Books like $2.00 a Day

This is one of my favourite history books.

It is a detailed social history of a single village in the Pyrenees, set between the years 1294 and 1324. It describes the lives of the shepherd community during the suppression of the Cathars, going into great detail about the parishioners' lives. 

By the time I had finished the book, I regretted having to say goodbye to the families whose lives I had gazed into. The book provides insights into their daily lives: love, marriage, religious practices, social relationships, and morality.

I found it a fascinating and informative read.

If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions I’ve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.

Looking back across six decades, MFK Fisher, one of the most astute and evocative travel and gastronomical authors ever to put pen to paper, recalls the year when everything for her was new: France, Europe, marriage, food, culture. Based in provincial Dijon, Mary studied French, shopped in the open markets, learned to cook, and jotted down astute observations concerning everyone she met, while her husband wrote his dissertation. My first encounter with Tours, in 1979, reminds me of Fisher’s encounter with Dijon in 1929. Like her, I was warmed by the joy of discovery, the sense that every stone and leaf, every living thing that I encountered had layers upon layers of meaning, and it was my job to uncover some of them, revealing meanings that no one had seen before. 

Everyone knows that there are no “French people.” Each region has its particular culture, and Paris is a country unto itself. Focusing on one particular artisan, his clients, and his neighborhood, Carhart helps us to understand what it means to inhabit a single quartier of Paris. It’s one of the most beautiful memoirs I’ve ever read – and I don’t even play the piano!

Atkinson died in January 2017. His life’s academic work focused on the causes of inequality and poverty. He had a particular interest in policy in these areas which is reflected in this book which offers a rationale for and a detailed account of how household income can be made more equal.

He is concerned with inequality in developed countries, so his focus is on the US, UK, and European countries. He first sets out how it is that income inequality has so greatly increased covering some of the same ground as Milanovic. He then, in chapters on progressive taxation and social security, sets out detailed proposals which he argues would considerably reduce inequality and promote social justice.

His proposals on progressive taxation would, it can be safely asserted, reduce Tory MPs to apoplexy.

American author Mark Twain had described the last decades of the 19th century as the Gilded Age in the United States, a period when on the surface everything appeared to be glittering like gold concealing the filth and ugliness that lay beneath. British journalist and academic James Crabtree, now based in Singapore, believes that the last few decades in India closely resembles the Gilded Age of the US. His 357-page book is filled with dozens of anecdotes about some of India’s most wealthy individuals such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, and Vijay Mallya. His meetings with them and his detailed descriptions of their lifestyles and demeanour make for racy reading. 

A disclaimer: Crabtree has described in flattering terms his meeting with this writer and referred to some of my articles and books.

Sociologist Cherlin was one of the earliest researchers to become aware of the importance of how, during the second half of the 20th century, during the computer revolution when skill demands of jobs were increasing, the job market collapsed for workers without a college education.

Without a stable job paying a living wage, men and women without a 4-year college education could not see their way to a stable marriage that prepared children for school and life success. This decimated blue-collar families, and led to "culture wars," and working-class resentment of college-educated elites.

Many of these less-educated individuals have left their traditional place in the Democratic party, and come to form Trump's and the Republican's voting base.

How many, and which individuals should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. is a long-standing policy dilemma that people feel strongly about yet appears to have no easy solution.

Economist Borjas shows us how economists think about the issues involved. Where are we in the history of immigration to the United States? Which American industries and individuals benefit from allowing more immigrants in, and which are harmed by such a policy?

What policies would be better for the U.S. economy and the U.S. population as a whole? How are regions, states, and cities differentially affected? What trade-offs are involved in the available policy choices in this area?

I enjoy myth-busting.

A favorite message from the economic profession is that free trade is good for everyone, and that those who do not agree are either misguided or defending vested interests of their own. In this book, Williamson shows that this view is false.

The welfare gap between the West and the rest of the world developed during the 19th and 20th centuries in large part because of trade-induced division of labor that led to de-industrialization, increased inequality, and volatile revenues in the losing countries—factors that all contributed to retarding economic growth and social development in countries that are now poor.

More recently, the free movement of capital has had similarly negative effects on developing and emerging economies, a fact that is now recognized also in organizations such as the IMF.

I have always loved Branko Milanović’s way of addressing complex topics in a very accessible and usually highly original way.

In this book, Milanović pays much attention to the rich and the super-rich and devises a way of comparing their wealth across the ages by asking this simple question: how much labour could they command in their own historical period and socio-economic context?

So, for example, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest Roman of Caesar’s times, could, with the yearly income from his vast possessions, command the work of 32,000 people. But, as Milanović argues, today’s super-rich are richer than past ones–circa 2010, the richest person in the world was the telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, who could command the work of 440,000 Mexicans.