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Work: a history of how we spend our time
Suzman, J. (2020). Work: A history of how we spend our time. Bloomsbury Publishing. From the title and sub-title of this book, you’d be unlikely to imagine the breadth of scope of the work it contains. James Suzman takes us on a a remarkable and fascinating journey through the evolution of our species: how we’ve worked…
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Talking to my daughter: a brief history of capitalism
Varoufakis, Y. (2017). Talking to my daughter: a brief history of capitalism. Random House. Yanis Varoufakis is a progressive politician and economist who negotiated on behalf of the Greek government during the Greek debt crisis of 2009-2018. He has a gift for communication and here has written an economics book that is unusually accessible. As far…
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Honourable Friends
Lucas, C. (2015). Honourable friends?: Parliament and the fight for change. Portobello Books. Although this is, to a degree, a memoir of Carloline Lucas’ first parliamentary term from 2010 to 2015, it is also much more than that; it is a searing critique of democracy as exercised through our early 21st century parliamentary system. If you…
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Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back
Bullough, O. (2018). Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back. Profile Books. At the heart of this book lies a simple dichotomy: In an often jaw-dropping tour of the murky world of big money – Oliver Bullough shows how this relationship between law and money is systematically exploited…
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Reclaiming Economics for Future Generations
Ambler, L., Earle, J., Scott, N. (2022). Reclaiming Economics for Future Generations. United Kingdom: Manchester University Press. This is a book written predominately by young economists who refuse to submit meekly to the received wisdom of mainstream (neoclassical) economics which dominates the academic and cultural framing of economics in the world today. They argue that neoclassical economics is largely responsible for the environmental, social…
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Post Growth – Life after Capitalism
Jackson, T. (2021). Post Growth: Life After Capitalism. United Kingdom: Wiley. Whilst the degrowth/post-growth literature, by definition, confronts the hegemony of growthism, it sometimes fights shy of directly challenging capitalism. But as the subtitle of Tim Jackson’s latest book makes clear, Post Growth does not suffer from any such coyness. In the second chapter- Who Killed Capitalism? – Jackson asserts…
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Prosperity Without Growth – Foundation for the Economy of Tomorrow
Jackson, T. (2016). Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. This is the second edition of a book first published in 2009 which was itself a reworked version of a report published earlier that year for the UK Sustainable Development Commission (still available here). In the prologue to the second edition, Jackson describes…
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The future is Degrowth – A Guide to World beyond Capitalism
Schmelzer, M., Vetter. A. and Vansintjan, A. (2022). The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism. United Kingdom: Verso. I’ve carefully read the The Future is Degrowth a couple of times and also skimmed it in preparation for this review, yet still feel I would benefit from reading it again – such is the density with which…
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Less is More – How Degrowth Will Save the World
Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more: How degrowth will save the world. Random House Hickel is a masterful storyteller – this is probably the nearest thing you’ll find to a page turner in the economic literature! The introduction would stand on its own as a powerful essay on the history of capitalism and it’s bedfellow growthism,…
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Doughnut Economics – Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
Raworth, K. (2018). Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-century Economist. India: Random House Business Books. I wish I’d read it years ago. To my old way of thinking, all economists are narrow-mindedly focused on the accumulation of financial wealth and largely careless of the consequences of that pursuit on society and the ecology of the planet. In…
