There has been a long gap since my last post, which coincided with the start of Michaelmas Term – suggestive timing. Life was indeed very busy, and although I carried on reading, sitting tapping away at the laptop had diminished appeal during the autumn. However, the end of the year approaches and it’s past time to produce the shortlist for the Enlightened Economist annual prize. As ever, the contenders are books I read during the year (regardless of publication date), the selection is arbitrary, and the prize is that I offer lunch to the winner when we are in the same city.
First, a quick catch-up on relevant reading since early October (omitting the various detective novels I relax with):
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder – I rather enjoyed this, although agree with the many reviews that pointed out its lack of any analytical structures. As a cri de coeur about the precipice the world finds itself sliding over, it’s well-written and passionate. And probably too late.
Your Life is Manufactured by Tim Minshall – this is a wonderfully informative book about the how of manufacturing by my Cambridge colleague, and also funny and super-readable. It’s out in late February – I read a proof to do a blurb. It’s the kind of book where pretty much every page has an amazing new piece of information.
The Gambling Animal by Glenn Harrison and Don Ross- out in late January, another book I read to provide a quote for. It’s a fascinating interpretation of human evolution in terms of risk taking and the way short-term socially-successful risk-taking piles up long-term giant risks – such as extinction risks due to climate damage.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk – a now quite old biography still widely agreed to be an excellent introduction to the life and ideas of W. It was a terrific read, and probably took me as close as I will ever get to the philosophical ideas. I was particularly taken by the account of a debate between Wittgenstein and Turing in Cambridge in 1939: were mathematical propositions a ‘grammar’ (W) or statements about underlying objects (T)? I read this book because I’m giving the Wittgenstein Lectures in Bayreuth in June 2025, about the use of ML/AI in public decisions.
Equality: WHat it is and why it matters by Thomas Piketty & Michael Sandel – out very soon, this is a transcript of TP being interviewed by MS, the latter mildly challenging the former about some of his views on the reason it’s important to attack inequality. It’s a nice summary of their mainly shared views but less interesting due to the fact that they fundamentally agree with each other, so the debates are over relatively minor points.
Now for the long/shortlist – in no special order (but with a few obvious themes). Two marked * are by colleagues of mine:
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing – Scott Shapiro (my mini-review)
AI Snake Oil – Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor (my review)
The Atomic Human – Neil Lawrence* (my review)
AI Needs You – Verity Harding* (my review)
The Tech Coup – Marietje Schaake (I haven’t written this up
Underground Empire – Henry Farrell & Abraham Newman (my review)
The Ordinal Society – Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy (my review)
The Unaccountability Machine – Dan Davies (my review)
The Grid – Gretchen Baake (my review)
How Infrastructure Works – Deb Chachra (my review)
Cuckooland – Tom Burgis (I didn’t write about this – a very readable and shocking account of the way London is – as we all know – a haven for global criminality and corruption)
Kaput – Wolfgang Munchau (haven’t written this up yet – it’s out last month)
Late Soviet Britain – Abby Innes (my mini-review)
Failed State – Sam Freedman (my review)
The Tyranny of Nostalgia – Russell Jones (my review)
Winner to be revealed in the next few days. But finally, a reminder that my next book, The Measure fo Progress, is out in April! It’s made the New Scientist list of best books to look out for in 2025.
