Anne Applebaum – Autocracy Inc.
Unfortunately, the strongly opiniated perspectives of the authortake away some of the power of the solid analyses.
Facebook leadership does not care about employees or humanity, but only about market power and profit.
Sarah Wynn-Williams – Careless people
To make the central thesis compelling, it would have been better to split the book in two: one on Facebook’s policy choices and one on how it treats its employees.
The only way to control the power of tech power houses and defend the rights of ordinary citizens is stricter regulation
Marietje Schaake – The tech coup
Although the book makes valuable points, the full focus on legislation risks overlooking the importance of thriving innovation for defending long term competitiveness in geopolitical context.
Capitalism has fallen: not due to a communist revolution, but by the hand of a new elite of rent-extracting technology companies that has grabbed power
Yanis Varoufakis – Technofeudalism
A surprising blend of philosophical reflections, personal dialogues, the retelling of a Netflix series, and a Marxist polemic pamphlet.
The coupling of personal and economic freedom increasingly appears to be a thing of the past
Martin Wolf – The crisis of Democratic Capitalism
After a slow start, the book provides interesting analyses, which after the 2024 US elections is more relevant than ever.
The ability to quantify and appreciate risks provides a competitive edge, but in the face of existential risks many models break down
Entertaining, but in-all, the book reads as a manifesto written for those who already agree.
A prince needs to carefully balance show of force and political scheming
Niccolo Machiavelli – The prince
In theory Machiavelli had it all figured out,
An unstable cocktail of money, power, prestige, politics and bling brought a Florentine banking dynasty to the highest regions of power. for as long as it lasted
Mary Hollingworth – The medici
Well written, striking the right balance between a thorough historical narrative, juicy gossip about minor royalty, and arty name-dropping.
Military theory always seems to be focused on solving the challenges from the previous war
David Patraeus and Andrew Roberts – Conflict
Somehow, in the world of Mr. Patraeus, all people who agree with the general are the most capable, intelligent and respected leaders to ever walk the earth while the French are never any good.
The West has for a long time under-estimated the tenacity of Russian covert operations
Gordon Corera – Russians among us
The connection between ‘illegals’ and digital information warfare seems mostly motivated by the author’s (or publisher’s) desire to give the book more relevance, rather than the coherence of the narrative.
If power is all you want, just follow these 48 simple steps
Robert Greene – The 48 laws of power
A pile of cynical, often conflicting, recommendations presented with Machiavellian panache.
The populist far-right has been able to gain ground due to the failure of progressives to address underlying concerns across broad strands of the population
Rhetorically strong, with well chosen observations spun into a seductive narrative that is designed to give hope.
To optimally solve for the UN Social Development Goals, optimize on simple metrics with good pay-off
Bjorn Lomborg – Best things first
Nice exercise that provides some nice contrarian thinking, as long as one is aware that the methodology of cost-benefit analysis (as applied here) seems to ignore systemic risks (e.g. climate change) and under-plays the difficulty of getting from theory to policy (let alone realization).
A solid system of taxation is one of the major indicators for the success of power structures
Chris Wickham – Medieval Europe
Rich and fascinating deep-dive into an under-estimated millennium.
There are a huge number of ways in which Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can take over the world, rendering humanity essentially useless
Nov. 2017: Interesting exploration of the implications of AGI, faulted by the typical preference of Analytical Philosophy for construction of intricate, highly theoretical scenario’s, under-emphasizing basic challenges (in the case of AGI: lack of robustness / antifragility).
Jun. 2023: The writer has leveraged the recent rise of LLMs like ChatGPT to further fuel fear about an AGI break-out – even though other AI-related risks require more imminent attention.
Structural shifts in energy production and usage (especially shale oil and EVs) have fundamentally affected the global power balance
The ‘it is all about oil’ narrative of international politics over the last 20 years made explicit is a comprehensive yet digestible form.
The issues and conflicts plaguing modern Spain are rooted in a troubled history that until shockingly recently was a dictatorship
Great overview that brings together different perspectives in a shocking narrative without becoming judgemental.
Protective parenting and the quest for emotional safety hurt the mental resilience of gen Z
Greg Lukianov and Jonathan Haidt – The coddling of the American mind
The writers provide valuable life lessons for individuals, but (unfortunately) do not discuss the broader societal function of protest movements.
Elections are not democratic but aristocratic, because only members of the elite get on the ballot
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.
A subversive branch of the French royal family has been responsible for the emergence of the low countries as a geopolitical entity
Bart de Loo – The Burgundians (read in Dutch)
Politics and court life in the high middle ages evoked in a juicy style.