Project Syndicate contributors once again share some of the books that resonated with them the most over the past year. From sweeping histories to ambitious new works of fiction, readers of all tastes and persuasions should find something to pique their interest in this year’s selection.
With a new year fast approaching, Project Syndicate commentators list the books that resonated with them the most in 2018. Though a large majority of the selections were published this year, there are a few throwbacks, reminding us that even – or especially – in tumultuous times, insights from the past can help us make sense of the present.
In this work of historical fiction, inspector Gereon Rath, best known as the protagonist of the TV series Babylon Berlin, encounters political intrigue, corruption, and mysterious murders just when the Nazis are consolidating power, revoking civil liberties, and steadily establishing a new order. Kutscher has given us a gripping account of how dictatorships infiltrate the lives of ordinary people by sowing mistrust. Neither Rath’s marriage nor his closest friendships are spared.
Along with her husband, Jan, Assmann won the 2018 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, one of Germany’s highest literary-academic honors. Here, she offers a compelling, powerful essay on how truthful historical memory, honest narratives, and compelling visions of the future are intricately linked, and can create a virtuous circle. If we draw the right lessons from the past – as Europe did in the decades following World War II – we can build a better future. But if we forget history, Assmann warns, we risk losing everything.
This mix of biography, literary collage, and personal essay offers deep insights into current German class relations – a system much less known than those of England, France, and the United States. Encouraged by Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims, Dröscher, a playwright, explains how difficult it still is even for the upwardly mobile to overcome what she calls the “three D’s”: Dick, Dorf, Dialekt (“thick, village, dialect”), and to avoid feeling out of one’s depth in social situations.
Drawing on a massive body of research, Sapolsky shows how individuals’ brains interact with a multitude of situational variables to produce different behaviors. This book will be of great interest to social scientists and policymakers everywhere.
It is always fascinating to learn how intellectuals have brought axiomatic order to various learned disciplines over the course of history. Baruch Spinoza did it for philosophy, Gérard Debreu did it for economics, and, as Berlinski’s book shows, Euclid did it for geometry.
Given the many differences between today’s strongmen, arguments about a revival of 1930s-style fascism are not entirely convincing. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan President Nicolas Máduro, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte each represent distinct varieties of “illiberal democracy,” authoritarian ultra-nationalism, or merely dictatorship bereft of any ideology other than “pouvoir a l’état pur.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an Islamist would-be sultan, and Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński is an ascetic Catholic nationalist. US President Donald Trump is the “first non-democratic president” in American history, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, with his own network of gulags, is the world’s last Stalinist.
Still, Albright has given us a timely, elegantly written survey of threats to democracy in the West and beyond. Her own recollections of meetings with some of the leaders mentioned here enrich her insights and remind us that democracy and individual rights cannot be taken for granted, even in the countries where they first took hold. Moreover, it is not impossible to imagine any one of today’s authoritarian populists blossoming into a full-fledged fascist, should the right circumstances emerge.
Though Israel has obviously played a role in the Palestinian tragedy of dispossession and statelessness, less known is the extent to which Arab regimes have prevented the creation of a Palestinian state. Anziska has produced a deeply researched study that shows how Arab leaders have used the Palestinian cause to distract Arab publics’ attention from domestic problems.
The book starts in 1978, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat agreed to a separate peace deal with Israel at a summit at Camp David. As William Quandt, Jimmy Carter’s Middle East adviser, would later observe, “Sadat did not give a damn” about Palestine. But Anziska could have launched his scholarly voyage in 1948, when Arab states, supposedly rallying behind the Palestinian cause, seized Palestinian lands for themselves. Jordan got the West Bank (in collusion with the Zionists), Syria got the territories in the north, and Egypt tried but failed to capture the Negev Desert in the south. The situation today is no different. The main Arab powers are closing ranks with Israel to face common threats such as Iran and Islamist terrorism, and Palestine has become a marginal preoccupation.
The Vietnam War – the first television war – was a catastrophe that every succeeding generation must understand and from which we still have much to learn. In this impressive narrative, Hastings makes the story and its lessons accessible to a modern audience, many of whom no doubt regard the war as a distant memory, if not ancient history.
Despite its subtitle, this book is about much more than the CIA and the Afghan war. And that makes Coll’s deeply reported account essential reading for understanding America’s longest-running war, itself another epic tragedy.
Economic miracles often hide disturbing socio-political realities, because the fruits of meteoric GDP growth are never evenly distributed. Crabtree chronicles the rise of the “Bollygarchs” in India and traces the country’s growing inequality to inadequate state capacity. He calls for deep reforms to India’s institutions of governance.
The United Kingdom probably turned into an ordinary country too quickly and too recently for its citizens to dismiss the glories of the British Empire. According to Kenny and Pearce, Brexit is the culmination of an existential crisis about Britain’s role in the world that dates back to the late Victorian era, when the whole imperial architecture started to crack.
Plastic waste is a major global problem. And yet, despite its disastrous effects on rivers, oceans, and other sensitive ecosystems, the world had done little to control it. McCallum’s important book offers a blueprint for how we might start to do so.
Maçães’s book helps us understand why Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative should be viewed as an imperial project aimed at making real the mythical Middle Kingdom. Through the BRI, the Chinese government has sought to lure countries desperate for infrastructure investment into its strategic orbit. But the initiative is now beginning to encounter strong headwinds.
Why are some laws obeyed, and some not? In seeking an answer to that question, this book takes readers through the canons of law and economics, as well as the literature on social norms, history, and institutions. Basu concludes that, “For the law to develop roots and the rule of law to prevail requires ordinary people to believe in the law; and to believe that others believe in the law. Such beliefs and meta beliefs can take a very long time to get entrenched in society.” The book reminds us that, in addition to improving our understanding of how laws and social norms are created, we also must study how they can erode.
Most behavioral economics assumes that it is possible to discern a set of “true” but latent individual preferences, undistorted by the various psychological mechanisms identified in the literature. Policy prescriptions are addressed to an idealized benevolent social planner – effectively representing “the view from nowhere.” This book advocates a very different approach. Rather than asking whether aggregate welfare is being maximized, Sugden questions whether “it is in the interest of each individual to accept the rules of [an] institution, on the condition that everyone else does the same.”
Rosenthal’s history of slavery in the Caribbean and the American South delves into detailed management records and other primary sources to understand the ins and outs of how plantations were run. Her approach is similar to that of business historians who have used documentary evidence to trace the evolution of management practices in industry over time. “Scale required structure,” she writes. And because sugar and cotton plantations were sometimes extraordinarily large, they were the sites where the science of management first emerged.
Carreyrou, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, broke the Theranos fraud story, and has now translated his reporting magnificently into book form. This is a tale of grift on an almost unbelievable scale. What were the company’s investors and principals thinking? As one Silicon Valley observer tells Carreyrou, “They had seen so many of their once-peers and now-superiors get rich by doing stupid things that they thought being stupid was a viable business model.”
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This is a fascinating examination of the technological and political challenges humanity faces. Harari, a historian, issues an urgent warning about the dangers of “algorithms,” which will soon decide our future for us unless we enact careful regulations to preserve conscious human decision-making.
Liberman’s broad historical analysis covers economic crises from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the financial collapse of 2008. He makes a convincing case that, because all crises are unique, they will always recur. Still, because crises also tend to have much in common, their worst effects can be mitigated. Among the many books written about the financial crisis ten years ago, this one distinguishes itself by virtue of its historical depth and its linking of macro- and microeconomic analysis.
