Here are 100 books that Rethinking Economics fans have personally recommended if you like
Rethinking Economics.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As a journalist covering the Future of Work and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I encountered pioneering social entrepreneurs and newly minted tech billionaires whose ideologies attracted millions and have since shaped our culture, economy, and society. I've curated some of the most impactful books that informed my understanding of their ambitions and how work is evolving, as well as the thought leaders who inspired them. Engaging with this content and integrating it over the last decade has transformed my worldview, leading me to a more fulfilling, peaceful, and creative life—but it’s been quite the journey!
I recently attended the 10-year Reinventing Organizations anniversary party over Zoom, which attracted hundreds of people from around the world. Many quit their jobs after reading Frederic Laloux’s book to help build a new market for a radically different approach to management consulting.
The unassuming former McKinsey consultant became a household name in business circles when his surprise bestseller challenged conventional ways of working. His premise is bold: we are entering a new stage of human consciousness that demands a rethink of how we organize work. Moving away from traditional command-and-control hierarchies formed during the Industrial Revolution, Laloux showcases case studies of organizations where everyone is encouraged to operate like an entrepreneur and contribute meaningfully.
In this engaging read, Laloux distills complex ideas effortlessly, inspiring readers to reimagine what’s possible for themselves and their teams. Reinventing Organizations is not your typical business book. A decade later, its insights remain fresh,…
The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose, but working for these entities often feels soulless and lifeless just the same. All these organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I love businesses and have been lucky enough to work for and with some great ones in my career in senior leadership positions. For me, leadership is an extraordinary privilege, so we have a responsibility to do it well and keep learning and improving ourselves and the organisations we lead. My journey into more conscious leadership began over 30 years ago, well ahead of the current movement, and it has progressively become the passion driving my work to help leaders and organisations contribute to building a better world. This passion also drives my service with a number of spiritual communities, including Sundial House and the Community of Living Ethics.
I am such a fan of Theory U, which gives the practical road map to ‘Presencing’ described in this book: the path it unfolds around generating truly transformational change, shifting our leadership and organisational thinking, decision-making, and action away from the traditional notions of leadership–evidence-driven thinking and problem-solving–and into the realms of heightened awareness, intuition, and sustainable decision making.
In my view, this book offers a clever combination of perspectives and insights from the worlds of science, business, and, courageously, spirituality. Its integration of big-picture vision–the change we could bring to the world–grounded in reality with real-life case studies and practical exercises makes it a valuable guidebook for leaders.
Presence is an intimate look at the development of a new theory about change and learning. In wide-ranging conversations held over a year and a half, organizational learning pioneers Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers explored the nature of transformational change—how it arises, and the fresh possibilities it offers a world dangerously out of balance. The book introduces the idea of “presence”—a concept borrowed from the natural world that the whole is entirely present in any of its parts—to the worlds of business, education, government, and leadership. Too often, the authors found, we remain stuck…
The World Economic Forum has identified systems thinking as one of the most important skills humankind must adopt to manage the complex global challenges we are facing. Peter Senge (one of the recommended authors) said systems thinking is the discipline that integrates the disciplines. I love systems thinking because it explains so much about the world. In the 1960s, my father gave me all of the early systems thinking literature, and I have been on a mission to educate people about systems thinking ever since. I know it has helped me immeasurably.
I love Wheatley’s book because she makes such compelling connections between what appear to be completely disparate things and then brings them right back to the reader and reveals them for us. She helps us to see that the world and life, while chaotic and nonlinear, are still beautiful and embraceable.
The new edition of the bestselling, acclaimed, and influential guide to applying the new science to organizations and management. In this new edition, Margaret Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times.
We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science—the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I love businesses and have been lucky enough to work for and with some great ones in my career in senior leadership positions. For me, leadership is an extraordinary privilege, so we have a responsibility to do it well and keep learning and improving ourselves and the organisations we lead. My journey into more conscious leadership began over 30 years ago, well ahead of the current movement, and it has progressively become the passion driving my work to help leaders and organisations contribute to building a better world. This passion also drives my service with a number of spiritual communities, including Sundial House and the Community of Living Ethics.
For me, the idea of leading by serving others, of helping them grow to be their best, expresses one of the core principles of leadership–releasing the potential in others. Service was the background track of my early corporate career in an organisation striving to do this globally.
