book review on economics

• Search Search Please fill out this field.
• 'Serious Money'
• 'When McKinsey Comes to Town'
• 'Empathy Economics'
• 'Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century'
• 'Economics and the Left'
• 'Work Pray Code'
• 'Talking to My Daughter About the Economy'

Why You Should Trust Investopedia

The 7 best economics books of 2024.

Learn how economics plays out in society and everyday life

Michelle Lodge is a contributor to Investopedia, who is also a writer, editor, and podcaster.

Erika Rasure is globally-recognized as a leading consumer economics subject matter expert, researcher, and educator. She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest.

The economy and how it impacts families is a burning issue today, as inflation and high interest rates dominate the news in the United States. In the United Kingdom, economics is at the heart of the troubles plaguing the island nation and former empire that changed prime ministers three times in 2022. Throughout the world, too, the economy is a major talking point.

As you read through our list of the seven best books that cover economics, you’ll find diverse and in-depth viewpoints covering how this science plays out in everyday life.

In "Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London," our best overall book, sociologist Caroline Knowles takes you through the neighborhoods of the capital city, telling stories of how the ultra-wealthy live and work; how they spend their money, marry and divorce; and why London is one of the best places for those with nefarious intentions to hide money from authorities. The Times of London called the book a “latter-day 'Canterbury Tales.'”

Another fascinating read is "When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm" by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, which investigates the prestigious, powerful consulting firm, revealing where it has failed to live up to its carefully cultivated sterling reputation. The New York Times investigative journalists detail how McKinsey sometimes works for opposing sides without revealing its obvious conflicts of interest and offers its clients advice that can lead to unsafe outcomes. 

Cambridge University political economist Helen Thompson has generated buzz for her "Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century ," which delves into the reasons for the world’s instability. Thompson reveals that shakiness is tied to geopolitics, which centers on energy, economics, and how the democracies of the most powerful nations work and interact.

Best Overall: 'Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London'

Coverage of the ultra-wealthy rarely reveals the reality behind their day-to-day lives—their many houses and super-yachts, the tony schools they attend, their memberships in exclusive clubs, traveling adventures, and the ease and perks that being very well-heeled affords them. Here’s a book that shows you just that. It is especially relevant now, as Britain’s richest-ever prime minister (at least in modern times), Rishi Sunak, a former investment banker, and his wife, Akshata Murty, a tech heiress who reportedly is wealthier than King Charles III, take up residence at No. 10 Downing Street.

In "Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London," author and sociology professor Caroline Knowles takes you on a slow, satisfying stroll through super-wealthy London, thanks to interviews with movers and shakers, support staff, and consultants. In the context of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, both of which revealed offshore entities used by the global elite, Knowles writes, “London is internationally renowned for its expertise in hiding money.” She is a former professor at Goldsmiths and now a global professorial fellow at Queen Mary, both University of London, and the author of "Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads and co-author of Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes, and Journeys ."

The book features maps of London neighborhoods and stories from 43 individuals, all of whom remain anonymous and are given nicknames. They include:

• Boy, a young entrepreneur and owner of a bar in Shoreditch, a hipster neighborhood adjoining The City, London’s Wall Street
• Quant, an algorithm writer for a bank
• Cake, a former banker and private equities dealer specializing in fintech
• Butler, a butler who has worked in some of London’s wealthiest households
• Journo, a Russian journalist and chronicler of London’s invisible Russian entrepreneurs
• Walker, a family office employee who works on domestic and family services
• Palace, a Notting Hill mom who hails from the landed aristocracy and does volunteer work
• Babysitter, a young woman who explains life in a commuter village
• Traveller, who organizes unusual luxury trips and travel experiences for very wealthy clients 

After observing protests outside the Saudi embassy, Knowles notes, “Just as in London, you are supposedly never more than six feet away from a rat, in [moneyed] Mayfair, you are rarely far from a human rights violation.” Another story tells of a London divorce in which the soon-to-be ex-wife, a former model, asks the court for £500 million annually to fund a lavish lifestyle that includes three staffed homes, steady replenishment of her shoe and jewelry stock, and many other excesses, and is awarded £53 million instead.

Knowles also discusses how plutocratic London co-exists side by side with wealth from the Middle East and Britain; how income inequality was at its ugliest in the lead-up and aftermath of the fire at the low-income-housing Grenfell Tower in 2017 that killed 72 people and displaced everyone living there; and how life among some of London’s wealthy has carried on uninterrupted for generations.

Best Exposé of a Powerhouse Company: 'When McKinsey Comes to Town'

Any employee or ex-employee of a corporation knows that “when McKinsey comes to town,” heads are going to roll, and it could be theirs. In Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe’s riveting, heavily annotated book "When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm," the authors blow McKinsey’s cover as the good guys with integrity and discretion. They detail how this influential, tight-lipped consulting firm plays both sides of the fence, so to speak, by working for opposing sides without acknowledging conflicts of interest and rendering advice to some unsavory clients at the expense of safety and other unfortunate outcomes in the interest of driving up short-term profits for the client and collecting high fees for McKinsey.

Both authors are award-winning journalists who now report for The New York Times. They explain how this “company defined by numbers, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides” enjoys near-absolute loyalty from its consultants, sometimes years after they have left the firm, and how that steadfastness proved a challenge in their reporting. Fortunately, some “McKinseyites” stepped forward to proffer insights into the firm’s practices and personalities.

McKinsey faced a disaster of its own making in South Africa, detailed in the chapter “Clubbing Seals: The South African Debacle.” McKinsey came to Johannesburg, hoping to establish a lucrative African foothold. Eventually, the firm became the focus of several government investigations involving “tainted contracts” and other irregularities connected to the country’s railroads and electricity utility, the airline South African Airways, and the financial consultancy Regiments Capital. McKinsey publicly apologized to the South African government several times, but the series of faux pas; links to the influential, corrupt South African Gupta family, and other illegal dealings rendered it mortally wounded in South Africa and left a stain on its global reputation.  

Best Biography of an Economist: 'Empathy Economics'

Janet Yellen is a rare individual. She is a highly accomplished woman and scholar in a male-dominated profession and is now the first female U.S. Treasury secretary . She has held the other two top economic policy jobs in the nation—chair of both the Federal Reserve and the Council of Economic Advisers —and was the first woman in both posts. In Owen Ullmann’s meticulous and laudatory "Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All," he outlines Yellen’s philosophy of lifting up those from the economic ladder’s lowest rung and her humanity, which stands out in the brutal world of Washington politics.

Yellen grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, N.Y. She is the daughter of a physician who employed a pay-what-you-can policy for his patients and a former elementary schoolteacher mother, who also ran her husband’s practice after he had a medical setback. Ullmann, an award-winning journalist, takes the reader from Yellen’s happy, stable childhood, where she observed economic disparities among the patients who visited her father’s office. He recounts the gender discrimination she has faced at universities and throughout her career, as well as her 1978 marriage to George Akerlof, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

He details her stints at the Fed—including her firing by then-President Donald Trump, who said in a staggeringly superficial pronouncement that she was too short to be Fed chair, a job she had been doing well for four years before Trump took office—and her professional life today. Ullman writes of Yellen: “One signature achievement involves climate change: For the first time, she made it the focus of every aspect of the financial world that the Treasury supervises.”

A speech to her Treasury Department staff after her confirmation shows how Yellen’s earliest experiences are still with her. “My father was a doctor in a working-class part of Brooklyn, and he was a child of the Depression,” she said. “He had a visceral reaction to economic hardship, telling us about patients who lost their jobs or who couldn’t pay. Those moments remain some of the clearest of my early life, and they are likely why, decades later, I still try to see my science—the science of economics—the way my father saw his: as a means to help people.”

Best on Economic Fault Lines in Today’s Unstable World: 'Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century'

The University of Cambridge political economist Helen Thompson writes about long-standing political rivalries among the great powers in her well-received "Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century," short-listed in September 2022 as one of the Financial Times ’ best books this year. The book’s subtitle is a homage to author Charles Dickens and “his meditation on industrial civilization pitted against ‘the innumerable horsepower of time’” in "Hard Times: For These Times."

Today’s pressure points and shocks, writes Thompson, are in economics, technology, military strength, and domestic political resilience. She notes that disruption in the last decade has been wrongfully attributed to populist nationalism in the context of the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the plummeting of a “purportedly liberal international order,” adding that “at the systemic level, much remains unexplained, not least because energy has gone unrecognized as an important cause of the geopolitical and economic fault lines at work.”

Thompson builds her message around three histories—geopolitical, which centers on energy; economic; and democracies—all of which she ties together to help explain the growing instability in the world today.

Best Collection of Opinions: 'Economics and the Left'

In "Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists ," editor C.J. Polychroniou presents 24 economists “whose lifework has been dedicated to both interpreting the world and changing it for the better,” in their own words and on various topics. These include their home countries, modern monetary theory (MMT) , Marxian and Keynesian perspectives, how their upbringing and parents helped to form their economic views, and the impact of COVID-19.

The group includes:

• Brazilian Nelson Henrique Barbosa Fihlo
• Briton Diane Elson
• American, specifically Californian, Teresa Ghilarducci
• Chinese, now U.S.-based, Zhongjin Li
• Turkish, now U.K.-based, Ozlem Onaran

Polychroniou is a political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked at numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. About the economists, the Bloomsbury Publishing website writes that “they are all people dedicated to the principles of egalitarianism, democracy and ecological sanity. The result is a combustible brew of ideas, commitments and reflections on major historical events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting global economic recession.”

Best on Economic Pursuit as the New Religion: 'Work Pray Code'

Religions, their services, and rituals are often the go-to destination for many individuals outside of work as a place of faith and fellowship. They also help people develop an identity and sense of belonging and purpose.

Yet that’s not the case for some tech workers in Silicon Valley, according to University of California-Berkeley sociologist Carolyn Chen in "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley ." In sync with their employers’ aim in Silicon Valley, these white-collar employees have created a “theocracy of work,” she argues, now willingly accepting “spiritual” sustenance from their workplace and employers.

Chen is an associate professor of Asian-American and Asian diaspora and comparative ethnic studies at the San Francisco-area university. She notes that some Silicon Valley employers willingly take on the pastoral roles that ministers, rabbis, priests, and imams once handled. In addition to doling out pay and providing traditional perks such as company cafeterias, which were common in paternalistic companies like the film company Eastman Kodak in the 1950s and ’60s, tech companies now assume maternalistic roles. Their perks can include wellness offerings—yoga, massages, and mindfulness classes—and 24/7 foods and snacks that are often gourmet in quality and cater to a variety of tastes and ethnicities.

Most tech workers at knowledge hubs come from elsewhere, be it a foreign country or another part of the U.S. They arrive in Silicon Valley with virtually no network, so they commence forming their connections and identity in the tech workplace. Chen’s research and interviews also show that some formerly religious individuals abandon their faith practices upon relocating to Silicon Valley. They then put the energy and fervor they once injected into their spiritual life into tech startups and jobs—a trend more prevalent among workers in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s than in older techies.

