Balaji Srinivasan – The Network state
Some fair nuggets of socio-economical diagnosis mixed with personal pet-peeves and drained in a techno-utopian rant.
Balaji Srinivasan – The Network state
Some fair nuggets of socio-economical diagnosis mixed with personal pet-peeves and drained in a techno-utopian rant.
The ‘it is all about oil’ narrative of international politics over the last 20 years made explicit is a comprehensive yet digestible form.
Katherine Eban – Bottle of lies
Impressive and concerning whistleblower story illustrating the subtleties in developing and producing effective generic drugs.
Nice historical overview, very topical in an era where technology significantly affects the Ukraine war and the power play between the USA and China around Taiwan.
Peter Zeihan – The end of the world is just the beginning
Highly entertaining read with a lot of black humor, but incomplete in its analysis (e.g. of risk of internal conflicts in the USA and likelihood of collaboration between states in Europe).
Nadia Eghbal – Working in Public
From an economical perspective, open source software is no different from other content that is published online.
Interesting historical perspective on economic development with renewed relevance in a post free-trade world.
Winifred Gallagher – How the post office created America
In theory a fascinating topic, but in practice a boring read; as I should have expected because the Post leveraged rather than drove innovation.
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy – The world for sale
Well documented account of how instrumental commodity markets have been in global politics.
Slavoj Zizek – Like a thief in broad daylight
Mix of interesting Marxist perspectives on contemporary politics and confusing rants about old movies.
Maxine Bedat does for fashion what the Michael Pollen did for food, but with a much more solid program behind it.
Dinny McMahon – China’s great wall of debt
October 2021: Apparently, the financial troubles of Evergrande are the first cracks in the wall.
July 2019: Interesting perspective on China’s impressive rise over the past years, providing more context to the recent trade war with the US and contrasting the view of Kai-Fu Lee.
After a reasonably insightful chapter describing Alibaba’s strategy, the book slides into an enumeration of facts that illustrate the way in which China’s government steers private enterprise.
Colin Woodart – The republic of pirates
Captivating narrative which juicy details on naval warfare practices and life on board.
Daryl Collins – Portfolios of the poor
Thorough application of small data that provides valuable insight in how people live on less than 2$ a day – and what that implies for microfinance.
Justin Fox – The myth of the rational market
The book resists the temptation to get lost in juicy stories, but focuses on the evolution of ideas.
John Kay and Mervin King – Radical Uncertainty
Economists should stay away from pseudo-philosophical assertions, in particular when these hinge on misinterpretation of Bayesian methods, use flawed logic, and do not lead to realistic recommendations.
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo – Good economics for hard times
Smart agent-based modelling perspective on global challenges around poverty and sustainability.
The great leveler – Walter Scheidel
Next to revolution (in the spirit of Marx), the book claims there are just three other forces strong enough to achieve leveling: mass warfare, epidemics, and system collapse (the last of which is arguably overlaps with the others).
the set-up in which interesting historical facts serve to make a political argument makes the author prone to the narrative fallacy.