Kagan’s latest book underscores the dangers of allowing a world without rules to emerge. From 1945 until the current era, we lived in a relatively orderly world. But new challenges to the post-war order remind us that progress is not inevitable; indeed, the story of human progress is a myth. Like Harari, Kagan is sounding the alarm. “The liberal order,” he writes, “is as precarious as it is precious. It is a garden that needs constant tending lest the jungle grow back and engulf us all.”
This is the best book on the euro crisis published to date, not least because it offers a deep discussion of the European Union’s economic and political development prior to the creation of the single currency. For anyone who recognizes that Europe’s financial crisis can’t be understood without first placing events in their historical context, this is the book to read.
Julian Jackson, De Gaulle, Harvard University Press, 2018
In this compelling biography, Jackson has managed to find new things to say about the man who knew more than anyone how a Fifth Republic President should comport himself in office. It ought to be French President Emmanuel Macron’s holiday reading.
Among the titles that stand out for being particularly timely and engaging, as well as potentially influential in the years ahead, Greenspan and Wooldridge’s book offers a detailed assessment of the state of capitalism – albeit one that is occasionally too rosy.
A deputy editor at Quartz, Kessler illustrates how technological change is already raising highly consequential questions for the workplace and society. Chief among them is whether the changes wrought by new technologies will lead to greater opportunities in work or merely more anxiety for more people.
Lowrey, also a journalist, describes the case for a universal basic income and the obstacles that may stand in its way. Proposals for a UBI – or something like it – will surely feature heavily in coming public debates over the response to ongoing and further technological change.
Indonesia cannot forever postpone a reckoning for the horrendous atrocities perpetrated and encouraged by its military in consolidating Suharto’s accession to power. This comprehensive and compelling account of a Rwanda-like slaughter – and of the West’s silent complicity at the time and ever since – makes clear why.
Is Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ugly authoritarianism reversible? If there is any cause for optimism, it can be found in the pride, courage, and resilience of the Cambodian people. This book captures superbly the extraordinary bravery and commitment of human-rights defenders who continue to speak out and work for change, despite the many risks they face.
Pinker’s overall thesis is hard to believe, and he knows it. Simply put, most indicators of human wellbeing are trending upward, and have been for decades. “Life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide,” Pinker writes. Since the Middle Ages, the homicide rate in England has fallen fiftyfold. Globally, the average life expectancy is 71 years; through most of human history, it was around 30. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by one billion since 1990.
The driving force behind all of these gains, Pinker contends, is the Enlightenment. A lone voice in an age of pessimism, Pinker calls on us to appreciate all that humanity has accomplished as a result of its embrace of reason, science, and progress as its guiding ideals.
It is rare for an 832-page economics book to be as rewarding and talked-about as Irwin’s Clashing Over Commerce. But rarer still is the clarity of Irwin’s prose, which describes the history of US tariffs and trade since the country’s founding. The book is divided into three segments, each based on a historical theme and period. Between 1763 and 1865, US trade policy was focused on revenue. Alexander Hamilton instated tariffs that were no higher than necessary to fund the new government.
Then, between 1865 and 1932, restriction became the new imperative. When the agrarian South lost the Civil War, it also lost the political power to limit the protectionism of Republican manufacturing interests concentrated in the Northeast. Finally, the 1932-2017 period has been characterized by reciprocity. Learning from the catastrophes of the 1930s, the US subsequently led the world to an open rules-based multilateral trading system, from which all countries benefited.
This tour de force of the historian’s craft is a profound yet readable analysis of how colonial control in nineteenth-century Northern India created a new rural society by transforming property relations, social interactions, and even the very idea of the village.
For more than a decade, Qiu’s detective novels, all set in Shanghai, have provided an evocative and often prescient description of the rapid transformation of Chinese society. This poignant and fascinating collection of short stories blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction.
A selection of works by the intrepid journalist and editor who was shot by Hindu fundamentalists outside her home in 2017, The Way I See It captures perfectly Lankesh’s signature political analysis and irreverence toward those in power.
Mazzucato revives an age-old but now nearly forgotten question: What really matters in an economy? In forcing us to consider what should be valued and whether market prices truly reflect those values, she makes a sensible case for the public sector to play a leading role in economic development and innovation. If her argument seems surprising, that is only because neoliberalism has shrunk our imaginations.
This is a wonderful book about composing, performing, and teaching music, complete with exceptionally interesting details about the great pianist Wanda Landowska.
With almost 10% of America’s 2.2 million prisoners incarcerated in for-profit prisons, the private prison business accounts for a major part of the US criminal justice system. Bauer does not paint a pretty picture of the industry. The business is rife with corruption, incompetence, and cruelty. With the US Congress having just passed long-awaited criminal-justice reforms, Bauer’s excellent investigation is especially timely.
Still, reining in for-profit prisons will be difficult. The push for privatizing government, long a conservative mantra, has spawned a multi-billion-dollar business. With its political donations ensuring its own protection, the industry needs the scrutiny Bauer’s illuminating book provides.
What’s the alternative to liberal democracy and the international order it has spawned? Snyder points to the blend of macho-fascism, right-wing religious mysticism, and refurbished agitprop that underpin Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. An exceptional historian, Snyder examines Putin’s impact on the world, including the mounting clandestine attacks on other countries and their citizens, who are being manipulated into undermining their own democracies. He puts current events – not least Russia’s interference in the US 2016 presidential election – in valuable historical context.
Reich describes humankind’s origins using the most advanced mathematical techniques available for analyzing ancient DNA samples. This new science is quickly changing our understanding of Homo sapiens, revealing a very different story from the one we had previously pieced together through archeological, anthropological, and linguistic sources. This book will not win the Nobel Prize in Literature; it is a bit too wonky for that. Nonetheless, it has radically changed my prior assumptions about an area of science I thought I knew something about. Readers are advised to take it in alongside The Secret of Our Success, by Joseph Henrich.
In a stunning novel that combines pointillist description with profound analysis, Albinati draws heavily from real life and his own experience to recount a brutal murder that shocked Italy in 1975. The “Circeo Massacre” is a lens through which to analyze the disintegration of the Italian bourgeoisie and Italians’ disenchantment with traditional religion. A privileged generation of Italian men who feel attacked – their masculinity is called into question – explode in rage and violence. Though the story is rooted in Italy, its implications for modern societies everywhere should be clear.
This is a fascinating diagnosis of the malaise that is driving global disorder and the disintegration of democratic politics. Snyder shows how the fundamental issue is intellectual and cultural – the backlash is driven by a vision articulated in Russia, and is a legacy of both imperial and Soviet Russia, but now globalized through social media.
As a journalist who has covered South Korea for years, Breen is well positioned to tell the story of how one of the world’s poorest countries achieved affluence. Even those who think they already know South Korea will learn something.
Ansary, who was raised in Afghanistan and brought to the US at the age of 16, has written a very readable and informative history of the Islamic world. Though I do not agree with his account at every turn, I found it to be thorough and thought-provoking.
Published soon after the brilliant sociologist’s death, this short book shines a light on a world where many people have given up on the idea of building a better future, and opted instead for an idealized version of the past. There could be no timelier topic for 2018.
