There are several reviews of interest in today's UK papers. The FT's marvelous Gillian Tett reviews John Cassidy's How Markets Fail, and makes it sound more enticing than the publisher's blurb manages. They write it up as being mainly about behavioural economics, which feels familiar now thanks to Nudge, Predictably Irrational etc. Tett paints it more as a critique of the real world effects of free market ideology, grounded in the history of economic thought. She sums up: “This is esentially a manifesto….for a pragmatic, flexible type of policy making.” Which sounds sensible enough. I just hope that he's not another of those unbalanced critics of economics and recognizes the strengths of the subject as well as its weaknesses (on which see my Soulful Science, new edition just out).

Incidentally, John Cassidy also wrote a good instant history of the internet boom and bust of the early noughties, Dot Con, albeit a very US focused one. For the UK equivalent, read Dot Bomb by Rory Cellan-Jones – a brilliant book by my husband.

In the FT also, Crispin Tickell reviews The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, a hot topic indeed if you'll forgive the pun. It's edited by Dieter Helm and Cameron Hepburn. Dieter Helm is an extremely good rigorous and empirical economist whose verdict on these contentious matters I'd certainly trust. (Bizarrely, the article doesn't appear on the FT website at the moment.)

Meanwhile over at the Guardian, Maya Jasanoff reviews what sounds like a terrific history by James Mather of the Levant Company, founded in 1581 with a royal monopoly over trade with the near and middle east. Apparently Pashas is the first history of this important but little known trading company to appear since 1935. It is, the reviewer says, a sensitive and intelligent response to the 'clash of civilisations' nonsense.

The Guardian books section also has a round-up of books of the decade. They include The Tipping Point, No Logo, Nickeled and Dimed, Freakonomics and Postwar.