“Silicon Valley indeed killed the Buddha,” writes Chen, who also authored "Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience." “But they have replaced the Buddha with another religion’s leader, the productivity leader in the religion of work. Like the dry cleaners, chefs, masseuses, and executive coaches, he’s there to ‘awaken’ tech workers to their full productivity.”

Best for Making Economics Simple: 'Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails'

Sometimes, the “soft science” of economics warrants a series of simple explanations that build as new concepts are presented. That’s the approach taken by former Greek finance minister and University of Athens economics professor Yanis Varoufakis in "Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, or How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails ." While nearly everyone can benefit from this book, beginners in economics will gain the most.

The author begins with the chapter “Why So Much Inequality?” a question that his daughter, Xenia, asked him when she noticed the economic disparities among children in the world. He spells out the ancient beginnings of markets, surpluses , the advent of writing, debt, money, and the state. In subsequent chapters, he delves more deeply into the birth of a market society , the marriage of debt and profit, banking, and pandemics. Varoufakis is also the co-founder with Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat of DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe 25 organization, a pan-European organization that aims to restructure European treaties.

Final Verdict

If you want to pull back the curtain on London’s vast wealth and secretive world of its mega-rich, then spend time with "Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London" by sociologist Caroline Knowles. She used her interviews with representative individuals in London and surrounding areas and research to paint a vibrant portrait and create a satisfying read about where Londoners spend, hide, save, and invest their “serious money.”

Michelle Lodge knows how to find the best of its kind in the book world. She has been published in Publishers Weekly and was an editor and writer for Library Journal , both of which cover books and the industry. While a book review editor at Library Journal , which recommends books for public library collections, she selected a number of top books on economics for review. She was also the editor of the On Wall Street Book Club, in which she reviewed books and interviewed authors on a podcast.

Seeking out a diversified field of books on economics requires lots of reading, including releases from book publishers and industry consultants, a passel of contenders, as well as publications, such as the Financial Times , The New York Times , the London Review of Books , and Bloomberg, and consultations with many experts. Lodge also pulled her resources together by collecting recommendations from Investopedia Financial Review Board members and Investopedia editors. Lodge’s aim is to present the reader with factual, actionable books that are well-written, enjoyable to read, and cover the bases in subject matter and expertise. Her goal is also to tap into a diverse pool of new and established writers, whose coverage reveals the many influences on and perspectives about economics.

CNBC. " Britain's New PM Is Almost a Billionaire — With a Net Worth of Twice That of King Charles ."

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

• Search Search Please fill out this field.
• US & World Economies

The 9 Best Economics Books

Learn more about economics with these top picks

Understanding economics, the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, is an important aspect of understanding and managing your finances. Learn more about economics and how it affects your finances with our picks for the best economics books.

Key Takeaways

• "Economics in One Lesson" gets our nod for the best economics book overall.
• "Thinking Fast and Slow" might appeal to those who appreciate the psychological roots of economics.
• "Common Sense Economics" can be a good choice for new-to-the-game investors.

Best Overall: Economics in One Lesson

Courtesy of Walmart

Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” earned the top spot on our list for its no-nonsense approach to economic theory, the intersection of government and the economy, and the importance of the free market. Written in 1946, it's sold more than a million copies, a testament to the staying power of Hazlitt’s lessons. Think anti-deficit approaches to the markets and economic liberty.

An economist and journalist, Hazlitt was a founding co-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an editor of The Freeman magazine.

Best on Microeconomics: Freakonomics

Courtesy of Amazon

Steven Levitt's and Stephen Dubner’s runaway hit “Freakonomics” tackles everyday questions and explores their answers through the lens of an unconventional economist. Some of the questions may sound a bit out there, like, “What’s more dangerous, a gun or a pool?” or “How much do parents really matter?” But the answers tell us a lot about what incentivizes people, how we make decisions, and how we call conventional wisdom into question.

Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Dubner is an award-winning journalist and radio and TV personality.

Best Psychological Take: Thinking Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” delves into the human mind and the two systems that power everything, one fast and one slow. It explains how these two systems are responsible for everything from overconfidence in the workplace to cognitive bias and how we make decisions on where to vacation next. But Kahneman takes it a step further, delving into when to trust our intuitions, when not to, and how to avoid common pitfalls when making decisions in both our personal and professional lives.

Kahneman is a psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Related: The Best Personal Finance Books

Best on Income Inequality: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

A New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” offers an unparalleled take on the history of wealth inequality in Europe and the United States. It explores the havoc wreaked by such inequality. The book explains in no uncertain detail that when the rate of return in a country is greater than the rate of economic growth, wealth inequality will continue to spread.

Piketty is a French economist and a professor at the Paris School of Economics.

Best for Beginners: Common Sense Economics

Written by top economists James Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee, “Common Sense Economics” answers beginners' pressing questions on the genre, from how an economy works to redistributing wealth. It describes important economic concepts like supply and demand , trade, and private ownership. This pick explains why an understanding of economics is important in clear, easy-to-understand prose.

Related: The Best Investing Books for Beginners

Best on Economic History: The Road to Serfdom

First published in 1944, F. A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” has been established as something akin to the gospel in the world of economic writing. Hayek’s work served up what then was a controversial warning against state control over the production of goods. It has sold more than 400,000 copies and has been translated into more than 20 languages.

The updated version includes a foreword by Bruce Caldwell, a Hayek scholar who adds clarification and modern takes on Hayek’s works, which have often been misinterpreted.

Hayek, a recipient of the Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, taught at the University of London, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

Best on Behavioral Economics: Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler’s “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics” turns classic economic theory on its head. It denounces the idea that much of economic theory is based on the behavior of rational actors. According to Thaler, humans are inherently flawed and easily succumb to bias and emotional decision-making. This sets a ripple effect on the economy into motion. Thaler schools readers on how to avoid these emotional pitfalls and make smarter decisions using this theory.

Thaler is a Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Related: The Best Stock Market Books

Best on Applied Economics: The Armchair Economist

Courtesy of Barnes & Noble

Steven Landsburg’s “The Armchair Economist” applies real-world situations to economic theory. Why do celebrity endorsements sell products? Do government deficits matter? Why do women pay more at the dry cleaners? The revised edition of this book tackles all this and more, making the economic concepts much more understandable.

Landsburg is a Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester and the author of “More Sex Is Safer Sex" and “Fair Play,” two textbooks on economics. He also authored the "Everyday Economics" column in Slate magazine.

Best Cerebral Pick: Good Economics for Hard Times

Ever wondered why economics matters? MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo explain just that in their book, “Good Economics for Hard Times.” It tackles the pressing economic issues of our age, from climate change to globalization to immigration and inequality, and it couples that with modern economic takes that could very well be the solutions to the world’s biggest issues.

Final Verdict

Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson,” available at Amazon , earned the best overall spot in part for its comprehensive take on basic economic theory, the intersection of the government and economics, and its anti-deficit position. First written in 1946, this text also has staying power.

An economic theory is an explanation of how economies work. There are several widely accepted economic theories. At least one theory is credited with blaming poor economic growth on high wages.

Wealth redistribution is the process of transferring income, property, or assets from one group or class to another, usually on a large scale. Your "wealth" may not be in the millions, but it's nonetheless redistributed when you pay taxes and the government then uses that money to fund social programs .

Why Trust The Balance?

Rachel Morgan Cautero has a master's degree in journalism from New York University and more than a decade of journalism experience, most in the personal finance sector. She was the managing editor of DailyWorth, a finance-based media destination for women. She’s been published in SmartAsset, The Balance, The Atlantic, Life & Money, Parents, WealthRocket, and Yahoo Finance. These titles were selected based on author credentials, reader reviews, and any relevant awards. 

Cambridge Dictionary. " Economic Theory ."

Open Education Sociology Dictionary. " Redistribution of Wealth ."

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Economics Books

Browse book recommendations:

• Economics Textbooks
• Fiction Recommended by Economists
• Globalization Books
• Inequality Books
• Monopolies, Oligopolies, Market Concentration and Antitrust
• Popular Economics Books

recommended by economists

Last updated: May 10, 2024

We've asked some of the most eminent public figures and theorists to recommend economics books for Five Books . Robert Shiller (2013 Nobel economics prize) chose books on ' Human Traits Essential to Capitalism' . Paul Krugman (Nobel 2008) talked about the books that inspired him to become an economist (he included a work of science fiction). We also have reviews of the work of Claudia Goldin (Nobel 2023) on unfair pay. Far from a dismal science, economics can be a path to saving the world.

For a view of the c hallenges we're facing in the world economy , our interview with Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, is a good place to start. For recent highly recommended economics books, Jason Furman, formerly Barack Obama's chief economic adviser and now at Harvard, chose the best economics books of 2022 for us.  We also keep a running list of new economics books.

Topics we've covered include inflation and monetary policy , game theory and inequality . Books on economic history are also an area of focus.

If our expert interviews are a reliable guide, the best economics books of all time are: A Monetary History of the United States , The Wealth and Poverty of Nation s , The Worldly Philosophers , The Passions and the Interests and, of course, The Wealth of Nations .

The best books on Economics and the Environment , recommended by Dieter Helm

Predicting our climate future: what we know, what we don't know, and what we can't know by david stainforth, the coming wave: technology, power, and the twenty-first century's greatest dilemma by michael bhaskar & mustafa suleyman, milton friedman: the last conservative by jennifer burns, capitalism and crises: how to fix them by colin mayer, stuck monkey: the deadly planetary cost of the things we love by james hamilton-paterson.

If you want to take an economy that's wholly dependent on fossil fuels and turn it into a low-carbon one it's going to be expensive, says economist Dieter Helm —and the sooner we face up to that reality the better. He recommends books to help us think through the relationship between economics and the environment, including one that really shines a spotlight on our own, individual behaviour.

If you want to take an economy that’s wholly dependent on fossil fuels and turn it into a low-carbon one it’s going to be expensive, says economist Dieter Helm—and the sooner we face up to that reality the better. He recommends books to help us think through the relationship between economics and the environment, including one that really shines a spotlight on our own, individual behaviour.

The best books on Fiscal Policy , recommended by Sergio de Ferra

Rational expectations and inflation by thomas j. sargent, this time is different by carmen reinhart & kenneth rogoff, the economics of sovereign debt and default by manuel amador & mark aguiar, end this depression now by paul krugman, austerity: when it works and when it doesn't by alberto alesina, carlo favero & francesco giavazzi.

The best way to run an economy remains one of the most challenging aspects for a country's leaders, with enormous consequences for people's well-being. Sergio de Ferra , a macroeconomist at the University of Oxford, introduces some of the ideas and debates, and explains why it's so hard to really know what works and what doesn't.

