Books like As Gods Among Men — picked by fans

Ingrid Robeyns opens her book provocatively. She poses the question: ‘Can a person be too rich?’ Her answer is ‘yes’! I value this book because it opens bold new ways of thinking about what can be done about inequality. Robeyns coined the term ‘limitarianism’ to explore how democratic societies might enforce specific caps on wealth.

This limitarianism is, for Robeyns, a ‘regulative ideal’ that should inform government policy and regulation. While limitarianism may appear idealistic at first glance, I found Robeyns book to offer very practical solutions as they relate to providing true socially funded equal opportunity, implementing progressive taxation and wealth capping, and a re-orientating society to valuing equality.    

How do billionaires become so rich? One story is that it is all about hard work, initiative, and special talents. If you believe that story, then you might conclude that billionaires deserve their extreme wealth. What I found especially insightful about Chuck Collins book is that he painstakingly shows that this story is bogus.

Collins delves into the realities of what he calls the ‘agents of inequality’–the accountants and lawyers who ensure that the world’s richest people maintain and extend their wealth over generations. This fascinating book lifts the veil on how the rich use everything from cash hoarding to tax evasion to trust funds to ensure that the world’s economic system remains unequal. 

Davos is a small town in the Swiss Alps that is the venue for the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting where billionaires, politicians, and celebrities get together to try to come up with solutions to the world’s problems. Peter S. Goodman’s book focuses on what he calls the ‘Davos Men’–the Davos attending billionaires (who are largely men) who speak out about the world’s wrongs while exploiting the global economy for their own financial gain.

What I found especially revealing in Goodman’s book was his meticulous and unrelenting unraveling of the deceitful realities of billionaire power and his trenchant call for the government to free themselves of the vastly undue political influence of the ultra-rich. 

Jonathan Taplin’s excellent book focuses on just four billionaires–Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen. What I found special about this book is that it shows how these billionaires have created and sold utopian futures to the world, whether they come in the form of the metaverse, cryptocurrency, space travel, or transhumanism.

Even more disturbing is Taplin’s argument that under the pretense of these utopias, billionaires have been able to grow their wealth and power without interference from the government. Meanwhile, inequality continues to expand, nature is replaced with technology, and oligarchy gets more and more entrenched. In short, billionaire utopian visions are a distraction from the real and present danger of gross economic inequality.

The Templars are generally remembered as fighters and castle builders, yet their activities along the frontier depended heavily on the order’s huge support infrastructure across Western Christendom. Networks consisting of hundreds of estates spanning many countries dispatched vast quantities of cash and resources—as well as recruits and other supporters—to the Templars’ outposts in the Holy Land on an annual basis. In Templar Families, Jochen Schenk investigates these networks focusing especially on the relationships that developed between the order’s officers governing their landholdings in France and the many local families whose support enabled the order to function.  

In The Givers David Callahan asks questions – and answers them – about the power philanthropists possess to influence public policy in America. 

He wonders how much influence donors have and what their goals are. He says that some of us are happy about the causes the wealthy promote, but are terrified about others. 

As well, he contends, the process is undemocratic. Philanthropy, he says, is a strong power center in its own right, and “is set to surpass government to shape society’s agenda.” He points out that private donors, who are accountable to no one, have more influence than the public officials who are accountable to the voters. 

Callahan is unafraid to question how much good philanthropists actually do.

I read An Inconvenient Wife years ago and it has always stuck with me.

As I dove into my research for my book, I reread this book and was just as impressed with it as I was the first time.

Lucy is the epitome of the upper-class New York Victorian woman but only if she bends to the will of her husband and physicians. It is a classic tale of yet another 19th-century woman forced into an asylum.

Lucy is subjected not only to medications but treatment for her “hysteria” which was the common diagnosis for most women in the asylum at the time. It was brilliantly researched and written!

So much of the early presidency took place out of “office hours.” Social events where women were present were considered apolitical and non-partisan, but of course, women had just as many opinions about politics back in the Early Republic as they do today! Instead, these events served as helpful venues for brokering deals, arranging political marriages, and securing appointments for friends and family members. Wives were also essential partners in campaigns and coalition-building once politicians were in office. You can’t understand the early presidents without understanding the broader social context as well.

A commonly discussed debate among dinosaur fans is whether or not Jurassic Park was influenced in any way by this book. Not only did the Carnosaur novel predate Jurassic Park but the film adaptations of both were released only weeks apart in 1993.

Regardless, this book did many of the same things in Jurassic Park several years before Jurassic Park’s release. The novel also features an eccentric billionaire cloning dinosaurs, but what I believe truly separates both stories is the fact that while Jurassic Park is set on a remote island, Carnosaur follows a sleepy little town where the primal creatures escape to and wreak havoc.

What follows is a gruesome series of attacks and mauling that send shivers down my spine each time I revisit this story. While this book is not as highly regarded as Jurassic Park, I believe it deserves to be remembered as a piece… show more.

I love an audacious woman, even if she is a hot mess. This book follows Alex, a young woman who’s been staying at the Hamptons with an older man. She’s a calculated person, good at capitalizing on the good natures and human weaknesses of others, but a small misstep brings her free ride with the older man to an end. Instead of leaving, she decides to linger on Long Island.

Each night, she finds a new person to graft, a new scheme to help her stay. Spending time with Alex was stressful and made me want to shake her for her short-sightedness and self-sabotaging. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her grit and wonder what on earth she was going to do next.