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.
Anita Anand – The patient assassin
Compelling story telling and enriching perspectives make it hard not to become fascinated by Udham Singh and his quest for revenge.
Daivd French – Divided we fall
January 2021: After the Capitol attack (6 Jan. 2021) it became clear how close we actually were to this type of scenario.
November 2020: The hypothetical scenarios are well crafted and unfortunately not as far-fetched as one might hope.
Good diagnosis of current monetary policy, but combined with a disappointingly naive belief in the free market as panacea.
Tim Marshall – Prisoners of geography
Insightful perspective that highlights how few options political leaders actually have in responding to external threats.
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo – Good economics for hard times
Smart agent-based modelling perspective on global challenges around poverty and sustainability.
Michael Lewis – The Fifth Risk
The book should be mainly read for the anecdotes on female astronauts and nerdy coast guards.
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).
Michael Beschloss – Presidents of war
In choosing the personal perspective of the leader, makes the book prone to the narrative fallacy.
The author weaves the perspective of women, slaves, and other disadvantaged grouped into the narrative of US history, making the work part of a bigger movement.
Edward Snowden – Permanent record
Extensive justification of why Snowden exposed the scope of surveillance by the NSA (with too many references to patriotic US heros among Snowden’s ancestors).
Gregory Zuckerman – the man who solved the market
The book would have been a better read if it had focused on one of its two narratives: the rise of algorithmic trading and the forays of hedge fund executives into US politics.
Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum – A lot of people are saying
Spells out the scary power of herd mentality in a post-truth world (indebted to Harry Frankfurt and Fernbach and Sloman).