The best way to run an economy remains one of the most challenging aspects for a country’s leaders, with enormous consequences for people’s well-being. Sergio de Ferra, a macroeconomist at the University of Oxford, introduces some of the ideas and debates, and explains why it’s so hard to really know what works and what doesn’t.

The best books on Challenges Facing the World Economy , recommended by Martin Wolf

Between debt and the devil: money, credit, and fixing global finance by adair turner, crashed: how a decade of financial crises changed the world by adam tooze, the narrow corridor: states, societies, and the fate of liberty by daron acemoglu and james robinson, slouching towards utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by brad delong, the rise and fall of american growth: the u.s. standard of living since the civil war by robert j. gordon.

Problems in the world economy can have a profound impact on politics. What's happening in the US and elsewhere is disturbing, says Martin Wolf , chief economics commentator of the Financial Times. He talks us through books to help us reflect on the challenges facing economies. His recommendations include two books that query whether the era of unprecedented economic growth—which has transformed our societies over the last 150 years—is finally coming to an end.

Problems in the world economy can have a profound impact on politics. What’s happening in the US and elsewhere is disturbing, says Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times. He talks us through books to help us reflect on the challenges facing economies. His recommendations include two books that query whether the era of unprecedented economic growth—which has transformed our societies over the last 150 years—is finally coming to an end.

The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature , recommended by Robert J Shiller

The theory of moral sentiments by adam smith, the passions and the interests by albert hirschman, nudge by cass sunstein & richard thaler, fault lines: how hidden fractures still threaten the world economy by raghuram g rajan, winner-take-all politics by jacob s hacker and paul pierson.

"You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them" argues Robert J Shiller , the Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate. He chooses five books that explore who we fundamentally are, as human beings, and how that will determine the shape of a successful capitalism.

“You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them” argues Robert J Shiller, the Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate. He chooses five books that explore who we fundamentally are, as human beings, and how that will determine the shape of a successful capitalism.

The best books on Inflation , recommended by Federica Romei

Monetary policy, inflation, and the business cycle: an introduction to the new keynesian framework and its applications by jordi gali, a monetary history of the united states, 1867-1960 by anna schwartz & milton friedman, inflation targeting: lessons from the international experience by adam s. posen, ben bernanke, frederic s. mishkin & thomas laubach, a monetary and fiscal history of latin america, 1960–2017 by juan pablo nicolini & timothy j. kehoe, the conquest of american inflation by thomas j. sargent.

Inflation has been under control in the developed world for decades now. Many assumed we had it beaten, but it has picked up recently and is once again a major policy concern. Here, Oxford economist Federica Romei chooses five books to help you understand inflation from a historical and theoretical perspective, and when, if and why you should worry about it.

The best books on John Maynard Keynes , recommended by Robert Skidelsky

The life of john maynard keynes by roy harrod, john maynard keynes by paul davidson, john maynard keynes by hyman minsky, keynes and the market by justyn walsh, the unexplored keynes and other essays by anand chandavarkar.

Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky recommends the best books about one of the most important economists of all time, John Maynard Keynes.

The Best Economics Books of 2022 , recommended by Jason Furman

The journey of humanity: the origins of wealth and inequality by oded galor, streets of gold: america's untold story of immigrant success by leah boustan & ran abramitzky, of boys and men: why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it by richard v reeves, chip war: the fight for the world’s most critical technology by chris miller.

As we study the causes of economic prosperity over the millennia and particularly the last century-and-a-half, it's worth remembering that humans are always the most important driver of economic growth. Jason Furman , a Harvard economics professor and former adviser to Barack Obama, picks out five of the best economics books of 2022, as well as topics he'd like to see books about in 2023.

As we study the causes of economic prosperity over the millennia and particularly the last century-and-a-half, it’s worth remembering that humans are always the most important driver of economic growth. Jason Furman, a Harvard economics professor and former adviser to Barack Obama, picks out five of the best economics books of 2022, as well as topics he’d like to see books about in 2023.

The best books on Game Theory , recommended by Ariel Rubinstein

Theory of games and economic behavior by john von neumann and oskar morgenstern, games and decisions by r duncan luce and howard raiffa, collected papers by robert j aumann, a beautiful mind by sylvia nasar.

Game theory is marketed as a system you can apply to any sphere of life, but does it really have much to offer in terms of practical application? The distinguished game theorist, Ariel Rubinstein , suggests not. He recommends the best books on game theory.

Game theory is marketed as a system you can apply to any sphere of life, but does it really have much to offer in terms of practical application? The distinguished game theorist, Ariel Rubinstein, suggests not. He recommends the best books on game theory.

The Best Introductions to Economics , recommended by Tim Harford

Thinking strategically: the competitive edge in business, politics, and everyday life by avinash dixit & barry nalebuff, money changes everything: how finance made civilization possible by william goetzmann, hidden order: the economics of everyday life by david friedman, the truth about markets: why some nations are rich but most remain poor by john kay, grand pursuit: the story of the people who made modern economics by sylvia nasar.

Nearly every aspect of our life is determined by economics, and yet it’s easy to go through life understanding very little about it. Author and columnist Tim Harford (aka the ‘Undercover Economist’) introduces the best books to get you thinking like an economist.

The best books on Monetary Policy , recommended by Lars Christensen

Fluttering veil: essays on monetary disequilibrium by leland yeager, money mischief: episodes in monetary history by milton friedman, the midas paradox: financial markets, government policy shocks and the great depression by scott b. sumner, the great recession: market failure or policy failure by robert l. hetzel.

Monetary policy isn't just about setting interest rates and if we think about it in those terms, we'll never really understand it, says Danish economist Lars Christensen . Here, he recommends books to better understand monetary policy, and explains why reading about the past is so important for avoiding mistakes in the future.

Monetary policy isn’t just about setting interest rates and if we think about it in those terms, we’ll never really understand it, says Danish economist Lars Christensen. Here, he recommends books to better understand monetary policy, and explains why reading about the past is so important for avoiding mistakes in the future.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

Advertisement

Supported by

Books of The Times

Review: ‘The Economics of Inequality,’ by Thomas Piketty

By Paul Krugman

• Aug. 2, 2015
• Share full article

Back in 2001 two French economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, circulated a seminal research paper (formally published two years later) titled “Income inequality in the United States, 1913-1998.” They used data from income tax receipts to do two things that you can’t do with standard data on the distribution of income, which come from household surveys. First, they gave us a portrait of the economic stratosphere — the incomes of the now-famous 1 percent. Second, they gave us historical depth, reaching all the way back to the late Gilded Age.

The picture that emerged was startling to those who still clung to the notion of America as a middle-class society, or who thought of rising inequality as mainly a tale of divergence between blue-collar workers and a fairly broad elite, like college-educated workers. Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez showed that the actual story of rising inequality since 1980 or so was dominated not by the modestly rising salaries of skilled workers but by gigantic gains at the very top — a doubling of inflation-adjusted income for the top 1 percent, a quadrupling for the top 0.1 percent, and so on. They also showed that these surging top incomes had more or less reversed earlier movements toward equality, that the concentration of income in the hands of a small minority was back to “Great Gatsby” levels.

It was a landmark piece of research that has had a major impact, not just on economics, but on political science too, for the fall and rise of the 1 percent turns out to be closely correlated with the fall and rise of political polarization. And last year, of course, Mr. Piketty made a huge splash with his magnum opus, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which both exposed the startling facts about inequality to a wide audience and made a disturbing case that we are well on the way to re-establishing “patrimonial capitalism,” a society dominated by oligarchs who inherit their wealth.

“Capital” is a powerful, beautifully written book (wonderfully translated by Arthur Goldhammer). It is also very big and quite dense, and there’s reason to believe that many people who bought it didn’t get very far in their reading. So it would be really helpful to have a short-form exposition of the essentials of that masterwork.

Unfortunately, that’s not what “The Economics of Inequality” offers.

Let me be blunt: I don’t know how the decision was made to release this “new” Piketty book in its current form, but it’s not at all the book one might have expected. It is, instead, a slightly revised version of a volume first published in 1997, when Mr. Piketty was in his mid-20s.

And by slightly I mean very slightly. Even the data tables have not, for the most part, been updated, in many cases containing no information later than 1995. Perhaps more important, the basic outlines of the argument haven’t been updated to reflect later scholarship — not even Mr. Piketty’s own work with Mr. Saez. As the author concedes in a note to readers, “This book does not fully take into account the results of the past 15 years of international research on the historical dynamics of inequality.”

So what one gets here is a lucid statement of our understanding of inequality as it stood almost two decades ago, with hardly any allowance for the subsequent research and real-world developments that have changed that understanding.

Take, for example, what this book says about patrimonial capitalism, which Mr. Piketty has placed at the center of debate about our society’s future shape. This book declares that progressive taxation “seems to have prevented a return to 19th-century rentier society” — and moves on to other issues. That was a defensible position two decades ago. But the most important contribution of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” was precisely its suggestion that since then a rising share of after-tax profits in national income has indeed set us on the path back to a rentier society, in which the rich live off inherited wealth.

Or take the discussion of rising wage inequality. In the 1990s, professional analysis of this issue was dominated by the theory of skill-biased technological change , which asserted that information technology was raising the relative demand for more highly educated workers. In this book Mr. Piketty offers a mild critique of this doctrine, but ends up asserting that it “surely explains a significant part of the increase in wage inequality.” Readers won’t learn that modern researchers have become highly skeptical of the whole theory, partly because it’s inconsistent with much of what has happened since 2000, like the stagnation of earnings among the college educated.

Broadly speaking, the trend of inequality research since Mr. Piketty wrote this book has involved de-emphasizing supply and demand while giving more attention to privilege and power. These factors aren’t ignored in “The Economics of Inequality,” which among other things contains a good discussion of the role of unions in limiting inequality, and how this helps explain the divergence between the United States and Europe. But readers who see only this volume will end up placing far too much faith in a story that emphasizes the invisible hand of the market, and too little on the visible role of powerful institutions.

I’m sorry to be so negative about a book by such an important figure in our economic thinking. But releasing this youthful effort as if it were a new contribution does a disservice to readers, and I’d argue to the author himself.

THE ECONOMICS OF INEQUALITY

By Thomas Piketty

Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

142 pages. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. $22.95.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

As book bans have surged in Florida, the novelist Lauren Groff has opened a bookstore called The Lynx, a hub for author readings, book club gatherings and workshops , where banned titles are prominently displayed.

Eighteen books were recognized as winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, in the categories of history, memoir, poetry, general nonfiction, fiction and biography, which had two winners. Here’s a full list of the winners .

Montreal is a city as appealing for its beauty as for its shadows. Here, t he novelist Mona Awad recommends books  that are “both dreamy and uncompromising.”

The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

• Latest Posts
• LSE Authors
• Choose a Book for Review
• Submit a Book for Review
• Bookshop Guides

Rose Deller

May 21st, 2018, book review: doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist by kate raworth.

