- A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burt Malkiel. I read this book in its first edition back in the 1970s, and it is still very good. I'll be using it in my course this fall on the financial crisis, mainly to set out the nature of modern finance theory and the criticisms of it. It is perfect for people who don't have a very strong background in either math or economics. It has more investment "advice" than I would like for a textbook, but that is only a minor drawback. I hope to cover the main points of this book in about 4 weeks.
- Causes of the Crisis. A special issue of Critical Review (Vol 21, nos 2-3, 2009). This is a brilliantly accessible collection of current articles by well-known scholars, many of whom had been raising questions about the financial system long before the recession hit. It is the other material I will be using for my course on the financial crisis.
- Brick Lane by Monica Ali. A novel about a young Bangladeshi woman who was sent off to London, England in an arranged marriage, about her coming of age, about her exploration of a new identity. Informative about cultural interactions, maybe, but I didn't much like reading about the tribulations she faced. In many ways, it reminded me of the pathos of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
- Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett. A very informative narrative of the evolution of the shadow banking system and its role in the financial crisis. Despite the lack of clarity in some of the explanations, and despite calling the Bank of Canada the "Central Bank of Canada", the book was very good. I have made considerable reference to it in the past few weeks and will likely make great use of it in my upcoming course on this subject. I have already mentioned this book several times (most recently here). It is not a quick read, but it was worth the effort
- No Second Class Citizens by Sir Roger Douglas. Sir Roger and I have become Facebook friends, likely through my earlier e-friendship with Rodney Hide. Both are libertarian politicians in New Zealand. In this book, many of the current policy issues are addressed from a libertarian perspective. The link is to a no-charge pdf copy of the book.
- The Retail Revolution: How Wal*Mart Created a Brave New World of Business by Nelson Lichtenstein. I love Wal-Mart and everything it does to break down barriers. Poor people get cheaper goods and better jobs at Wal-Mart, and third-world producers get better jobs, too. I didn't much care for the not-so-subtle anti-Wal-Mart, pro-union tone of this book.
- Animal Spirits by Akerlof and Shiller. These guys are bright, and they have continued the work of challenging the rational-maximizer neo-classical paradigm in economics. The phrase "animal spirits" refers to a passage in Keynes' General Theory. Shiller, btw, was one of the early outspoken analysts who warned about the coming of the recent housing and financial crisis.
- Playbooks and Checkbooks by Stefan Szymanski. An extremely readable and accessible little book that has NO graphs and NO equations. I'm considering using it in the next Economics of Sports course I teach. I reviewed the proposal for this book several years ago.
- The Myth of the Rational Market by Justin Fox. Justin Fox didn't much like economics as a student, but he has some valuable insights in this book. It's another sensible exploration of the things we need to take into consideration rather than use the simple rational-maximizer model.
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris. Morris has shown what seems like integrity to me by revising his views about the Palestinian refugee problem as more information became available. In this book, he makes it very clear that the issue is more complicated than any one-paragraph bit of polemics might suggest.
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