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.
Christopher Harding – Japan Story
The author provides a richness of perspectives that guide the reader beyond clichés.
Paul Collier – The future of capitalism
The author’s recommended retun to a local solidarity may address the issue at hand, but will also pose significant threats for ‘diversity and inclusion’.
Moises Naim – The end of power
the book, written pre-Trump, pre-Brexit and pre-Cambridge Analytics, underemphasizes the risk of large-scale orchestration of fringe groups to undermine nation states; thereby making the author’s call for stronger institutions feels a bit besides the point.
the set-up in which interesting historical facts serve to make a political argument makes the author prone to the narrative fallacy.
John Carlin – Dawn of the code war
Overly chauvinistic and politically correct story of how intelligence and cyber crime are convering, written boringly – I eagerly await the Michael Lewis version…
Anad Giridharadas – Winners take all
Giridharas key argument is that elites only support change to the point where their privilege is not endangered.
Shoshana Zuboff – Surveillance capitalism
There is a tendency in critiques of ‘big tech’ to underestimate the long-term resilliance of mankind; although that does not render the argument invalid.
Meridith Broussard – Artificial Unintelligence
Great effort to democratize AI and peel off some layers of mistique that harm public debate (althought the case against technochauvinism seems at times a bit too shallow).
Kara Cooney – When women ruled the world
The book illustrates how difficult it is to avoid speculation when trying to reconstruct a comprehensive narrative from ancient historical records.
The level of Trump’s incompetency is not even shocking.
Rome was much more of a ‘social welfare state’ than I ever realized; with a people’s tribunes, food for the poor, land redistribution, and pensions for soldiers.
Intriguing account covering Trump’s rise, by an NBC journalist debuting on the campaign trail.
At first the polemic style is charming, but over-all the writer’s objective to crush the system by his brain power is poorly executed and overlooks too many credible alternative lines of argument.
Jamie Bartlett – The people vs Tech
Summary of how tech firms form a risk for democracy, but without a thorough assessment of how technology itself can be applied to improve the democratic process.
Solid analysis of politics and mass communication ends in a disappointingly polarized plea for “us v. them”-thinking.