Thompson shows how the deterioration of public language in the digital age has confounded debates about major events such as the war in Iraq and the financial crash. The result is a loss of trust between politicians and journalists, leaving citizens bitter and unwilling to believe anybody.
This thought-provoking book relies on the trends outlined in the previous titles to show that our ideas about the threat to democracy are anachronistic. Democracy is less likely to fall to a military coup or a totalitarian regime than to implode under the weight of disillusionment. As a case in point, look no further than the rise of Donald Trump.
JUSTIN YIFU LIN
Bozhong Li, An Early Modern Economy in China, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2019
This is the first in-depth study of GDP growth in the Yangzi Delta (Jiangnan), which has been China’s most prosperous region for a millennium. Li has combed through thousands of historical documents and modern research to fill a crucial gap in the study of Chinese economic history. The book helps readers understand how China’s miraculous growth after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms was possible. The present emerges from continuity with the past.
Zipei Tu, The New Civilization of Data, Zhongxin Press, 2018 (in Chinese)
Big Data, harvested from the Internet and processed through digitalization, has become a new factor endowment, parallel to capital, labor, and land. In this new book, Tu analyzes how it may shape or reshape world politics, economics, and culture in ways similar to the discovery of America in the fifteenth century.
Although this book was published a few years ago, it drives home just how difficult it is to transform even the most successful analog, brick-and-mortar businesses into digitally savvy companies that can compete in the twenty-first century. McDermott’s description of the sheer difficulty of changing a company suggests that many will not survive.
For those who fear that Americans are living in the worst of times, Meacham makes a persuasive case that the country has survived worse over the course of its history. He is no Pollyanna; but he provides compelling grounds for rediscovering hope.
This book is indispensable for all who are troubled by the state of the world, but open to evidence of all the ways it has improved over time. I had the pleasure of getting to know Rosling in his later years. He was a true intellectual leader in the area of global development.
In a world increasingly beset by dysfunction and the weakening of Western democracy, Goodhart’s study of British society in the age of Brexit identifies the core division that is making governance difficult. In his United Kingdom, there is no one society, but rather “Somewheres” tied to a particular place and its traditional values, and “Anywheres,” generally described in terms of the liberal urban elites who populate them.
The denizens of Somewheres and Anywheres inhabit their own worlds, and to the extent that either group thinks of the other, it is to express resentment or dismissiveness. Goodhart’s goal is to awaken the “Anywheres” to the perceptions and motivations of the “Somewheres.” His book is largely descriptive, but it represents a crucial step toward understanding the loss of internal cohesion that has brought the UK to its current impasse.
This is a masterful treatise, writeen from a continental perspective, on Western society’s changing relationship with law. Krynen, a legal historian, describes the varying sensibilities inherent in different aspects of the law – its creation, implementation, and modification – before demonstrating how these sensibilities compete with one another in modern society. His account of the rivalry between politicians who legislate and the courts tasked with ensuring compliance is particularly incisive.
Many of us consider former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to be the greatest living American of the past few decades. In this new memoir of his work in public life, he shows how important it is for governments to have people with the integrity to do what is right for the country.
In this fascinating book, a science journalist takes a step into the beyond and finds that human progress and individual wellbeing depend heavily on our imaginations. More to the point, she shows that creativity is fed primarily by our dreams.
A magnificent piece of scholarship, Edwards’ book puts paid to the ignorant view that advanced economies never default on their debt obligations. In order to reflate the economy during the Great Depression, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt found that he had to renege on provisions built into US debt contracts that guaranteed holders of gold payment in dollars at a fixed exchange rate.
Even though the US Supreme Court ultimately held its nose and supported the abrogation of gold clauses, the US government’s actions surely felt the same to foreign investors as Argentina’s did when it defaulted on its debts in the early 2000s. Edwards’ serious scholarship illustrates the benefits of historical distance in evaluating major events, and stands in sharp contrast to the superficially researched polemics that have dominated altogether too much of the debate in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The author offers a wide-ranging and deeply researched analysis of the explosion of monopoly power around the world during the past few decades, especially in the US. Tepper’s highly accessible book shows that monopolies may account for some of the most troubling problems of our time, including both rising inequality and slow growth.
Monopoly power has become a hot topic. Scholars are finally rethinking the overhyped body of literature on the topic – work that has earned some academic economists massive legal consulting fees in recent decades, while paralyzing US Department of Justice efforts to promote competition. Meanwhile, European policymakers have done better, but not by much.
Tepper offers a range of sensible policy recommendations, and questions whether the giant tech companies of Silicon Valley should be allowed to buy up every “unicorn” company that might someday pose a competitive threat.
This shocking story of corruption and greed didn’t really happen, did it? Wright and Hope’s book tells the true story of how a young Malaysian businessman used his connections with the country’s then-prime minister, Najib Razak, to enrich himself and travel in the world’s most elite social circles, most famously funding the Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The financial firm Goldman Sachs is also dragged through the mud for allegedly not performing due diligence when it was offered an improbably large fee to underwrite a Malaysian corporate bond issue that turned out to be rife with corruption. Although Wright and Hope tell the story in an over-the-top manner that sometimes blurs the lines between reporting and entertainment, their account is a sobering reminder of the important of constant vigilance by global regulators, particularly when dealing with autocratic leaders, whether in an advanced economy or an emerging market.
The book is especially timely now that tackling corruption has become such an acute issue in the global battle for influence between China and the West. Most recently, it has emerged in the debate between China and the World Bank over how best to help Africa.
Though this book was first published 86 years ago, I finally caught up with it this year, and have realized, upon reading it, the full horror of what has happened to the field of economics. Just consider Robbins’s definition of economics and think about how far we’ve strayed: “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”
If you read only one history of the US, make it this one. Lepore has succeeded in finally telling a history of all Americans, from Christopher Columbus up until the current era. Her powerful narrative makes clear just how many stories have been missing in conventional histories. And with the US entering an era where the default image of an American will no longer be Euro-Caucasian, her book could not be timelier.
Cottam is both a visionary and a practical experimenter. In her new book, she offers the most hopeful vision I have seen of a future in which government can play a critical but non-central role in re-weaving the fabric of human connections. Such connections lead to social and political empowerment, dignity, and self-reliance. Cottam bases her ideas on actual work that she pioneered in Britain over the past 15 years, but her approach can be modified and applied anywhere.
Homer (translated by Emily Wilson), The Odyssey, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018
In a time of trouble and turbulence, a return to the classics – particularly to the tale of “a complicated man,” who “wandered and was lost,” but who ultimately found his way home to his family – can ground and soothe the soul. This new translation rejuvenates many worn metaphors with fresh turns of phrase, and offers a subtle but unmistakable feminine perspective.
Given that the 2008 global financial crisis was the defining event of our time, its tenth anniversary was reflected in some of the year’s most notable non-fiction. Tooze and Tucker have both written mammoth volumes about the crash and its aftermath, each dense and rich in detail. Both books address the questions of how the crisis happened, how it was resolved, and whether a more robust and resilient system was put in place afterwards.
Are we now better positioned to prevent financial instability? Both books leave it to the reader to decide. My own conclusion is that after the crash, crisis prevention improved, but the rise of Trumpism and other anti-establishment political movements could now jeopardize international cooperation in resolving the next crisis.
