
I was recently asked to recommend few books on general topics in economics to read over the summer. Well, there is a lot out there that is exceptionally interesting and thematic but would not fit into a “top ten” list…
So, instead of listing some of the newest highly ranked bestsellers, which in any case one can easily find elsewhere, here is a mixed selection that has motivated some thinking over the past year or so. These are the first ten that came to mind listed alphabetically by author and with no pretense for originality.
And yes, there are a couple that might not strike one as purely on “economics” but that’s the challenge to overcome perhaps. Happy readings!
- Robert Z. Aliber and Charles P. Kindleberger. 2015. Manias, Panics, and Crashes A History of Financial Crises, 7th ed. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Bas van Bavel. 2019. The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Duncan Foley, Thomas Michl, and Daniele Tavani. 2019. Growth and Distribution, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Victor Hugo. 2015. Les Miserables. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
- Michal Kalecki. 2015 (1966). Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles 1933-1939. London: Routledge.
- Mervyn King. 2016. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Company
- Karl Marx. 1990 (1867). Capital, Vol. 1. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
- Branko Milanovic. 2019. Capitalism, Alone. The Future of the System That Rules the World. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.
- Kakuzo Okakura. 2020 (1906). The Book of Tea. Pretorian Books.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 2014. Antifragile. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Oh… and because I was also asked to recommend something on game theory, but can’t decide which is better, here’s a list prepared by Ariel Rubinstein who’s clearly a way more respected authority on the subject!