Category: economics
-
Book Review: The Road to Freedom, by Joseph E. Stiglitz
I read this book in the cool dark mornings and eternally bright evenings of the New Zealand summer while on a three-day hike with my family. I was immediately hooked by the premise: What do we mean when we advocate for ‘freedom’, and what happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s?…
-
Book Review: Little Bosses Everywhere, by Bridget Read
“Of course, I’m concerned about profits and losses. I just don’t give them top priority. That’s why I say, “P&L means people and love.” — Mary Kay Ash I love a good multi-level-marketing takedown, and this book delivered the goods. Read has done extensive research on the birth, evolution, and pervasive reach of pyramid schemes in America,…
-
Book Review: How They Get You, by Chris Kohler
I found Chris Kohler on one of the identical algorithmic short-form video platforms (Facebook, maybe?) and fell in love with his videos. He was highlighting the very absurdities of corporate power and government inadequacy that I was reading about in many of my books, but with a humour and a subtlety of facial expression that…
-
Book Review: Econobabble, by Richard Denniss
A short review — I will read anything Richard Denniss writes, if only because he is one of the few voices in Australia that actually makes any sense. This book is basically just a leftist’s funny and logical attack on contemporary conservative talking points, yet it also brings real insight and clarity to topics that…
-
Book Review: Feeding the Machine, by James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant
A wide-ranging book that lays bare the staggering human consequences of the AI industry. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of growing up with the Internet, but I distinctly remember the day it dawned on me that ‘the cloud’ was in fact just a bunch of servers sitting in data centres, connected to the rest of the…
-
Book Review: Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth
I’m now in my fifth year working in climate and sustainability, which is far too long to not have read Doughnut Economics until this Christmas. I wish I’d read this book years ago, because it gave words to concepts I’d been thinking and feeling but couldn’t clearly articulate. Here’s the basic idea: for a long…
-
Book Review: Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
On March 18 — release date — I downloaded Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s new book Abundance to my Kobo. Despite being in a foreign country with no access to English-language new releases, in a couple of clicks, I had in my hand what friends in New York, London, and Melbourne were all also reading at the…
-
Book Review: Money, by David McWilliams
As books on money go, few are as fun as this.
-
Book Review: Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara
Cobalt Red is Siddharth Kara’s devastating exposé of a country ravaged by Western hunger for digital technologies.
-
Book Review: Chip War, by Chris Miller
Chris Miller’s ‘Chip War’ exposes the fragility of one of the world’s most critical supply chains.