*Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950*, by Bruce Caldwell & Hansjoerg Klausinger

One of the best biographies of any economist, covers anything you might wish to know, and with conceptual understanding.  This is a fantastic book and I am eagerly awaiting volume II.  Mini-excerpt:

Hayek [at LSE] never really liked Mannheim, whom he spent some time with when he first arrived, trying to introduce him around and help him to get acclimated.  This ended when, after listening patiently to Mannheim complain about the inadequacy of the English language for expressing his ideas, Hayek finally blurted out, “So much the worse for your ideas!”

You can pre-order here.  Hayek, by the way, is an interesting polar case for any talent search algorithm.  He was first interested in botany, and didn’t do anything in economics until he was 30 years old.

And I hadn’t known that Colette was the stepmother of Bertrand de Jouvenal (“On Power”), and had a five-year affair with him!