Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo – Good economics for hard times
Smart agent-based modelling perspective on global challenges around poverty and sustainability.
The ignorance of the Trump administration when it comes to the inner workings of government creates immense risks
Michael Lewis – The Fifth Risk
The book should be mainly read for the anecdotes on female astronauts and nerdy coast guards.
Without massive and violent disruption of the established order, there will be no meaningful redistribution of wealth
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).
For a democratic leader, waging war is a balancing act between ethics, national interests and electoral impact
Michael Beschloss – Presidents of war
In choosing the personal perspective of the leader, makes the book prone to the narrative fallacy.
The US constitution has always been used as a tool for suppression
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.
There is a big difference between leaking and wistle blowing
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).
Following the rise of Jim Simons’ Renaissance, quants have become a major force in US politics
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.
Over the past 170 years Japan’s perception of itself has changed radically – multiple times
Christopher Harding – Japan Story
The author provides a richness of perspectives that guide the reader beyond clichés.
In Western societies the uneducated are outcasts, which poses systemic threats for democracy
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’.
Thanks to technology, it becomes ever easier for fringe movements to topple the establishment
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.
Increasing inequality and lack of immigration are the two big crises facing the US
the set-up in which interesting historical facts serve to make a political argument makes the author prone to the narrative fallacy.
Cyber crime is a cost-effective way for other nations to retalliate against the US, without risking all-out war
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…
Running a socially responsible business is often just egotism in disguise
Anad Giridharadas – Winners take all
Giridharas key argument is that elites only support change to the point where their privilege is not endangered.
You are the raw material of capitalists trading in futures on human behavior
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.
AI outcomes reflect the thinking of the technochauvinists that built it – which may not be desirable for society
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).
Some of the few women who ruled as pharaohs were depicted with male characteristics
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.
Steve Bannon skilfully helped Trump to play to his own strengths and avoid his considerable weaknesses
The level of Trump’s incompetency is not even shocking.
The history of Rome consists of a unique series of revolutionary social and political experiments
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.
Trump’s campaign was not the train wreck that everyone thought it was
Intriguing account covering Trump’s rise, by an NBC journalist debuting on the campaign trail.
Debt has its origin in inequality, suppression, and war
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.