The principles of servant leadership–empowering others and ethical and sustainable leadership–sit well with my spiritual values. This book has played a significant part in my journey to leading and living more consciously.
What also stood out for me was Greenleaf’s introduction of the concept of stewardship–we are, after all, just stewards of our organisation, and our world, tending and nurturing them for the next generation. This stewardship mentality is increasingly important given the climate and other crises of today.
Based on the seminal work of Robert K. Greenleaf, a former AT&T executive who coined the term almost thirty years ago, servant-leadership emphasizes an emerging approach to leadership—one which puts serving others, including employees, customers, and community, first.
The Power of Servant Leadership is a collection of eight of Greenleaf's most compelling essays on servant-leadership. These essays, published together in one volume for the first time, contain many of Greenleaf's best insights into the nature and practice of servant-leadership and show his continual refinement of the servant-as-leader concept. In addition, several of the essays focus on the related issues of…
When I was contemplating a topic for my PhD thesis, it struck me powerfully that American economics was severely under-studied, and that this applied even more so to those associated with “American institutional economics.” My research soon indicated to me that the literature that did exist was lacking in coverage and badly misleading. During my research in archives, I uncovered some real gems—just one example was the archives of the Robert Bookings Graduate School, an institution largely forgotten, but famous at the time. This was exciting and inspired me to continue on to provide a major re-evaluation of American economics in the interwar period.
Mary Furner’s book presents what is the common view of progressives as liberal reformers, but there is another side to progressive social science that is less liberal.
The progressive era social science literature is replete with racism and with arguments about racial and other forms of inferiority derived from eugenics.
The vast amount of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe gave rise to concerns about the undermining of American standards, both biological and economic, including theories of “race suicide.”
Leonard’s book has generated a great deal of discussion, and while there is no doubt that many progressives displayed eugenic and racist ideas, it needs to be stressed that such views were not limited to progressives, but included many of those with conservative and even free-market views in other areas.
In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic…
As a boomer and working-class kid, I experienced living conditions improving rapidly. This sparked my interest in studying international and development economics to explore how we can create a better and more equitable world. As professor of international economics, I have been researching and teaching for many years about what is now known as “globalization”. This taught me two things that inspired me to write my latest book: First, to understand the process and consequences of (de-)globalization, in-depth study is essential to avoid popular misconceptions about the global economy; and, second, globalization needs to be carefully managed to make it work for all people.
Financial Times columnist Martin Sandbu laments “the end of belonging”, a decades-long but unwritten social contract in postwar Western-style social market democracies that promised boomers and their parents broadly shared prosperity.
Being a boomer myself, I know all too well what he is talking about. However, he argues that globalization is often used as a scapegoat, and posits that national policies to offset the negative side effects of (global) markets are feasible even in a globalized world.
He proposes a range of policies from wealth taxes to minimum wages, active labor market policies, and macroeconomic stimuli to create a high-pressure economy, but emphasizes that it is crucial to put together a comprehensive package of all suggested policies to make (global) markets work for everyone.
A radical new approach to economic policy that addresses the symptoms and causes of inequality in Western society today
Fueled by populism and the frustrations of the disenfranchised, the past few years have witnessed the widespread rejection of the economic and political order that Western countries built up after 1945. Political debates have turned into violent clashes between those who want to "take their country back" and those viewed as defending an elitist, broken, and unpatriotic social contract. There seems to be an increasing polarization of values. The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My interest in political economy dates back to my student years where I combined the study of the history of political economy, economics, and philosophy. Whether apologists or critics of capitalism, both groups appreciate the centrality of economic exchange among people who live in communities where absolute autonomy and self-sufficiency are unattainable. My concern with reframing political economy is also informed by the all too hushed scandal of capitalism, namely, the reliance on slavery for the accumulation of wealth for more than a century after the establishment of the USA. The reckoning with this atrocity animates much of my present thinking about political economy in general and capitalism in particular.
In an accessible language and with multiple real-life examples, Madrick systematically critically engages every humdrum idea of principle attributed to the presumed success of capitalism. Following to a great extent Karl Marx’s lead on the self-destruction of the economic system we call capitalism, Madrick updates the critique to the 21st century and shows, time and again, why capitalism is not only prone to recessions and depressions but will bring about its own demise.
A bold indictment of some of our most accepted mainstream economic theories—why they’re wrong, and how they’ve been harming America and the world.
