Review: Raghuram G. Rajan, The Third Pillar (2019) – Guest Review by Share My Library

What follows is a guest review by Share My Library. All opinions belong to the author. Please visit Share My Library's website here, and follow them on Twitter here. If you are interested in contributing a guest post to my blog, please contact me using the information here. Quote of the book: “Too much market …

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Review: Mariana Mazzucato, Mission Economy (2021)

Economic inequality is soaring, the climate crisis is getting worse, the pandemic has exposed a ‘digital divide’ (with many people unable to access the technology to work and learn remotely), and more. Why is it so difficult for anything to be done about this? Can the government not step in and help? Alas, argues Mariana …

Five Books That Will Make You Think Differently About Capitalism

How should we shape the economy to deal with income inequality and climate change? What role should the state play in economic activity? Should we fear AI? These questions are some of the most important ones facing us today. In this post, we’ll have a look at how an array of scholars have tackled them, …

Review: Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (2017)

So I appreciate that I’m a bit late to the party with this one, and I know I don’t normally review works of fiction, but I’ve just finished reading this book and I had to say something about it. (Though given that I typically review history books, and that this is a work of historical …

Review: Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up (2020)

The world can be a confusing place. We’re constantly bombarded with facts and figures, infographics and images. They appear to us in the news, in magazines, and on social media. This is all supposed to inform us — the authors are certainly trying to persuade us of something. Yet a lot of this information is …

Review: Padraic X. Scanlan, Slave Empire (2020)

Scholars, up until the 1930s, have seen the abolition of slavery as the major turning point in the  history of the British Empire, the keystone of British Liberalism, and the foundational contribution Britain has made to the world. This is a view that is still endorsed by politicians today. It is a view that requires …

On Popular Economics

I’ve just purchased Tim Harford’s latest book, How to Make the World Add Up, and in honour of this moment I wanted to reflect on his earlier books, The Undercover Economist and its sequel. I read these a while ago, and they were pretty foundational for me getting into the subject of Economics (a shout …

Review: Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021)

Climate change is one of the most serious problems facing humanity at this point in time. What can we do now to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and how can we adapt to what we cannot prevent? Bill Gates presents his understanding of where we’re at with solutions, and identifies the gaps in …

Five Key Take-Aways from JS Mill, On Liberty

To round off my read-along of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, I will reflect here upon the five key things I have taken away from this book in this reading. I won’t go over every point that I have raised during the read-along: if you want my thoughts in more detail, please revisit parts one …

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty – A Summary

Chapter I: Introductory On Liberty opens with Mill setting out the problem, as he sees it. While government was formed out of a need to protect the people from other “vultures”, the people would also need protection from the government (the “king of the vultures”). Their liberty is defined by the limitations of the government’s …