There is lot of food for thought in both books. For his part, Tucker focuses on the power of unelected agencies, not least the central banks that played such a prominent role in managing the 2008 crisis. That role is epitomized by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s promise in July 2012 to do “whatever it takes” to backstop Europe’s banking and financial systems. Of course, “whatever it takes” meant that central banks were entering policy areas beyond their explicit remit. The blurring of lines between elected and unelected powers has both challenged the legitimacy of central banks and raised questions about the functioning of modern democracies. Indeed, the perceived lack of legitimacy, combined with the unfettered power of technocrats, has informed and shaped today’s populist surge, especially in Europe.
Goldstein explains in rich detail how adverse economic conditions undermined life and stability in a community that for three generations had relied on the steady jobs provided by a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. Throughout the book, the many promises made to the community by politicians and GM stand in stark contrast to what really happened. A story of a community’s loss of hope and identity, Goldstein’s Janesville is a poignant microcosm of de-industrialization.
By following a number of local families in the years after the 2008 crash and closure of the GM plant, Goldstein paints a tragic picture of downward mobility. A majority of workers are forced to accept lower pay and worse job conditions, and the effects are felt across the entire community.
Nothing could seem more remote from Wall Street, the US Federal Reserve, or the international financial institutions in Washington, DC. And yet the story of Janesville is really a story about globalization, post-industrial growth models, deteriorating labor-market conditions, and the effects of policymaking. Goldstein doesn’t imply any correlation between the layoffs in Janesville and the rise of Trump, but it is hard to believe that the obliteration of blue-collar jobs in this region had no impact on the 2016 election results. After all, Wisconsin went for the Democrat, Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012, but rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016. The ongoing lack of any policy response to the challenge of de-industrialization remains a tragedy of the post-2008 era.
In this delightfully written history of India’s Deccan Peninsula, Pillai synthesizes several centuries of syncretism and conflict, with a cast of characters as memorable as any you will find in a novel. The author’s mastery of the facts and ability to bring obscure episodes to light mark him as a popular historian without parallel.
Open Embrace offers a superb analysis of the state of Indo-US relations in the Modi-Trump era, featuring a lucid explication of the Hindutva Strategic Doctrine and detailed discussions of Indian and US policy differences on China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Through meticulous research, conscientious reporting, and plain writing, George has given us a highly engaging book that should be required reading for anyone who wants to go beyond the headlines and into the substance of policy.
Lee makes a compelling case that China is poised to win the next stage of the competition over artificial intelligence (AI). But what is truly distinctive about this work is the author’s analysis of the societal challenges posed by radical automation. This is the best analysis I have seen of how AI will change the nature of different types of work, with profound implications for inequality and perceptions of self-worth.
Scheidel’s sweeping account warns us that human societies’ inherent tendency toward rising inequality has more often been reversed by war or revolution than by democratically agreed countervailing policies. The message is an important one in a world where technology is driving increased concentration of income and wealth.
This is a powerful depiction of Europe as a foreign land, from the viewpoint of a woman who wants to liberate herself from its rules by submitting to them. The result is a playful exploration of illusions of freedom. Though freed from the need to serve family, the protagonist is not free from the emptiness such liberation engenders.
Reliant as it is on the commodification of everything, the triumph of capitalism has been a calamity for most women. Their hard slog as mothers and carers can never be remunerated within market societies. Under such conditions, women are compelled to commodify their sexuality, robbing them of their autonomy and even of the opportunity to enjoy sex for themselves.
Without romanticizing formerly communist regimes, Ghodsee’s book brilliantly retrieves the plight of hundreds of millions of women in those countries as they were stripped of state support and thrust into brutal, unfettered markets. Through personal anecdotes and forays into the history of the women’s movement, Ghodsee helps us overcome the unnecessary tension between identity and class politics.
This interesting little volume should make the younger generation reflect on what they can expect for their own future. Though the authors avoid discussing the problem of caring for the very elderly when they can no longer do so themselves, they offer a clear and useful perspective for those whose bodies and minds will most likely work well for a century or more.
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“There’s a new sheriff in town,” declared US Vice President J.D. Vance at this year’s Munich Security Conference. With his boss, “Sheriff” Donald Trump, openly disparaging America’s longstanding security commitments and actively undermining European security, the United States can no longer be trusted, and it is up to Europe’s leaders to bolster the continent’s defense capacity – and fast.
Ian Buruma
says there is no chance US democracy will emerge from Donald Trump’s second administration unscathed, explains why the left is losing the culture war in the US and Europe, touts the enduring importance of the humanities, and more.
Within his first month back in the White House, Donald Trump has upended US foreign policy and launched an all-out assault on the country’s constitutional order. With US institutions bowing or buckling as the administration takes executive power to unprecedented extremes, the establishment of an authoritarian regime cannot be ruled out.
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With a new year fast approaching, Project Syndicate commentators list the books that resonated with them the most in 2018. Though a large majority of the selections were published this year, there are a few throwbacks, reminding us that even – or especially – in tumultuous times, insights from the past can help us make sense of the present.
HELMUT K. ANHEIER
Volker Kutscher, Marlow: Der siebte Rath-Roman (Marlow: The Seventh Rath Novel), Piper, 2018
In this work of historical fiction, inspector Gereon Rath, best known as the protagonist of the TV series Babylon Berlin, encounters political intrigue, corruption, and mysterious murders just when the Nazis are consolidating power, revoking civil liberties, and steadily establishing a new order. Kutscher has given us a gripping account of how dictatorships infiltrate the lives of ordinary people by sowing mistrust. Neither Rath’s marriage nor his closest friendships are spared.
Aleida Assmann, Der europäische Traum: Vier Lehren aus der Geschichte (The European Dream: Four Lessons from History), H.C. Beck, 2018
Along with her husband, Jan, Assmann won the 2018 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, one of Germany’s highest literary-academic honors. Here, she offers a compelling, powerful essay on how truthful historical memory, honest narratives, and compelling visions of the future are intricately linked, and can create a virtuous circle. If we draw the right lessons from the past – as Europe did in the decades following World War II – we can build a better future. But if we forget history, Assmann warns, we risk losing everything.
Daniela Dröscher, Zeige deine Klasse: Die Geschichte meiner sozialen Herkunft (Show Me Your Class: The History of My Social Background), Hoffmann und Campe, 2018
This mix of biography, literary collage, and personal essay offers deep insights into current German class relations – a system much less known than those of England, France, and the United States. Encouraged by Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims, Dröscher, a playwright, explains how difficult it still is even for the upwardly mobile to overcome what she calls the “three D’s”: Dick, Dorf, Dialekt (“thick, village, dialect”), and to avoid feeling out of one’s depth in social situations.
LESZEK BALCEROWICZ
Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Penguin, 2017
Drawing on a massive body of research, Sapolsky shows how individuals’ brains interact with a multitude of situational variables to produce different behaviors. This book will be of great interest to social scientists and policymakers everywhere.
KAUSHIK BASU
David Berlinski, The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements, Basic Books, 2014
It is always fascinating to learn how intellectuals have brought axiomatic order to various learned disciplines over the course of history. Baruch Spinoza did it for philosophy, Gérard Debreu did it for economics, and, as Berlinski’s book shows, Euclid did it for geometry.
