100 Books Like The Great Escape

Why is it that looking at the past, reading our history, studying ancient ruins, makes me feel better about facing today’s world?

I think about connection, a feeling that, despite having lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, there are still shared goals and commonalities between myself and them. 

Harari is one of those rare authors who can distill enormous amounts of information into a single sentence and hold your attention at the same time. Early in the book, Harari explains that as humans evolved to walk upright, the narrowing of the pelvis and hips made childbirth more treacherous. His line for this: “Women paid extra.” As a mother myself, when I read that line, it felt so modern, so lived-in, like the same line could describe my own feelings today.

Books like Sapiens aren’t really about the biology of humans, but about finding our humanity within a scientific exploration.… show more.

This recommendation is more technical than my previous recommendations.

The authors reconstruct many measures of income and income inequality to show that the widening gap indicated by official statistics is an artifact of certain assumptions underlying these statistics.

First, and most importantly, regarding those who are dependent on the social safety net, "income" includes only cash benefits dispensed by the government, not the cash value of non-cash benefits; and, for those who are taxpayers, "income" is defined as before-tax income, not after-tax income.

Second, monetary values are incorrectly corrected by the CPI (the authors propose using the chained-linked CPI).

The book might be considered to present an agenda for further research on the specifics it addresses and similar concerns.

Maddison weaves varied measures into a history of GDP, population, and perforce GDP per capita of the world and its regions and of countries as the data allow, going back to ‘year 0’ (the year that’s not between 1 BC and 1 AD).

His effort is continued by the Maddison Project.

Careful measurement could be said to differentiate the scientific from the discursive disciplines.

This is a frustrating book.

It is a path-breaking effort to gather national IQ data from as many countries as possible, and to correlate the same with GDP per capita and other measures of national success.

There are several major shortcomings to the original effort including: (1) that averages of "similar" countries were used where local estimates of national IQ weren't available, and (2) national IQs of many countries were drawn from small convenience samples.

These shortcomings might have been justified as the best that could be done given the costliness of collecting scientifically-valid samples, along with a call to address these shortcomings.

Since the publication of the book, numerous additional IQ data have been developed in, for example, the norming of IQ tests for various populations. Also, much near kin achievement data have been developed in the administration of internationally-standardized scholastic examinations.

And, even for tiny countries, we have… show more.

Labor unions played a key role in lifting millions of Americans—mostly white male industrial workers—into the middle class in the mid-twentieth century. The passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s opened access to unionized manufacturing jobs and led to new waves of labor activism by women and people of color, but these were undermined by political and economic shifts that eliminated millions of jobs in the late twentieth century. Windham shows how anti-union policies and practices made it more difficult for workers to organize and force employers to the negotiating table, which explains the persistence of racial and economic inequality in the twenty-first century. Like Foner’s Nothing But Freedom (mentioned above), the book provides ample evidence that nothing about this was foreordained—once again, those who set the rules of a more globalized economy did so in ways that allowed some people to prosper while others starved.

I love this book for two reasons. It condenses a massive amount of economic history into a small book, and it shows how our unequal societies are backtracking to older models of the economy.

Moneyless Society, conceptually, is a curious read. Tracking how money affects us all and its presence as a centralized decay against society is another curious concept. I enjoyed reading Moneyless Society for the context of why change needs to be made. Surrounded by the author’s intent in publication is a group of individuals committed to making change. I may quote in my own volumes that money is necessary as a tool but that does not mean you can’t argue otherwise. Moneyless Society is a great feel-good economic story through history into potential change.

This is a positive book that shows how education can help Blacks and other minorities get an education that will help them stay out of mass incarceration. It is good to have a positive program as we attempt to deal with American racism.

Rousseau is a delight to read. He offers a strong challenge to the Enlightenment thinkers of his time by suggesting that the modern embrace of commerce and sociability was more corrupt than beneficial for society.

In this Second Discourse, he offers a thought experiment through which we are taken back to the imagined origins of human society so that we can trace what is essential to the human condition.

He offers a statement of the injustice of modern economic inequality and invites us to consider political alternatives.

I would have recommended John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which is one of the great masterworks of the twentieth century, but reading Keynes himself can be difficult.

Hansen’s book is the best summary available despite being more than 70 years old. And understanding Keynes is essential if you want to understand how certain economic policies continue to lead us astray.

Hard to find, but not impossible.