This is Schumacher week here on Make Wealth History. To kick us off, a brief biographical post. Fritz Schumacher was German, born in Bonn in 1911. His father was an economics professor at a time when economics really mattered in Germany. The inter-war years saw the infamous devaluation, a subsequent recovery and the rapid emergence [...]
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Book review: Whoops! by John Lanchester
Here’s a book that’s been much recommended to me, that I’ve finally got round to. Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay by John Lanchester a layman’s guide to the financial crisis, and it’s not just understandable, it’s also entertaining. Quite a tall order for a book on financial collapse, I’m sure [...]
The importance of knowing a little economics
I’ve just started reading John Lanchester’s Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, a much recommended book on the financial crisis. In the introduction, he talks about the knowledge gap between the world of finance and the average citizen. “There is a need to narrow that gap” he says, “if members of the [...]
The Transition Companion, by Rob Hopkins
If you’re a transitioner yourself, chances are you’re well aware of this book. You may even have a hand in it somewhere, having sent in a story, a photo or a quote. You may have read the draft chapters as they were posted on Rob’s Transition Culture blog, or suggested a title. The Transition Companion: [...]
23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang
Ha-Joon Chang is a Korean economist with a knack for explaining the blind spots of his discipline. In his latest book, he rounds up a series of common but mistaken assumptions about the way the world works, and knocks them down one at a time. It’s written in an accessible and often entertaining tone, drawing [...]
Book review: Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo
Dead Aid is a much talked about book that has taken me a little while to get round to. It’s got a lot of attention because while there are many books that critique development aid, none have come out quite as aggressively and entirely against it. Furthermore, Dambisa Moyo is a woman, and an African, [...]
Hell and High Water, by Alastair McIntosh
A couple of years ago I heard Alastair McIntosh speak about his new book, Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition. He was one of the most compelling speakers I’d heard in a long time, and I bought all his books at the end of the talk – except the one [...]
Brave Old World, by Tom Hodgkinson
For those who still believe The Idler is about laziness, it may come as a surprise to learn that Idler editor and Ecologist columnist Tom Hodgkinson has written a book about his experiences of running a smallholding. All that digging, mucking out animals and chopping wood sounds suspiciously like hard work. But since the Idler [...]
Ed Miliband reads up on post-growth
This is the first time I’ve used a paparazzi image on the blog, but I suspect it’ll be the last too. Here’s Britain’s leader of the opposition Ed Miliband photographed with his summer reading, as featured in the Daily Mail. Three books from the top is Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth. We do actually have [...]
Overconnected, by William H Davidow
Books about the dangers of the internet aren’t likely to get much of an audience right now, and some might be tempted to dismiss them as neo-Luddite scare-mongering. But a book about the downsides of online connectivity written by an insider, a venture capitalist and former VP of Intel, well, that might just get a [...]
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