Budget deficits are bad. A strong dollar is good. Controlling inflation is paramount. Pay reflects greater worker skills. A deregulated free market is fair and effective. Theories like these have become mantras among American economists both liberal and conservative over recent decades. Validated originally by patron saints like Milton Friedman, they’ve assumed the status of self-evident truths across much of the mainstream. Jeff Madrick, former columnist for The New York Times and Harper’s, argues compellingly that a…
Since I began to study history at the university, I have always wondered why things could get so wrong in Europe in the 1930s. The key to understanding this crucial period of world history was the failure of economic policy. In the course of my studies, many of my questions have been answered, but I am still wondering about the extent of human and institutional collapse. Hence, to me, the Great Depression is such a fascinating topic that you can never leave once you started doing research about its causes and consequences.
This book is highly recommended for those who want to get an overview of the newest research on the Great Depression. Written by leading economic historians, the book explains what made the catastrophe possible, why it spread across the globe, and how it was ended. Most importantly, the authors manage to explain the scholarly literature in a language that can be understood by everyone interested in the period.
Understanding the Great Depression has never been more relevant than in today's economic crisis. This edited collection provides an authoritative introduction to the Great Depression as it affected the advanced countries in the 1930s. The contributions are by acknowledged experts in the field and cover in detail the experiences of Britain, Germany, and, the United States, while also seeing the depression as an international disaster. The crisis entailed the collapse of the international monetary system, sovereign default, and banking crises in many countries in the context of the most severe downturn in western economic history. The responses included protectionism, regulation,…
My passion is to prepare clients' investments for the impending debt crisis. That is why I started Pento Portfolio Strategies and created the Inflation/Deflation and Economic Cycle Model. The US faces an entirely new paradigm – due to onerous debt, central banks are forced to either massively monetize the nation's debt or allow a cathartic deflationary depression to reset the economy. Our government is now compelled to seek a condition of perpetual inflation to maintain the illusion of prosperity and solvency. Our central bank is now walking the economy on a tightrope between inflation and deflation. This will require a vastly different and active investment strategy to fit the new dynamic.
This book explains the unchecked power of the Federal Reserve.
Perfect for those who don't have the time to read the 608-page The Creature From Jekyll Island. In this book, Paul explains in very simple terms that the Federal Reserve has been given absolute power over the most essential element of our economy – the price and supply of money.
Formed by a small group of powerful bankers who argued a central bank would stabilize the currency, over the past century since its creation, the Fed has not only destabilized the currency but also created a series of wealth-destroying asset bubbles.
It has also led to a trenchant and destructive wealth gap between the rich and the poor.
During the 2008 presidential campaign over 4,000 students gathered at the University of Michigan to hear Republican candidate Ron Paul speak. As he began to address the topics of monetary policy and the coming depression, a chant came from the crowd, 'End the Fed! End the Fed!' As dollar bills were set on fire, it became clearer than ever that the real problem, one that nobody in the media was talking about, was the central bank - an unconstitutional entity and a political, economic and moral disaster. Most people think of the Federal Reserve as an institution that has always…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I started studying Judaism as an adult in 1982, and in the 40 or so years that have passed since then I’ve read voraciously on the subject and have discussed it at length with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis from Boston to Tampa. I’ve come to see over that time that Judaism’s objective is to shape conscientious, caring human beings who will bring light and compassion to the earth in spite of all the forces that want to keep trouble and insensitivity there. The books that I’ve listed are among the best in communicating the Jewish vision for the planet. I think you’ll learn much from them.
This may seem an unusual choice – and its title is entirely misleading – but what Sanders describes is what the U.S. might look like if it translated Biblical values into policy and law.
Sanders’s real subject is justice – social, economic, racial, and environmental. He describes a compassionate society in which all have access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in which no one is condemned to suffer because of the accidents of birth.
Significantly, Sanders backs up all his suggestions with explanations of how they could be translated into reality. Read this even if you didn’t vote for him!
'Bernie Sanders has changed US politics forever' Owen Jones
It's OK to be angry about capitalism. It's OK to want something better. Bernie Sanders takes on the 1% and speaks blunt truths about a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed, and rigged against ordinary people. Where a handful of oligarchs have never had it so good, with more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes, and the vast majority struggle to survive. Where a decent standard of living for all seems like an impossible…