19 comments | 52 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

In Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21 st -Century Economist , Kate Raworth offers a new model for economics, based around the ‘doughnut’, which values human well-being and advocates for a ‘regenerative and distributive economy’. While the book holds multidisciplinary promise and Raworth draws upon appealing and evocative metaphors and examples to convey economic concepts in accessible terms, Maria Zhivitskaya remains unconvinced of the doughnut’s transformative potential.

If you are interested in this book review, you may like to listen to a podcast of Kate Raworth’s lecture ‘Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21-Century Economist’ , recorded at LSE on 23 November 2017. 

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist . Kate Raworth. Penguin. 2017.

One day economic historians might examine Doughnut Economics as an artifact of thinking that emerged as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, deriving its credibility from the fact that economics failed to predict it. Kate Raworth pursued an undergraduate degree in economics in order to set herself on a career path in an organisation such as Oxfam or Greenpeace, ‘campaigning to end poverty and environmental destruction’. However, she found that those issues she cared deeply about were overlooked by the academic study of economics and so, years later, she wrote Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21 st -Century Economist to provide a ‘compass’ to help ‘policymakers, activists, business leaders and citizens alike to steer a wise course through the twenty-first century’. An ambitious aim.

The author positions this book as contrarian and revolutionary, and it dissects seven fundamental principles of economics that she feels need to be updated to make economics a useful discipline. Raworth explains that:

rethinking economics is not about finding the correct [school of thought] (because it doesn’t exist), it’s about choosing or creating one that best serves our purpose – reflecting the context we face, the values we hold, and the aims we have.

In her attempt to bring economics more up-to-date, as the subtitle of the book suggests, Raworth depicts humanity’s goals as a doughnut .

The doughnut has social foundation and human well-being in the middle, and is itself ‘the safe and just space for humanity’ and for a ‘regenerative and distributive economy’, surrounded on the outer edge by the ecological ceiling of ‘critical planetary degradation’. The overall target should be to remain within the doughnut to ensure that we neither fall into conditions of social inequality and suffer shortfalls, such as in water and food, nor allow growth to overshoot into threatening environmental collapse. In her words, this model ‘draws on diverse schools of thought, such as complexity, ecological, feminist, institutional and behavioural economics’. This multidisciplinary promise was the most appealing element of the book for me.

Image Credit: ( Ferry Sitompul CC BY 2.0 )

The book is neatly organised around the ‘seven ways to think like a twenty-first century economist’, which are listed on page 26. These principles are underlined by a broad assumption that economics as we know it doesn’t care about either humans or the environment, and therefore the first thing we should do is ‘change the goal’ from GDP growth to the doughnut. The second principle is ‘seeing the big picture’, where Raworth explains that the market is not self-contained, and that the economy is more embedded in society than some economists assume.

Raworth acknowledges the vast influence economics as a discipline has had on the way we think: in particular, the notion of the ‘rational economics man’, which she suggests we need to replace with ‘social adaptable humans’. To demonstrate how unreasonable the ‘rational economic man’ assumption is, she quotes a Wikipedia page that lists 160 cognitive biases. Her argument goes that due to the sheer number of these, economics as a discipline is unhelpful. That seemed like a weak argument to me, not least because Daniel Kahneman, who discovered many of these, won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Using his discovery as a way to demonstrate the weakness of the discipline seems unfair.

The fourth principle is that we need to ‘get savvy with systems’, and appreciate that the real economy doesn’t comply with the supply-demand equilibrium but is instead embedded in dynamic complexity. The fifth and sixth are ‘design to distribute’ and ‘create to regenerate’, as Raworth claims that the assumption that growth reduces inequality and facilitates environmental improvements is false. Finally, the seventh recommendation is that we should be ‘agnostic about growth’:

today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive: what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.

Not surprisingly, three of the seven principles claim that growth doesn’t lead to redistribution of wealth or environmental regeneration and is overall not a helpful goal, which is why Raworth suggests we should rather be redistributive and regenerative by design.

Raworth’s attentive choice of words throughout the book is very attractive: for example, she quotes George Lakoff who summarises the US Conservatives’ use of ‘tax relief’ compared to the US left’s ‘tax justice’, concluding that this subtle reframing ‘helped to channel public outrage and mobilize widespread demand for change’. Her book, too, demands change. Raworth goes all the way back to Ancient Greece to draw on Aristotle’s distinction between the terms ‘economics’ – the ‘practice of household management’ – and ‘chrematistics’ – ‘the art of acquiring wealth’ – to criticise modern economics as being all about the latter. The book is also peppered with charming anecdotes: for example, did you know that the popular board game Monopoly is derived from the original ‘The Landlord’s Game’?

Raworth suggests that ‘economists need a metaphorical career change: from engineer to a gardener’, which is a quote ironically inspired by Friedrich Hayek, who originally meant it in a laissez-faire kind of way. Raworth beautifully explains that gardening actually entails the hands-on creation of conditions necessary for success. However, while her metaphors are flowery and appealing, they do not offer any real policy advice about how to tackle the complicated issues she highlights. Instead, the book is full of statements such as ‘building diversity and redundancy into economic structures enhances the economy’s resilience, making it far more effective in adapting to future shocks and pressures’; and ‘it is far smarter to create economies that are regenerative by design, restoring and renewing the local-to-global cycles of life on which human well-being depends’. Practical policy questions, such as tackling the complexities of integrated environmental and economic accounting, are outside the scope of her idealistic vision.

Overall, Doughnut Economics is excellent at describing economic concepts in accessible terms, and could be read as an add-on to an introductory economics textbook. Raworth’s in-depth summary of climate change is very well argued and would be useful for challenging climate change denial: in this sense, the book is more about sustainable development than economics.

Raworth criticises economists and politicians for debating ‘economic efficiency, productivity, and growth […] while hesitating to speak of justice, fairness, and rights’, without providing tangible policy recommendations. She calls for bringing ‘humanity back at the heart of economic thought’, and criticises the likes of Harvard and the London School of Economics for promoting ‘research in what are known as the “top” journals, but those journals simply maintain the status quo’. Her plea is to change that and teach history and philosophy in conjunction with economics, which is a useful suggestion that more universities could take on board, perhaps borrowing from LSE’s curriculum for Economic History studies and Oxford University’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics course that has been taught there for almost a century. So, despite the book’s gloomy view of the current state of the world, perhaps not all hope is lost.

Maria Zhivitskaya completed a PhD in Risk Management from the LSE Accounting Department in 2015, worked for Goldman Sachs afterwards, and currently works for Prudential plc. Read more by Maria Zhivitskaya .

Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics. 

About the author

19 Comments

Thanks for the review. I’ve been considering reading the book for a while and might give it a go.

One thought though – maybe Kahneman would be ok with his work (admittedly from what I know of it) being used against economics as it shows that ‘rational economics man’ is flawed.

There are many books out there which are more thoughtful…

• Pingback: EUROPP – Book Review: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

A most helpful review: insightful, balanced, positive, and to the point. Thank you, Maria.

“To demonstrate how unreasonable the ‘rational economic man’ assumption is, she quotes a Wikipedia page that lists 160 cognitive biases. Her argument goes that due to the sheer number of these, economics as a discipline is unhelpful. That seemed like a weak argument to me, not least because Daniel Kahneman, who discovered many of these, won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Using his discovery as a way to demonstrate the weakness of the discipline seems unfair.”

Let’s remember that Kahneman, a psychologist himself, won the Nobel Prize in Economics precisely because he demonstrated the weaknesses of the discipline with regards to “rational economic man” theory, and yet mainsteam economics is still predominantly couched in “rational economic man” theory. So, Raworth is correct to use Kahneman’s work to argue that economics as a discipline is unhelpful, and it seems as like you’re simply scoffing at her use of Wikipedia.

Well said Chris! Clearly humans often make irrational decisions for a multitude of reasons. It was a very odd criticism to make.

In addition, the criticism “Practical policy questions, such as tackling the complexities of integrated environmental and economic accounting, are outside the scope of her idealistic vision.” is also not valid as environmental, social and corporate governance factors are being integrated into investment decision-making for example. Bloomberg, MSCI etc. allow users to access and use ESG data.

• Pingback: Sobrevivir al cambio climático significa transformar tanto la economía como el diseño -
• Pingback: We Have To Change Economics And Design To Survive ‘Climate Change’ Or Something » Pirate's Cove
• Pingback: To Survive our Climate Crisis do we need New Marxist, Feminist Economics?
• Pingback: Surviving climate change means transforming both economics and design | Bizarre Culture
• Pingback: SoftMachine.net | Surviving climate change means transforming both economics and design
• Pingback: Techno-fix futures will only accelerate climate chaos – don’t believe the hype – Enjeux énergies et environnement
• Pingback: SoftMachine.net | Techno-fix futures will only accelerate climate chaos – don’t believe the hype
• Pingback: Techno-Fix Futures will only Accelerate Climate Chaos – Don’t Believe the Hype - Resilience
• Pingback: Techno-Fix Futures will only Accelerate Climate Chaos – Don’t Believe the Hype – Enjeux énergies et environnement

Amsterdam is adopting Kate Raworths Doughnut https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/amsterdam-doughnut-model-mend-post-coronavirus-economy

• Pingback: My Top 10 Books in 2020 – Matai Muon
• Pingback: What are Doughnut Economics? – The Geog Blog

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Related posts.

The Plastic Turn – review

January 5th, 2024.

Book Review: Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis by Eve Darian-Smith

July 27th, 2022.

Book Review: Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds by Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler

April 7th, 2022.

Reading List: Most popular social science book reviews from 2014

December 26th, 2014, subscribe via email.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

[email protected]

Book Reviews

EH.Net Review offers reviews of new releases of interest to scholars and teachers in the fields of economic history, business history, and the history of economics. All book reviews are posted to the EH.Net-Review list, then added to EH.Net’s book review library .

Publishers are advised to email EH.NET Book Review Editor Ranjit Dighe about new titles. Alternatively, books can be sent to him at:

Prof. Ranjit Dighe EH.Net Book Review Editor Department of Economics, Mahar Hall State University of New York at Oswego 7060 State Route 104 Oswego, NY 13126

Book Review Library

EH.Net’s book review library is available to anyone worldwide without charge. The archive is searchable by keyword, author, title, subject, time period, and geographic code. If you use these reviews, please cite EH.Net as the source.

Economic History Classics

During 2006 EH.Net published eight “Classic Reviews.” Modeled along the lines of our earlier Project 2000 and Project 2001 series, reviewers “reintroduce” each book to the profession, “explaining its significance at the time of publication and why it has endured as a classic.” Each review summarizes the book’s key findings, methods and arguments, as it puts it into the larger context and discusses any weaknesses.

