Project Syndicate is one of my favorite sources of commentary on economics and geopolitics. In this post, their contributors each name some of their favorite books of 2018, which, perhaps not surprisingly, mostly cover economics and geopolitics. I would love to read almost everything on this list, but I’ll mention 10 just for brevity.
- Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and public policy
- Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning
- Bruno Maçães, Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order
- The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics – how laws and norms arise in a society, and how they endure (or why they do not)
- Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management – the uncomfortable but interesting topic of how brutal plantations were actually run
- Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – covering algorithms, among other topics
- Ira W. Lieberman, In Good Times Prepare for Crisis – disaster and risk management
- Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World
- David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
- Jonathan Tepper (with Denise Hearn), The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
- depressing books about the Vietnam war and the massacres in Indonesia