SHLOMO BEN-AMI
Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning, Harper, 2018
Given the many differences between today’s strongmen, arguments about a revival of 1930s-style fascism are not entirely convincing. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan President Nicolas Máduro, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte each represent distinct varieties of “illiberal democracy,” authoritarian ultra-nationalism, or merely dictatorship bereft of any ideology other than “pouvoir a l’état pur.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an Islamist would-be sultan, and Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński is an ascetic Catholic nationalist. US President Donald Trump is the “first non-democratic president” in American history, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, with his own network of gulags, is the world’s last Stalinist.
Still, Albright has given us a timely, elegantly written survey of threats to democracy in the West and beyond. Her own recollections of meetings with some of the leaders mentioned here enrich her insights and remind us that democracy and individual rights cannot be taken for granted, even in the countries where they first took hold. Moreover, it is not impossible to imagine any one of today’s authoritarian populists blossoming into a full-fledged fascist, should the right circumstances emerge.
Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, Princeton University Press, 2018
Though Israel has obviously played a role in the Palestinian tragedy of dispossession and statelessness, less known is the extent to which Arab regimes have prevented the creation of a Palestinian state. Anziska has produced a deeply researched study that shows how Arab leaders have used the Palestinian cause to distract Arab publics’ attention from domestic problems.
The book starts in 1978, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat agreed to a separate peace deal with Israel at a summit at Camp David. As William Quandt, Jimmy Carter’s Middle East adviser, would later observe, “Sadat did not give a damn” about Palestine. But Anziska could have launched his scholarly voyage in 1948, when Arab states, supposedly rallying behind the Palestinian cause, seized Palestinian lands for themselves. Jordan got the West Bank (in collusion with the Zionists), Syria got the territories in the north, and Egypt tried but failed to capture the Negev Desert in the south. The situation today is no different. The main Arab powers are closing ranks with Israel to face common threats such as Iran and Islamist terrorism, and Palestine has become a marginal preoccupation.
CARL BILDT
Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975, Harper, 2018
The Vietnam War – the first television war – was a catastrophe that every succeeding generation must understand and from which we still have much to learn. In this impressive narrative, Hastings makes the story and its lessons accessible to a modern audience, many of whom no doubt regard the war as a distant memory, if not ancient history.
Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Penguin, 2018
Despite its subtitle, this book is about much more than the CIA and the Afghan war. And that makes Coll’s deeply reported account essential reading for understanding America’s longest-running war, itself another epic tragedy.
EDOARDO CAMPANELLA
James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, Tim Duggan Books, 2018
Economic miracles often hide disturbing socio-political realities, because the fruits of meteoric GDP growth are never evenly distributed. Crabtree chronicles the rise of the “Bollygarchs” in India and traces the country’s growing inequality to inadequate state capacity. He calls for deep reforms to India’s institutions of governance.
Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce, Shadows of Empire: The Anglosphere in British Politics, Polity, 2018
The United Kingdom probably turned into an ordinary country too quickly and too recently for its citizens to dismiss the glories of the British Empire. According to Kenny and Pearce, Brexit is the culmination of an existential crisis about Britain’s role in the world that dates back to the late Victorian era, when the whole imperial architecture started to crack.
BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Will McCallum, How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time, Penguin Life, 2018
Plastic waste is a major global problem. And yet, despite its disastrous effects on rivers, oceans, and other sensitive ecosystems, the world had done little to control it. McCallum’s important book offers a blueprint for how we might start to do so.
Bruno Maçães, Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order, Hurst, 2018
Maçães’s book helps us understand why Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative should be viewed as an imperial project aimed at making real the mythical Middle Kingdom. Through the BRI, the Chinese government has sought to lure countries desperate for infrastructure investment into its strategic orbit. But the initiative is now beginning to encounter strong headwinds.
DIANE COYLE
Kaushik Basu, The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics, Princeton University Press, 2018
Why are some laws obeyed, and some not? In seeking an answer to that question, this book takes readers through the canons of law and economics, as well as the literature on social norms, history, and institutions. Basu concludes that, “For the law to develop roots and the rule of law to prevail requires ordinary people to believe in the law; and to believe that others believe in the law. Such beliefs and meta beliefs can take a very long time to get entrenched in society.” The book reminds us that, in addition to improving our understanding of how laws and social norms are created, we also must study how they can erode.
Robert Sugden, The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist’s Defence of the Market, Oxford University Press, 2018
Most behavioral economics assumes that it is possible to discern a set of “true” but latent individual preferences, undistorted by the various psychological mechanisms identified in the literature. Policy prescriptions are addressed to an idealized benevolent social planner – effectively representing “the view from nowhere.” This book advocates a very different approach. Rather than asking whether aggregate welfare is being maximized, Sugden questions whether “it is in the interest of each individual to accept the rules of [an] institution, on the condition that everyone else does the same.”
Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, Harvard University Press, 2018
Rosenthal’s history of slavery in the Caribbean and the American South delves into detailed management records and other primary sources to understand the ins and outs of how plantations were run. Her approach is similar to that of business historians who have used documentary evidence to trace the evolution of management practices in industry over time. “Scale required structure,” she writes. And because sugar and cotton plantations were sometimes extraordinarily large, they were the sites where the science of management first emerged.
J. BRADFORD DELONG
John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Knopf, 2018
Carreyrou, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, broke the Theranos fraud story, and has now translated his reporting magnificently into book form. This is a tale of grift on an almost unbelievable scale. What were the company’s investors and principals thinking? As one Silicon Valley observer tells Carreyrou, “They had seen so many of their once-peers and now-superiors get rich by doing stupid things that they thought being stupid was a viable business model.”
KEMAL DERVIŞ
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Spiegel & Grau, 2018
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This is a fascinating examination of the technological and political challenges humanity faces. Harari, a historian, issues an urgent warning about the dangers of “algorithms,” which will soon decide our future for us unless we enact careful regulations to preserve conscious human decision-making.
Ira W. Lieberman, In Good Times Prepare for Crisis, Brookings Institution Press, 2018
Liberman’s broad historical analysis covers economic crises from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the financial collapse of 2008. He makes a convincing case that, because all crises are unique, they will always recur. Still, because crises also tend to have much in common, their worst effects can be mitigated. Among the many books written about the financial crisis ten years ago, this one distinguishes itself by virtue of its historical depth and its linking of macro- and microeconomic analysis.
Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and our Imperiled World, Knopf, 2018
Kagan’s latest book underscores the dangers of allowing a world without rules to emerge. From 1945 until the current era, we lived in a relatively orderly world. But new challenges to the post-war order remind us that progress is not inevitable; indeed, the story of human progress is a myth. Like Harari, Kagan is sounding the alarm. “The liberal order,” he writes, “is as precarious as it is precious. It is a garden that needs constant tending lest the jungle grow back and engulf us all.”
BARRY EICHENGREEN
Ashoka Mody, EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts, Oxford University Press, 2018
This is the best book on the euro crisis published to date, not least because it offers a deep discussion of the European Union’s economic and political development prior to the creation of the single currency. For anyone who recognizes that Europe’s financial crisis can’t be understood without first placing events in their historical context, this is the book to read.
Julian Jackson, De Gaulle, Harvard University Press, 2018
In this compelling biography, Jackson has managed to find new things to say about the man who knew more than anyone how a Fifth Republic President should comport himself in office. It ought to be French President Emmanuel Macron’s holiday reading.
MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN
Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, Capitalism in America: A History, Penguin, 2018
Among the titles that stand out for being particularly timely and engaging, as well as potentially influential in the years ahead, Greenspan and Wooldridge’s book offers a detailed assessment of the state of capitalism – albeit one that is occasionally too rosy.