Project 2000/2001

In addition to publishing reviews of recent releases, EH.Net offers two special collections of reviews. Project 2000 features a series of review essays on significant works in twentieth century economic history. These essays survey the works that have had the most influence on the field of economic history and highlight the intellectual accomplishments of twentieth-century economic historians. Project 2001 continues the series with reviews of twelve additional influential works in the field from any time period.

Forthcoming Book Reviews

We try to review all new contributions to economic and business history. Toward that ambitious goal, we can always use suggestions and additional reviewers. Our reviews are emailed to subscribers to the EH.Net Review electronic list and archived in the Book Review Library. The link below offers a summary snapshot of our reviews pipeline.

• Forthcoming Reviews in Economic History

Browse Chronologically

Browse by Title

Browse by author, browse by reviewer, browse by subject.

• Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Extractive Industries
• Business History
• Development of the Economic History Discipline: Historiography; Sources and Methods
• Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity
• Economic Planning and Policy
• Economywide Country Studies and Comparative History
• Education and Human Resource Development
• Environment, Climate, and Disasters
• Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
• Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
• Health, including Medicine, Disease, and Pandemics
• Historical Demography, including Migration
• Historical Geography
• History of Economic Thought; Methodology
• History of Technology, including Technological Change
• Servitude and Slavery
• Military and War
• Household, Family and Consumer History
• Income and Wealth
• Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
• International and Domestic Trade and Relations
• Labor and Employment History
• Living Standards, Anthropometric History, Economic Anthropology
• Macroeconomics and Fluctuations
• Markets and Institutions
• Social and Cultural History, including Race, Ethnicity and Gender
• Transport and Distribution, Energy, and Other Services
• Urban and Regional History

Browse by Geographic Location

• General, International, or Comparative
• Australia/New Zealand, incl. Pacific Islands
• Latin America, incl. Mexico and the Caribbean
• Middle East
• North America

Browse by Time Period

• General or Comparative
• Prehistoric
• 16th Century
• 17th Century
• 18th Century
• 19th Century
• 20th Century: Pre WWII
• 20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
• 21st Century

ECONOMIC HISTORY ASSOCIATION

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR  MICHAEL HAUPERT EMAIL: [email protected]

MEETINGS COORDINATOR JEREMY LAND JEREMY.LAND@ GU.SE

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR TAYLOR LAND [email protected]

QUICK LINKS

• GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS
• EHA PUBLICATIONS

• Previous Book Reviews
• Browse Library
• Course Syllabi
• Directory Listings
• Encyclopedia
• Mailing Lists
• Measuring Worth
• Related Sites
• EH.Net Sponsors

© ECONOMIC HISTORY ASSOCIATION 2023

SITE DESIGN/HOSTING, BIG FISH CREATIVE

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts
• Currently reading: Best books of 2021: Economics
• Best books of 2021: from our stable
• Best books of 2021: History
• Best books of 2021: Politics
• Best books of 2021: Children’s books
• Best books of 2021: Science fiction
• Best books of 2021: Pop music

Best books of 2021: Economics

• Best books of 2021: Economics on x (opens in a new window)
• Best books of 2021: Economics on facebook (opens in a new window)
• Best books of 2021: Economics on linkedin (opens in a new window)
• Best books of 2021: Economics on whatsapp (opens in a new window)

Martin Wolf

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The Future of Money : How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S Prasad, Belknap £28.95/Harvard University Press $35

Digital technologies are also transforming the world of finance. Prasad of Cornell provides an invaluable overview of what this might mean: physical money will disappear; central bank money will compete with the new private versions; financial intermediation will be transformed; and new opportunities will open to the world’s population. But, with opportunities come risks. As Prasad summarises: “A glorious future beckons, perhaps”.

The Resilient Society by Markus K Brunnermeier, Endeavor $24

In this important book, Princeton’s Brunnermeier argues that “resilience can serve as the guiding North Star for a post-Covid society”. The global financial crisis and the pandemic have taught us that we need to be resilient if we are to respond to shocks successfully. Resilience is not the same as “robustness”. It is “about being able to weather a storm and recover”. We must do better at it.

Cogs and Monsters : What Economics Is, and What It Should Be by Diane Coyle, Princeton University Press £20/$24

Coyle, now at Cambridge university, is an exceptionally thoughtful commentator on economics. In this book , she rejects what she calls the “straw men” arguments of the many critics of economics, though admitting how difficult it is for economists to be objective. Instead, she focuses on two other weaknesses: first, the assumption of the rational economic “cog” has become even more unrealistic in the age of “snowballing” digital “monsters”; and, second, practitioners of economics are wildly unrepresentative of the society they study.

An Economist at Home and Abroad : A Personal Journey by Shankar Acharya, HarperCollins India $24

Acharya has been a close friend of mine since we met in 1971, when we both worked together at the World Bank. Subsequently, he returned to India, where he was the longest serving chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, serving three reforming finance ministers, notably Manmohan Singh. Since then he has been the wisest analyst of the performance of the Indian economy. In this lovely autobiography, he recounts his personal and professional life with charm and perspicacity.

Three Days at Camp David : How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy by Jeffrey E Garten, HarperCollins $29.99, Amberley £20

At a secret meeting at Camp David over the weekend of August 13-15 1971, President Nixon and his senior advisers decided to sever the link between the dollar and gold. This was not just the definitive end of the gold standard, it also marked the beginning of a new monetary order. In this outstanding book, Garten explains in detail what happened and draws lessons for today.

Sustainable Futures : An Agenda for Action by Raphael Kaplinsky, Polity £18.99/Wiley $21.50

Ours is an age of intellectual upheaval. People are looking for new paradigms. Kaplinsky, an expert on innovation, defines our challenge as the exhaustion of the “Mass Production” paradigm and its replacement with the “Information and Communications Technologies” paradigm. Our task, he argues, is to build a prosperous and environmentally sustainable world in this new context.

Books of the Year 2021

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites . Some highlights are:

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill Tuesday: Politics by Gideon Rachman Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle Friday: History by Tony Barber Saturday: Critics’ choice

The New Economics : A Manifesto by Steve Keen, Polity £12.99/Wiley $14

Keen is one of the world’s leading heterodox economists. This book is a fierce assault on a lack of realism of neoclassical economics that borders on religious belief. He is particularly effective in skewering the complacent assumptions of conventional beliefs in macroeconomics, monetary economics and environmental economics. A great deal of what he writes makes good sense, especially on the merits of Post-Keynesian and “biophysical economics”. The simplifying assumptions of conventional economics are indeed dangerous.

The Age of Unpeace : How Connectivity Causes Conflict by Mark Leonard, Bantam Press £18.99/$36.95

Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, has written a book that has the twin merits of being both short and important. We have created an interconnected world that has brought great benefits. But it has also led to a tribal backlash, with “populist leaders promoting national glory over global understanding”. His correct conclusion is that “if the connections that are essential to our wellbeing are also being turned into deadly weapons, we need to find ways of making them less dangerous.”

The Economist’s View of the World : And the Quest for Well-Being by Steven E Rhoads, Cambridge University Press £20

This is a 35th anniversary version of a classic. Rhoads, an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Virginia, has built upon the best explanation I know of how orthodox economists think about choice, markets, externalities and other concepts. The new edition will be valuable to non-economists and economists alike: the former will learn how economists think; and the latter will learn some of the limits to how they think.

Six Faces of Globalization : Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters by Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, Harvard University Press £28.95/$35

This is an interesting and original book. Its starting point is that people have different “narratives” of globalisation. The authors distinguish six such narratives: the “establishment” narrative; the “left-wing populist” narrative; the “right-wing populist” narrative; the “corporate power” narrative; the “geoeconomic” narrative; and the “global threats” narrative. Their conclusion is that the best approach is to synthesise apparent opposites. There is not one truth, but rather many partial truths.

Tell us what you think

What are your favourites from this list — and what books have we missed? Tell us in the comments below

Nudge : The Final Edition by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein, Allen Lane $18

Nudge , originally published in 2008, was an immensely influential and important best-seller about how to influence people to make better decisions, thereby ameliorating the trade-offs between bottom-up foolishness, on the one hand, and top-down command, on the other. The authors called it “libertarian paternalism”. Here they have substantially revised the earlier version in the light of new ideas, developments and research. The title represents a commitment to ensure that they do not write another version. So read it now: this is the definitive edition.

Samuelson Friedman : The Battle Over the Free Market by Nicholas Wapshott, WW Norton $28.95

This is a follow-up to the author’s Keynes Hayek . Its focus is with the debate between MIT’s Paul Samuelson and Chicago’s Milton Friedman , whose contrasting views graced the pages of Newsweek for 18 years. Samuelson was an economist’s economist: his methodological influence was profound. Friedman had a huge influence on monetary economics. But his political influence was arguably even greater. By focusing on these two men, Wapshott illuminates debates that remain current to this day.

The Magic Money Tree and Other Economic Tales by Lorenzo Forni, Agenda £14.99/$25.00

Budget constraints matter. This is true for private households and businesses. It is also true for governments. Those that forget this simple lesson of history will get into a mess. This is the theme of this little book by Forni of the University of Padua. He takes the reader through the basic realities of budgeting, credit and money. It is the job of governments and central banks to stabilise economies through fiscal and monetary policy, as Keynes taught us. But one cannot create long-term growth simply by creating vast amounts of money. If one forgets this truth, one is likely to end up looking rather like contemporary Argentina.

For economics books published in the first half of the year, see Martin Wolf’s mid-year selection

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café

Promoted Content

Explore the series.

Follow the topics in this article

• Global Economy Add to myFT
• Non-Fiction Add to myFT
• Economics books Add to myFT
• Martin Wolf Add to myFT

International Edition

• Arts & Culture
• Civic Engagement

Economic Development

• Environment
• Human Rights
• Social Services
• Water & Sanitation
• Foundations
• Nonprofits & NGOs
• Social Enterprise
• Collaboration
• Design Thinking
• Impact Investing
• Measurement & Evaluation
• Organizational Development
• Philanthropy & Funding
• Current Issue
• Sponsored Supplements
• Global Editions
• In-Depth Series
• Stanford PACS
• Submission Guidelines

Radically Small Thinking

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo

• download https://ssir.org/images/articles/Fall_2011_Reviews_Radically_Small_Thinking.pdf
• order reprints
• related stories

Review by Timothy Ogden Fall 2011

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo

320 pages, PublicAffairs, 2011

Buy the book »

The core of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s new book, Poor Economics , can be summed up by a single sentence in the foreword: “[W]e have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness.”

The next 250-plus pages do exactly that, describing and analyzing the choices that people living on less than $2 a day make. Those choices tend to make a great deal of sense after some illumination and contemplation. For instance, it’s common for poor families to invest their entire education budget in just one child, usually a son, hoping that this child will make it through secondary school, while shortchanging the other children. Why? Many families think the value of schooling comes from getting the local equivalent of a high school diploma, not from attending another semester of school. It would be a waste of resources to spread the family’s educational budget among all the children rather than trying to make sure that one child reaches the brass ring. Yet the value of education , it turns out, is linear—each additional week brings additional value. Helping parents understand this, the book explains, has far more impact than building schools; it rapidly changes their educational choices.

