not claim specialist expertise, and my understanding is continually evolving. I plan to update this material from time to time, as I learn more.  Nevertheless, I have tried to present material that is balanced and accurate, if woefully incomplete. I welcome comments and corrections, especially from those with deeper expertise.

You can download the current draft of the PowerPoint deck (November 8, 2023) here.

Again, this is a work in progress.  Comments and corrections are welcome.  Expect updates in due course.

Disasters Redux: This Time, Earthquakes

 

In several recent posts, I've focused on some of the bad things that can happen to our cities and real estate, including pandemics (COVID), conflicts (Ukraine's invasion by Russia), climate change, and bad urban policies.  On February 6, 2023, southern Turkey and northern Syria were struck by a 7.8 earthquake centered in Turkey's southernmost province of Antakaya, and a series of aftershocks.  As of this writing the death toll is estimated to be about 50,000 in Turkey and 9,000 in Syria, with other devastating losses, including injuries, property damage, and large stresses on individuals and communities.

Teaching urban courses for a quarter century, I have assigned (or students volunteered) a number of papers asking students to apply the course's lessons to (usually then current) disasters such as Hurricane Katrina (2005), Haiti's 2010 earthquake, and of course the 9/11 attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  More recently, I've discussed Russia's invasion of Ukraine in some of my guest lectures.

But the most recent deck I've created relates to the February 8, 2023 earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria. It's still a work in progress, but you can download the current version here.