Sarah Kessler, Gigged: The Gig Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work, Random House Business, 2018
A deputy editor at Quartz, Kessler illustrates how technological change is already raising highly consequential questions for the workplace and society. Chief among them is whether the changes wrought by new technologies will lead to greater opportunities in work or merely more anxiety for more people.
Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World, Crown, 2018
Lowrey, also a journalist, describes the case for a universal basic income and the obstacles that may stand in its way. Proposals for a UBI – or something like it – will surely feature heavily in coming public debates over the response to ongoing and further technological change.
GARETH EVANS
Geoffrey B. Robinson, The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66, Princeton University Press, 2018
Indonesia cannot forever postpone a reckoning for the horrendous atrocities perpetrated and encouraged by its military in consolidating Suharto’s accession to power. This comprehensive and compelling account of a Rwanda-like slaughter – and of the West’s silent complicity at the time and ever since – makes clear why.
Sue Coffey (ed.), Seeking Justice in Cambodia: Human Rights Defenders Speak Out, Melbourne University Press, 2018
Is Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ugly authoritarianism reversible? If there is any cause for optimism, it can be found in the pride, courage, and resilience of the Cambodian people. This book captures superbly the extraordinary bravery and commitment of human-rights defenders who continue to speak out and work for change, despite the many risks they face.
JEFFREY FRANKEL
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Viking, 2018
Pinker’s overall thesis is hard to believe, and he knows it. Simply put, most indicators of human wellbeing are trending upward, and have been for decades. “Life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide,” Pinker writes. Since the Middle Ages, the homicide rate in England has fallen fiftyfold. Globally, the average life expectancy is 71 years; through most of human history, it was around 30. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by one billion since 1990.
The driving force behind all of these gains, Pinker contends, is the Enlightenment. A lone voice in an age of pessimism, Pinker calls on us to appreciate all that humanity has accomplished as a result of its embrace of reason, science, and progress as its guiding ideals.
Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy, University of Chicago Press, 2017
It is rare for an 832-page economics book to be as rewarding and talked-about as Irwin’s Clashing Over Commerce. But rarer still is the clarity of Irwin’s prose, which describes the history of US tariffs and trade since the country’s founding. The book is divided into three segments, each based on a historical theme and period. Between 1763 and 1865, US trade policy was focused on revenue. Alexander Hamilton instated tariffs that were no higher than necessary to fund the new government.
Then, between 1865 and 1932, restriction became the new imperative. When the agrarian South lost the Civil War, it also lost the political power to limit the protectionism of Republican manufacturing interests concentrated in the Northeast. Finally, the 1932-2017 period has been characterized by reciprocity. Learning from the catastrophes of the 1930s, the US subsequently led the world to an open rules-based multilateral trading system, from which all countries benefited.
JAYATI GHOSH
Neeladri Bhattacharya, The Great Agrarian Conquest: The Colonial Reshaping of a Rural World, Orient Black Swan, 2018
This tour de force of the historian’s craft is a profound yet readable analysis of how colonial control in nineteenth-century Northern India created a new rural society by transforming property relations, social interactions, and even the very idea of the village.
Qiu Xiaolong, Inspector Chen and Me: A Collection of Inspector Chen Stories, independently published, 2018
For more than a decade, Qiu’s detective novels, all set in Shanghai, have provided an evocative and often prescient description of the rapid transformation of Chinese society. This poignant and fascinating collection of short stories blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction.
Gauri Lankesh (edited by Chandan Gowda), The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader, Navayana/DC Books, 2017
A selection of works by the intrepid journalist and editor who was shot by Hindu fundamentalists outside her home in 2017, The Way I See It captures perfectly Lankesh’s signature political analysis and irreverence toward those in power.
Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, Allen Lane, 2018
Mazzucato revives an age-old but now nearly forgotten question: What really matters in an economy? In forcing us to consider what should be valued and whether market prices truly reflect those values, she makes a sensible case for the public sector to play a leading role in economic development and innovation. If her argument seems surprising, that is only because neoliberalism has shrunk our imaginations.
Paul Kildea, Chopin’s Piano: A Journey Through Romanticism, Allen Lane, 2018
This is a wonderful book about composing, performing, and teaching music, complete with exceptionally interesting details about the great pianist Wanda Landowska.
KENT HARRINGTON
Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, Penguin, 2018
With almost 10% of America’s 2.2 million prisoners incarcerated in for-profit prisons, the private prison business accounts for a major part of the US criminal justice system. Bauer does not paint a pretty picture of the industry. The business is rife with corruption, incompetence, and cruelty. With the US Congress having just passed long-awaited criminal-justice reforms, Bauer’s excellent investigation is especially timely.
Still, reining in for-profit prisons will be difficult. The push for privatizing government, long a conservative mantra, has spawned a multi-billion-dollar business. With its political donations ensuring its own protection, the industry needs the scrutiny Bauer’s illuminating book provides.
Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Tim Duggan Books, 2018
What’s the alternative to liberal democracy and the international order it has spawned? Snyder points to the blend of macho-fascism, right-wing religious mysticism, and refurbished agitprop that underpin Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. An exceptional historian, Snyder examines Putin’s impact on the world, including the mounting clandestine attacks on other countries and their citizens, who are being manipulated into undermining their own democracies. He puts current events – not least Russia’s interference in the US 2016 presidential election – in valuable historical context.
RICARDO HAUSMANN
David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Pantheon, 2018
Reich describes humankind’s origins using the most advanced mathematical techniques available for analyzing ancient DNA samples. This new science is quickly changing our understanding of Homo sapiens, revealing a very different story from the one we had previously pieced together through archeological, anthropological, and linguistic sources. This book will not win the Nobel Prize in Literature; it is a bit too wonky for that. Nonetheless, it has radically changed my prior assumptions about an area of science I thought I knew something about. Readers are advised to take it in alongside The Secret of Our Success, by Joseph Henrich.
HAROLD JAMES
Edoardo Albinati, La scuola cattolica, Rizzoli Libri, 2016
In a stunning novel that combines pointillist description with profound analysis, Albinati draws heavily from real life and his own experience to recount a brutal murder that shocked Italy in 1975. The “Circeo Massacre” is a lens through which to analyze the disintegration of the Italian bourgeoisie and Italians’ disenchantment with traditional religion. A privileged generation of Italian men who feel attacked – their masculinity is called into question – explode in rage and violence. Though the story is rooted in Italy, its implications for modern societies everywhere should be clear.
Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Tim Duggan Books, 2018
This is a fascinating diagnosis of the malaise that is driving global disorder and the disintegration of democratic politics. Snyder shows how the fundamental issue is intellectual and cultural – the backlash is driven by a vision articulated in Russia, and is a legacy of both imperial and Soviet Russia, but now globalized through social media.
ANNE O. KRUEGER
Michael Breen, The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation, Thomas Dunne Books, 2017
As a journalist who has covered South Korea for years, Breen is well positioned to tell the story of how one of the world’s poorest countries achieved affluence. Even those who think they already know South Korea will learn something.
Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, Public Affairs, 2009
Ansary, who was raised in Afghanistan and brought to the US at the age of 16, has written a very readable and informative history of the Islamic world. Though I do not agree with his account at every turn, I found it to be thorough and thought-provoking.
