David van Reybrouk – Against Elections (read in Dutch)
It would be interesting to expand the solution space to include not just random selection of citizens but also modes of participation and collaboration from non-political domains like open source software development.
Bart de Loo – The Burgundians (read in Dutch)
Politics and court life in the high middle ages evoked in a juicy style.
David Graeber and David Wengrow – The dawn of everything
The authors attack a overly simplified version of the theories they aim to refute, failing to recognize the necessarily non-linear nature of evolution.
Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum – A lot of people are saying
January 2020: The book spells out the scary power of herd mentality in a post-truth world (indebted to Harry Frankfurt and Fernbach and Sloman).
March 2022: In the perspective of this book, it is curious to see how far Putin can stretch his narrative on the Ukraine invasionfor his domestic audience.
Garry Kasparov – Winter is coming
March 2022: Strong moral plea, that after the Ukraine invasion has become an even ore chilling read
Timothy Snyder – the road to unfreedom
October 2019: Elaborate and fascinating analysis of Putin’s Russia, which bears striking parallels to what populists in Western countries try, more recently.
March 2022: Chilling to see these themes back in Putin’s messaging around the Ukraine invasion.
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.
Roman Krznaric – The good ancestor
Hard-felt plea for including future generations into political decision making.
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy – The world for sale
Well documented account of how instrumental commodity markets have been in global politics.
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible women
Great exercise in spotting biases, and understanding how these manifest themselves in how the world around us is shaped.
Nicole Perlroth – This is ho they tell me the world ends
Although the writer clearly picks sides, she does not shy away from the role of the US in the cyber arms race.
Slavoj Zizek – Like a thief in broad daylight
Mix of interesting Marxist perspectives on contemporary politics and confusing rants about old movies.
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.
Colin Woodard – American nations
The book is more about political realities than about cultures, with little attention given to the role of black people (apart from them being enslaved).
Layla Saad – Me and white supremacy
The “just shut up and listen”-attitude is refreshing, but will not convince anyone who is not already on the reader’s side and even antagonize many potential supporters of her cause.
The writer never really succeeds in making the Simulmatics story seem important, partly because due to endless digressions about the bad marriages of the men who founded the company and partly because she avoids any substantial assessment of the actual models they used.
Malcolm Gladwell – Talking to strangers
Gladwell once more makes his well known point that prejudice is often subconscious and institutionalized (cf. also Blink), this time inspired by a BLM atrocity.
The seemingly controversial thesis turns out to be a platitude hidden behind a carefully crafted facade of definitions.
The purposeful one-sided rant makes the book lose all credibility, in particular since the arguments can easily be reversed – especially in the wake of Trump’s desperate challenge the US election outcome.
Jonathan Rodden – Why cities lose
In the US election system, geographic concentration puts democrats at a fundamental disadvantage.
