The Yellow House, the state of memoir, and other notes
In which I lambast the American idea that memoir shouldn't be about how people fit in history, discuss how families create destiny, and explain why celebrities make for terrible authors (it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, celeb-babies.)
Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine by Alex de Waal
In the early 2000s, famine as we know it had been largely eradicated, thanks to changing demography, improved public health, efficient humanitarian monitoring and relief efforts, and a relatively stable global political stage. However, the US-led War on Terror sharply curtailed these gains.
Exhibit A: Moral Hazard and Private-Public Partnerships
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit is a spectacular documentation of just exactly how private-public partnerships in the low-income housing sector served as great opportunities for real-estate scammers to prey on the most vulnerable.
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by Tim Wu
The “economics eugenics movement” targeting firms perceived as “unfit to deserve industrial life” birthed the modern monopoly in America. Tim Wu provides a rollicking history of what have often been bare-knuckle fights over political and economic concentration in the US.
Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
In Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back, Oliver Bullough sets out to illuminate the means and methods First World tax dodgers and Third World kleptocrats use to hide their businesses and wealth from the rest of us.
The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society
Binyamin Appelbaum’s new book is a sweeping work of recent (standard) economic history, covering the last 70 years of the economic theorists that have influenced public policy.. the next chapters to Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers.
Reflections on The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
A fictionalized account of the horrors of Jim Crow Florida's Dozier School for Boys asks if the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice or not. Pulitzer-winner Colson Whitehead isn't quite sure.
Capitalism Run Amok: on Oval by Elvia Wilk
A weirdly brainy novel about capitalism run amok, set in a Berlin where the seasons cycle through in a day, homeless encampments are everywhere, privacy doesn't exist, corporations own everything, and everyone wants to know why no one else cares about what is going on. Also, they all have bullshit jobs.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
Standard economic theory would surmise that people should enjoy jobs where they are well compensated for doing nothing important, as the energy expended in doing so is low vs the level of compensation for that effort. But is that true? Graeber's qualitative study of jobs without meaning and purpose identified 5 types of bullshit jobs. Which category does your job fit into?
Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
There’s a gray area between the robots taking over and human labor, and a new class of worker bridging the gap between what Artificial Intelligence systems can and can not do. Enter the world of Ghost Work.
Generation Priced Out: Who Gets To Live In The New Urban America? by Randy Shaw
NIMBY politics and the generation that owns everything pose great challenges to housing in urban areas, even and especially in progressive cities, writes Randy Shaw.
The Boeing debacle is the latest example of regulatory capture
How the Boeing 737 Max grounding and the Genoa bridge collapse show us that allowing companies to self-certify the safety of their products can be deadly
Can American Capitalism Survive? Why Greed Is Not Good, Opportunity Is Not Equal, and Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor by Steven Pearlstein
Societies with higher levels of cooperation and trust are more prosperous than those where legal mechanisms are needed to enforce good market behaviors, writes Steven Pearlstein.
The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier
A development economist moved by poverty at home revisits the ethical dimensions of capitalism.
Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert Frank
Economist Robert Frank is concerned. Concerned that not enough people recognize the role that good fortune and luck plays in their success, and that too many people attribute their success entirely to their own hard work and virtue.