MARK LEONARD
Zygmunt Bauman, Retrotopia, Polity, 2017
Published soon after the brilliant sociologist’s death, this short book shines a light on a world where many people have given up on the idea of building a better future, and opted instead for an idealized version of the past. There could be no timelier topic for 2018.
Mark Thompson, Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?, Vintage, 2017
Thompson shows how the deterioration of public language in the digital age has confounded debates about major events such as the war in Iraq and the financial crash. The result is a loss of trust between politicians and journalists, leaving citizens bitter and unwilling to believe anybody.
David Runciman, How Democracy Ends, Profile Books, 2018
This thought-provoking book relies on the trends outlined in the previous titles to show that our ideas about the threat to democracy are anachronistic. Democracy is less likely to fall to a military coup or a totalitarian regime than to implode under the weight of disillusionment. As a case in point, look no further than the rise of Donald Trump.
JUSTIN YIFU LIN
Bozhong Li, An Early Modern Economy in China, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2019
This is the first in-depth study of GDP growth in the Yangzi Delta (Jiangnan), which has been China’s most prosperous region for a millennium. Li has combed through thousands of historical documents and modern research to fill a crucial gap in the study of Chinese economic history. The book helps readers understand how China’s miraculous growth after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms was possible. The present emerges from continuity with the past.
Zipei Tu, The New Civilization of Data, Zhongxin Press, 2018 (in Chinese)
Big Data, harvested from the Internet and processed through digitalization, has become a new factor endowment, parallel to capital, labor, and land. In this new book, Tu analyzes how it may shape or reshape world politics, economics, and culture in ways similar to the discovery of America in the fifteenth century.
DAMBISA MOYO
Bill McDermott, with Joanne Gordon, Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office, Simon and Schuster, 2014
Although this book was published a few years ago, it drives home just how difficult it is to transform even the most successful analog, brick-and-mortar businesses into digitally savvy companies that can compete in the twenty-first century. McDermott’s description of the sheer difficulty of changing a company suggests that many will not survive.
JOSEPH S. NYE
Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, Random House, 2018
For those who fear that Americans are living in the worst of times, Meacham makes a persuasive case that the country has survived worse over the course of its history. He is no Pollyanna; but he provides compelling grounds for rediscovering hope.
JIM O’NEILL
Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Flatiron Books, 2018
This book is indispensable for all who are troubled by the state of the world, but open to evidence of all the ways it has improved over time. I had the pleasure of getting to know Rosling in his later years. He was a true intellectual leader in the area of global development.
ANA PALACIO
David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics, Penguin, 2017
In a world increasingly beset by dysfunction and the weakening of Western democracy, Goodhart’s study of British society in the age of Brexit identifies the core division that is making governance difficult. In his United Kingdom, there is no one society, but rather “Somewheres” tied to a particular place and its traditional values, and “Anywheres,” generally described in terms of the liberal urban elites who populate them.
The denizens of Somewheres and Anywheres inhabit their own worlds, and to the extent that either group thinks of the other, it is to express resentment or dismissiveness. Goodhart’s goal is to awaken the “Anywheres” to the perceptions and motivations of the “Somewheres.” His book is largely descriptive, but it represents a crucial step toward understanding the loss of internal cohesion that has brought the UK to its current impasse.
Jacques Krynen, Le théâtre juridique, Gallimard, 2018
This is a masterful treatise, writeen from a continental perspective, on Western society’s changing relationship with law. Krynen, a legal historian, describes the varying sensibilities inherent in different aspects of the law – its creation, implementation, and modification – before demonstrating how these sensibilities compete with one another in modern society. His account of the rivalry between politicians who legislate and the courts tasked with ensuring compliance is particularly incisive.
EDMUND S. PHELPS
Paul Volcker (with Christine Harper), Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government, Public Affairs, 2018
Many of us consider former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to be the greatest living American of the past few decades. In this new memoir of his work in public life, he shows how important it is for governments to have people with the integrity to do what is right for the country.
Alice Robb, Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018
In this fascinating book, a science journalist takes a step into the beyond and finds that human progress and individual wellbeing depend heavily on our imaginations. More to the point, she shows that creativity is fed primarily by our dreams.
KENNETH ROGOFF
Sebastián Edwards, American Default: The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court, and the Battle Over Gold, Princeton University Press, 2018
A magnificent piece of scholarship, Edwards’ book puts paid to the ignorant view that advanced economies never default on their debt obligations. In order to reflate the economy during the Great Depression, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt found that he had to renege on provisions built into US debt contracts that guaranteed holders of gold payment in dollars at a fixed exchange rate.
Even though the US Supreme Court ultimately held its nose and supported the abrogation of gold clauses, the US government’s actions surely felt the same to foreign investors as Argentina’s did when it defaulted on its debts in the early 2000s. Edwards’ serious scholarship illustrates the benefits of historical distance in evaluating major events, and stands in sharp contrast to the superficially researched polemics that have dominated altogether too much of the debate in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Jonathan Tepper (with Denise Hearn), The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, Wiley, 2018
The author offers a wide-ranging and deeply researched analysis of the explosion of monopoly power around the world during the past few decades, especially in the US. Tepper’s highly accessible book shows that monopolies may account for some of the most troubling problems of our time, including both rising inequality and slow growth.
Monopoly power has become a hot topic. Scholars are finally rethinking the overhyped body of literature on the topic – work that has earned some academic economists massive legal consulting fees in recent decades, while paralyzing US Department of Justice efforts to promote competition. Meanwhile, European policymakers have done better, but not by much.
Tepper offers a range of sensible policy recommendations, and questions whether the giant tech companies of Silicon Valley should be allowed to buy up every “unicorn” company that might someday pose a competitive threat.
Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, Hachette Books, 2018
This shocking story of corruption and greed didn’t really happen, did it? Wright and Hope’s book tells the true story of how a young Malaysian businessman used his connections with the country’s then-prime minister, Najib Razak, to enrich himself and travel in the world’s most elite social circles, most famously funding the Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The financial firm Goldman Sachs is also dragged through the mud for allegedly not performing due diligence when it was offered an improbably large fee to underwrite a Malaysian corporate bond issue that turned out to be rife with corruption. Although Wright and Hope tell the story in an over-the-top manner that sometimes blurs the lines between reporting and entertainment, their account is a sobering reminder of the important of constant vigilance by global regulators, particularly when dealing with autocratic leaders, whether in an advanced economy or an emerging market.
The book is especially timely now that tackling corruption has become such an acute issue in the global battle for influence between China and the West. Most recently, it has emerged in the debate between China and the World Bank over how best to help Africa.
ROBERT SKIDELSKY
Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Macmillan, 1932
Though this book was first published 86 years ago, I finally caught up with it this year, and have realized, upon reading it, the full horror of what has happened to the field of economics. Just consider Robbins’s definition of economics and think about how far we’ve strayed: “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER
Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018
If you read only one history of the US, make it this one. Lepore has succeeded in finally telling a history of all Americans, from Christopher Columbus up until the current era. Her powerful narrative makes clear just how many stories have been missing in conventional histories. And with the US entering an era where the default image of an American will no longer be Euro-Caucasian, her book could not be timelier.
Hilary Cottam, Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionize the Welfare State, Virago, 2018
Cottam is both a visionary and a practical experimenter. In her new book, she offers the most hopeful vision I have seen of a future in which government can play a critical but non-central role in re-weaving the fabric of human connections. Such connections lead to social and political empowerment, dignity, and self-reliance. Cottam bases her ideas on actual work that she pioneered in Britain over the past 15 years, but her approach can be modified and applied anywhere.