Or consider why it is so difficult to get peasant farmers to use improved agricultural methods—such as fertilizer, irrigation, and improved seeds—that can double or triple yields. Each of these methods requires an investment up front, but farmers often decline them even when they can afford them (through either subsidies or low-cost loans). Why? Because peasant farmers know how risky agriculture is. The cost of crop failure—whether by act of God or unfamiliarity with new practices—when you’ve committed all your resources or borrowed is more devastating than the cost of barely getting by with low yields.

In another startling insight, the authors explore how a program designed to reduce AIDS prevalence, which encouraged monogamous marriage among Kenyan teenagers, likely led to an increase in school dropout rates and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. The problem isn’t that the program didn’t work; it’s that it worked quite well. The girls did marry, but the only men with the financial resources to marry were older and, as a result, more likely to be infected and to expect the girls to drop out of school and raise their children.

The book offers such insights on nearly every page, covering topics on finance, food, health, education, and family planning. Unfortunately, the authors’ primary approach to finding such insights—the randomized controlled trial (RCT), the method used to test pharmaceuticals for safety and efficacy—often is given more attention than the insights themselves. Although methods are important—the unique insights would not have been possible without them—the debate over the pros and cons of RCTs obscures not only the insights but also the authors’ underlying theory of change, which deserves far more consideration.

This theory of change mirrors the education example above. Social impact is often conceived as a step function, requiring big changes to reap rewards. Banerjee and Duflo conceive of it as far more linear. That means that a series of small adaptations and tweaks drives impact and its rewards.

Humans have a bias toward believing in big changes for big results. But the authors believe, as Banerjee told me a few years ago, that “there is no evidence that big changes are the result of big levers.” That’s a view that’s taking hold in a wide variety of areas. It’s on display in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent writing about innovation and Tim Harford’s new book Adapt. It’s also evident in the background of Charles Kenny’s Getting Better.

In other words, much of the whole enterprise of attacking poverty is built on the wrong foundations: the idea that big changes are necessary to create the world we want. This foundation is shared on both sides of the political spectrum. For want of better descriptors, the “interventionists” want to invest large sums to remake the context of the poor all at once; the “libertarians” want to drastically change the structure of poverty interventions and social safety nets; and the “social impact investors” are hell-bent on brand-new ideas that scale up rapidly. All advocate big change.

One of the common critiques of Banerjee and Duflo’s work is that they don’t appreciate how hard it is to alter policy to implement the kinds of changes their insights into the lives of the poor suggest. But they do appreciate exactly that—and therefore they disdain those big changes entirely. They believe that the path forward is not better “big thinking” but thinking small. Improving the lives of the poor measurably and consistently is primarily a matter of making a series of small changes in lots of different domains, changes that don’t require major political battles or dramatically changing funding structures.

Banerjee and Duflo, then, are radically small thinkers. Poor Economics is perhaps the most thorough indictment of big thinking in social policy since Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. That’s why Poor Economics is vital reading for anyone serious about confronting poverty. You may not agree with Banerjee and Duflo’s conclusions, but the poor will be poorer if you don’t wrestle with the logic that informs them.

Timothy Ogden, is executive partner of Sona Partners and editor in chief of Philanthropy Action. He blogs regularly for the websites of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Harvard Business Review, and Financial Access Initiative.

SSIR.org and/or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and to our better understanding of user needs. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to otherwise browse this site, you agree to the use of cookies.

This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy .

• Journal of Economic Literature

Book Reviews

• Article Information

JEL Classification

• Y30 Book Reviews (unclassified)

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The Road to Freedom by Joseph E Stiglitz review – a vision of progressive capitalism seems too little, too late

The Nobel-winning US economist’s championing of government intervention to nullify neoliberal excesses is ardently expressed but unconvincing

I n 2009, the American government loaned almost half a billion dollars to Elon Musk’s Tesla corporation to hasten the development of electric car technology. What did it think it was playing at? Didn’t it remember what Ronald Reagan said? “The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” the late president told a 1986 press conference.

For Reagan and the brains behind his neoliberal puppet, the role of government is to get out of the way and let the unfettered orgy of self-interested neoliberal economic life express itself as nature intended. Taxation is theft and interventionist industrial policy always a mistake, except when it involves bailing out failing banks in reward for tanking the economy.

Nobel-winning economist and former Bill Clinton aide Joseph Stiglitz demurs. He proposes, instead, what he calls progressive capitalism. We need more government, not less. Stiglitz even writes a sentence that may induce any tooled-up Maga enthusiasts to expectorate into their spittoons and pump their shotguns. “We need environmental regulations, traffic regulations, zoning regulation, financial regulations, we need regulations in all the constituents of our economy,” he writes.

after newsletter promotion

We need, what’s more, to problematise Margaret Thatcher’s homey analogy between government finance and a housewife’s balanced weekly budgeting. Stiglitz says most companies grow by incurring debts, but no one would just look at the liability side of a firm’s balance sheet. “If we spend the money on infrastructure, education or technology, then we have a more productive economy,” he writes. “When a firm invests well, the value of the assets increases more than the liabilities, and the firm’s net worth is enhanced. The same for countries.” This is basic economics, though not of the kind that I and many others were taught at university in the early 1980s, when laughable myths about individual economic rationality, perfect competition and how the spirit of free enterprise needed to roam unchecked were presented as undeniable facts.

But can governments be trusted to deliver socially desirable goals such as electric cars? Consider the HS2 high-speed railway debacle or, if you can bear to, Michelle Mone’s impact on public trust in government. Or consider, Stiglitz suggests, the errors that the US government made in drawing up its contract with Tesla. “It made a mistake. It failed to insist on a share of the upside potential … by insisting on receiving shares, for instance. If it had, the government (and American taxpayers) would have more than made up for the losses incurred in other technology and investments.”

To put it another way, governments aren’t very good at business. “Mistakes will be made,” says Stiglitz. “But the discovery of a mistake is no … reason to abandon a policy.” He notes that the US has embraced interventionist industrial policies as never before to provide correctives to badly functioning markets, especially since the 2008 banking disaster – hence the development of Covid vaccines and recognition of excessive dependence on foreign-made microchips. The US government, that is to say, is already doing more governing than neoliberal orthodoxy allows.

The case for minimal government was made by the nemeses of Stiglitz’s book, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The former, a Viennese economist whose 1944 book The Road to Serfdom was so prized by Thatcher she handed out copies at cabinet meetings, insisted that tyranny would result from government control of economic planning. The latter economist’s scorn for big government was typified by his remark: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

Stiglitz, who has had beef with Friedman ever since the pair clashed at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, thinks Thatcher’s favourite monetarist thinker is responsible for a desertification of human hope thanks to his quasi-religious faith in shareholder capitalism, in which the only goal for managers of companies is to maximise shareholder value. Friedman, Stiglitz insists, unleashed a generation of Gordon Gekkos to slime their way to economic power with their “greed is good” philosophy. Worse, the pursuit of shareholder greed encouraged company managers to ignore what economists call externalities – such as water organisations filling British rivers with excrement, drug companies killing Americans by addicting them to opioids or the rape of the Earth for private gain.

Much heavy lifting for Stiglitz’s case is done by the American political philosopher John Rawls, whose 1971 book A Theory of Justice proposed a still resonant thought experiment. Imagine that each of us is temporarily behind a veil of ignorance knowing nothing of our talents, income and wealth, or indeed core values. In this “original position”, what principles of justice would we devise to ensure the society we lived in was a good one? Not, suggests Stiglitz, those that prevail today in countries such as the US and UK. Instead, he thinks it would yield the principles of progressive capitalism he spends the book defending – involving more government intervention and reforming neoliberalism’s excesses captured in the bracing truth of Isaiah Berlin’s remark “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”

I’m not so sure. His vision of progressive capitalism seems too little, too late – too little to create egalitarian societies after decades of neoliberalism; too late to stave off climate disaster. I wish Stiglitz had drawn – as the British philosopher Daniel Chandler did last year in a book similarly aimed at loosening neoliberalism’s chokehold – on another element of Rawls’s thinking. His principle asserts that any inequality in society can be justified only to the extent that it benefits the worst off. But that, I suspect, smacks too much of socialism for the Nobel laureate. Stiglitz’s conviction – ardently expressed, mostly unconvincing – is that capitalism got us into this mess and can get us out of it too.

• The Observer
• Margaret Thatcher

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Review of Brad DeLong’s Book “Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century”

by Joakim Book | May 16, 2024

The Berkeley economist Brad DeLong hates Friedrich Hayek — that much is clear from his oversized 536-page tome, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century , 25 years in the making. And that’s also about the level of scholarship we can expect. The key ingredients in this politically slanted misinterpretation of the “long” century, 1870 to 2010, are taunts, insults, and extreme value judgments. In the first five pages no less, Hayek is both demoted to a “mere” moral philosopher and explicitly called an “extraordinary idiot” — only to be resurrected as “a genius” towards the end of DeLong’s excruciating narrative. It’s anybody’s guess why.

The book inches forward with long asides and biography paragraphs for characters as unremarkable as the man who brought Hitler into his political party. The kindest thing one can say about DeLong’s occasionally humorous rants is that the book’s subtitle is misplaced: This is not an economic history of anything, but a political and ideological one.

An economic history of the 1940s, say, would involve production, government wartime dirigisme , debt financing, and postwar inflation . It would consider the faulty notion that big government wartime spending brought depressed economies out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Instead, what DeLong delivers is a dull, textbook-type account of Britain and Germany’s warmongering. It’s the old-fashioned “ maps and chaps ” type of history — that aristocratic British flavor of academic investigations that look at all the wrong things (warfare, diplomatic correspondence, voting, or politicking).

Western governments of the interwar years — larger and more invasive than they had ever been — were to DeLong’s eyes pursuing “doctrines of orthodoxy and austerity,” with an “insistence on pure laissez-faire, that the government should simply leave the economy alone.”

We’re given many florid phrases about the horrid “anarchy of the market” and how the market “failed” to provide this or that imagined good. DeLong often seems to believe that because things exist in abundance somewhere in the world, we can all have anything we desire — physical distribution, durability, or political and institutional obstacles be damned. That’s an odd thing to publish in 2022, at the tail end of skyrocketing inflation and an energy crisis that, in part, resulted from insufficiently movable energy.

The book’s title refers to what Western society has implicitly aimed for since the mid-nineteenth century: material well-being, abundance, and dignity for all. That’s the “utopia.” DeLong chalks up the wealth of today — which most of our ancestors indeed have called utopian — to three pretty disparate things: world globalization, the industrial research lab, and the modern corporation. None of those are completely immaterial to the progress and economic growth miracles of the last two hundred years, but none of them pack enough punch to have delivered the incredible improvements in the average person’s livelihood, 1850 to today.

