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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Wow. I am really stunned by this list. I took a look expecting the usual chorus of contrarian populist hardbacks, but this list is very conclusive and and covers a wide range of opinions and subjects. I have read about a quarter of them and can attest they are all excellent (although with varying degree of readability). This is the exact sort of list if you want to see multiple perspectives and challenge yourself.

I also want to shout out to Hidden Order, which I was really surprised to see here, but is really quite the gem. More than any other econ book, I have pulled off the shelf and gone through the much dog-eared pages. It does an amazing job of taking off-the-shelf economic ideas and framing them in such excellently written parables or examples. Disagree or whatever, but it's an excellent and often trite way to understand classic principles.

A couple books I would add to the list:

Why Nations Fail

Red Plenty

Who Gets What and Why

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It turns out that Hidden Order is hard to google because of a spy thriller by the same name, so here's an Amazon link to the econ book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Order-Economics-Everyday-Life/...

it's so important to read many of the books on this list (or at least long summaries) to get a proper perspective on economics. too many (including commenters right here) make the mistake of picking a team and losing their brains in favor of defending their team, rather than carefully considering the merits and positions of the various arguments put forth (which admittedly is harder).

while economics is inherently political, it isn't a sport.

Yeah seconded, this really is an excellent list. Very pleasantly surprised to see "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" as first on the list, it should be required reading as a guide to what we're seeing playing out in American politics currently (after it is rewritten into a more coherent and concise/accessible book, in its current form it's clearly the work of multiple undergrads/grad students stitched together by Prof. Gordon) - but the ideas in it are really powerful.

Also really pleased to see The Road to Serfdom by Hayek on the list. Eager to check out the book on Climate vs. Capitalism as I haven't seen this topic given full treatment in a book yet beyond questioning the sustainability of growth economics and efficacy of carbon taxes in broad terms.

The Mankiw textbook is used in intro undergrad classes everywhere.

I would also love to read a book by a contemporary Chinese economists on their thoughts of the Chinese market, although something tells me a good academic/unbiased book on this topic is impossible to find.

Only two books I would add would be:

The Age of Diminished Expectations (Krugman)

Dune (Herbert)

Please don't read Climate vs. Capitalism, the author has no formal economics training and her analysis makes this clear. Rather than realistic and thought out solutions towards decarbonisation - like those suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - we are treated to yet another exhausted critique of neoliberalism accompanied by the usual quixotic calls to action.

Yes, activism has a role to play in convincing governments to act, but when it perpetrates the myth of individuals vs. corporations it does nothing but help individuals relinquish themselves from blame. Look at the gilet jaune movement in France after it tried to impose a fuel tax. Some of these people are the same individuals who if asked would declare unwavering support for climate action. In practice however few are willing to shoulder the associated cost, even in the rich world. They mistakenly believe that taxes on corporation wont eventually filter down to consumers. There are also vast misconceptions about our existing ability to substitute away from fossil fuels even if we had the renewable capacity (for example, over 80% of UK households only have infrastructure for gas heating). The public debate needs to make these trade-offs clear rather being inundated by people like Naomi Klein who are more interested in finger pointing and sensationalism.

If you really want to want to understand the issues we face and how we might actually confront them then read the IPCC report [1], the Club of Rome Climate Emergency Plan [2], or even this blog post by Bill Gates [3].

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

[2] https://www.clubofrome.org/project/the-club-of-rome-climate-...

[3] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima...

Thanks for the recommendations, and for saving me some time/money picking up Klein's book.

I'll check out the reports you've linked, and Gates' blog post.

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