Homer (translated by Emily Wilson), The Odyssey, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018
In a time of trouble and turbulence, a return to the classics – particularly to the tale of “a complicated man,” who “wandered and was lost,” but who ultimately found his way home to his family – can ground and soothe the soul. This new translation rejuvenates many worn metaphors with fresh turns of phrase, and offers a subtle but unmistakable feminine perspective.
PAOLA SUBACCHI
Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Viking, 2018
Paul Tucker, Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State, Princeton University Press, 2018
Given that the 2008 global financial crisis was the defining event of our time, its tenth anniversary was reflected in some of the year’s most notable non-fiction. Tooze and Tucker have both written mammoth volumes about the crash and its aftermath, each dense and rich in detail. Both books address the questions of how the crisis happened, how it was resolved, and whether a more robust and resilient system was put in place afterwards.
Are we now better positioned to prevent financial instability? Both books leave it to the reader to decide. My own conclusion is that after the crash, crisis prevention improved, but the rise of Trumpism and other anti-establishment political movements could now jeopardize international cooperation in resolving the next crisis.
There is lot of food for thought in both books. For his part, Tucker focuses on the power of unelected agencies, not least the central banks that played such a prominent role in managing the 2008 crisis. That role is epitomized by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s promise in July 2012 to do “whatever it takes” to backstop Europe’s banking and financial systems. Of course, “whatever it takes” meant that central banks were entering policy areas beyond their explicit remit. The blurring of lines between elected and unelected powers has both challenged the legitimacy of central banks and raised questions about the functioning of modern democracies. Indeed, the perceived lack of legitimacy, combined with the unfettered power of technocrats, has informed and shaped today’s populist surge, especially in Europe.
Amy Goldstein, Janesville: An American Story, Simon & Schuster, 2017
Goldstein explains in rich detail how adverse economic conditions undermined life and stability in a community that for three generations had relied on the steady jobs provided by a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. Throughout the book, the many promises made to the community by politicians and GM stand in stark contrast to what really happened. A story of a community’s loss of hope and identity, Goldstein’s Janesville is a poignant microcosm of de-industrialization.
By following a number of local families in the years after the 2008 crash and closure of the GM plant, Goldstein paints a tragic picture of downward mobility. A majority of workers are forced to accept lower pay and worse job conditions, and the effects are felt across the entire community.
Nothing could seem more remote from Wall Street, the US Federal Reserve, or the international financial institutions in Washington, DC. And yet the story of Janesville is really a story about globalization, post-industrial growth models, deteriorating labor-market conditions, and the effects of policymaking. Goldstein doesn’t imply any correlation between the layoffs in Janesville and the rise of Trump, but it is hard to believe that the obliteration of blue-collar jobs in this region had no impact on the 2016 election results. After all, Wisconsin went for the Democrat, Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012, but rejected Hillary Clinton in 2016. The ongoing lack of any policy response to the challenge of de-industrialization remains a tragedy of the post-2008 era.
SHASHI THAROOR
Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji, Juggernaut, 2018
In this delightfully written history of India’s Deccan Peninsula, Pillai synthesizes several centuries of syncretism and conflict, with a cast of characters as memorable as any you will find in a novel. The author’s mastery of the facts and ability to bring obscure episodes to light mark him as a popular historian without parallel.
Varghese K. George, Open Embrace: India-US Ties in the Age of Modi and Trump, Penguin India, 2018
Open Embrace offers a superb analysis of the state of Indo-US relations in the Modi-Trump era, featuring a lucid explication of the Hindutva Strategic Doctrine and detailed discussions of Indian and US policy differences on China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Through meticulous research, conscientious reporting, and plain writing, George has given us a highly engaging book that should be required reading for anyone who wants to go beyond the headlines and into the substance of policy.
ADAIR TURNER
Kai-fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018
Lee makes a compelling case that China is poised to win the next stage of the competition over artificial intelligence (AI). But what is truly distinctive about this work is the author’s analysis of the societal challenges posed by radical automation. This is the best analysis I have seen of how AI will change the nature of different types of work, with profound implications for inequality and perceptions of self-worth.
Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press, 2017
Scheidel’s sweeping account warns us that human societies’ inherent tendency toward rising inequality has more often been reversed by war or revolution than by democratically agreed countervailing policies. The message is an important one in a world where technology is driving increased concentration of income and wealth.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS
Rachel Cusk, Kudos: A Novel, Faber, 2018
This is a powerful depiction of Europe as a foreign land, from the viewpoint of a woman who wants to liberate herself from its rules by submitting to them. The result is a playful exploration of illusions of freedom. Though freed from the need to serve family, the protagonist is not free from the emptiness such liberation engenders.
Kristen R. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, Nation Books, 2018
Reliant as it is on the commodification of everything, the triumph of capitalism has been a calamity for most women. Their hard slog as mothers and carers can never be remunerated within market societies. Under such conditions, women are compelled to commodify their sexuality, robbing them of their autonomy and even of the opportunity to enjoy sex for themselves.
Without romanticizing formerly communist regimes, Ghodsee’s book brilliantly retrieves the plight of hundreds of millions of women in those countries as they were stripped of state support and thrust into brutal, unfettered markets. Through personal anecdotes and forays into the history of the women’s movement, Ghodsee helps us overcome the unnecessary tension between identity and class politics.
Daniel Gros
Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, Bloomsbury, 2017
This interesting little volume should make the younger generation reflect on what they can expect for their own future. Though the authors avoid discussing the problem of caring for the very elderly when they can no longer do so themselves, they offer a clear and useful perspective for those whose bodies and minds will most likely work well for a century or more.
BOOKS BY PS COMMENTATORS IN 2018
Bertrand Badré, Can Finance Save the World?: Regaining Power Over Money to Serve the Common Good, Berrett-Koehler
Kaushik Basu, The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics, Princeton University Press
Ian Buruma, A Tokyo Romance, Penguin
Barry Eichengreen, The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era, Oxford University Press
Joschka Fischer, Der Abstieg des Westens: Europa in der neuen Weltordnung des 21. Jahrhunderts, Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Bernard-Henri Lévy, L’Empire et les cinq rois, Grasset
Justin Yifu Lin, Peter J. Morgan, and Guanghua Wan (eds.), Slowdown in the Peoples’ Republic of China: Structural Factors and Implications for Asia, Brookings Institution
Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, Allen Lane
Dambisa Moyo, Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It, Basic Books
Ashoka Mody, EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts, Oxford University Press
José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph E. Stiglitz (eds.), The Welfare State Revisited, Columbia University Press
Jim O’Neill (with William Hall and Anthony McDonnell), Superbugs: An Arms Race Against Bacteria, Harvard University Press
Raghuram Rajan, The Third Pillar: The Revival of Community in a Polarized World, Harper Collins, forthcoming in March 2019
Kevin Rudd, The PM Years, Macmillan Australia
Jeffrey D. Sachs, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, Columbia University Press
Klaus Schwab (with Nicholas Davis, Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Guide to Building a Better World, Portfolio Penguin
Robert Skidelsky, Money and Government: A Challenge to Mainstream Economics, Allen Lane, 2018
Shang-Jin Wei et al. (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China, Oxford University Press (Paperback)