His overarching grand narrative divides the market-friendly Hayekians from the people-rights-proposing followers of Karl Polanyi . It’s no big mystery who DeLong thinks the bad guys are. The Hayekian right-wingers “understood that the market is made for some men, but not all — and likewise that some men, but not all, would benefit.” The Polaniates, in contrast, recognized that people imagine certain rights being owed to them — livelihood, stable social environment, a decent job. If we just say so, we can have nice things .

Though the deployment of new technologies and the corporate organizational form seem to belong to market institutions, and thus the Hayekians, DeLong claims them for his own side: The market “cannot by itself deliver enough research and development, for example, or environmental quality, or indeed, full and stable employment.” That’s another failure for the market, unfixable unless a benevolent politician or bureaucrat balances the erratic tendencies of the marketplace. “A prosperous market economy could only flourish if it was protected by authority.”

The book is irrelevant in the exact meaning of that word: It does not answer the question it sets for itself, does not rise to the task of chronicling the big economic changes of the extended twentieth century, does not adequately and accurately capture a believable grand narrative that characterized this long century . Instead, ramblings. Jabs at this or that conservative or market-friendly character — Charles Murray and George Gilder being some particular favorites.

What we get is a social history of America, pages jam-packed with woke-speak and some fascinating nuggets from America’s failure to live up to its ideals. These are all valuable in small doses, tiring in actual delivery, yet marshal not an iota toward the “economic” topics the author ostensibly set out to capture (except for a few pages that feature Claudia Goldin ’s work on the disappearing wage gap ).

We learn that there is enough food on the planet, so nobody must endure hunger; enough shelter, so nobody ought to lack any; enough clothing in our corporate warehouses such that nobody needs to be cold. The market is bad because it creates too-large riches for the wrong people; because it caters only to the rich; and because it rewards only those “lucky enough to control resources that produced things for which the rich had a serious jones.”

In contrast, economists up and down the century, such as Ludwig von Mises, have thought of capitalism as mass production for the masses . DeLong didn’t get the second part of that decades-old memo and instead, surprisingly, lumped Mises in with the fascists — calling him “a darling of the far right.” The citation to Mises is completely out of context, taken from a section in his 1927 book Liberalism that attacks fascism’s adoration of violence and warmongering, not supports it. (Mises is a difficult read, everyone knows who has tried, so we should have some compassion with DeLong’s oversight here.)

In the last few chapters, the message gets blurry. From the three reasons for our wealth, we suddenly get four factors that best define the twentieth century — technology-fueled growth, globalization, American exceptionalism, and “confidence” that humanity could progress by having the government fix market problems. Add to that the two most important moments: Keynes’ Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren and FDR’s many big government policies of the 1930s.

That would have been a more interesting framing for this book’s “grand narrative.”

In a lecture on the book from around its publication, DeLong confessed that he thinks “at least 20 percent of this book is big-time wrong.”

Let’s just say that’s an optimistic figure.

Made available by the American Institute for Economic Research .

Joakim Book

The views expressed above represent those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors and publishers of Capitalism Magazine . Capitalism Magazine sometimes publishes articles we disagree with because we think the article provides information, or a contrasting point of view, that may be of value to our readers.

Have a comment?

Post your response in our Capitalism Community on X.

Related articles

The Heart of a Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to About African Poverty — and What that Means for Human Flourishing

In contrast to those who believe that experts can engineer progress for Africa, Magatte Wade argues that what is needed is deregulation, entrepreneurship, and investment.

The Meaning of Americanism

Review of “What America Is: The Moral Logic of the American Revolution and Other Essays” by C. Bradley Thompson (2023).

Recovery: A Guide to Reforming the U.S. Health Sector

If you support universal health care and the right of patients to make their own health decisions, there might be more for you in Recovery than you might think. I hope you’ll give it a look.

Like this content? Subscribe to support our work — it's free.

Read by students, professors, and citizens, Capitalism Magazine provides over 9,000 free to read articles and essays from pro-reason, individual rights perspective. 100% independent.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

Pin It on Pinterest

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

BASIC ECONOMICS

A citizen’s guide to the economy.

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 2001

Sowell’s economics in a social vacuum is as meaningful as color in the absence of light.

From conservative think-tanker Sowell ( The Quest for Cosmic Justice , 1999, etc.), ideological balderdash parading as a disinterested introduction to economics.

“Utter ignorance and gross fallacies” dominate the economic knowledge of the man on the street, thunders Sowell, so he is here to right this wrong with a clear-eyed introduction to the dismal science, free of bell curve and bar graph, and most of all with “nothing to say about the validity of social, moral, or political goals such as ‘affordable housing,’ ‘a living wage’ or ‘social justice.’” Readers can almost feel the spray of his invective, but Sowell claims that these elements play no role in economics, which is “the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.” The free flow of money and goods in a competitive market is Sowell’s Eden. And he trots out one example after another of how fettering the market will bring ill results: how the homeless of New York would have roofs if there had never been rent control, how “distinguishing discrimination from differences in qualifications and performances is not easy in practice, though the distinction is fundamental in principal,” as if racism were no more institutionalized than his market is value-free. “Monopolies are very hard to maintain without laws to protect the monopoly forms from competition,” is typical Sowell, as if, one, monopolies were foundlings in need of protection and, two, they didn’t get that very protection already. When Sowell reduces economics to the twin concepts of scarcity and the intelligent allocation of resources, he really does seem to think his readers are so “ill-informed and misinformed” as to forget that without society there would be no economics, and that society does sometimes think about the social contract, rights, and protection of the weak.

Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2001

ISBN: 0-465-08138-X

Page Count: 500

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

BUSINESS | ECONOMICS | GENERAL BUSINESS

Share your opinion of this book

More by Thomas Sowell

BOOK REVIEW

by Thomas Sowell

THE CULTURE MAP

Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business.

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Planet Money

• Planet Money Podcast
• The Indicator Podcast
• Planet Money Newsletter Archive
• Planet Money Summer School

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

Neoliberal economics: The road to freedom or authoritarianism?

Greg Rosalsky

In the early 1930s, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, then based at the London School of Economics, jotted off a memo to the school's director, William Beveridge. At the time, the Great Depression was wreaking havoc around the world. And the ideals of classical liberalism, like democracy and free-market capitalism, were under assault. Witnessing the rise of fascist parties around Europe, Beveridge, like many others in his day, had argued fascism was the ultimate expression of a failed capitalist system. Absolutely not, argued Hayek in his memo. Fascism, with its rejection of liberal democracy and embrace of government power, actually had its roots in socialist ideas and policies.

What began as the germ of an idea in a memo became a magazine article and then, in 1944, a book, which Hayek titled The Road To Serfdom . When Hayek shopped the publication rights of the book in the United States, three commercial publishing houses rejected it. They didn't see its potential. Hayek settled for an academic publishing house: The University of Chicago Press.

The Road To Serfdom became a smashing success. Not only did it sell hundreds of thousands of copies, it blew wind into the sails of a flagging conservative movement, which had struggled to captivate the hearts and minds of mainstream America after the Great Depression.

Hayek argued that the ballooning welfare state, characterized by policies like those of the New Deal, handed too much power and control to the central government, robbing people of autonomy over their economic lives, hurting the economy, and paving the road to tyranny. He argued that freedom and prosperity could only be achieved by embracing the free market.

80 years later, economist Joseph Stiglitz — who like Hayek , won a Nobel Prize in economics — has a new book out with a response to Hayek and his generations of followers. "A major theme of my book is that Hayek got it 180 degrees wrong," Stiglitz told Planet Money in an interview last week. In fact, the very title of Stiglitz's book is a counterpunch to The Road to Serfdom . It's called The Road To Freedom .

Like in the 1930s, when Hayek began working on his book, populism is now exploding around the world. And Stiglitz fears some countries may be careening towards "a 21st century version of fascism." But contrary to the classic argument made by Hayek, Stiglitz says, this rise in authoritarianism "comes not in the countries where the government is doing too much, but where the government is doing too little to protect individuals against unemployment, the stresses of adaptation to globalization, to technical change, to the stresses of migration."

For a long time, conservative politicians sold lower taxes, fewer regulations, and smaller government as integral to enhancing freedom. But, Stiglitz argues, this conception of freedom is all wrong and, even worse, it has paved the way to a dangerous political era that threatens our real freedom.

What Is Freedom?

For Hayek — and later Milton Friedman and a whole host of other conservatives and libertarians who were inspired by Hayek's work — freedom largely meant freedom from government.

Stiglitz opposes this narrow way of thinking about freedom. In his book, he offers a much different conception of freedom, which he writes is really about, using jargon from economics, "a person's opportunity set — the set of options she has available."

Freedom, in other words, is "really what you're free to do," Stiglitz says. "Somebody who is at the point of starvation doesn't really have much freedom. He does what he has to do to survive." By giving that person more resources, Stiglitz says, he becomes more free. He has more options in life. In this sense, Stiglitz argues, the government can step in and give citizens more freedom by, for example, levying taxes to fund programs that eliminate poverty or help people get jobs.

Even more, Stiglitz argues, policymakers should be wary that policies that expand the freedom of some people may come at the cost of the freedom for many more people. He begins his book by quoting the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin: "Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep." He uses this metaphor to criticize policies like financial deregulation, which, he says, gave more freedom to banks at the expense of the freedom of ordinary Americans.

An Assault On "Neoliberalism"

Stiglitz goes well beyond an effort to reclaim the concept of freedom for progressives. Much of his book is aimed at bulldozing away any legitimacy for "neoliberalism" — an increasingly popular term for the free-market ideology that swept America and much of the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Neoliberalism's crimes include freeing financial markets to precipitate the largest financial crisis in three-quarters of a century; freeing trade to accelerate deindustrialization [by, for example, gutting American manufacturing ]; and freeing corporations to exploit consumers, workers, and the environment alike," Stiglitz writes. "This form of capitalism does not enhance freedom in our society. Instead, it has led to the freedom of a few at the expense of the many. Freedom for the wolves; death for the sheep."

As a member and then president of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Clinton White House, Stiglitz had a prominent seat at the table when neoliberal ideas spread beyond their traditional stronghold in the Republican Party and began being pushed by Democrats. President Bill Clinton promoted a range of free-market policies, including signing the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), supporting China in its bid to join the World Trade Organization, and deregulating the telecommunications and financial industries.

Stiglitz says that, behind closed doors, he fought tooth and nail against many of these policies. He notes, for example, he was successful at staving off financial deregulation — that is, until he left office in 1997. Clinton didn't sign financial deregulation into law until 1999 .

"I strongly opposed deregulation of finance, in part because I understood that 'freeing' the financial sector would make us all less free in the end," Stiglitz writes in his book. He blames financial deregulation for contributing to the 2008 financial crisis.

