WRONG: Nine Economic
Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them by Richard S. Grossman (an
easy to read book that offers important lessons through the prism of economic history)
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Lawrence in Arabia:
War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by
Scott Anderson (a worthwhile read for history buffs)
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According to Steven Teles,
“With that complexity
has also come incoherence. Conservatives over the last few years have
increasingly worried that America is, in Friedrich Hayek's ominous terms, on
the road to serfdom. But this concern ascribes vastly greater purpose and
design to our approach to public policy than is truly warranted. If anything,
we have arrived at a form of government with no ideological justification
whatsoever.
The complexity and
incoherence of our government often make it difficult for us to understand just
what that government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides
from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources
upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less
organized. As we increasingly notice the consequences of that regressive
redistribution, we will inevitably also come to pay greater attention to the
daunting and self-defeating complexity of public policy across multiple,
seemingly unrelated areas of American life, and so will need to start thinking
differently about government.”
----
The Entrepreneurial
State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato (a
thought-provoking book)
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The Dictator's
Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita and Alastair Smith (a controversial book on political theory)