Books To Understand the Economy

Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. Or so she thought. In The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown draws on decades of cross-disciplinary research to show that tax law isn’t as color-blind as she once believed. She demonstrates how American tax law rewards the preferences and practices of white people while pushing Black people further behind. The results are an ever-increasing wealth gap and more Black families shut out of the American dream.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk — and the players raising the stakes. Taking us behind the scenes from casinos to venture capital firms, and from the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of power brokers and risk-takers.

From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, comes an urgent analysis of how the “rigged” systems of American politics and power operate, how this status quo came to be, and how average citizens can enact change.

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress, from one of the world’s preeminent thinkers. As we face ecological crisis across the globe, The Journey of Humanity is a book of urgent truths and enduring relevance, with lessons that are both hopeful and profound: Gender equality, investment in education, and balancing diversity with social cohesion are the keys not only to our species’ thriving but to its survival.

From New York Times business reporter Nelson D. Schwartz comes a bold and urgent investigation of division between the wealthy and the middle class in every arena of American life.

One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone — not just for people of color.

A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times bestselling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay” (Financial Times). Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”

It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal — that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding — reigns supreme. The Meritocracy Trap is a revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy and illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

A progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.

The brilliant creator of NPR’s Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: Laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before.

What is Economics? Why do consumers borrow and save? How do economic systems work? Money and investing can be daunting. This book covers all of the key aspects of economic theory and history.

What is it like to sit in the Oval Office and discuss policy with the president? To know that the decisions made will affect hundreds of millions of people? To know that the wrong advice can be calamitous? When the President Calls presents interviews with thirty-five economic policymakers who served presidents from Nixon to Trump.

Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America — including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Biss, Karen Russell, and many more. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.

From the legendary former Fed Chairman and the acclaimed Economist writer and historian, the full, epic story of America’s evolution from a small patchwork of threadbare colonies to the most powerful engine of wealth and innovation the world has ever seen.

An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm that advises corporations and governments, that highlights the often drastic impact of its work on employees and citizens around the world.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong … Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin — a New York Times columnist and one of the country’s most respected financial reporters — delivers the first definitive blow-by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he recreates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and recounting how, motivated as often by ego and greed as by fear and self-preservation, the most powerful men and women in finance and politics decided the fate of the world’s economy.

In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of “Chimerica” into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens.

The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world’s poorest citizens, from one of the world’s most renowned economists.

An illustrated guide to the mad math and terrible terminology of economics, from one of the internet’s favorite financial educators. This indispensable handbook reveals the hidden forces driving key economic outcomes, the most common myths to steer clear of, and the dusty, outdated assumptions that constrain our political imagination, offering a bold new path to building a prosperous society that works for everyone.

A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income — a stipend given to every citizen — and why it might be necessary in an age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

In Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. A work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott’s work reads like a page-turning novel. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality — told through the crucible of one remarkable girl.

Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it — rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating manifesto, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today.

A powerful analysis of how the bias towards wealth that is woven into the very fabric of American capitalism is damaging people, the economy, and the planet, and what the foundations of a new economy could be.

How do we stop the unrelenting evolution of the economic hit man strategy and China’s takeover? The riveting third edition of this New York Times bestseller blows the whistle on China’s economic hit man strategy, exposes corruption on an international scale, and offers much-needed solutions for curing the degenerative Death Economy.

With stark poignancy and political dispassion Tightrope addresses the crisis in working-class America while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. This must-read book from the authors of Half the Sky “shows how we can and must do better” (Katie Couric).

Lives of the Laureates offers readers an informal history of modern economic thought as told through autobiographical essays by thirty-two Nobel Prize laureates in economics. The essays not only provide unique insights into major economic ideas of our time but also shed light on the processes of intellectual discovery and creativity. The accounts are accessible and engaging, achieving clarity without sacrificing inherently difficult content.