After serving in the Clinton Administration, Stiglitz again battled creeping neoliberalism, this time on a global scale as the chief economist of The World Bank. There he fought against policies like the liberalization of capital markets, which allowed global investors to more freely move money to and from poor countries. He blamed this policy for creating financial volatility and contributing to economic crises around the world.

Of course, there are many who disagree with Stiglitz's take on neoliberalism and the need for strong government involvement in the economy. They may believe the government is too dumb or corrupt to do a good job regulating the market and engineering a more prosperous and freer society. Countries like Argentina and Venezuela, where generations of left-wing leaders have pursued interventionist policies, have seen a host of economic problems, including runaway inflation and dismal economic growth.

Many economists still believe in the virtues of free-market capitalism. For example, in a new book titled The Capitalist Manifesto: Why The Global Free Market Will Save The World , Swedish author Johan Norberg argues that free-market capitalism has lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty, fostered incredible technological innovations, and brought down prices on all sorts of goods and services. Turning against it, Norberg warns, will only hurt growth, lower our living standards, and devastate many, especially the world's poor.

Stiglitz's Fears and Hopes For the Future

Now is the time, Stiglitz argues, for the United States and other nations to abandon neoliberalism and embrace a new form of "progressive capitalism," where the government plays a bigger role in managing the economy, fighting climate change, breaking up monopolies, and eradicating poverty, inequality, and joblessness.

"If we continue down this path — you might say the road to serfdom — we will lose some freedom because it's leading to more populism," Stiglitz says. "This populism is an authoritarian kind of populism and is a real threat to the sustaining of democracy and even, really, a market economy that actually functions."

While Stiglitz spends much of his book criticizing Republicans, many Republicans these days are more receptive to the idea that the free market is failing America and that we need greater government intervention. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), for example, has been vocal against monopolies and has sponsored various bills to break them up. Last year, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) published a book , Decades of Decadence , which explicitly blasts neoliberalism, especially free-trade deals, for hurting American workers. Rubio now supports "industrial policy" — handing the federal government more power to shape and grow strategic American industries (For more on industrial policy, listen to this Indicator episode ). In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post , Rubio says "industrial policy" used to be dirty words in his political circle, but now he believes the federal government must play an active role in revitalizing American manufacturing.

We asked Stiglitz whether the growing bipartisan consensus that the government needs to play a bigger role in the economy gives him any hope that his vision may actually come into being. Stiglitz, a staunch Democrat, began by criticizing Republicans, including for pushing the unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

"But," Stiglitz continued, "when I read, say, Marco Rubio's views about industrial policy, I sometimes think he may have cribbed it from some of the things that I've written," he says with a laugh. "And so there is hope that on a lot of these issues, there is an understanding that neoliberalism failed — it's so obvious to me — and that we have to have new policies, like industrial policies, like more competition to stop Big Tech. I do think we're moving in that direction in a bipartisan way."

By the way, Joseph Stiglitz and I had a wide-ranging conversation about freedom, economics, neoliberalism, and his views on the world's problems. We covered a whole lot more than what I could fit in this newsletter. We will be releasing an audio version of this interview to Planet Money+ subscribers soon. You can subscribe here .

• Free Market
• neoliberalism

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

An Update on Economic Development Projects - April 19, 2024

Video item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

Download options, in collections.

Uploaded by John Hauser on May 4, 2024

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Biden announces new tariffs on China. What does that mean to consumers? Tariffs explained

President Joe Biden is announcing a significant raise in tariffs on various Chinese goods, including steel and aluminum, batteries, and electric vehicles, USA TODAY is reporting .

So, what is a tariff? And what will a tariff increase mean to consumers? Here's what to know.

What is a tariff?

A tariff is a tax on imported goods, levied by the government, according to the International Trade Administration .

The goal of a tariff is to support local industry by raising the prices of imported goods, making them more expensive than their domestically produced alternatives, according to Investopedia .

Who pays the tariff?

Ultimately, the customer pays the tariff through higher prices.

Initially, tariffs on imports coming to the United States are collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on behalf of the U.S. Commerce Department , according to Investopedia. From there, the increased cost gets passed along to U.S. consumers.

Why are tariffs used?

Tariffs are often used to protect young industries and developing economies, according to Investopedia. However, they are also used in established economies with developed industries for a variety of reasons, including:

• Protecting domestic employment. Competition from imports can hurt domestic companies, leading to layoffs or shipping work overseas to cut costs. All of which increases unemployment.
• Protecting consumers. A tariff could be levied against imported meat, for example, if there are fears that meat has been contaminated.
• Infant industries. This type of tariff is common in developing nations trying to foster growth in their domestic industries.
• National Security. These barriers are common to protect industries that are strategically important, such as defense industries and those supporting national security.
• Retaliation. Tariffs can be used as retaliation if countries believe a trading partner is not playing by the established rules.

Retaliation seems to be the reason for the new tariffs against China. The Biden administration is accusing China of flooding the markets with goods at artificially low prices, USA TODAY reports, putting U.S. manufacturing at a steep disadvantage.

What's on the list of new tariffs against China?

As reported by USA TODAY, Biden will announce the new tariffs in a speech on Tuesday. These include:

• The tariff rate on electric vehicles imported from China will increase from 25% to 100% beginning this year.
• The rate on semiconductors from China will increase from 25% to 50% by 2025.
• The tariff rate for lithium-ion batteries from China used in electric vehicles will increase from 7.5% to 25% this year, while the same rate will apply to all other lithium-ion batteries in 2026. The tariff rate for battery parts will also increase to 25% this year, as well as critical minerals used to make batteries.
• The tariff on solar cells imported from China will increase from 25% to 50% this year.
• The tariff rate on steel and aluminum products will increase from 0%–7.5% to 25% this year.
• The rate on ship-to-shore container cranes imported from China will increase from zero to 25% this year
• The tariff rates on hospital syringes and needles made in China will increase from zero to 50% this year. Rates for personal protective equipment such as face masks, certain respirators and surgical gloves will also increase by 25%.

First Belong to God by Austen Ivereigh: The ideas of Pope Francis on the existential crisis facing religion and the planet

Very little has changed in terms of doctrine, even if the background music is softer and less dogmatic.

Pope Francis waves during an audience with Hungarian pilgrims at the Vatican. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/Getty

This book is the fruit of an eight-day online retreat that author and Pope Francis expert Austen Ivereigh was invited to lead by the British Province of the Jesuits in July 2020, at the height of the Covid lockdown. It employs the Spiritual Exercises developed by the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, along with the retreat talks given by Bergoglio before he became pope, and his writings since he succeeded Pope Benedict XVI in March 2013. Ivereigh is a close friend of Pope Francis and an admirer of the Jesuits, which is obvious from many of his observations.

In his foreword, Francis mentions that, as Pope, he has highlighted that the destruction of the environment and the mass displacement of people are symptoms of what he calls the “crisis of non-belonging”. Ivereigh notes the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor (currently, the richest 1 per cent of the world’s population own more wealth than the other 99 per cent put together), which is fuelling a naked disregard for the damage that unrestrained consumerism is doing to the planet.

“How is it that we allow throwaway culture, in which millions of men and women are worth nothing compared to economic goods, how is it that we allow this culture to dominate our lives, our cities, our way of life?”, Francis asks. This interrogation echoes the views of the Polish-born sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, who coined the phrase “liquid modernity”, a metaphor, according to Ivereigh, “in which precariousness in economic and social conditions lead men and women to perceive the world as a container full of disposable objects, objects for one-off use – including human beings”.

According to Bauman, in this new society, individuals become at one and the same time the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote.

What does it mean to love someone today? To be a gay person? To be Irish?

Cork Stories: pleasing tales with serious themes laced with inimitable Cork humour

Caleb Azumah Nelson honoured

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna: Impressive debut with hints of rap as a novel

The book is divided into an eight-day cycle covering various themes, three of which I consider particularly important: The Ecology of Mercy (caring for creation); Around a Common Table (Synodality) and The Triumph of Failure. At the end of each section, people are asked to meditate on certain texts and to subject them to the Jesuitical methodology of contemplate-discern-propose. The section on synodality emphasises that, in order to be successful, there is a need for “dialogue, discussion, research – but with the Spirit”. The Ignatian idea of “discernment” is at the heart of everything, the ability to hear the voice of God speaking to us individually, through meditation or dialogue with others, and the Spirit.

Even those who are most sceptical about what real changes Francis has brought to the church will often acknowledge a genuine commitment to the poor

This is a book that will definitely appeal to readers who want to become better acquainted with the ideas of Pope Francis on the existential crisis facing organised religion and the planet. Equally, those who were excited at the election of the first Jesuit to the seat of St Peter will find much to ponder in Ivereigh’s skilful exploration of the extent to which the Spiritual Exercises have influenced the current pope.

Even those who are most sceptical about what real changes Francis has brought to a Catholic Church that is fast becoming something of an irrelevance in the western world will often acknowledge a genuine commitment to the poor and a desire to reach out to those who have suffered at the hands of a sometimes authoritarian institution with a view to bringing healing. He appears to have a unique ability to strike a chord with a public that may be disillusioned with Catholicism, but are not necessarily ready to break completely with its cultural and spiritual legacy.

The 11 years since his assuming the role of St Peter have seen Francis’s attempts to steer the church in a new direction meet resistance from the more conservative elements within the Roman Curia, the main power bloc in the Vatican. Very little has changed in terms of doctrine, even if the background music is softer and less dogmatic.

While reading this book, my thoughts kept returning to Fr Tony Flannery, a well-known Redemptorist preacher and retreat leader who was removed from priestly ministry in 2012 for his support of female priests, same-sex marriage and the harsh treatment of homosexuals by the church. I wonder if Francis might not use discernment to bring about this Irish priest’s long-overdue rehabilitation? After all, a sense of “belonging” is unfeasible if justice is not the cornerstone of the way the church treats both its loyal and dissident members.

Eamon Maher is co-editor (with John Littleton) of The Francis Factor: A New Departure (Columba Press, 2014), a collection that analysed the first year of the new pontificate

IN THIS SECTION

‘i loved alice munro’s stories more than any i have ever read’, i visited singapore to see why it is ranked as the top education system in the world. here’s what i learned, bambie thug should not have been making statements on ireland’s behalf, south dublin tennis club slams student accommodation plan, irish workers among the least productive in europe, study indicates, case against dublin firefighter accused of rape in boston to be moved to higher court, latest stories, what will €350,000 buy in france, italy, spain, japan and galway, the irish times business person of the month: declan o’rourke, aviva ireland, every time i travel abroad i am gripped by the fear that ireland is making a fool of me, kpmg ireland opens new dublin ai hub with plans to create 200 jobs, simone gannon: my four top new beauty products for the season.

• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Information
• Cookie Settings
• Community Standards