Summer reading

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This morning's Financial Times features its recommendations for summer reading. I always enjoy lists of books, and all the more so this time as it includes The Economics of Enough. There are several economics and business, and also politics, books on the list I'd like to catch up with this summer. For example, Paul Allen's memoir Idea Man is one, along with Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order. This looks intriguing too:

Fixing
the Game: How Runaway Expectations Broke the Economy, and How to Get
Back to Reality, by Roger L Martin, Harvard Business School
Press, RRP£19.99, 251 pages  An obsession with maximising shareholder value continues to blight
American capitalism, says Martin. His conclusions have a global
relevance: by straining to hit quarterly targets, chief executives are
not only short-changing their customers, they are losing touch with the
real reasons for being in business.

And my new boss, BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten, is recommending Off Message by Bob Marshall Andrews, so I shall certainly read that.

But here's the question for readers of this blog. Can we draw up our own list of summer recommendations? Rather than restricting it to newish hardbacks, the rule is paperbacks that can be left behind in the holiday house, and that are intellectually stimulating without being hard work. Please comment here or send me a tweet (@diane1859), and I'll compile a list.

2 thoughts on “Summer reading”

  1. What a challenge!
    Top choice would be “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre.
    Then perhaps “The Truth About Markets” by John Kay.
    And, despite its limitations, “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis.

  2. Hi Diane,
    Holiday 5 reading for Economists…perhaps something old, something new:
    Dear Undercover Economist (a quick dip in and out the pool)
    superFreakonomics (on the beach)
    Economist Pocket World in Figures (for rainy days)
    Gladwell’s Outliying Tripping Points (nothing on’t telly)
    The Black Swan (for the unexpected holiday twist)

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