You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
My faith in social media was restored in the first week of 2018. All it took was a book, a comment, and a tweet.
The book is Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth.
I gave this book my attention, and I recommended that you do the same.
The comment came from the economist Steve Horwitz.
In my review of Doughnut Economics, I asked for some book recommendations that are on the other side of the argument from Raworth’s progressive views on economics. Steve suggested that the language for the books that I am looking for would be ones about the "broad social benefits of free(r) markets”.
Steve’s book recommendations are:
- Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues
- Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist
- Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource 2
- Cox and Alm's Myths of Rich and Poor
- Robert HIggs’ Crisis and Leviathan
- Vedder and Galloway’s Out of Work
- Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail
- Don Lavoie’s National Economic Planning: What is Left?
- Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy
Where Kate Raworth comes back into this story is a tweet.
Kate is asking for books that push her thinking. Steve has provided us with a list of such books.
My guess is that none of the three of us in this conversation (Kate, Steve, and myself) see the world in the same way. But we are talking to each other. Sharing our knowledge. Giving each other our attention. Listening to one another.
We should do this more.
Do you have any book recommendations beyond what Steve has suggested that Kate and I might like to read?
Can book discussions through social media transcend our political views, enabling us to enlarge our perspectives and (as Kate says) lean into views that we find uncomfortable?
What are some books that you have read that you found to be both excellent and also different from your beliefs?
What are you reading?
