Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group

In World Order, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argues that “chaos threatens” the world order “side by side with unprecedented interdependence” between nations. Kissinger is dead right in describing the evolution of the world order and how it’s unravelling today. His predictions for what comes next rely on inertia: they will prove accurate if today’s trends continue apace without a significant shift in trajectory.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan. Kaplan brings a true understanding of the long range geopolitics that seriously matter, even as world leaders lose the plot in the wake of distracting headlines du jour. The long term is about the rebalancing to Asia, whether the United States engages in a concerted strategy to “pivot” or not. Asia is the world’s economic, security, and demographic locus, and the preeminent geopolitical challenge of tomorrow. Even if it did come out in 2012, “Revenge of Geography” remains well ahead of its time in making the case that global power dynamics will revolve around Asia in the years to come.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) by Christian Rudder. In a world where corporations and governments have growing troves of data on citizens, it’s essential to take a step back and question what can actually be gleaned from this stockpile. “Dataclysm” is an extremely insightful book that actually mines big data for social implications, outlining what it can tell us about the state of humankind—and importantly, what it can’t. Finally somebody is letting data speak for itself.

It opens some very important questions on the evolution of society. And the author seems like he’d be an amusing dinner guest—always a plus. I highly recommend it.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform

“Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal” by Eric Dezenhall can be summed up in its subtitle. He is an expert in PR trench warfare and how the Blitzkrieg of Internet and 24/7 news coverage has changed the correlation of forces putting every public person and corporation at risk. The book is filled with examples of success and failure. There is no cure all, no promise of certain success. Some problems don’t fix. Sorry.

The book I have read and reread for months this year is “End the IRS before it Ends Us: How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America.” While writing it, I discovered a treasure trove of books on the role taxes play in American history. A favorite is “Taxation in Colonial America” by Alvin Rabushka, which documents the tax burden in the early 1770s before the Boston Tea Party. Average taxes then were 1 to 2 percent of income. Londoners were paying 20 percent. Empires are expensive. Just how did we go from 1 to 2 percent taken in taxes to our government spending over 30 percent of gross domestic product?


Philipp Hildebrand, vice chairman of BlackRock Inc. and former president of the Swiss National Bank

Henry Kissinger’s World Order contains the best reflection I’ve read on Russia this year. Henry Kissinger also provides an exceptional long-term perspective on Europe. Much of what he has to say is highly relevant for the future of the euro zone. The narrative is positioned around the premise that the core problem in Europe is that Germany has always been either too strong or too weak. In a sense that question is still very much on the table today: The question of how to form a Europe in which Germany is just right remains at the core the European integration project.


Edmund S. Phelps, Nobel-laureate economics professor at Columbia University

“Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” by William Deresiewicz must be one of the darkest books of 2014. We think of second-rung colleges as places where students are trained to occupy positions in the depths of a bureaucracy -- “lives of subordination and supervision.” But, the author argues, the Ivy League schools are -- in their own way -- damaging too. The kids arrive “curious, hungry for purpose” but leave with a “passion only for success.” Few experience college as the beginning of their own project of intellectual discovery and personal growth. If the author is right, the League’s product since the 1960s is a smug, self-congratulatory elite. Another reason why the American economy has been becalmed for several decades.

Renee James, president of Intel Corp.

I’m currently reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. The reason why is self-evident.

Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo. Every American should read this true story. It chronicles a time and attitude long lost.

Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

On monetary matters, Martin Wolf’s The Shifts and the Shocks is a corker. Wolf is under no illusion about the frailties of economists and policy makers. The root cause of the financial debacle endured in 2007-2010 was, in Wolf’s point- blank words, “The economics establishment failed.” He rails against the “ignorance and arrogance of academics and policy makers,” “the insouciance encouraged by rational-expectation and efficient-market hypotheses,” and “the workhorse macro- economic tool used by central banks (that) was a ‘dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model’ in which finance barely appeared.” He harshly scolds contemporary economists for habitually neglected classical economic thought as framed by the likes of the iconic Walter Bagehot, historian extraordinaire Charles Kindelberger, John Maynard Keynes and Hyman Minsky.

“It is not enough to blame institutional failure” for the debacle we experienced, he says, “because the institutions that failed were those many economists had lauded. This then was not an institutional failure but an intellectual one.” Wolf’s criticism of the economics establishment is withering. And spot on.

Greg Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard University

House of Debt by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi. In this book, two prominent economists who have done extensive research on the recent financial crisis and subsequent recession explain their findings in simple terms so they can be understood by the general public. They argue that policy makers have focused too much on struggling banks and too little on the plight of highly indebted homeowners. They also suggest that to prevent future crises, we as a society should rely less on debt finance and more on creative forms of equity finance.


Tessa Jowell, member of the U.K. parliament

The American Lover by Rose Tremain. She’s wonderful at drawing character. It’s short stories and if you’re busy you can enjoy them without every worrying if you’re going to finish it.

 

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