The Princeton University Press catalogue for Spring 2011 arrived yesterday, and it trails what must surely be one of the most important economics books out next year – my own! The Economics of Enough: how to run the economy as if the future matters will be published in February and is available for pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon US (and other online booksellers). The subtitle explains the aim of the book, which explores both the multiple crises of sustainability – financial, environmental, social – and the possible routes to getting decision-making with a longer term time horizon. The vision of the Victorians, living through an earlier era of profound technological and social change, inspires me. How did they manage to transform living standards from one generation to the next and at the same time build such lasting infrastructure and cultural legacies that we are still living off them now?

I'll post more about the book as we get closer to the official launch, and there will also be some talks and events. The fantastic cover image is by a wonderful artist, Julee Holcombe.

The Princeton catalogue has a lot of other tantalising titles. I'm particularly taken by the look of Daniel Drezner's Theories of International Politics and Zombies, in which he apparently stress tests international political theory by asking how it would treat a zombie invasion. I also like the look of Emma Rothschild's new book The Inner Life of Empires, a perspective on the Enlightenment through one extended Scottish family, and Beyond Mechanical Markets by Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg, which argues that financial markets are so inherently irrational that neither behavioural nor neoclassical analysis is valid. Loads of beautiful natural history and other titles too.